Scifi and Fantasy: where do we draw the line?

[Star-child]

There might be a physics answer:
SF speculates on a story that is enabled by events or technology that does not violate the historical record. It may appeal to possibilities suggested by research, or live in the gray area of the knowledge yet to be explored.

Fantasy re-writes the rules the world is built on, substituting new timelines or physical mechanisms that admittedly are in conflict with what is known to be true.

Sometimes it is a setting answer:
SF takes place in a world influenced internally by science or externally by the scientific record. It might create a future based on what science could reveal, or describe a past that scientific research has suggested.

Fantasy takes place in a world that appeals to romantic aspiration using familiar elements of young peoples' fantasy lives: Fame, love, honor, single combat, natural wonders, hulking antique structures, revenge, hidden powers and being found to be totally unique. The world exists with the logic and satisfaction of a daydream.

Or it may be a simple keywords answer:
Spaceship, arrow, castle, spell, rune, planet, plague, alien, beast, robot, computer, legend, mage, quest.


"Science fantasy" is the overlap where the keywords of one is placed on or mixed with the setting or logic of the other.

If I had to choose a line, it would be where the intent of the story is in making me feel something. If I feel largely those romantic elements, it feels like a fantasy. If I feel largely those elements of exploration of ideas, that's SF. "Eaters of the Dead" might have swords and beasts, but it fascinates by what it might reveal about a real time, and is SF. A future story where the hero is foretold to use his unique super-ness to vanquish the evil telepath and free the space princess is a fantasy, no matter how many spaceships. I'd rather read the former because I like ideas more than wish fulfillment.

 

[tinkerdan]

TinkerDan wakes up to discover:

George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire is set on a world where the seasons last years. Why? They just do. Fantasy.

Brian Aldiss' Helliconia Cycle is set on a world where the seasons last years. Why? Because the planet has an elliptical orbit around a binary star system consisting of a red dwarf and a white giant. Science Fiction.

:GRRM's stories take place on a slightly different Helliconia

 

[Venusian Broon]

The boundary betwixt the two has always been blurry.

But normally it's easy to make two rough piles that we can all agree, one has fantasy and the other SF books.

(There is the tricky issue of Space Opera which is by definition a mixture of the two genres. But you can get hard SF Space Opera as well as heavily fantasy based ones...so I like to think of all Space Opera books on some sort of continuum between the two poles.)

 

[Narkalui]

TinkerDan wakes up to discover:

:GRRM's stories take place on a slightly different Helliconia

Naaah. Planetos' orbit around its Sun is artificially slowed by the magic of the Others or The Children of the Forest. How? Magic!

 

[tinkerdan]

Yes and that's what it looks like to them:

Naaah. Planetos' orbit around its Sun is artificially slowed by the magic of the Others or The Children of the Forest. How? Magic!

:I'd be worried if they lived like barbarians and had a higher grasp of physic than we do.
So sure that's what they tell you.
It all looks like magic until they learn differently; and then they search for new magic until one day magic is gone and only physics is left. And life became boring.

Nothing happens.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

It all looks like magic until they learn differently; and then they search for new magic until one day magic is gone and only physics is left

Another quote from Arthur C. is in order:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

 

[Elckerlyc]

Another quote from Arthur C. is in order:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

In the end it's all in the eye of the beholder.

 

[Serendipity]

We know the results that science gives now. We can interpolate the results of proven science and be almost sure we will get the right results. We can extrapolate the results of science and the closer the results are to actually science the more reasonably certain we can be of those results.

But there will come a point when the science will break down in our extrapolations... we don't what that point is. And until then we have to treat any reasonably distant extrapolation like Schroedinger's cat - it is dead or alive until we open the box and then it will be either dead dead or alive - it can be either science or fantasy at the same time until we do the experiments to confirm if it is either science or fantasy.

The trouble with the standard question of whether a story etc is fantasy or science fiction is it assumes we know what is definitely science and not science now for everything when the truth is far from but.

 

[BAYLOR]

Another quote from Arthur C. is in order:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

To person living in the Middle Ages , our 21st technology would seem to them as the stuff of magic.

 

[Venusian Broon]

To person living in the Middle Ages , our 21st technology would seem to them as the stuff of magic.

Imp of the perverse here.

Everyone says that but...would they really?
Impossible to tell, of course. But actually I don't think Roger Bacon would have, neither a great many of the early renaissance. I think they would quite understand (and not think of magic) I base those thoughts on what we know of them, of course.

Why couldn't the general population have a large number who perhaps thought the same way?

 

[BAYLOR]

Imp of the perverse here.

Everyone says that but...would they really?
Impossible to tell, of course. But actually I don't think Roger Bacon would have, neither a great many of the early renaissance. I think they would quite understand (and not think of magic) I base those thoughts on what we know of them, of course.

Why couldn't the general population have a large number who perhaps thought the same way?

What kept down in the Middle Ages the population was the sway and power of the Catholic Church and its anti science attitude. The church put everyone in a box and wouldn't let them think outside of it under penalty of death in some cases. But that said I suspect ther were a great many clergymen who didn't share the church official line on science and inquiry

Your right about Roger Bacon, he would understood that our technology wasn't magic and so would number of other other intellectuals of his era.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

So... Where do superheroes fit in? It strikes me that the genre needs superpowered beings, but it's rather indifferent whether the origin of their powers resides in, ahem, "SF" (radioactive spider! Gamma bomb!) or fantasy (the mystical arts!).

