Defend Your Favorite -- SF or Fantasy (split off from "Race to 100")

One of the reasons SF grinds my gears is the sheer sense of trepidation I get before opening the cover- good's victory is never promised. I see the hero/heroine on the cover of a fantasy and my instincts tell me it is.

Sure, evil wins in a lot of horror but most times its supernatural agencies. With sf the evil's all too often human. Our morality is so damn easy to cave in and the best SF holds a mirror up to that.

'They see Kennedy and its how they wanna see themselves, they see me and its how they really are.'
-President Nixon

Kennedy= Fantasy Nixon= sf
 
J-WO said:
One of the reasons SF grinds my gears is the sheer sense of trepidation I get before opening the cover- good's victory is never promised. I see the hero/heroine on the cover of a fantasy and my instincts tell me it is.

Sure, evil wins in a lot of horror but most times its supernatural agencies. With sf the evil's all too often human. Our morality is so damn easy to cave in and the best SF holds a mirror up to that.

'They see Kennedy and its how they wanna see themselves, they see me and its how they really are.'
-President Nixon

Kennedy= Fantasy Nixon= sf
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Not sure what you're getting at here. Are you saying that in SF the evil is always human? Err what about Alien,or Voyage of the Space Beagle,or in fact most sF I've read
 
AE35Unit said:
Not sure what you're getting at here. Are you saying that in SF the evil is always human? Err what about Alien,or Voyage of the Space Beagle,or in fact most sF I've read
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If it wasn't for the corporation, those alien eggs would have sat in that wrecked ship for eternity. The aliens are killers yet essentially innocent, a force of nature.
'They don't screw their own kind to make a buck,' as Ripley says in the sequel (or words to that effect).

Haven't read Space Beagle but I'll bet there's a goddamsonofabitch causing trouble in it somewhere and that his/her ancestors a primate.

The evils not always human in SF but you've got to admit there's a notable tendency.
 
J-WO: not so I seem to recall one getting it in the neck to allow his fellows to escape from the cell on in the third episode was it.
 
My personal story has been one of a gradual transition (from when I started reading SF&F in the mid 80's) from predominantly fantasy to predominantly SF. And I can't put that change down to any change in the kind or quality of books on offer, it reflects a change within me.

When I first started reading fantasy, it was very much about escapism. Wanting to escape reality and immerse myself into the rich worlds that I was reading about. I literally wanted to transport myself into these worlds, imagining that life would be so much better. Long series were good; I never wanted the stories to end. Gradually I soured of it though. Getting to the end of Edding's "Malloreon" series, Weis & Hickman's "Death Gate Cycle" series and not even finishing Robert Jordan's "Wheel of Time" series, I began to realise much of this was bumph and just dragged out as an easy way of making money.

I turned towards more older fantasy that tended to be less formulaic but also towards SF as for me it became less about escapism and more about exploring interesting ideas and concepts. Somebody said (Teresa I think) that fantasy is more character driven and I agree. And that also helps explain my change; quite simply characters have become less important for me; I am less concerned about empaphising with the protagonists where it used to be very important for me.

But I still love both SF and fantasy. I think they can and should tell us about people. Even hard SF it is not the technology itself which is most interesting, but how it affects the people that use it and society in general.
 
TheEndIsNigh said:
J-WO: not so I seem to recall one getting it in the neck to allow his fellows to escape from the cell on in the third episode was it.
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I could argue the hive mind instinct angle but there's no way I'm going to defend Alien Resurrection. Its big bad monster looked like the Michellin man gone to seed.

There's also the argument that its man who locks them in an unnatural env- oh, why am I bothering? The films like Carry on xenomorph.

(Puts fingers in ears closes eyes) The franchise ended with Aliens, the franchise ended with Aliens...
 
J-WO said:
I could argue the hive mind instinct angle but there's no way I'm going to defend Alien Resurrection. Its big bad monster looked like the Michellin man gone to seed.

There's also the argument that its man who locks them in an unnatural env- oh, why am I bothering? The films like Carry on xenomorph.

(Puts fingers in ears closes eyes) The franchise ended with Aliens, the franchise ended with Aliens...
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Funny I always thought Big Bird from Sesame Street on a bad makeup day
 
Science fiction and fantasy can both be incredibly enjoyable if the writer knows his/her business. I go back and forth with regularity and have no prejudices either way. I have to admit that the science fiction genre has become a bit thin of late, and I usually go through a two or three year wait for the authors I like. Fantasy authors certainly seem more prolific than science fiction authors, but it is quality not quantity!
 
I tend to go through spurts as to what I enjoy reading. For a few years it was Fantasy, then Sci-fi, then Horror, then back again. I like Fantasy, so long as it's not the overdone elves and King Arthur times era. It's overdone, and I'm so sick of Tolkien remakes, I could choke. Same goes for the stereotypical sci-fi, that clones Star Wars or Star Trek. So my answer is both and neither, depending on my mood, what I happen to find that's not the same story with different characters that happens to interest me.
 
My favourite is fantasy. I like a make-believe world of magic, dragons, medieval things and such.

I love science fiction, too and its technology, but I prefer fantasy in the end over science fiction.

I think fantasy has room for very vivid imagination.

