I'm afraid we may be talking at cross-purposes here:
I think mid 70s to early 80s is off by a few decades, but overall yes, compared to a form which has been around since roughly the dawn of man, science fiction would be considered late to the party. Understandable since there was little widely applied science to base fiction on before the 20th century.
When I refer to the 70s to early 80s, I am referring to the way fantasy changed in that era, largely due to the influence (or perceived influence) of Tolkien. Far too many fantasy writers went from storytelling and using their medium to address their worldviews, concerns, etc., and concentrated on worldbuilding for its own sake. (Just to be clear: I have nothing against worldbuilding when it is in service of a more worthy goal; but when the minutiae of doing this overrides the writing, storytelling, or "heart" of a piece, then things are seriously out of balance.)
Before that point, however, fantasy ran the gamut from sheer escapism to deeply philosophical; something which it seems to be moving toward once again -- which, in my view, is all for the better. My argument with you was the sweeping generalization you made, and that you see the sorts of things I listed as exceptions, when in fact throughout the history of the form, they have been the norm. (Oh, and just to clarify: I also put in a wide range of writers, from the great to the good to the mediocre to the barely competent -- or, in the case of Goodkind.......
)
So... while I would agree with you (as I noted earlier) that in recent times fantasy has had more of a tendency to be
mainly good versus evil, and only that to create the conflict needed for any story to work
this is the exception in the field as a whole (historically speaking), rather than the rule.
Which, of course, is why I see the following as quite off the mark, though (given this tendency over the past 2-3 decades) understandable:
When fantasy does become somewhat more philosophical, it's generally in the form of moral issues within the framework of the fantasy world which are used to add depth to a character, rarely holding lessons directly applicable to our own world.
[...]
In good SF, the toys are trappings used to help tell the story, set the stage for the point the writer is trying to make. In fantasy, the trappings are the story and the point the writer is trying to make.
Silverberg's City, one of those everyone living in massive skyscraper novels you mentioned, was an exploration of what unchecked population growth could lead to; first the solution (the buildings), then the social alterations forced on humanity so that they'd be able to live with the solution. Essentially it says: Here's what your breeding is driving us to, do you like what could happen?
A fantasy book about people living in a series of 1,000 storey buildings would be about the great adventures little Jimmy and his friends get into exploring their building, then contriving to explore other buildings too.
In City the buildings are a way to make a point. In a fantasy book, the buildings would be the point.
The bulk of fantasy, like most of science fiction, uses its settings as metaphors for exploring various ideas of some meaning to the author (and, generally, of some relevance to society as well), whether that be "man's inhumanity to man"; the struggle to maintain a humane interrelationship with our fellows in the face of so much which tends to dehumanize (a major theme in much fantasy, explored to varying degrees of depth); our place in the world or cosmos about us; the pangs of disillusion and maturation; personal freedoms and responsibilities as opposed to those of society-at-large (the obligations of each to the other, for instance); epistemology; the nature of human identity; religious issues, ranging from "the question of evil" to the place of religion in a modern society; and so on.
Science fiction is often a bit more openly didactic about these things (though this is, again, an overgeneralization and by no means true across the board at any time), but both sub-genres (along with horror or the weird/tale of terror) explore these and other themes. They do so through somewhat different lenses (much of the time, at any rate), but neither has anything approaching a monopoly on such themes. The poorer sort of fantasy -- whether it is popular or not is something quite different from its actual quality as literature -- does tend to concentrate on the "toys", as you so aptly put it; but this is also true of the poorer sort of science fiction (or horror, or detective fiction, or any other generic fiction for the matter of that).
I may be making a completely wrong assumption, but from your posts I get the impression that your experience with a wide range of fantasy is less than that for a wide range of science fiction. Please correct me if I am wrong on this; but, again, this is something I see a fair amount even from those whose primary interest is in fantasy; and, given the wide range in the field (I mean, you can't really get much more varied than Harlan Ellison and J. R. R. Tolkien... and they were, for some decades, contemporaries!), can lead to a tendency to see either field as rather monolithic, when such is very seldom the case.
On the list I provided above (again, a list which deliberately included a considerable range of types of writers, good, bad, and indifferent, as well as "classic" or "modern"):
Most, of course, died before the advent of contemporary science fiction, many of them wrote horror or horror-fantasy, and others wrote both SF and fantasy.
I'm afraid I fail to see the relevance here to the debate. If we are dealing only with recent entries in either field, then the point about the period of (some of) these writers is of course valid; but if we are talking about the two types of fiction
per se, it really doesn't apply... after all, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein has been called by many (including Brian Aldiss) the first science fiction novel, but it is also a horror novel, a Gothic novel, a piece of social commentary, a philosophical novel, and a novel of sentiment. It is also one of the great fantasy novels, horror (or at least horror which treats of something outside the accepted realm of material science) being a subset of fantasy... as is much of science fiction, for the matter of that (especially from the Golden Age). And, of course, that also means that the point about their writing horror or horror fantasy really doesn't have much to do with it, as this is again pointing toward a very narrow view of what constitutes "fantasy". (For instance, where would you put Jack Vance's "The Dragon Masters" or Poul Anderson's
The Broken Sword, or Walter M. Miller, Jr.'s
A Canticle for Leibowitz? These are only three of the literally thousands which straddle the genres.)
I'm afraid I'll have to stand by my original statement. While it's certainly possible for a strict fantasy writer to comment on modern philosophies (Lewis Carroll, Terry Pratchett), and for a SF writer to produce philosophically null work (everything that fits into the cyber-punk sub-genre, for example), as a rule, between the two, it's SF which is used to explore, and project from, the current human condition, and fantasy used to explore - fantasy.
I didn't say that fantasy can't support philosophy, I said it's not typically being used that way.
There seems to be something of a contradiction between the two statements here, though I can see where they may be reconciled. However, as I stated elsewhere, it's that "as a rule" that causes the problem, as this isn't backed by the evidence (that is, the majority of the literature of either genre).
And just to clarify on the "Buck Rogers" comment... that was my point: science fiction was viewed as a nearly illiterate portion of popular culture based on a debased view of "Buck Rogers" taken from the comics and Hollywood serials, rather than even a knowledge of Phil Nowlan's original stor(ies). Yet it
was the popular perception, and it stuck for decades. I see the same thing happening with fantasy now as happened with science fiction then, and in neither case is it truly deserved (though there is indeed a small degree of truth to it in both).
