Should science fiction/fantasy even be classified as separate genres?

[The_African]

They're obviously close relatives, I can't think of any other two genres that are so obviously similar but classified separately. Should science fiction and fantasy just be considered sub-genres of speculative or imaginative fiction?

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

No, because there are distinctive differences between them.

Science fiction is technological. Fantasy can be, but mixes magic within it. And, of course, fantasy has fantastical and mythological creatures that science fiction usually doesn't have.

 

[Ursa major]

There is obviously some sort of continuum: the softer the SF, the more fantasy elements it is said to have. (Which may be unfair to fantasy: a lot good fantasy is very strict in its use of rules (of magic, for instance).)

But the same can be true of non-genre-identified fiction (or even fiction of which its author declares: "this is not science fiction").


But to answer your question: it depends. It depends on why you would want to identify them as such.

They are linked here, I assume because the owner, Brian, sees a shared community of interest. W.H.Smiths and Waterstones, for example, link them by mixing books of both genres on the same shelves. (The libraries around where I live do the same.) Horror, though separated out, often is on adjacent shelves.

If you're talking about sellling your fiction, and may be worried that you have written something that crosses the genre barriers, don't. (Worry about it, that is.) Many genres get mixed: there are fanatsy detectives and SF detectives all over the place.




* Waits for JD to encapsulate the whole issue in one post. *

 

[j d worthington]

* Waits for JD to encapsulate the whole issue in one post. *

LOL. So I've gained that much of a reputation as a pedant, have I?

Hmmm... I just answered this to some degree in the other thread; but I will add a point or two here:

They both come from the same origins. Depending on what historian you are looking at, science fiction is the offspring of fantasy, or vice versa. I would say that it is a little of both (depending on what you consider to be fantasy): Fantastic literature, including ghost stories, the Gothic novel, and the like, came along first. As the nineteenth century progressed, and the scientific worldview gained predominance among the more educated, including most literary writers, elements of that began to become more prominent in even fantastic literature (e.g., Poe's penchant for exploring different scientific themes or discoveries in his tales, even when the focus was quite different; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, which has often -- including by Brian Aldiss -- been called "the first science fiction novel"; etc.). Eventually this led to the need to offer a rationalistic form of explanation for fantastic phenomena in stories, even avowedly ghostly tales (the era of the "psychic research" societies and the like). This predominated in the latter half of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

As science began to explain more and more of what had previously been seen to be "gray areas", things which were considered weird but not outside the realm of possibility, these phenomena and the tales about them began to fall into more and more discredit. This was exacerbated by the First Word War, when ghost stories, the new subgenre of the horror tale, and the like, suffered a reaction against them as many began to feel they had "supp'd full of horrors" from the realities of trench warfare and wholesale butchery and maiming (the unprecedented numbers of horrifically maimed but surviving soldiers returning from that war became a grim reminder of the horrors of real life and man's inhumanity to man; a reminder which fostered both a fascination with disfigurement and guilt at society's role in the cause of so much of it). Science fiction, on the other hand, was offering an increasingly glowing vision of the future as it began to emerge from the fantastic field; possibilities which were seen as very real potential futures for humankind.

Though fantasy did still exist, it was often viewed as suspect in most literate circles, being generally relegated to the pulps (then seen as the lowest form of literary endeavor, much like the penny dreadfuls of 50-75 years before), unless it was openly allegorical for some social ill or exploration of human fallibility. It wasn't until following the Second World War that fantasy slowly began to make a comeback, as people began to sicken of the ultra-realist school which had so dominated most of twentieth-century writing to that time. This was aided by a further reaction against the extremes of the Modernist movement and the like. Gradually fantasy began to emerge as a relief from these tendencies and as a form of escape from the mundane problems and horrors we saw in that war... especially as people began to blame science for the horrors of possible nuclear annihilation, the rejection of traditional religious values (with their comforting, familiar worldviews), and the perceived threats of "secular" states such as the U.S.S.R. and the like.