I also find fantasy story to be more character driven.
 
I've been listening to BBC radio 7's The Seventh Dimension (An hour of SFF and Horror every day of the week- check it out!) and I've got to say, high fantasy comes across as absurdly funny on Radio. Maybe I'm biased, but sci-fi 'radios' a lot cooler (Well, most of the time...) and more believable.

I turned it on the other day to hear a voice with a treble effect on it and claiming to be a demon saying- 'Looook! I'm buuurning hiss fleshhh! Seee how it smolderssss!'

I felt for the poor actor who had to deliver that one.
 
I think people should be careful of too big generalizations....

Fantasy has more room for vivid imagination ? Is a fantasy set in another clichè pseudo medieval European world more imaginative than reading a far future SF where the writer has to invent many things, when he does it well it can be so much imagination.

With sf the evil's all too often human. Not in the super science stories with bug eyed monsters...

There are many examples for both genres to make a lie of those big generalizations.
 
Yeah, but the very nature of this thread presupposes big generalizations. If we avoided that we'd end up comparing book to book and- regardless of common opinion- I do have a life outside of this forum!
 
I just read and skimmed through the last 6 pages of posts (had to be honest there...skimmed some). I've got to say that if we have "camps" I'm largely in MS. Edgerton's. (I shall henceforth use your first name, as you haven't actually given me permission to do so I offer a tacit apology. Well. it's not exactly tacit now as I have expressed it...)

Teresa and I are only about 2 or 3 years apart age wise and it sound as though in some ways we had a similar experience. Then again there are differences. As you are I believe a child of the west coast I grew up in the foot hills of the Smoky Mountains on a small farm. There were no public libraries within "walking distance" so during my youth I was limited to what I could find in the library of my elementary school and what could be obtained from news stands where I'd beg my dad to stop on weekend trips to the grandparents. Beside this I asked for books on "occasions" (birthdays etc.) but usually got "abridged classics for children" until I managed to break people of that.

I however read all the SF I could lay my hands on.

When I was 13 however we moved to Dayton Ohio and there I had easier access to a wider variety of books. Also on my next birthday I got my dad to allow me to join the science Fiction Book Club. $1 each and almost no fantasy in sight....depending on what you may call fantasy. My dad at that time worked for McCall Corp. (McCall's Magazine...one many here may not remember). Among their "sub-mags" was Analog and he had subscribed me to it knowing my preference for that type of reading...there I found the add for the book club.

Not to belabor my reminisces here but I seem to have noticed a change in the caliber of the Science Fiction I read then and what I find now. While there are notable exceptions to this I wonder if maybe the quality in the books (on the whole) may be lower?

I mean I know there are good SF books out there but there is a glut of simple space opera type reads. There is certainly nothing wrong with this type of read, I love brain candy...but I'm just not into space pirates and so on. (of course there is also a glut of simple fantasy works out there also....)

There is also the "break" in agreement on what is Science Fiction as opposed to Fantasy. Remember Clark's admonition that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." A lot of what some may think of as Science Fiction may be pegged by others as Fantasy. Science is advancing at such a rate that now it can literally be difficult for "fiction" to stay ahead of "fact". Everyone has heard the discussions on the computers or communicators in the original Star Trek and the ones we actually use.

I don't know, I just don't see many Stand on Zanzibar s , 1984s, or Do Androids Dream of Electris Sheep any more. There are some good books I'm sure, not saying there aren't. I just wonder if maybe the bar in SF has not come down somewhat??​
 
thepaladin said:

I don't know, I just don't see many Stand on Zanzibar s , 1984s, or Do Androids Dream of Electris Sheep any more. There are some good books I'm sure, not saying there aren't. I just wonder if maybe the bar in SF has not come down somewhat??​
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If you look at a 2nd hand bookshop's sf shelf you might find one of these three genuine classics (Though most likely someone would have put 1984 in the 'proper book' section), but you may not see it amid all the rubbish paperbacks that were first released at the same time. I had to trawl through a lot of dreck before I happened on Zanzibar.

Truth is, theres a reason SF has got a reputation as poor quality. Fantasy too. A policy of stack 'em high and sell 'em cheap throughout much of the twentieth century. We remember the good stuff because it clings to the inside of our skulls whilst the rest slides off.

That said, If I have one problem with modern SF is that everyone's got their eye on doing a series or a trilogy. Sometimes I'll be half way through a book and I'll know that's exactly what the writer is thinking and suddenly its all very conceited. For some things it works- undoubtedly, it does- but in the case of Paladin's examples it would have been a disaster (1984 especially!). Those books are beautiful because they are final. At least, that's part of the reason.
 
That said, If I have one problem with modern SF is that everyone's got their eye on doing a series or a trilogy.
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I don't know, I think it's fair that Fantasy and SF books are seldom stand-alone, given that a lot more exposition has to be done in these genres than in others.
 
What J-Wo said is funny to me that fact that i read more SF is because i can find more stand alone by quality authors than fantasy where even the best authors write series.

Trilogy is usually my limit for modern heroic,epic fantasy series. Heh i read Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn series only because it was three books and not more.

SF isnt much better than fantasy when its series books but its hard to name rated new fantasy that isnt series.
 
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