What is fantasy?

Originally Posted by Duanawitch
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.
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Kind of. :)

But sub-creation does more than make what is already known exotic. (That's the job of shmeerp.) I've done a poor job describing it. It is less about acts of language than about the inherent nature of language itself to screw with reality.

Here is a link to Tolkien's On Fairy Stories (hopefully legally on the net?)

There's one other distinction I've read about, and I'll mention it because Tolkien touches upon it a bit in the essay. Not sure how to describe this. Its kind of how each discourse relates to the culture of the readers. I'm not sure. Maybe you could call it thematic?

Sci-Fi: Progressive
Fantasy: Escapist (btw: LOVE Tolkien's take on this. Way to turn the materialists' arguments right back on them. Brilliant.)
Horror/Gothic: Subversive
 
The problem with all these theories is that they are concerned with the philosophical and thematic as a basis for genre. While the thematic nature of various stories can certainly be debated, philosophy does not designate types of stories. Instead, the basic elements of the story denote its type.

Because fantasy has a long mythological and religious history, and because those early legends did often have allegorical and philosophical underpinnings or goals (subject to many different interpretations,) fantasy fans can perhaps understandably see those themes pop up in other types of stories. But that does not make those stories fantasy. If we went with the personal struggle idea for instance, every single piece of fiction would be not only fiction (made up,) but fantasy and the idea of fantasy as a type of story different from other stories loses any meaning. If you get very nicely vague and abstract, you can call any example anything you like. And many fantasy fans seem to like to call as many stories as fantasy as they can, for reasons about which I can only speculate.

If you have a person murdered and there's a mystery about who killed him, those elements make the story a murder mystery. Likewise, if you have a story with elements that are outside of reality, and those elements are given a scientific basis, then it's sf, and if they are not, it's fantasy. It's what is in the story, not what you think the story means thematically (a meaning with which other readers may entirely disagree.) Again, for our own personal enjoyment, it matters little whether the dragons are magical creatures or bioengineered animals. But, if those elements have been placed in the story, if the dragons are in fact bioengineered animals, ignoring that fact just so you can call it fantasy then gives your pronouncement little meaning.

This isn't a matter of picking teams for basketball. Fantasy doesn't "win" if we can claim more stories for our side. It's what the author is doing, what elements are put into a story and what rationale is given for the existence of those elements in the story. And if the author writes all the books in a series and constructs the past history of the stories with the concept of dragons as bioengineered animals, you’re stuck with it. It’s not fantasy. It’s a deliberate choice the author has made of what is going to be in the story. And I can tell you, as someone who loves both genres, that a lot of sf fans and authors would appreciate it if you’d stop trying to declare sf as some weird form of fantasy fiction.

That a sf story is about a quest, or a battle of good and evil folk and their empires, or has funky alien animals, none of these things makes it fantasy. These are all storytelling ideas that are not endemic to fantasy but available for all sorts of fiction. That most of the earliest stories in the world were fantasy does not mean that fantasy then gets to claim the whole field for all time. Again, the thematic doesn’t determine type. Types of stories definitely do influence each other. I think we could safely say that fantasy has influenced all types of stories. But that doesn’t mean that they then become a fantasy story.
 
The difference between it all Is sleight of hand. Put a woman in abox and cut her in half, it's fantasy. Put two women in boxes, pretend to cut hte box in half and it's science Fiction.
 
kegasaurus said:
The difference between it all Is sleight of hand. Put a woman in abox and cut her in half, it's fantasy. Put two women in boxes, pretend to cut hte box in half and it's science Fiction.
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Exactly, keg. But that sleight of hand is important because it's a principle element, indeed the basis for, the story being told. That the sawing trick is accomplished by two women in the box changes what type of story it is. Which is why sf and fantasy are different categories of fiction, though we may enjoy them equally.
 
Thought this little info tidbit was pertinent to the topic:

Isaac Newton came up with physics from studying old occult texts which asserted that objects had a mysterious force between them from which one object could control another object from afar. Today we call this gravity.

Just interesting that perhaps the foundation of all modern science was born out of fantastical musings. The link between science and spirituality is there.
 
I stil think that Star Wars is fantasy. In SW there is no scientific explonation about how the light sabers work, how space ships fly and jump in hyperspace!
 
The key difference is the explanations used (for world, events or whatever). If they are primarily plausible (well, slightly), scientific ones, it is science fiction. If they are primarily magical, then it's fantasy. Science fiction novels don't need lasers, spaceships etc. And things with spaceships, lasers etc can be fantasy - like Star Wars. Fantasy can be based in our own world, as can Science fiction (Book of the New Sun, for example), but whether the explanations are supernatural, or explained by science, differentiates them from non sf/f fiction.

"Sci-Fi: Progressive
Fantasy: Escapist (btw: LOVE Tolkien's take on this. Way to turn the materialists' arguments right back on them. Brilliant.)"