However, it wasn't until the cultural revolution of the 1960s that fantasy really got a shot in the arm, as the younger generations began to really question (while nonetheless often celebrating the technological benefits of) the scientific and rationalistic approach to reality, with the resulting fascination with Eastern religions, neo- and pseudo-mysticism, the resurgence of exploded pseudosciences, and the like. Along with this came an even greater desire to escape from the social fracturing which was going on all around -- the Vietnam war; race riots; extreme political corruption; the feeling that the democratic ideal was failing in taking care of its people; the backlash against the Red Scare coupled with the grim holding on of the Cold Warriors, and the like. Fantasy offered just what people were looking for: something which appealed to the emotions and reassured rather than challenged views more in line with emotional gratification instead of the often alienating views offered by our increasing understanding of the universe and how it works -- a universe which was often counterintuitive in its genuine nature.

Fantasy -- in its broadest sense -- thus coupled with increasing scientific knowledge to produce science fiction; and science fiction -- in its stricter sense of a literature based on a secular, scientific worldview -- in turn begat the conditions which fostered the growth of a new type of fantasy. But, like the Gothic novel (to which they are both related, and from which, in many ways, they both emerged), each has tended to become somewhat insular at times, often threatening a sort of sterility. Only by crossfertilization has any of these maintained its virility and fecundity.

So... yes and no. They are branches of the same thing, but they are not themselves the same thing.

 

[The_African]

Nice post, JD. Imo, they have more in common than not.

One thing that irritates me is when horror is lumped in with fantasy and science fiction. It makes as much sense as lumping comedy in with mystery or romance. Horror doesn't necessarily have anything to do with magic or speculative themes like future technology or contact with aliens. Saw is 'realistic' horror, Nightmare on elm street is fantasy-horror, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is science fiction-horror.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Well, JD is right-as he always is -but as far as fantasy actually vs. science fiction goes, it comes down to possibilities.


It is generally considered that science fiction has a possibility of happening, or at least a close attempt thereof. (Space travel, different races, more powerful technology, etc.)

Fantasy has, in the most general, generic sense, no possibility of happening. It's not so much the knights-in-shining-armor sort of thing, but what is "magic" in most fantasy novels is completely impossible. An old man with a large branch will never be able to call fire down from the skies, or summon a massive blizzard, or create duplicates of himself.

A spaceship that can fly at half the speed of light? That's a bit more plausible.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

An old man with a large branch will never be able to call fire down from the skies, or summon a massive blizzard, or create duplicates of himself.

A spaceship that can fly at half the speed of light?

But neither of those things has been proven true as yet.

And what happens to a work of science fiction when the scientific theories it is founded on are proven to be incorrect? Does it switch genres, or has it been proven to be what it always was from the beginning: fantasy. And even when some of the ideas in science fiction come to pass, it is never quite in the way the writer imagined it.

When I was a teenager, Karn, a great deal of science fiction was founded on the premise that we would all be living in huge skyscrapers by the year 2010, that we would be flying around in air-cars, that everything in our homes would be run by huge computers and we would have household robots to do all the housework. Oh, and there would be colonies on the moon, of course.

None of that happened. It was a fantasy people had about what the early 21st century would be like.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Just because a timeline isn't right doesn't mean that it won't still happen someday.

I do believe magic is the main wedge separating science fiction and fantasy, and if I can express David Eddings' views on the matter, "fantasy and science fiction should not even look at each other. Science fiction deals with the future, while fantasy deals with the past."


That's not necessarily the truth, but it is the general view on such these days. There are of course differences in each side, but my views are, they are different enough as to be separate genres.

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

That's not necessarily the truth, but it is the general view on such these days.

It's not even close to the truth. There is plenty of fantasy set in our contemporary world, or in futuristic worlds. The truth is, good fantasy is timeless. You are confusing the trappings with what the stories are about.

