Defining SF & Fantasy

[dask]

In a field so vast and varied how can you pin a definition down, and who has the authority to do it so that it's valid for everyone?

 

[Gordian Knot]

Who has the authority? I believe that would be Mr. Dictionary!

 

[aaronbev79]

I love both Science Fiction and Fantasy, but I hate when the two are lumped together as if they have so much in common.

The only thing they have in common that's truly meaningful is that they often share similar audiences/readers.

Lumping them together does nothing to help "outsiders" (non-fans/aficionados) understand what is meaningful/interesting/important with either one.

 

[dask]

Who has the authority? I believe that would be Mr. Dictionary!

Dictionaries are a good place to start though I don't think they write themselves, but I've read over the years various authors expressing some disapproval over dictionary definitions of sf for one reason or another.

 

[iansales]

In a field so vast and varied how can you pin a definition down, and who has the authority to do it so that it's valid for everyone?

Why would you need authority? It's not definition by fiat. If the definition works, people will begin to use it and it will become accepted. Though lots of people have tried defining sf, the only ones generally accepted are Damon Knight's, which is useless, and Darko Suvin's, which uses big words to say something obvious.

 

[Fried Egg]

I love both Science Fiction and Fantasy, but I hate when the two are lumped together as if they have so much in common.

The only thing they have in common that's truly meaningful is that they often share similar audiences/readers.

Why would they share similar audiences/readers if they didn't share something else in common besides this?

 

[steve12553]

That is totally correct. I just meant to say that in most instances, the author, the readers and the general consensus will align under the banner of common sense. Most authors that write novels in the 25th century with spaceships are going to acknowledge that their work is a work of SF...

And even if they don't, if it is a Science Fiction story or book it is one. If I say the sun is blue that doesn't make it so. It just makes me silly.

...I'm talking about at the margins, it is silly to say that a book is science fiction just because it fills a set of criteria: the author/the readers may actually believe it fits better in another genre, such as romance or thriller or whatever, and so such hard and fast rules become a bit unwieldly.

Marginal books may fit into more than one genre, Asimov wrote detective stories that took place in the far future and even though they are truly Mysteries they are also Science Fiction.

 

[steve12553]

Why would they share similar audiences/readers if they didn't share something else in common besides this?

The common element of these audiences is their ability to imagine things and accept thing beyond reality. Seeing a movie about a naval battle that took place in World War Two does not require much suspension of disbelief even if it has charactors that weere invented for the film.
If the film included a magician who took the main charactor into the past to see his Grandfather do something heroic in that battle or a scientist uses a time machine to try to change the outcome of that battle, the mainstream, non-imaginative audience is no longer interested because as far as anybody knows (right now), that can't happen and that did not happen.
I'd still be watching and hopefully so would most of everybody else here. At least if it was a decent film.

 

[paranoid marvin]

Fantasy is the impossible made probable.

Sci-fi is the improbable made possible.

(in my opinion)

 

[dask]

Fantasy is the impossible made probable.

Sci-fi is the improbable made possible.

(in my opinion)

If I read this in an sf mag I'd say "right on." It makes allowance for all the different kinds of sf and, in case anyone has missed it, sf is too colorful a garden for one type of flower.

 

[iansales]

Fantasy is the impossible made probable.

Sci-fi is the improbable made possible.

(in my opinion)

There's nothing probable about magic or dragons. And there are even fantasies which are little more than historical stories set in invented worlds, without magic or weird fauna.

Likewise, there's nothing improbable about a mission to Mars. It's technically feasible - almost - and it's only politics that's preventing it from happening. FTL, otoh, is more likely impossible than improbable.

Beware of glib definitions. They usually fall at the first hurdle

 

[Gordian Knot]

Dictionaries are a good place to start though I don't think they write themselves, but I've read over the years various authors expressing some disapproval over dictionary definitions of sf for one reason or another.

Yes one will always find someone who is going to have issues with the dictionary definition. Compounding this is that not all dictionaries define it in exactly the same way.

The reason I still believe dictionary definitions are the best starting point is your other comment. They do not write themselves. They are written by people whose job it is to understand how a word is used in language and to set down wording that as closely as possible defines how that word is used. They are the "experts" as it were on defining things.

Because I do strongly believe that there has to be a core definition people will agree to as the starting point. If there is not, I do not see how people can have an informative discussion on anything.

 

[aaronbev79]

Why would they share similar audiences/readers if they didn't share something else in common besides this?

How about you make an argument rather than asking an unanswerable question?

 

[dask]

Yes one will always find someone who is going to have issues with the dictionary definition. Compounding this is that not all dictionaries define it in exactly the same way.

