What is fantasy?

[Duanawitch]

Ok...Swordspoint. Absolutely no magic. No supernatural, psychic or unexplained events; there really is nothing about the structure of Kushner's world that is fantastic in nature. The novel is set in a city in an alternate world (there are some geographical referents that confirm this, but the city itself is unnamed and unpositioned in relation); the society itself, however, is reminiscent of an Italian city State in which noble families hire professional swordsmen to settle matters of honour. The story centres around the exceptionally gifted dualist Richard St. Vier, his enigmatic lover Alec and the fiendish politicking that dominates the lives of a vibrant cast of noblemen and women. Like its subtitle says it's a "Melodrama of Manners" with intelligence and agility featuring as the only unusual gifts and a very tight political scuffle as the plot. Nevertheless, it isn't our world or our historical world; there is some very distinct world-building flowing from reorientated gender and class relations.

If you were to stretch the word fantastic to its limits, you could possibily make the permissibility of homosexuality in Kushner's world a "fantastic" element. But I don't think the level of homosexual and bisexual activity is higher than in our own society; it's only the openness of their culture that allows its expression and exploration.

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.

I absolutely agree on all the above points, except that fantasy *must* contain the obviously "fantastic": magic or the supernatural or that which has no basis in existence. I know that might seem ridiculous - root word and all - but the meaning of "Fantasy" in the OED is as simple as "an imagining unrestricted by reality; a creation of the imagination, especially a weird or bizarre one; an illusion, hallucination or phantom". And a publisher or bookseller would be hard-pressed to shelve/categorise something like Swordspoint, set in an alternate world as it is, anywhere else but in the Fantasy section. I agree that most Fantasy includes those things, but after reading Kushner's novel I think I'll have to stretch my conception of the genre once again (which is what I love about Fantasy: it is never stable, never still and I'm forever having to reorientate myself).

I've been trying to think of other examples, but my memory isn't ticking over: does GGK's A Song for Arbonne have any overtly fantastical elements? I remember that Lions of Al-Rassan has some psychic children in it and I suppose that is a fantastic skill, but it far from shapes or changes the reality of that world. Although Swordspoint might be a rather unusual example, its still pertinent.

On the question of SF I concede to your greater wisdom and experience; my idea of a definition wasn't all that well thought through.

However, on the point of Margaret Atwood and Philip Pullman...I don't think I expressed my concern very well. While I understand the demands of the industry, and how mainstream and genre publishing works, I'm continually shocked by genre fiction's bad reputation. (Not only SF/F but also Crime and Historical fiction...many so-called mainstream authors seem to view literary classifications as a matter of breeding and meaning, with genre fiction ranking far below). And often the prejudice, as with Atwood and Pullman, is born out of an ignorance that doesn't want to be corrected. Pullman has been quoted as saying he knows his work *isn't* fantasy, even though he claims to have never read any adult fantasy and wouldn't want to. He's said disdainingly of his fantasy author counterparts:

"They read my stuff but I don't bother with theirs. Its got no depth or meaning."

Equally, its obvious, as you say, that Atwood is totally uninformed. To me this isn't just a marketing issue but a vital misunderstanding and misconstruction of what SF/F has to offer. It all smacks of vanity and elitism. Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... SF/F may be beginning to creep onto syllabuses and cross-pollinate with the "literary fiction" sections, but it continues to be treated as a second class citizen.

 

[KatG]

i support the idea that genres are arbitrary.

Well of course they're arbitrary. They only exist because we decided to have them. Genres are markets, which technically isn't the dictionary definition of the word, but that's how it works when it comes to fiction. If an audience of sufficient size is identified as willing to buy not just one author's work but a slew of them doing works of a similar type, publishers will create a "genre" or "sub-genre" to market to that audience. If the audience and market get large enough, the genre will develop its own specialty publishers or publishing imprints and special section in bookstores, all to make it as easy as possible for you to find your favorite sort of stories. SF built up a large magazine empire and assembled enough of an audience for sf stories (mostly teenage males,) to become a genre with its own publishers and section in the bookstores in some countries -- notably the U.K., the U.S., and Australia. But that was enough to create both the genre market and its concept. And then those sf publishers, finding that a large number of sf fans and others liked fantasy stories, added on another big market -- the fantasy genre.