Bad science fiction is all about the technology, just as bad fantasy is all about the magic. But the best writing in either genre is about the characters, the human condition, the fears and hopes we all share, the challenges we all must meet. Whether a character fights a dragon with a sword, or commands a heavily armed vessel during a skirmish in outer space, the true battleground is within the human heart, the human brain -- whether the character will find the courage and ingenuity to win, or the self-sacrificing courage to die. The sword and the space ship are just props.

But here is what sets SFF apart from other genres: by removing these things from our mundane reality -- whether it's a thousand years in the future or a thousand years in the past, one step ahead into the near future, or one step sideways into a contemporary world where magic exists -- it allows us to see the true essentials of our shared humanity outside of their familiar context, and ideally to see them more clearly.

Look at it this way, Karn. In real life, sometimes we can't see the tree because it blends in with the rest of the forest. But if you uproot the tree very gently, and plant it in a different place -- the garden of a palace, say, or in an alien landscape -- the tree stands out, it's no longer part of a blur of green, you see its leaves and branches, the texture of its bark. Perhaps for the first time, you gain some essential understanding of what a tree is.

It's the same thing with our loves and hates, our loyalties, our prejudices, our dreams, our nightmares: strip them of the context that blinds us, and we may see them anew.

 

[j d worthington]

Nice post, JD. Imo, they have more in common than not.

One thing that irritates me is when horror is lumped in with fantasy and science fiction. It makes as much sense as lumping comedy in with mystery or romance. Horror doesn't necessarily have anything to do with magic or speculative themes like future technology or contact with aliens. Saw is 'realistic' horror, Nightmare on elm street is fantasy-horror, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is science fiction-horror.

Well, that "lumping in" is because the three genres (or sub-genres of fantastic fiction, to be more accurate) are all closely related historically and literarily. Granted, you do have the realistic (or, more properly, naturalistic) horror of things like Saw (or, to use a literary example, much of Guy de Maupasssant's horror work, though that is by far much, much more subtle and effective), but they do come from much the same source. And, if one must be pedantic about this, "horror" -- at least in the broader sense of fantastic fiction or verse whose intent was to stir feelings of dread, unease, fear, terror, and the like -- was by far the earliest and most venerable of the three, dating back as it does to the earliest forms of storytelling. And, as Groff Conklin showed very well with his anthology Science Fiction Terror Tales, both sf and fantasy owe a great debt to the horror genre.

To take a slight divagation... it rather saddens me when I see the terror tale spoken of in such a disparaging fashion (at least, so I read your comment above; I may be misinterpreting here), as it is as broad and subtle a field as any, from the wistful eeriness of Oliver Onions' "The Beckoning Fair One" or the poignant terror of W. H. Hodgson's "The Voice in the Night" to the comically grotesque (yet no less chilling) "A Visitor from Down Under" or "The Traveling Grave" of L. P. Hartley, or the poetic grandeur and terror of much of Théophile Gautier's work, or the visions of the sublime and terrible of the best of the Gothic novelists and short story writers.

As for horror not having anything to do with "magic or speculative themes like future technology or contact with aliens"... even your own examples call that into question. A great deal of Fritz Leiber's work was based on precisely that connection, while Chad Oliver's "Let Me Live in a House" (a.k.a. "A Friend to Man") is very much about an encounter with aliens; Brunner's novel The Sheep Look Up (called one of the 100 best horror novels of all time) is speculation about future trends technologically and otherwise... and so on.

Teresa: very good post. As Faulkner put it in his Nobel acceptance speech:

the problems of the human heart in conflict with itself [...] alone can make good writing because only that is worth writing about, worth the agony and the sweat

While I agree with this sentiment, I do not think (as is obvious from my posts elsewhere) that this need be the primary reason for writing a tale; there may be many others. But it is what drives great literature.