I disagree - all fiction is equally escapist as any other, by its nature of being fiction (though possibly historical fiction is different), and science fiction and fantasy are very equally escapist, if they are escapist. If you're taking escapist as meaning escaping to a world completely different to our own, but a much nicer, happier one so that you're not having to think about all the horrible things of our own, then I disagree. If you're just saying escapist as in escaping from our own world and our own problems, then both sci-fi and fantasy are escapist in that sense. While Tolkien and many of his followers may write fantasy in this escapist style, many do not, and that is an extremely bad generalisation, as there is much fantasy which aims to create a dark, unforgiving world - ie not very escapist (George RR Martin, Steven Erikson, China Mieville).
And why do you describe sci-fi as progressive? In what way is it more progressive than fantasy?
 
Well, I'd say your definition of "escapism" isn't quite what I meant. I'm not talking about individual reader experiences. It is more of a way to group texts based on a particular, unifying discourse. I'll explain a bit more but I'm not making definitive statements, just presenting bits of theories.

First, I'd disagree about all fiction = escapist. All fiction is imaginary i.e. you use your imagination to decipher signs i.e. words, but that is not escapism.

Escapism really boils down to immateriality i.e. the impossible i.e. the fantastic. It is unreal. (As opposed to sci-fi, which is improbable. One exception: sci-fi like Star Wars which relies on outdated conventions. In those cases, the story uses conventions which were once "improbable" but which, over time, have become "impossible".) Some calls this focus on the unreal something like "opium of the masses" (same principle). Others, like Tolkien, insist the opposite. They believe "escapism" undermines the false notion that reality is knowable, fixed, historical, and inevitable.

This makes escapism very nearly subversive, but not quite. Too much to go into here. Fantasy suffers the same pitfalls as the Romantics in terms of what is or is not subversive. Some don't see a difference, just like many don't see a difference between the gothic and the romantic. I happen to think there is a distinction, esp. starting around the mid-1800's, but nevermind.

The bigger problem I think is how you fit horror/gothic into the divide between sci-fi and fantasy.

A few people have mentioned the magic vs. science distinction. I think when you bring horror/gothic into the mix, such distinctions fall flat. Magic and science coexist in the gothic tradition. So why is Frankenstein not really sci-fi or Vathek not really fantasy? (Note: I mean in the critical sense. Publishing categories are much more fluid and random.) Is the giant spider in IT more of a monster than Shelob? I think any useful division would have to account for such nuances.
 
Some people say that anything is possible and everything is possible, because the universe (or whatever is outside of it) is infinite, so everything must exist, and that there are also an infinite number of alternate universes, then everything must be possible.

I pretty much agree with what you say about escapism, but one strange thing - that means that fantasy, by being fantasy, is escapist, and for escapism to exist it has to be fantasy or science fiction, which means, in other words, that escapism is a pointless term.

I agree there's a problem with the classifications of science fiction and fantasy, because as you say some fall into two or are very hard to put into any one. Two examples of that are Gene Wolfe's book of the New Sun and China Mieville's New Crobuzon books, which have elements from both. I think generally they are science fantasy (which I consider a mix of the two genres, unlike some who say it is a sub-genre of science fiction), to compensate for those that don't fit.
 
Escapism really boils down to immateriality i.e. the impossible i.e. the
fantastic
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If you define escapism this way, you're defining fantasy (the genre) and escapism as roughly the same thing. But the main thing about escapism is of course escaping. It's fantasising about a better, more exciting, but unreachable world.Reading about celebrities is also escapism, not because celebrities are impossible, but because a celebrity life style is extremely improbable for the reader. Fantay is not escapist when it's read for other reasons than fantasising about another world. If the book somehow relates to the real world, for example through social or emotional descriptions or simply by showing how people might react to certain situations, then it is not pure escapism. Of course fantasy is often read just for ëscapist" amusement, but so are Tom Clancy novels. Escapism might be a characteristic of much of fantasy but it is surely not a defining characteristic that sets it apart from other fiction.