D -- I went and checked and "Swordspoint" was first published quite some time ago. It seems to have been recently reprinted because the author is continuing the series in "The Fall of Kings," which is also out. It is a fantasy series; in the second book, the protagonist is dealing with legends of wizards (who were probably fake,) and a possible source of magic (which is not.) Kushner also wrote a more traditional fantasy novel, "Thomas the Rhymer." So even though Swordspoint may seem out of the loop, it's not. Kushner is writing fantasy and publishing with genre publishers. She is doing interesting stuff, sounds like, and the homosexual leads is a nice aspect.

I guess I'm always a bit shocked at how people are shocked that sf/f gets so little respect as a genre. I think it's a tribute to the genres' growth and new generations of fans that they really don't seem to get it. But it's simply this: the sf genre came from pulp magazines made primarily for a small, niche, young male audience. And the fantasy genre came from the sf genre and from the help of things such as fantasy gaming companies. And it has always been mostly a paperback market. Neither genre required literary-style writing for fans, not that they rejected literary-style writing either. So as a literary pedigree, it's not appealing for a lot of authors.

But it's not so much snobbery as plain anxiety. The fantasy genre market is certain but small, despite the growth of the genre. Crossover mainstream audiences are possible, but such popularity does not always translate as value and worth. The mainstream market is uncertain, but large. If you come to be valued within it, the gains are potentially much larger. And if an author doesn't write fantasy or sf stories exclusively, it may not make sense to call yourself a genre author, which means you only write in the genre. For instance, Jonathan Lethem wrote some sf, such as the popular "Gun, with Occasional Music." But then he went and wrote a mystery novel that was not sf or fantasy and so he published it with a mystery publisher. That book was very successful. Another book he wrote, "The Fortress of Solitude," is a fantasy novel, but it was published as a non-genre book and that was probably the right call. Isaac Asimov wrote primarily sf, but also did some mysteries. Kurt Vonnegut Jr. did not want to be caught in what he saw as the sf ghetto (and which probably could be called a ghetto at the time.) He refused to call his work sf, published with non-genre publishers mostly and gained a fair amount of literary acclaim as a satirist. He's still embraced by sf, but he managed his career as he saw fit. He wanted that larger, more uncertain market. More genre authors are able to reach that market as well as the genre market since his heyday.

And Vonnegut may have also wanted a certain amount of freedom. The idea that fantasy can go many different places is a strange one to many fantasy fans. There are many fantasy stories that would not do very well in the current genre market and may do much better in the mainstream market with both mainstream and some genre fans. That's also changing, just slowly. But given how sf/f used to be viewed -- and how it seems to be viewed in many places in the world -- it's progress. And semantics. And sales.

But fantasy stories are fantasy stories, psychic children and all, whether they are put in the fantasy/sf section of the bookstore or not.

 

[Duanawitch]

I went and checked and "Swordspoint" was first published quite some time ago. It seems to have been recently reprinted because the author is continuing the series in "The Fall of Kings," which is also out. It is a fantasy series; in the second book, the protagonist is dealing with legends of wizards (who were probably fake,) and a possible source of magic (which is not.) Kushner also wrote a more traditional fantasy novel, "Thomas the Rhymer." So even though Swordspoint may seem out of the loop, it's not. Kushner is writing fantasy and publishing with genre publishers. She is doing interesting stuff, sounds like, and the homosexual leads is a nice aspect.

Certainly Kushner is writing fantasy! Nevertheless, the magical turn placed on events by the sequel Fall of Kings, which as you say was not only published 10 years after the original but was also co-authored, is wholly retrospective. The genral difficulty - that Swordspoint contains no magical or fantastical elements - remains (and I don't want to seem like I'm flogging a dead horse ). When Kushner published in 1987 she did indeed publish with a fantasy publisher, and her work does indeed appeal to a fantasy audience, but it doesn't, and didn't then, conform to any magical or fantastic system. Her novel's Fantasy element is wholly characterised by its "other-worldliness".

Essentially, what I was trying to say above (not very well I admit) was not is a novel like Swordspoint fantasy (we know it is, we feel it is), but how do we identify it as such. If we ignored, for example, which section of the bookshop we found it in, which publisher printed it and where it was reviewed and by whom, how would we know to call it fantasy. Based on our reading alone how do we identify what a "fantasy story" is? If we wanted to be structuralist about it, we could ask: what is the langue of fantasy writing, and what are the paroles? And if a story identified as "fantasy" didn't fit these criterion, how do we accomadate it?