Which, incidentally, brings up the contention that sf is "technological". This is a common misperception, but a misperception nonetheless. Plenty of science fiction has little or nothing to do with technology, from Lester del Rey's "Day Is Done" (1939) to (again) "Flowers for Algernon" (1958; pub. 1959) to the bulk of Ballard's work (or, for that matter, Aldiss' Report on Probability A (1968)-- sorry, Chris, but it really is a good example, no?) to Lovecraft's "The Colour Out of Space" (1927) to Theodore Sturgeon's More Than Human (1953)... or even Robert A. Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land (1961). There are numerous other examples here, too. At most, with exceptions such as the work of George O. Smith, sf is about the effects of technology on society; and often even that is rather elliptically approached in favor of wider concerns.

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

Well, that all is true enough, JD, and even post-apocalypse falls under science fiction, but one should point try to point out specific examples of works that can be melded together as to either describe them as fantasy OR science fiction. I believe that that can not actually occur with enough blend as to mash the genres together. But then, as I am not at all a science fiction aficionado, and am actually rather narrow-minded about what I like in my fantasy, I am definitely not an expert opinion on such things.

Just a personal opinion on my own experiences with each genre.






Although looking back, I suppose Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels COULD be associated as either science fiction or fantasy, considering the history that is described in novels such as The White Dragon, and considering their lifestyles and the dragons during the present period....

 

[j d worthington]

Well, that all is true enough, JD, and even post-apocalypse falls under science fiction, but one should point try to point out specific examples of works that can be melded together as to either describe them as fantasy OR science fiction. I believe that that can not actually occur with enough blend as to mash the genres together. But then, as I am not at all a science fiction aficionado, and am actually rather narrow-minded about what I like in my fantasy, I am definitely not an expert opinion on such things.

Just a personal opinion on my own experiences with each genre.

Well, there have been quite a few examples throughout the history of the genre. As I noted, Fritz Leiber made quite a speciality of this, from his stories of Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser to things like "Ship of Shadows" and "Gonna Roll the Bones" (which was included in Ellison's anthology Dangerous Visions and won a Hugo award for 1968... speaking of which):

Although looking back, I suppose Anne McCaffrey's Pern novels COULD be associated as either science fiction or fantasy, considering the history that is described in novels such as The White Dragon, and considering their lifestyles and the dragons during the present period....

Yep. One of the earliest of those -- perhaps the first, my memory isn't quite that good -- "Weyr Search", also won a Hugo for best sf novella of the year 1968, in a tie with Phil Farmer's "Riders of the Purple Wage". The original version of this can be found in The Hugo Winners, Vol. II....

 

[Fried Egg]

In our WHSmith's store, horror is "lumped" in with fantasy and SF which suits me as I like all three genres.

The question of seperate shelving for these genres comes up again and again and I think it's motivated at heart by those people that like one (sub) genre but not the other. This sentiment has always baffled me who has long been drawn to both. And I'm sure that those who claim to detest one or the other might always have their opinions mollified were they only to read a few of the right books.

 

[chrispenycate]

Well, I agree that 'Report on probability A' does not dwell too much on the technological aspects, but still consider that Aldiss was cocking a snoot at both the literary establishment and SF readers when he penned it; not necessarily a bad aim, mind you.

This discussion has been going on since at least the mid fifties, probably longer; I remember the letter pages in 'New Worlds' sprouting suggestions for everyone insisting on 'speculative fiction', rejecting the separate labels and inevitable speciation, before 'The Lord of the Rings' came out. Personally, I quite like them separated; labelling, classification is a large part of human thought and, even if there is a central, indefinite region - most of the psi stories for a start are magic, and Zenna Henderson's 'the People'? – there are enough extreme cases, and if the assumptions for a magic working society and its industry are rarely thought through, well, that's the non-analytic side we all know and love.

But literary genres can crossbreed way outside their species, and produce viable fertile offspring; Science fiction has produced children with detective literature , thrillers, travel documentaries, religious philosophy and even, post Philip Jose Farmer, (did he really win a Hugo for Purple wage? It's far from his best) romance and fantasy has been just as promiscuous; is there any surprise that their incestuous tastes have sometimes turned to each other, close cousins and frequently squeezed together on the bookshelves? Particularly when the set of readers who like both is larger than the exclusive sets for either, and even the central group of authors who write both must be approaching the size of either of the specialised groups.

