What is fantasy?

Sojourn, there's a hoary old canon in scientific circles that says 'seek simplicity, but distrust it'. For your classification system, I'll ask you to classify Patricia Kenneally's Keltiad series for me. A series that draws incredibly heavily on the celtic tradition and follows the descendents of Brendon the Astrogator who fled earth to avoid persecution. THe series is complete with magic, the sidhe (faery folk), starships, interstellar alliances and high-tech.
Clearly the series bridges across the so-called boundary you set up between SF and Fantasy. Which is why I think genres is a good marketing concept but has no legitimate basis in reality. You can't divide up a continuum into discreet chunks without making some arbitrary decisions.


[This message has been edited by Giarc (edited November 12, 2000).]
 
Well, like i said before, i agree that it is mainly a marketing concept, but you can hardly say it has no legitimate basis in reality...
 
Well, if it is a marketing concept...I'm glad there is one. Otherwise I would have to hunt through and read a ton of sci-fi book covers in order to get to a fantasy book. I enjoy fantasy not science fiction. Its unfortunate they are both classified as a single genre in many instances. Basically what I want is magic and a level of technology that includes swordfighting and not guns. This is to me what seperates sci-fi from fantasy. Of course there are exceptions, but there are exceptions to everything in life.

But I for one like that these two genres are considered seprate and any attempt to consolidate them by everyday people or the press only serves to detract one from the other.
 
Giarc: Hehe, it appears that we're following two different schools of thought; the late martial artist and philosopher Bruce Lee once said, 'in all things, simplicity' or words to that effect. ^_^ Well, that's the arts for you, as opposed to scientific thought.

Anyway, I think you misunderstood my intentions, my fault for not having added that both 'genres' are strictly NOT mutually exclusive. With your example, it's 'simple': Patricia Kenneally's series would be conveniently defined by many as 'sci-fi/fantasy'! A popular example of such hybrids is 'Star Wars', which is essentially fantasy with the 'trappings' of science fiction. I've come across a role-playing game titled 'Skyrealms of Jorune' which was decribed as 'science-fiction with the trappings of fantasy'. One wonders what the difference (if there is one) would be between Star Wars and Skyrealms, though I could presume that SW would have a more pronounced 'fantasyness' than Skyrealms. Indeed, such hybirds are quite common, especially since many authors/game designers seem determined to break out of preconcieved molds.

One thing I do agree with is that the 'genre' classification is a form of marketing and product identification, ultimately to the benefit of consumers. Imagine if all works of fiction were lumped under the catch-all 'Fiction' genre. Horrors...

IMHO... ^_^
 
I'm currently reading a book on writing science fiction and fantasy by Crawford Kilian, and he defines science fiction as "a story that couldn't happen without its scientific content. The story can't contradict what we currently accept as scientific fact, such as the impossiblity of going faster than light, but it can speculate on what may turn out to be fact-such as a way to travel through some other kind of space where the speed of light is not a factor."

Fantasy is explained as "a story in which the conditions are flatly contrary to scientific fact. Magic works. Supernatural beings intervene in human affairs. People have destines, often foretold long before their birth."
 
I agree that the use of genres is /useful/ and of benefit. Just as the species concept is useful for biologists to discuss a particular lifeform. My point is that there is no clearcut demarcation between SF and fantasy. It is all arbitrary and subjective. For example, with Pluvius' definitions, who is to say what 'may turn out to be fact'? At what point do you say this is flatly impossible or possibly feasible? The concept of a spherical Earth would once have been thought of as flatly impossible. Again, it becomes a judgement call.
I still maintain that genres are artificial constructs. Useful ones, granted, but ultimately are subjective and decided arbitrarily by people. A good parallel is colour. We divide the visible spectrum into different 'colours' depending on the wavelength of the light. What one person calls fluro green, another may call it yellow. A rainbow is composed of a continuous range of wavelengths of light and there is no discreet or 'real' lines of demarcation between the colours we see. The concept of colour is very useful, but it is an artificial classification system imposed on a continuous phenomenon.
IMHO
 
i haven't read any of the other posts so excuse me if i'm repeating things that have been said before.i think that fantasy and sci-fi are generaaly similar, but with one major difference.While in sci-fi most things that occur can be and should be rationalised by our own current knowledge of science or at least by a certain logic that is well explained before hand, fantasy authors have the freedom to imagine everything and anything that they wish. also fantasy books tend to be more "lager then life" so to speak.
i love both genres just as much.
 
I'm still just annoyed that everyone thinks that faster than light travel is still impossible. There is no law of physics that disproves it, no evidence that it cannot be achieved. Einsteins theories of general and special relativity are just that - theories. Until they can be proven or disproven, no one can say whether they are true or not.

Off topic, but still an interesting conversation.
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Actually Einstein's theories on the inability to travel faster than speed of light are universally considered to be fact. The universe has many laws which have become well known to scientists, and that is one of them. This isn't to say there aren't ways to circumvent this law with some far future technology-but it has been calculated to be true.
 