Although, as MrMoonshineMan says, genre is arbitrary, it is human nature to categorise; we label because it is in our nature, as well as in the nature of industry and of semantics. Would you say there is no genre outside of sales, that Fantasy is indeed a "phantom" in and of itself?

I know I seem to be pushing and pushing at these things, but I think it's important to debate genre issues. I'm continually being asked what it is I like about SF/F literature when I consider myself a serious reader and an academic. I think I know what I like...and I like Fantasy...but what is that in its essential parts?

 

[MrMoonshineMan]

i see what you're saying, Duanawitch. i think we have to go back to what i think Girac said, with the two dimensional representation. All fiction books can be considered to have some degree of fantasy, and some degree of science fiction, but most of what people consider to be strictly fantasy is far out along the fantasy axis with an extremely small SF value. and vice versa.

i don't think that there would be any kind of "critical point" as in thermodynamic phase diagrams. there is a continuum of points. that is to say, there is no line such that on one side is strictly fantasy and on the other is science fiction.

so i guess i still support that genres are arbitrary, and i agree with you when you say that it is in our nature to make them, and they are necessary for marketing and organization needs.

 

[Duanawitch]

I don't think that there would be any kind of "critical point" as in thermodynamic phase diagrams. there is a continuum of points. that is to say, there is no line such that on one side is strictly fantasy and on the other is science fiction.

I like this idea of being on a continuum and agree that there can't be any distinct cut off point.

 

[Jay_T]

Forgiv me for not adding to the actual topic; i thin KatG set it straight, and if you spend enough time around messagebaord this topic gets old, however I have read it and I just wanted to comment on this:

For instance, Jonathan Lethem wrote some sf, such as the popular "Gun, with Occasional Music."

Great book

 

[KatG]

Well, that's our language; we like multiple meanings of words. There's the dictionary/academic definition of genre, which we really never use when using the word genre around here. When fans talk about the fantasy genre, or genre fiction, they mean the genre market. But sometimes, they extend the word to all fantasy fiction in general. Fantasy fiction existed long before there was a genre market, continues to exist outside as well as inside the genre market, and would presumably still be around should the genre market be dissolved. And this forum does include discussions of all fantasy fiction, as a type of story, whether such works are published by genre publishers or sold in sf/f sections of bookstores or not, especially as many of the members' home countries have neither genre publishers nor a distinct genre market. (Canada for instance doesn't really have any genre publishers but has a genre market. India seems to have neither.)

Kushner may have taken longer to write a sequel to Swordspoint than perhaps originally planned, but seems to clearly have had a fantasy world in mind, and pitched the story in that context to her publisher and fantasy genre fans. If we disregard that concept and the sequel and look at the book alone, and if we accept your assertion that there are no magical, divine or supernatural elements to the work at all -- which we have no reason to doubt -- then technically, it's a fantasy novel. Here's why: fantasy fiction are stories which contain elements that have a magical or supernatural basis or contain fantastic phenomena which is not explained at all. Swordspoint has an imagined reality in which there is a city with cultural practices that do not replicate (though may have been inspired by) anything in reality. And there is no explanation for the existence of this city in this imaginary world with these practices, for this deviation from reality. So she just sneaks in under the wire. That doesn’t mean that she couldn’t have published the work as a non-genre fantasy. But given her fan audience, that wasn’t an option she chose.

Of course, it is possible that someone might market a work as a fantasy that is not a fantasy. We've got plenty of authors out there claiming their fantasy novels are a mix of sf and fantasy because they have a spaceship in it or something, and plenty of fantasy fans who claim an sf novel is really a fantasy novel because it has psychic alien wildlife. But fantasy stories are a type of story that contains the fantastic. It’s not going to change its nature. SF uses a science basis to structure its imagined realities, and fantasy uses a fantastic basis to structure its imagined realities (magic, supernatural, unexplained.) In Kushner’s case, given what she continued to do with the series, it’s firmly in the fantasy camp, if playing with the boundaries by dropping any hard fantasy elements.

The fantasy genre market does change, quite regularly, in sub-genres and names of sub-genres, popular trends among authors, size of the fan base, etc. Some interesting changes seem to be going on right now. But the key components are what is in the story and why it is there. If a story has elements that are not reality or at least not fully, then that leads us to sf and fantasy and the why part is what splits them. If the why is science-based, it’s sf; if the why is magical, supernatural, or unknown, you’re in fantasy land. Horror, a type of story meant to horrify and scare, gets to have it three ways. They can have a fantasy story (big, scary boogeyman under the bed,) a sf story (big, scary alien comes to eat your face off,) or neither (scary psycho serial killer with a big knife.)