And elements of each have become standard in the other; parallel universes have replaced underhill and rabbit holes (and geographical locations as yet undiscovered by civilisation), benevolent aliens show definite elven trends.

And both are used for political satire, commentary on the ills of society, investigation of the human condition; is it any wonder that, after a hard day's proselytising they take a little pleasure in each other's presence?

 

[Urien]

They're lumped together because they deal in what has not yet (SF), or cannot (fantasy, supernatural horror), or did not exist (alternative history).

These can be grouped under the heading, speculative fiction.

They also blend with each other, and other (often crime/thriller/romance) genres.

The taxonomy of genres is always difficult and each of the three main groupings in spec fic, SF/fantasy/supernatural horror can be sub-divided many times JD and others have pointed out.

Then you have the debate about lit fic and spec fic, lit fic authors who write a SF or fantasy book don't always want to own up to it.

 

[Ursa major]

...labelling, classification is a large part of human thought....

Very true; as is the separating of things into sheep and goats, hence the need for:

...lit fic authors who write a SF or fantasy book don't always want to own up to it

so as not to limit their size of their sales figures and (more importantly?) their wish not to be tagged with the label of "genre writer".

 

[Rodders]

It's only people that read SF that would want to differentiate. For those that don't read the genre, it's just all the same.

I have to say that i love SF, but for some reason cannot get into fantasy, so i have no interest in that type of story, so i automatically exclude anything that doesn't fit into the category that i'm looking for. Unfortunately, that's our seperation.

 

[The_African]

It's not even close to the truth. There is plenty of fantasy set in our contemporary world, or in futuristic worlds. The truth is, good fantasy is timeless. You are confusing the trappings with what the stories are about.

Bad science fiction is all about the technology, just as bad fantasy is all about the magic. But the best writing in either genre is about the characters, the human condition, the fears and hopes we all share, the challenges we all must meet. Whether a character fights a dragon with a sword, or commands a heavily armed vessel during a skirmish in outer space, the true battleground is within the human heart, the human brain -- whether the character will find the courage and ingenuity to win, or the self-sacrificing courage to die. The sword and the space ship are just props.

But here is what sets SFF apart from other genres: by removing these things from our mundane reality -- whether it's a thousand years in the future or a thousand years in the past, one step ahead into the near future, or one step sideways into a contemporary world where magic exists -- it allows us to see the true essentials of our shared humanity outside of their familiar context, and ideally to see them more clearly.

Look at it this way, Karn. In real life, sometimes we can't see the tree because it blends in with the rest of the forest. But if you uproot the tree very gently, and plant it in a different place -- the garden of a palace, say, or in an alien landscape -- the tree stands out, it's no longer part of a blur of green, you see its leaves and branches, the texture of its bark. Perhaps for the first time, you gain some essential understanding of what a tree is.

It's the same thing with our loves and hates, our loyalties, our prejudices, our dreams, our nightmares: strip them of the context that blinds us, and we may see them anew.

This was well said. I shouldn't be so closedminded but aside from the 'realistic' novels that I've already read and love, I can't see myself reading anything other than science fiction/fantasy. The last non-sff novel I read was As I Lay Dying and I think my phase with mainstream classics ended with that. I like non-sff African fiction though, especially if it takes place in pre-colonial Africa.

"fantasy and science fiction should not even look at each other

I can understand classifying them as two separate genres but I don't understand how anyone can't see the obvious similarities between the two. It seems cliquish to say you'll read sci-fi but not fantasy and vice versa. A fantasy novel about a woman who uses magic to travel back in time and a science fiction novel about a woman who builds a machine to travel back in time are both about time travel, whether this is accomplished through magic or technology is secondary to the fact that none of us will ever experience time travel.

I view fantasy (the oldest genre of story telling) as the mother of science fiction.

Well, that "lumping in" is because the three genres (or sub-genres of fantastic fiction, to be more accurate) are all closely related historically and literarily.