May be considered fact, but never actually proven. The whole scientific definition of a theory is a scientific idea which hasn't been conclusively proven, and a law is an idea that has been proven to be true.
Therefore to say that:
"The universe has many laws which have become well known to scientists, and that is one of them"
is false by the very scientific definition of a law.
Scientist have proven laws, which help us frame the rules of the universe. So while it is a commonly accepted (and believed) theory that faster than light travel is impossible, it is not a law of physics (like Newton's laws - which he proved with many experiments).
 
Actually there is evidence that faster than light travel cannot be achieved. Einstein has proven that the universe is made up of certain fundamental laws which can be explained mathmatically. And this incorporates the inability to exceed light speed.

I'm sorry but I'm not an expert on science, so if someone could help me explain why this is so it might be beneficial to me and others out there. Thank you.
 
I don't think either of us are going to convince the other here, Pluvious, and neither of us has quite enough knowledge to prove their point. I know that they are called Theories of General and Special Relativity, and once something is proven it becomes a law. By my logic, this means that the ideas in these theories (ie faster than light travel) has not been proven or disproven.

Hopefully someone with a better understanding (or at least someone who can be bothered to do the research) can step in now...
 
Actually, I'd just like to say that the scientific method (science) can't /prove/ anything; it can only fail to disprove something. Eventually the range of palusible alternative hypotheses become exhausted and the last theory standing becomes accepted as 'fact'. Of course, the point at which a theory is accepted as fact is another judgement call
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Seems to be my theme song these days. Life is complicated !
smile.gif
 
I have also read Crawford Kilian's book, and I want to comment on something. He writtes, about fantasy: "a story in which the conditions are flatly contrary to scientific fact. Magic works. Supernatural beings intervene in human affairs. People have destines, often foretold long before their birth".
I think in the last part he is mistaken (IMHO). People don't need to have a grand destine, for the book to be fantasy. It is just that Destiny is overused. Personaly, I hate Fate, Destiny etc. All writters have used it. I want something original. A hero who will do something great without this being foretold by ancient books and profecies.
As to my defination of fantasy:
"Fantasy is the genre in which magic is reall, and people do heroic deeds, that normal men will never ever think to try."

Bardos
 
relateing to the scientific discussion.
Newton's "laws" of gravity have been indeed proven, but still Einstein's theory of relativity which as far as i know most of it's points HAVE been proven circumvents some of Newtons laws. e.g time being constant.
my point is that even what we consider as a scientific law can be broken as our knowledge grows. as far as our knowledge extends nowadays, faster then light travel is impossible. This might change with more knowledge.
 
I've just read Ellen Kushner's Swordspoint: A Melodrama of Manners and decided this thread needed resurrecting. According to nearly all the definitions of fantasy in this discussion, Swordspoint wouldn't classify as fantasy - no magic, no hero, no quest. It only ticks the alternate world box. Does this mean it isn't fantasy? Its certainly shelved, marketed and reviewed as such, and after reading it I couldn't argue it was anything else - mundane fiction, magical realism, historical fiction, or even alternate history.

So how does this kind of work become classified? IMHO fantasy is a massive genre that blurs into both SF and regular fiction, but the key element for pure fantasy for me is an "other-worldliness"...the story's setting has to be geographically, linguistically or culturally unfamiliar to us (whether this means alternative world, or distant future world as in Shannara).

The SF element is the persistent use of post-industrial technologies. Although I wouldn't want to expand too much on this...I haven't read half as much SF as fantasy. :o

Both have their epic, quest, "special powers" elements (as in Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness where telepathy is an embedded quality of the human psyche...something I think most scientists would dispute at the present time).

I'd call anything that contains fantasy elements in our world - magic, shape-shifting, gender changing, elves and so on - "magical realism": like Virginia Woolf's Orlando or Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus. I'd also be tempted to put some of Murakami's work in this category.

Also, I'm interested to know what people think about the current trend amongst well-known, apparently "mainstream" authors, like Margaret Atwood (SF) and Philip Pullman (fantasy), for denigrating the genres by suggesting that their own work is simply too meaningful to be categorised as SF/F. Both seem to think that all there is to fantasy is dragons, wizards and stableboys, and all there is to SF is space ships and intergalactic lizards. Atwood made this (ridiculous) distinction between SF and her work, which she prefers to call "speculative fiction" (ha ha), saying that things like The Handmaid's Tale and Oryx and Crake could really happen.
 
Fantasy is a huge genre and can encompass so many different sub-genres. I think the main ground rule is that if a book or film contains anything remotely 'fantastical' (ie something that would not happen in the real world) then it can be classed as being fantasy.

Therefore, Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, a film about a magical, flying car has just as much right to be called fantasy as Lord of the Rings does. They are simply different fantasy genres.
 
Oh man, do we have to? Okay, here we go again.