 

[shellback97]

Most Science Fictions involves technology well beyond our current understanding of the laws of physics and is thus just as much a fantasy as magic. Both the Wheel of Time and Brust's Vlad Taltos novels hint at some super technology that is the ultimate cause of the supposed magic. John Ringo in his There Will Be Dragons books creates a scenario where super technology can turn into magic. So the line between Sci Fi and Fantasy is very fluid. Now with horror, Peter Hamilton's Nights Dawn books are really scary, if you can get by the fact that they are hard sci fi space opera. Martin and Elliot are very scary at times too if you can get past the fact that they are epic fantasy. Now it is easier to scare someone if you can make them believe this could happen to them or at least happen in the real world. HP Lovecraft worked really hard to create this illusion. Blair Witch Project is an excellent example of this illusion at work. But when was the last time Stephen King ever really bothered with this? He usually only did it in short stories and true horror works best in short stories since the whole thing really needs to be swallowed in one sitting. Scariest thing I read recently was John RIngo's There Will Be Dragons- the woman in the middle of the ocean when the net crashed. OMGZ. and that was half a page.

 

[Razael]

Wow! I thought the diffrence between sci-fi and fantasy is pretty clear. The one is with blasters, spaceships and guns, and the other genre is with swords and magic in some medieval realm...

 

[KatG]

Most Science Fictions involves technology well beyond our current understanding of the laws of physics and is thus just as much a fantasy as magic. Both the Wheel of Time and Brust's Vlad Taltos novels hint at some super technology that is the ultimate cause of the supposed magic. John Ringo in his There Will Be Dragons books creates a scenario where super technology can turn into magic. So the line between Sci Fi and Fantasy is very fluid.

I’m sorry, but that argument doesn’t work. That the science we have now would seem magical to people in the 1200’s doesn’t change the fact that it is science, not magic. Likewise, that we can speculate about possible future science that would be amazing in our current time period doesn’t turn it into magic either. A flying car powered by a machine engine that doesn’t exist yet would still be a flying car powered by a machine – by science – not by magic spells. The supertechnology in John Ringo’s novel is not magic but technology – genetics, chemicals, nanorobots, solar fuels. His “elves” are genetically engineered super-soldiers, not magical beings. The woman who dies in the ocean does so not because protective magic fails her but because of essentially a massive power outage.

“There Will Be Dragons” belongs to a loosely organized sub-genre of sf that has ended up with the unfortunate, inaccurate name of science fantasy. These are stories that exhibit a fantasy-like appearance or mask, but are actually science-based and hence, science fiction (albeit often using science that is thin or highly speculative.) It’s not surprising that a number of science fantasy authors – C.J. Cherryh, Tad Williams, Gene Wolfe – also write fantasy, which may add to people’s confusion. Essentially science fantasy writers are playing with the very idea you bring up, that what seems like fantasy and magic turns out to be actually science. This is the definition of the sub-genre. The why is it there dividing line thus does not become fluid, but instead is the critical factor of the tale or series.

Robert Jordan has hinted of advanced technologies in the history of his imaginary world in WOT, and Stephen Brust has dropped hints that the races in his Jhereg series may be genetically engineered. The problem is that it isn’t at all clear whether magic or science powers the legendary advanced machines or caused the genetic engineering, and whether science rather than magic is responsible for all the fantasy elements present in these series. Since there isn’t a clear science explanation, since it is unknown, both series are firmly fantasy. Either author could, with the stroke of a pen, perhaps put in the science and turn their series into science fantasy, but they haven’t done it yet. It would be pretty interesting, but I don’t know that either of them will do so.

Again, if an author puts in a machine or piece of technology into their fantasy story along with magic and supernatural elements, that doesn’t turn it into a sf story. If an author has a dragon in their sf story, and the dragon is an alien or genetically engineered life form, then it remains a sf story, not a fantasy one just because the creature is called a dragon.