Historically, maybe, but not 'literarily'. There's nothing about horror that necessarily has anything to do with fantasy or science fiction but fantasy and science fiction are related because they both deal with the speculative or logically impossible, one just has a scientific or psuedo scientific explanation for speculative/impossible events and the other accepts them as unexplainable and mysterious/exotic. Fantasy/sci-fi necessarily involve imaginative themes, horror doesn't. It makes no sense to me to lump a non-speculative/imaginative horror story in with fantasy/science fiction just because the three have been closely connected historically. I love horror, by the way.

 

[j d worthington]

Historically, maybe, but not 'literarily'. There's nothing about horror that necessarily has anything to do with fantasy or science fiction but fantasy and science fiction are related because they both deal with the speculative or logically impossible, one just has a scientific or psuedo scientific explanation for speculative/impossible events and the other accepts them as unexplainable and mysterious/exotic. Fantasy/sci-fi necessarily involve imaginative themes, horror doesn't. It makes no sense to me to lump a non-speculative/imaginative horror story in with fantasy/science fiction just because the three have been closely connected historically. I love horror, by the way.

Well... we may be speaking somewhat at cross-purposes here in our terms; but I would argue that whether or not particular stories are fantastic or have fantastic elements does not alter the fact that the three genres are actually quite closely related, both historically and literarily, even today. They all descended (essentially) from the Gothic novel, which itself was a blending of the historical romance novel, the novel of sentiment, the heavy influence of the early translations of the Arabian Nights (especially that by Galland), and a resurgence of interest in traditional folklore, fairy tales, and such things as the border ballads. And, as has been demonstrated on numerous occasions, even though these (and mysteries, too, which also came from this same background -- vide Voltaire's Zadig the Babylonian and various works by Poe, and the like) diverged, a lot of the differences are more particular adaptations of similar tropes, themes, and types of storytelling rather than actual distinct literary conventions.

Thus, for instance, a character like Hannibal Lecter is a direct literary descendant of Count Dracula, who in turn is a direct literary descendant of the Gothic villain such as Montorio, Manfred, or Ambrosio, but adapted to modern sensibilities and a more naturalistic (if often only barely) worldview. Jack and Barbara Wolf did a very entertaining and thorough job of demonstrating the interrelationship between these different fields in their anthology, Ghosts, Castles, and Victims, which is something of a literary history of the permutations of the Gothic tale from Walpole's The Castle of Otranto through such things as Edmond Hamilton's "The Dead Planet" or John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, as well as Algernon Blackwood's "The Willows" and H. P. Lovecraft's "From Beyond".

Horror and sf or fantasy are intricately intertwined in many cases, as the development of the separate subgenre "dark fantasy" has shown, let alone any number of stories by Stephen King, Ramsey Campbell, T. E. D. Klein, Robert Bloch, Clark Ashton Smith, Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Robert A. Heinlein, or even writers such as Shirley Jackson or Jorge Luis Borges, exemplify. Individual stories, or even a particular branch of horror, may not have an apparent connection to sff, but overall the three (with mysteries making a fourth) are about as incestuously intertwined as any literary offspring could possibly be....

 

[clovis-man]

In our WHSmith's store, horror is "lumped" in with fantasy and SF which suits me as I like all three genres.

The question of seperate shelving for these genres comes up again and again and I think it's motivated at heart by those people that like one (sub) genre but not the other. This sentiment has always baffled me who has long been drawn to both. And I'm sure that those who claim to detest one or the other might always have their opinions mollified were they only to read a few of the right books.

I'm in charge of what the lady volunteers call "the men's section" at my local Friends of the Library Bookstore. This includes espionage and international intrigue novels, true crime, etc. as well as all "speculative fiction", including SF/F. I have the latter categories arranged on the shelves in two main divisions, i.e., "Science Fiction and Fantasy" and "Gothic and Horror". Anne Rice and Stephen King fall into the latter category. No vampires in SF/F-land. But I'm not prejudiced.