The reason I still believe dictionary definitions are the best starting point is your other comment. They do not write themselves. They are written by people whose job it is to understand how a word is used in language and to set down wording that as closely as possible defines how that word is used. They are the "experts" as it were on defining things.

Because I do strongly believe that there has to be a core definition people will agree to as the starting point. If there is not, I do not see how people can have an informative discussion on anything.

I agree with the idea of a core definition and have no problems with dictionaries. Indeed I love dictionaries and harbor a small collection of them, but the danger is making the definition too narrow, like Charles Sheffield's hard sf is the only sf. When that happens all you're doing is defining one type of sf.

 

[Gabe.]

How about you make an argument rather than asking an unanswerable question?

Because it is a rhetorical question? I agree that they share certain aspects, but draw inspiration for those aspects from different places.

They are both concerned with an exploration of that which doesn't exist:

Science Fiction is world that doesn't exist based on the extrapolation of current science and technology to predict future advancement and trends.

Fantasy is a little bit more removed from the real world: It is an extrapolation of what a society could be like on an earth that is not ours, based on our current knowledge of history; and the ways cultures, languages, mythology/religion all develop.

Both are simply extrapolations on what we currently know, and that is why both are believable. Obviously dragons aren't believable in OUR world, but we can definitely imagine a world in which they are. It's the same as how travelling faster than light is not believable on our world, but perfectly believable in a world with superior technology.

 

[iansales]

Science Fiction is world that doesn't exist based on the extrapolation of current science and technology to predict future advancement and trends.

What about a story about a man who finds a time machine and goes back in time to kill Hitler? That's not sf by your definition, though most people would recognise it as sf.

 

[assasin]

In my opinion any sort of classification [be it taxonomy, literary genres or the differences between chemistry and physics] is just flailing around trying to find the best fit. It's impossible to find a perfect fit for most things. As such definitions are more or less useless and things have to be classified on a case by case basis depending on where the closest fit is.

To me the differences between genres deals with the content of the genres. If a story has magic, dragons, elves, gods, vampires, etc. its fantasy. If it has spaceships, laser guns, aliens or whatever its science fiction. If there is overlap it depends on how that overlap is dealt with. If a spaceship/alien invasion appeared in a setting such as westeros I'd say it would be a clearcut mix of genres. If there was some "force" similar to fantasy magic in an intersteller series with spaceships I'd say it was science fiction with fantasy themes. If a fantasy used magic portal to teleport between planets and magic staffs instead of laser guns I'd say it would be fantasy with science fiction themes [think wheel of time during age of legends]. If a story had vampires its fantasy, if those vampires were made using radiation its science fiction drawing inspiration from fantasy. Of course this doesn't include subgenres like hard science fiction which would need to classified separately based on the general content of that sungenre.


If there is any commonality between fanatsy and science fiction is that they would both be impossible based on modern science and technology; but things that are possible [like a mission to mars] and are similar to themes and tropes of fantasy or science fiction should still count as fantasy or science fiction, because other than the small fact that it is technologically possible, its exactly the same as other fantasy or science fiction in terms of themes, so it would just make it more confusing putting it in another classification. I did explain how much flailing around is required.

 

[Gabe.]

What about a story about a man who finds a time machine and goes back in time to kill Hitler? That's not sf by your definition, though most people would recognise it as sf.

Clunky wording of my definition, well spotted. I meant only that it is an extrapolation of current technology to predict what technology might be capable of i.e. Time travel is not something that is possible, but is theoretically possible and thus becomes the reality in works of science fiction that seek to explain it. It need not actually be SET in the future, just predict future technologies (or technologies that haven't yet been discovered, but may well be possible.)

 

[iansales]

I think you might be too set on using extrapolating technology. There's a novel by Nicholas Monsarrat, The Time Before This, in which the narrator hears a story about a man who found a repository in the far north of Canada containing devices stored by a race who had populated the Earth long before humanity. The book was published as mainstream, but sf readers would almost certainly consider it sf.

Putting in spaceships, rayguns, robots, time machines, etc. aren't necessary for a book to be sf, though a book with them in will be recognised as sf.

 

[Fried Egg]

How about you make an argument rather than asking an unanswerable question?

I thought I had made my case with my opening post.

But for you to say that these genres have nothing in common besides an inordinate number of fans in common, it begs the question, why should they have an inordinate number of fans in common unless they both have something that appeals to the same sort of reader?

And I think it is because they both play about with the general facts of reality as we commonly understand them. For readers who like that sort of thing (as I do), they are bound to be attracted to both genres.