Should Fantasy and Sci/Fi really intertwine?

[Parson]

Yes, but only at the start of the series. As it goes on, it gets more and more sff-y, with the introduction of AVIAS and the back-stories of the First Founders.

Okay, I never got past book 3? The White Dragon? I love much of what Anne has done (ie the Crystal Singer series) but generally I found Pern boring. It was not SF enough to suit me. Maybe some of the later stuff would have been.

 

[The Technophobe]

Parson, you should have stuck with the series, talking Dolphins later in the series as well, go back and get the books. The Doona series is ok as well.

 

[Anomander]

My classification is perhaps a bit simplistic: Sci-fi is based on the futuristic, while Fantasy is based more on the past (Swords, knights etc). But there is indeed some overlap.

 

[Pyan]

My classification is perhaps a bit simplistic: Sci-fi is based on the futuristic, while Fantasy is based more on the past (Swords, knights etc). But there is indeed some overlap.

But then how do you treat the post-apocalyptic SF, when we've gone past the future and reverted to steel? The Pelbar Cycle, by Paul O. Williams, for instance, is set in a future after nuclear war, where North America is reduced to less than 5%of its present population. Tribes have sprung up, and the most advanced weapon is the bow. But this is most definitely SF, not fantasy, and hard SF at that. A good read, too, if you can find them: see review below.

Superior Post-Holocaust Novel, October 26, 2005
Reviewer:R. Albin (Ann Arbor, Michigan United States) - See all my reviews
Originally published over 20 years ago by the Del Ray imprint, this book and its sequels have now been reissued as trade paperbacks by the University of Nebraska Press. Set in the midwest of the Mississippi Valley (the Heart River of the book), millenia in the future after a nuclear war, this book depicts the emergence of new civilizations controlling large swathes of North America. The author develops several different urban and tribal cultures, all with distinctive features, uses a bildungsroman type of plot to expose the readers to the various cultures, and then ties them together with an adventure story - romance involving inter-cultural warfare. Written decently and with a good degree of imagination. This is a stand alone book. I suspect the author wrote this book and after its success developed the rest of the series which are more interdependent. The University of Nebraska Press deserves considerable credit for bringing out relatively obscure but worthy books like this one.

 

[Sharukem]

Yes, but only at the start of the series. As it goes on, it gets more and more sff-y, with the introduction of AVIAS and the back-stories of the First Founders.

It doesn't always have to be intertwined at the beginning though. It could wind up coming together near the middle and then split at the next book, or finish the intertwined story. so just remember that there is more than one way to intertwine a story and not always at the beginning.

 

[chrispenycate]

I suppose science fiction should be able to explain away all its marvels, while fantasy's magic is less analysed. Still, there are plenty of technologies "indistinguishable from magic" even in hard science fiction, and no few fantasy writers have discovered that putting limits on their magic, establishing laws, made the situation more exciting, not less; and that is essentially applying the scientific method (for me, the touchstone of the difference) We've seen dragons, trolls, griffins, werewolves and vapires in major or minor roles in SF, with time travel, nuclear fission and public transport in fantasy: either technology has attempted weather control, mind control, genocide and social disruption or uniformity.
Someone back in the Campbell days suggested that SF was essentially democratic, while, in fantasy, the hero would always turn out to be the undiscovered son of some noble or another; another suggestion was that SF looked towards an improving future, while fantasy lived in a dark age, after the downfall of a previous, higher civilisation, who's ancient relics hung about for good or evil to stumble over (excuse me; go on mighty quests to discover) Anyone here can point out exceptions on both sides to either of these conditions. More than anything else I suspect, the difference is in the writing style as much as in the content - SF readers expect explanations, fantasy readers would prefer not to have them, but like the feeling that they exist somewhere. (Whee, vast generalisation)

 

[Parson]

Parson, you should have stuck with the series, talking Dolphins later in the series as well, go back and get the books. The Doona series is ok as well.

I have read the Doona series. I would agree Ok. But not classic. I don't think I will go back to the series. It still just sounds boring to me.

 

[Pyan]

Have you tried the Tower and the Hive series, or the Crystal Line books, by the same author?

 

[Cloud]

Yes. why not? I want to be entertained, amused, provoked into thought, and have my belief suspended; I don't really care what you call it or if genres get mixed, as long as the ideas and presentation hold together.

 

[Parson]

Have you tried the Tower and the Hive series, or the Crystal Line books, by the same author?

Yes and Yes. Once, some years ago, I had a short e conversation with Anne and I said (honestly I think) that I was one of her few readers who had read about everything she had written but very little of the Pern stuff. I asked if she were going to do any more of the Crystal Singer Series. She said she didn't think so. Needless to say I was sad.

 

[Parson]

as long as the ideas and presentation hold together.

Cloud, I think you've put your finger on the problem for me. I have a much harder time having the ideas hang together for me in Fantasy than I do in SF. Even the "Fantasy" SF seems to have more going for it for me than straight Fantasy. For example, I had a very hard time with the Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings because I just couldn't get over the setting "Middle Earth!" As if there were a possibility of a whole other word suspended between earth and the molten core!! It is much easier to suspend belief on "FTL" travel or esoteric Physics. We all know there are things we don't know there so belief becomes far less of a stretch.

 

[RyFrye]

Cloud, I think you've put your finger on the problem for me. I have a much harder time having the ideas hang together for me in Fantasy than I do in SF. Even the "Fantasy" SF seems to have more going for it for me than straight Fantasy. For example, I had a very hard time with the Hobbit, and The Lord of the Rings because I just couldn't get over the setting "Middle Earth!" As if there were a possibility of a whole other word suspended between earth and the molten core!! It is much easier to suspend belief on "FTL" travel or esoteric Physics. We all know there are things we don't know there so belief becomes far less of a stretch.

Correct me if I am wrong...but...I think "middle earth" isn't a physical locale, it's a time in history...even in LTR. Though LTR added an alternate history with mythical creatures.

 

[Parson]

I don't know if "Middle Earth" were a "historical epoc" or not. That would make more sense, but I never picked up on that if it were true. It would make more sense than a physical location.

 

[sci-fi girl]

Tolkien said that Middle Earth is our Earth but in a fictional period of the past. It was a wide continent at the east of the other continent Aman, also called the Immortal Lands, and both had been separated by Belegaer, the Great Sea. The Immortals Lands became inaccessible after Numenor's fall. Middle Earth was mortals' land and over the centuries, it became Europe, Asia, Africa and Australia.

 

[j d worthington]

And the term itself comes from Middle English, which took it from Norse mythology's Midgard:

Midgard - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

And, yes, it was (like Howard's Hyborian Age) set in prehistory. "Middle-earth" also refers to it being the "mid-realm" between the unknown East and the "Undying Lands" of the Valar.

 

[Parson]

There sure are a lot of bright people here with phenomenal memory.