Publishers don’t necessarily go out of their way to clarify things, even though they use the basic criteria for most of their marketing decisions. They know that many of the fans of the two genres read both genres and are happy to cross-pollinate audiences as much as possible. And for fans, what a particular story may be is usually a moot issue. Whether the vampire is a damned soul who can’t enter a church (fantasy) or an alien creature with a biological need to drink blood (sf,) we can still enjoy the vampire. But, if you are trying to definitely determine whether a story is sf or fantasy, the why is it there issue, the choice the author makes for a rationale, is the litmus test.

 

[Razael]

You make me wonder "Is Star Wars Fantasy???"

 

[Gary Wassner]

KatG, do you find the scifi shelves shrinking and the fantasy shelves expanding in your local stores? I went into one of those huge Barnes and Noble stores (I needed to take another look at my books on the self, it's such a new experience for me ) and I realized that there was only one bank of shelving for the science fiction titles and more than six for fantasy. I never noticed that quite as glaringly before.

 

[KatG]

Believe it or not, Star Wars is sf, though that doesn't mean that fantasy fans can't enjoy it and sf fans can't complain about it. People point to the Force, but Lucas covered his butt by having it explained that the Force was the energy from all things -- essentially, the next stage of quantum physics -- that the Jedi can then manipulate through mind training. Then he got loopier in Phantom Menace, turning the Force from energy into micro-organisms, which makes it more sf. Really bad science, but sf. There's the prophecy with Anakin having been conceived without a dad, but that's been put forth as part of the Sith plot to deliberately make the kid. Are we buying any of this? No, but the fact that it's thrown in there as a rationale makes it sf. Or as the sf folk like to say, scifi.

KatG, do you find the scifi shelves shrinking and the fantasy shelves expanding in your local stores? I went into one of those huge Barnes and Noble stores (I needed to take another look at my books on the self, it's such a new experience for me ) and I realized that there was only one bank of shelving for the science fiction titles and more than six for fantasy. I never noticed that quite as glaringly before.

GW, that's a whole other thread, and a subject that's come up in the SF Forum. Most bookstores still mix sf and fantasy, rather than separate them, and while the fantasy books definitely dominate (for one thing, they're often heavier,) and it was looking a little bad there for a bit, sf seems to be having an upswing. A large number of sf movies and t.v. are coming up and some of those films are based on actual sf fiction -- "War of the Worlds," "Hitchiker's Guide," "Through a Scanner Darkly." Plus there's been some sf movie hits in the recent past from sf fiction -- "Minority Report," "I, Robot." The Star Wars film and Stover's adaptation novel are doing well. All of that helps the sf genre.

A number of sf authors, new and established, are getting a lot of attention now -- Elizabeth Bear, Julie Czernada, etc. Neal Stephenson's Baroque series, while only nominally sf, is doing very well and he seems to not have cut his ties with the genre as much as I thought earlier. There were signs of a possible purge in both sf and fantasy -- sales down, inventories too full and publishers dump authors -- but that doesn't seem to be happening just yet. The publishers appear to be promoting both their fantasy and sf titles in roughly equal proportion, though I do think we have to accept that the ratio of sf to fantasy published has changed in fantasy's favor. Non-genre authors are playing around more and more with sf. Michael Cunningham, the author of "The Hours," who's a fan of sf, made one of the three tied-together novellas in his new novel "Specimen Days" a sf story.

So it's getting interesting. The truth is that pop culture interest in sf -- movies, t.v., games, comics, general fiction -- helps the sf genre. Fantasy's success can help sf, and vice versa. SF/F publishers have very little reason to split the two genres up because they can help bank-roll each other and they have so many mutual fans. But some bookstores are splitting the two up for sales purposes, because they've both gotten so huge. The amount of sf/f in a particular store seems tied to what they think their clientele is, so you might have a lot, a little, or more fantasy than sf, depending on the store. My local superstore has a huge sf/f section and doesn't split them, plus one tier just for tie-in stuff. In contrast, the mystery section is only two sets of shelves, in part because they moved all the bestselling suspense fiction to the general fiction shelves, but that's the fall-out of the mystery genre purge that occurred in the late 1990's maybe. Another store I was in had a very tiny sf/f section and didn't split them. Another store had a huge sf section and a huge fantasy section, and....you get the idea. Both at least are way more prominent in stores than they were just a decade ago, and that's not counting the children's titles.

(So did you sign your books in the Barnes & Noble? Always introduce yourself and offer to sign the stock.)