SF has utterly nothing to do with post-industrial technology. It's perfectly fine for fantasy stories to be set in modern, post-industrial settings. I.E. if China Mieville or Neil Gaiman throw a computer into their stories, that doesn't make it a sf element. SF are stories of imagined realities that involve science and technology that does not, at the moment, exist. It may be science and technology that may one day exist (such as what happened with cloning,) partially exists (nanotechnology, space travel,) or that is unlikely to ever exist (Spiderman.) SF stories may be set in the past, the alternate past (German wins WWII,) the present or the near or far future. SF stories may be set in a post-apocalyptic future where science and technology have had a set-back (don't exist as they do now.) SF stories may use such devices as psychic abilities, time travel, vampirism, animal imprinting, and alternate dimensions as long as there is a scientific basis for them, however flimsy, and they remain sf stories, not fantasy stories. A story in which people on a giant spaceship don't know that they are on a giant spaceship is still a sf story.

A fantasy story does not have to be about a quest and does not have to have a hero. It does not have to have cute animals, elves, dragons, wizards, dwarves or any other concept that may be commonly used in fantasy stories. It is a fantasy story because it is an imagined reality in which the fantastic occurs -- things that are caused by magic, the supernatural or who knows what -- things which do not exist in reality and which are given no scientific basis for existence. Fantasy stories can be set in any time and in any place, including imaginary worlds and the near or far future.

Now, I haven't read Swordspoint and I don't know what the deal is with it. I'll take your word for no magic, but I would then normally expect there to be some sort of supernatural, psychic, or unexplained elements to it, or something about the structure or existence of the alternate world that is fantastic in nature. Perhaps someone else who's read the work could provide more info.

Magic realism is a form of literature that has been around a long time, just as fantasy fiction has been around long before there was ever a fantasy genre. (In most countries of the world, there still isn't a fantasy genre market and they must think we're crazy to discuss this stuff.) It is a realistic story in which something magical and unrealistic occurs, such as a man waking up one morning to find he's a giant cockroach. It is a fantasy story. Most magic realist authors, however, are not published by fantasy genre publishers specifically for the fantasy genre fan audience. Genre authors are published by genre publishers for fantasy fans. Non-genre fantasy authors are published by non-genre publishers for a mainstream, general audience. Sometimes they mix and they're doing it more and more. Susannah Clarke, for example, a non-genre fantasy writer, seems to have actively marketed her novel to the genre fans.

Margaret Atwood writes stories that are sf, fantasy or neither. Her dislike of being called a sf author is because she does not write only sf and because she does not want potential readers to view her as being part of the sf genre, which is a small, specialized market that she clearly doesn't value. Given that most of her very large fan base are not sf fans, this does make a certain amount of sense, even if we don't like her attitude about it. Obviously, no one has really explained to her what "speculative" means in the industry.

Pullman, because he'd published children's fiction before, had his bestselling series published in children's, instead of in adult fantasy where it belonged. The market audience for children's fantasy is larger than adult fantasy, as it is not a specialized niche market, so that worked out pretty well for him. Pullman has also gotten aclaim from genre fantasy and the children's field, but he wants bigger mainstream audiences and a chance at mainstream literary prizes. So he's trying to disassociate himself both from the fantasy genre and from children's fiction. It would make more sense if he just wrote something else and went and got it published by Knopf or William Morrow in the U.S., but you'll just have to forgive him for being cranky.

The fantasy and sf genre markets offer authors a direct crack at the readers most likely to buy them, but it can also mean difficulties marketing to non-genre readers, causing authors to defect from genre publishing. As non-genre sf and fantasy authors do well and as the SF/F genres become bigger and more popular, this becomes less and less of an issue. But that won't stop authors from whining about it. :)
 
newtons laws hold in the classical regime. since they work for us, any new theory has to account for newtons equations success. they are in fact a limiting case of quantum mechanics.
some things can move faster than the speed of light, there have been interesting experiments using coupled quantum systems, in which when a state is changed at one point, the corresponding state changes at another point. it all sounds a lot like Philotes in the books by orson scott card. right now, it is generally accepted that while things may go faster than the speed of light, information cannot, so you can have random occurences of faster than light, but you couldn't send a message.
it may well be that there will be a discovery of a better theory that describes the universe, and this new theory will have to explain why quantum mechanics and relativity work so nice sometimes. just because we haven't discovered it yet, is no reason to say it will never be found.
Larry Niven has his Ringworld books, in which there are elements of fantasy, but there is also the idea of harnessing Magnetic Monopoles to power their space ships and what not. While Magnetic monopoles have never been found, the theory behind them is sound, and would explain much about fundamental electrodynamics. just because we've never found them is no reason to give up looking for them.
sorry, kinda got caught up in the physics.

i support the idea that genres are arbitrary.
 
But that won't stop authors from whining about it.

KatG, you are so hard on us. ;)

I love being a genre author. I write fantasy because I love it and I have always loved to read it as well. I gravitated to the fantasy sections, if they existed in the bookstores, whenever I walked into one. I've been reading fantasy since I was a kid.
 
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