I mean in the critical sense. Publishing categories are much more fluid and random.
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Perhaps publishing categories are not so useless. The public at which a book is aimed ( by the writer, not the publisher) determines for a large part to which genre it belongs. It is useful to think "why does a certain categorisation exist", after all, categories are all arbirtrary in some sense. The division between fantasy and science fiction exists because they have largely seperate readers, and because books are usually influenced by other books from the same genre , and those other books are read by the same people who are expected to read the new book. There is naturally an overlap: books aimed at both readerships and readers who read both genres. The "science fantasy" books are in the overlap, influenced by both and aimed at both reader groups. A reason to create a seperate category would be if there were a lot science fantasy readers that read only very limited amounts of pure fantasy or science fiction, and if science fantasy books were mainly influenced by other science fantasy books.
This clearly not the case, but it is the case for horror books. The IT spider is horror, because the book is aimed at a horror public, and is written mainly to be scary, just like other horror books. Shelob is a very horroresque element, but the book as a whole is not meant to be horror.
Imagine a network, where books are connected if one influenced the other and a reader and book are connected if the reader liked the book. Every book and every reader will be connected through a series of connections, but a genre is an area of high interconnectivity, where many readers have read the same books and books have influenced each other heavily. In this way it is hard to sharply define genres, but it is easy to imagine why It is not fantasy and The Tommyknockers ( same writer, about an alien spaceship) is not science fiction. They are much stronger connected to other horror books than to fantasy or science fiction, but that doesn't mean they're not connected to those genres as well.
 
Lots of interesting input here!

My love for fantasy falls along two lines: One is that I personally love it and enjoy it; the other is that it continues a long literary tradition.

All cultures have legends, myths, and superstitions. The earliest written stories are fantastic.

To me, "real" fantasy should incorporate some type of a exploration of an issue/concept. It's hard sometimes to look at issues which are very close to us and easier to evaluate them when the questions are held at a distance. Thinking about something when it's set apart from your own reality is effective. For example, fairy tales were not told in order to entertain, but to instruct. A story about a person losing his job in St. Louis just doesn't have the same impact as an allegorical myth. We can only learn a very limited amount from the former--what this character did in this situation--and the lessons will have very little to do with us. But a fantasy is about everyone and what we take away from it is our own.

Personally, I enjoy reading books that explore topics such as heroism, the triumph of the ordinary, reason, the power of the individual, dedication, etc. I want to know that such things are still possible. I feel that we are living in a sort of Dark Ages in relation to art, music, and philosophy right now. And I think that a few writers are aware of this and are trying to "remind" us about the human spirit and of what it has been capable in the past--what factors played into the development of the human race. And many of those writers tend to lean toward the medieval-type fantasy story. This is no accident. In our own world, the beginning of the Renaissance ended the middle ages and brought forth an explosion of human achievement unparalleled since the Golden Age of Greece. Our problems today are not so different from those in the middle ages, so why not use that time frame to discuss our present malaise?

Good vs. Evil: Integral to fantasy, this concept is so fluid that we can interpret it however we like. This doesn't have to be illustrated by the knight in shining armor vs. the stinking, horned demon (although these are archetypes we immediately recognize). Our demons are more subtle than that, of course, but the writer can create a more universal appeal when he uses imagery readily available to people from different walks of life.

Also, I think that a true fantasy should be multidimensional. There should be the story itself, available and enjoyed by all ages. Then I think the writer can incorporate broader meanings available to more experienced people. A five-year-old can enjoy The Odyssey if the language is age-appropriate, yet of course this epic has been studied for centuries in the highest schools of learning. I recently gave my 10-year-old niece a copy of The Fellowship of the Ring. I told her to re-read it every year or two, and she will discover that the story will change. Of course she didn't completely understand what I was talking about, but she will.

Well, just my rambling two cents.
 
There's an essay in the Big Elfquest Gatherum called "Elfquest: Fantasy Premise, Science Fiction Worldview" that has some interesting things to say about this never-ending debate.

Essentially, it argues that the core of the difference between fantasy and science fiction is in how its worldview explains the causes of things. The example is given of a story where colonists on Mars discover an indigenous race that worships a Red God. If, in the story, the Red God is a real, supernatural being, then the worldview is a fantasy one, for all the sci-fi trappings. If, on the other hand, the worship of the god is viewed from a sociological point of view, and the god is no more "real" than Zeus, then it's a science fiction novel. So, the article goes on, Elfquest, for all the Elves and telepathic wolves and whatnot, is actually Science Fiction, because ultimately, the Elves are explained as decending from crash-landed shapeshifting aliens.

Now, I know this doesn't work as far as commercial genre goes, but I've always sort of mentally categorized books by that criteria ever since. So, for me, Star Wars is definitely fantasy, and The Book of the New Sun is... well, I'm not sure, because I haven't finished it, but if all the odd goings-on have no scientific backing, then the worldview is fantasy. If it does -- science fiction.

....Of course, it doesn't really matter in the end, as I like to lump Fantasy, Science Fiction, New Weird, Horror, and Magical Realism together as Speculative Fiction and call it a day :p . It's all good!
 
Lol the vast array of replies on this threads comes as no surprise. What a great topic! :)

I always felt that there really was no difference between fantasy and Science Fiction. It's all very imaginative work including both elements of the known and the unknown.

And while is argueable that science fiction is more "probable" do to it's realistic devices, to a childs heart, and I think mine too magic is also very realistic. Essentially both genres are just beyond the reach of current cicrumstances.
 
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