 

[Gary Wassner]

Kage Baker told me the same thing about offering to sign the books. Now that Barnes and Noble is placing a storewide order for The Twins, I will approach them. I was reluctant to previously because I wasn't sure that they would have really cared about me, and I am not really very good with rejection. It's a childhood thing. I am going to approach them about doing some other kind of promotion as well. If The Twins sell, they intend to buy the rest of the series, so I want to do whatever I possibly can.

 

[Duanawitch]

[Swordspoint has] an imagined reality in which there is a city with cultural practices that do not replicate (though may have been inspired by) anything in reality. And there is no explanation for the existence of this city in this imaginary world with these practices, for this deviation from reality.

I am much more comfortable with this as a (very) generalistic concept of what fantasy is (and can be), emphasising "imagined reality", otherworldliness and divergent cultural/social practises rather than typically fantastic elements (like magic). While this otherworldliness is often expressed through fantastic elements (perhaps in the majority of examples), social-cultural phenomena serve as an equal and, for me a more notable, index of difference and imagined reality, and thus of "fantasy".

If you spend enough time around messagebaord this topic gets old...

I can imagine. And the title question of this topic really is unanswerable if taken in the abstract...which I suppose is what I tried to do.

I've been quite an unquestioning reader of fantasy writing thus far, knowing what I enjoyed but having only a vague notion of what the "genre" encompassed. It's only in the weeks since I started reading threads here at the forum that I began to question the basis of my liking and disliking, and the composition of the SF/F world. So for me (and at your expense I suppose) the topic is still very new and not easily absorbed or solved...I suppose "genre" alignment is a process of osmosis only just beginning in my case.

 

[Artemisia]

My pet theory

I have a theory, although I freely admit that it's a generalisation, and as I've read far more fantasy than science fiction, it may be a little biased - feel free to disagree.

I think that fantasy inculed any stories that can be interpreted as allegories of a person's inner struggle - like LoTR being seen as a struggle between a pre-industrial arcadia and teh destructive machines of the Dark Lord. Readers of fantasy especially have a romantic nostalgia for the pre-industrial world, but few people would consider giving up our modern comforts to regain that world. Reading fantasy gives us an outlet for that inner conflict, and lets us escape the perpetual hum of electricity for a while.

Science Fiction - true science fiction - I think is about conflicts on a cultural level, like the movie Gattaca, and works by authors like Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein. They deal with the effects of science and technlogy on our culture as a whole.

I say true science fiction, because I think that lost of what is presented as SciFi is really fantasy with ray guns - and that includes Star Wars and a lot of McCaffrey. Before Dragonsdawn and All the Weyrs of Pern, who would have called the Dragonrider series SciFi?

On a slightly different track, what do people think of Fantasy stories that do not have magic? the first exaple that comes to mind is Jennifer Fallon's Second Sons Trilogy (The Lion of Senet, Eye of the Labrynth, Lord of the Shadows) - they are set in a fantasy world, but the grounding is firmly in science and mathematics - and I would in no way consider it scifi. While magic is common to fantasy stories, is it always essential? What other examples are there of Fantasy stories without magic?

And, on yet another track - has anyone ever come across urban fantasy with a futuristic setting?

 

[algernoninc]

I liked the analogy : "SF is fantasy with ray guns". it implies that there really isn't such a big difference between the two genres. they are different in the "clothes" they wear (chainmail hauberk versus titanium spacesuit), in the exterior trappings and not in the core (the coming of age story, how an ordinary person deals with extraordinary circumstances, etc.). Maybe we should look at the similitudes between SF and fantasy, and not at the differences.

Also, maybe the difference is in "the eye of the beholder", in the way we approach a book. my best example is "Helliconia" trilogy by Brian Aldiss. I first read it some 20 years ago, while still a student at Politechnics, and I brought all my engineer training to bear - searching for technical/scientific explanations in every page, and finding them. I rejoiced at identifying the clockwork mechanisms that made the story plausible.

I re-read the story last year, having now a more solid background of fantasy reads under my belt. Guess what : it now reads as a perfect example of an epic fantasy book - several intelligent species cohabiting and interacting with each other, continental wide plots and conflicts, larger than life heroes, even magic (what is science to one civilisation is magic to another).

I'm curious to see on what shelf would you slot "Helliconia".

To take the analogy even further, you can read a lot of non-genre books as fantasy. One of my favorites is about an imaginary leader of an imaginary country : "The Citadel" by Antoine de Saint-Exupery - does this qualify it as a fantasy book?