 

[BAYLOR]

So... Where do superheroes fit in? It strikes me that the genre needs superpowered beings, but it's rather indifferent whether the origin of their powers resides in, ahem, "SF" (radioactive spider! Gamma bomb!) or fantasy (the mystical arts!).

Your forgetting Dt Strange in the Marvel Universe and Dr Fate in the DC Universe.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Your forgetting Dt Strange in the Marvel Universe and Dr Fate in the DC Universe.

I was specifically referencing Dr Strange when I mentioned "the mystical arts."

 

[Star-child]

Another quote from Arthur C. is in order:
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

Does this mean that some fantasy books are actually not fantasy because the author couldn't tell the difference between the magic she wrote and technology?

 

[Teresa Edgerton]

But actually I don't think Roger Bacon would have, neither a great many of the early renaissance. I think they would quite understand (and not think of magic) I base those thoughts on what we know of them, of course.

Why couldn't the general population have a large number who perhaps thought the same way?

Because the general population was uneducated, taught not to think or question?

Personally, although I know (sort of) how computers work, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but ... they do work most of the time so when people who do understand it say that it's technology that is good enough for me. If I lived in the Middle Ages and someone in authority told me it was magic, I would probably believe them.

 

[Parson]

Because the general population was uneducated, taught not to think or question?

Personally, although I know (sort of) how computers work, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but ... they do work most of the time so when people who do understand it say that it's technology that is good enough for me. If I lived in the Middle Ages and someone in authority told me it was magic, I would probably believe them.

Bingo!

But I think that the line between Fantasy and Science Fiction can never be set down in any way that covers all of the possibilities. In general it would be easy to make your two piles of books one Fantasy and one Science Fiction. My rule of thumb is: It is whatever the author and publisher declare it is. I think Anne Maccaffrey's "Pern" is the perfect example. For me the story was classic Fantasy, but Anne called it Science Fiction (I think because she brought out that there was a "scientific" background for the dragons.), so the series is S.F. however much I might think otherwise.

 

[Venusian Broon]

Because the general population was uneducated, taught not to think or question?

Personally, although I know (sort of) how computers work, it really doesn't make a lot of sense to me, but ... they do work most of the time so when people who do understand it say that it's technology that is good enough for me. If I lived in the Middle Ages and someone in authority told me it was magic, I would probably believe them.

If they were uneducated how could they be 'taught not to think or question'

I know, I know, they had to go to church every week! But even then there's clearly a range of reactions, some very religious, others not. A bit like the masses today.

I think we tend to generalise, especially when we have little information. When we do get some snippets of what the great unwashed actually said and did, turns out there are many examples of them being were pretty clued up in their situation and clever. Yes they was very little chance of someone getting from the poor, what was seen then, to be a proper education then. That was for the reserve of the rich, powerful and the higher classes of society; books were extraordinarily expensive. If the poor did make advances, there was little way of them to transmit this to future generations (plus society had them working hard to grow crops, so there was that.)

However that doesn't stop some people just having a natural aptitude for natural sciences and dismissing supernatural causes for things that happen about them. and I suspect such people would not be to overawed by our 'magic'. Again just as the case is today.

Humans tend not to be similar, I think, in many areas of their personality, so in all eras I tend to assume that they would have a wide variety of views and position on all matters. If they are unfortunate to live in a regressive society, that is another matter.

I do think that if the 5th and 6th Century BCE Greeks saw what we were doing, they'd probably be disappointed on quite a few levels

 

[Narkalui]

I think people have misunderstood my earlier point. In science fiction the science is explained and it (in theory at least) works (mostly). In fantasy it's just deus ex machina. The serum that turned Lee Majors into Captain Puerto Rico has no basis in real science, therefore it may as well be (for narrative purposes) a magic potion. Just because it's all dressed up in techno/chemical jargon doesn't make it science fiction, it's still fantasy.

In summation: to be science fiction the science must be grounded in real theoretical science, otherwise it's fantasy disguised as science fiction.

 

[tinkerdan]

However:

I think people have misunderstood my earlier point. In science fiction the science is explained and it (in theory at least) works (mostly). In fantasy it's just deus ex machina. The serum that turned Lee Majors into Captain Puerto Rico has no basis in real science, therefore it may as well be (for narrative purposes) a magic potion. Just because it's all dressed up in techno/chemical jargon doesn't make it science fiction, it's still fantasy.

In summation: to be science fiction the science must be grounded in real theoretical science, otherwise it's fantasy disguised as science fiction.

:
That explanation places everything in fantasy; because there is always some place they go beyond known physics and just as many that they don't explain what they are doing, but give it a real sounding scientific name.
And Deus ex Machina is usually an unexplained something that intervenes at the last moment and most well written fantasy novels have established order for the magic, so you can't call the magic Deus ex Machina unless it is some unexplained form of magic or magic being that shows up out of nowhere to save the day.

And Deus ex Machina in science fiction does exist when they use something that they pull out of their arse at the last minute without any clear explanation of where it came from. And that could be some object of known or unknown physics.

I really think it's safe to call it all Fantasy--because it is.