 

[Artemisia]

Exactly - Magic, or technology, is only ever a means to an end in a story. A story is about characters - all the spells in the world won't help a hero who has failed to overcome the flaws in their character that set them on the path of adventure in teh first place. I tend to take a Jungian view of the function of stories - we read them to act out our internal conflicts and get some resolution. However, it is only temporary; no sooner do we put down one book than we have to go find another!

I haven't read Helliconia, but from what you have said, I'd call it fantasy. In a magical world, magic is technology. Just go ask the wizards at Unseen University.

 

[H.F.]

I always liked Tolkien's definition relying on the idea of sub-creation. To the extent that words can function allegorically, they attempt to recreate reality, albeit imperfectly. Which I think works pretty well (though hardly ideally) to describe what we call "realistic" fiction.

A story perhaps only becomes fantastic when allegory is completely removed from language -- language, in that sense, as it works both to reflect our world and to influence our perceptions of it. This definition makes fantasy heavily reliant on imagination by distancing the comprehension of language from "objective" reality. You read "hobbit" and must rely on your own mind to piece together a reference (with help, of course, from other words which do function allegorically). Hence what might be the innate problem with shmeerps in fantasy.

Not sure where this would leave sci-fi. I know some people group all of speculative fiction under the "Romance" title (coughFryecough), or see it all as an attempt to recreate worlds outside or tangential to the norms or commonly held laws of reality. Maybe divisions only occur on the level of conventions. A sci-fi story features machines, a fantasy features magic, a horror story features any combo therein plus blood ... simplistic, I know. Oh well, maybe its just more important to keep asking the questions than arriving at the answers.

 

[Duanawitch]

I think that fantasy inculed any stories that can be interpreted as allegories of a person's inner struggle.

Science fiction - true science fiction - I think is about conflicts on a cultural level

Interesting distinction, and true to an extent, but I think, more often than not, cultural and inner conflicts are analogues and forms of each other in SF/F. They're like co-dependent partners with dual applicability. LotR may be a story about individuals struggling against, and triumphing against, evil after great personal difficulty, but it is also about conflicts on a cultural level. There is a great deal of cultural politics interweaved in the books - the relationship between Edoras and the White City, between Saruman and Fangorn forest. Similarly with SF. I see both strands of conflict informing the other. Grudgingly I have to admit I think Margaret Atwood said it quite well in her Guardian article at the weekend:

"They can explore the nature and limits of what it means to be a human in graphic ways, pushing the envelope as far as it will go."

Human as both individual and as cultural player I suppose.

On a slightly different track, what do people think of Fantasy stories that do not have magic? the first exaple that comes to mind is Jennifer Fallon's Second Sons Trilogy (The Lion of Senet, Eye of the Labrynth, Lord of the Shadows) - they are set in a fantasy world, but the grounding is firmly in science and mathematics - and I would in no way consider it scifi. While magic is common to fantasy stories, is it always essential? What other examples are there of Fantasy stories without magic?

If you read back over the last few posts you'll see that KatG and I have been discussing the magic issue for a few weeks. I personally see fantasy's defining quality as a sense of otherness and other-worldliness, with magic often used to acheive this but not essential. I've never read Jennifer Fallon's books (although the first is on my interminable to-read-pile), but now I'll be very interested to approach them.

A story perhaps only becomes fantastic when allegory is completely removed from language -- language, in that sense, as it works both to reflect our world and to influence our perceptions of it. This definition makes fantasy heavily reliant on imagination by distancing the comprehension of language from "objective" reality. You read "hobbit" and must rely on your own mind to piece together a reference (with help, of course, from other words which do function allegorically). Hence what might be the innate problem with shmeerps in fantasy.

I'm very interested by this idea of how fantasy works. Let me get this straight: "realistic" fiction is created by acts of language that are directly referential to objects, ideas and customs that we recognise in our "real" lives, while SF/F is created by exoticising the reference process and thereby subtly changing our approach to often familiar subjects or ideas?

Thus, although we are able to recognise a custom or a belief system (like, say, marriage) we are placed outside it, observing it through the imagination...and it becomes part of a non-reality, an otherworldly place? That has linguistic reflections, but is not speaking the language of "realism"? Hmmmm...I don't think I'm making any sense. Definitely much to think on though.