I think that the best science fiction is about how people react to new situations, rather than being dry descriptions of how things work. While I’m sure that in most cases, the author is fascinated by the new technology s/he’s thought up, in most cases it doesn’t make a difference to the story…and when it’s the POINT of the story, well, generally the story isn’t very good. It’s the same with fantasy…if most or all of the work is devoted to HOW a magic system works, then I’m generally not interested in it as a story, though it might be a dandy game resource.
I like both science fiction and fantasy, and I read both.
I like both genres, although I’d say I prefer science fiction, if only because it seems to me that the far-out sciencey situation tends to be the driver of the plot, while many (most?) fantasy books are just books about people that happen to be set in a fantasy setting.
LOTR was different- the One Ring and its destruction was the driver of the plot. And there are sci-fi stories that aren’t driven by technology and are about people (Left Hand of Darkness?)
Given. But how often is that actually used to make social commentary (and I’ve just realized LeGuin is as much a fantasist as an SF author) - where are the best-selling or award-winning fantasy stories that are about gender or anarchism or limnality in a way The Dispossessed or Left Hand of Darkness or Foreigner or Grass or The Algebraist are, for instance?
I’m going by what I know of current best-selling fantasy, mind you - your Malazans and Westeroses and Westlands and Terre D’Anges. I don’t doubt there’s plenty of obscure authors toiling away producing insightful musings on the human condition in a fantasy milieu. But the ones who do are completely unknown to me. And no, “gritty” isn’t a substitute for insight. Nor is “gay”
The reasons you give would be, for me, a reason to prefer fantasy over science fiction. I didn’t enjoy Time Enough for Love for the science; I enjoyed it because I wanted to know about Lazarus Long. Similarly, what draws me to Lord of the Rings is the story of Frodo and Sam & Eowyn & Merry & Pippin and so forth. I want to get into a character’s skin for a while, see the world through his or her eyes, which one can do in either sf of fantasy, if it’s done well. But if it’s all about the future science or the rules of magic: who cares?
Who said you were a good king? Maybe you were just worried about the evil at the borders because you didn’t want competition.
I’m not really one of the folks the OP is looking for, since I enjoy both science fiction and fantasy. But I prefer for there to be well-established rules that the world follows, and science fiction tends to be better at that, so I tend to prefer science fiction.
More to the point, I prefer the rules to be knowable to the reader, and for a good science fiction writer, most of the rules are the same as for our own world: In a science fiction book, if I find myself asking “why don’t they just do so-and-so”, I may well be able to answer the question myself with something like “because that would violate conservation of energy”, or whatever. Conservation of energy need not ever have been mentioned in the book for me to conclude this: I can take it for granted. With fantasy, though, I don’t know a priori whether conservation of energy will hold, and even if the fantasy world has its own laws which are enforced just as strictly as conservation of energy is in ours, I don’t know what those laws are without the author telling me.
I lean towards science fiction. I don’t like magic in stories that allows the resolution of any problem with a newly discovered magical ability. Otherwise, my preferences are more about the quality of the writing, the characters, and the plot than the genre.
I don’t meet your criteria in that I don’t hate Fantasy, and I will certainly read it, and there’s even some fantasy that I actively like (more on that in a moment) but I have a definite preference for Sci Fi.
I tend to prefer very dystopic settings. Grimdark if you must know. Cyberpunk, Dark Space Opera, Military Sci Fi and Post Apocalyptic settings seem to appeal to me. I like the descriptions of weapons and battles, the explanation of how the science works, the struggle of mankind in a hostile universe.
Warhammer 40k fiction, Alastair Reynolds and Richard Morgan are my three staples.
As I said, there is some fantasy I like. But it matches the outlines I’ve already given - Dystopic, mankind’s struggle in a hostile world. Warhammer Fantasy. It’s dark and crunchy. Rocks fall, everyone dies. Romance is a minimal plot aspect, there’s little or no sex or bodice ripping, just the occasional fade to black. The plucky sidekick may die horribly for no real reason, except for the inherent nastiness of the world. China Mieville meets that description as well.
What I like about the Warhammer universes (40k and Fantasy both) is that Magic is not just a great Macguffin you can pull defeat from the jaws of victory with. “Magic” is nasty. It’s the stuff of Chaos. It corrupts and warps everything it comes into contact with. Without severe discipline (and even with), what you may perceive as a simple spell can result in you suddenly sprouting five heads and a horror crawling out of your nose. Psyk is required in the 40k universe, it’s the backbone of interstellar travel, but with it comes a host of horror and dangers that even the most stalwart are potentially able to fall victim to.
Tolkein I just can’t stand because OMG WORDS. I can get through a long book. But when I got bogged down reading the descriptions of the shire’s green fields I thought “Fuck this shit, life’s too short” and just watched the movies. Kim Stanley Robinson also suffers from OMG WORDS though in a slightly lesser fashion, just so you know that’s not fantasy specific.
Oh, don’t mind me, I just don’t care for Heinlein. At the end of the day, I don’t find I care very much about the characters in most science fiction books I’ve read, for whatever reason. Characters in fantasy books tend to grab me more. I’m not even sure why, unless I really am easily blinded by magical beasts and shiny armor.
Some people like things grounded in reality, but that’s not very high on my priority list. I like epic. I like magic. I like stories that remind me of fairy tales and mythology. If a book adds that stuff to a modern, real world setting, like Harry Dresden, Weetzie Bat, Charles de Lint or the Night Watch series, so much the better.
You could say the same thing starting with “Skald the Rhymer looked out on his galactic empire…” in which the Forces of Evil are vaporized by Skald’s giant blasters. The same way that good sci-fi avoids that sort of plot-killer, so does good fantasy. I don’t think it’s that much more of a problem in one than the other.
I think Skald has already addressed this. This sort of deus ex machina doesn’t happen in good, well-written fantasy, and it can happen in bad science fiction.
To the OP: I love both fantasy and science fiction. And I get different, though overlapping, things from them. But my first love is fantasy, because when it’s really good, it touches places in my heart that other literature rarely if ever touches.
If I can’t form an emotional connection to a character, I’m not going to like them OR find them interesting. Heinlein’s fellows just don’t do it for me.
That’s just it. I did form an emotional connection to Lazarus Long. Just because he wasn’t always likeable didn’t mean he was never likeable. His cantankerousness at the beginning of Time Enough for Love was quite understandable; Ira had screwed him over (by preventing his suicide) for his own purposes and put him in an unpleasant position. And his actions in “The Tale of the Twins that Weren’t,” “The Tale of the Adopted Daughter,” and the time-travel bit at the end exposed him as basically a good fellow, despite his protestations to the contrary.
Fantasy loses me when it goes off on its anti-modernist kick. It says, “Wasn’t it great in the old days, before all this business with industrialism, democracy, and urban sprawl? Life was better when we were ruled by wise and noble kings, and learned to use swords, and believed in magic, and rode horses around all day.” Oh, okay then. I guess all that stuff about famine, black plague, serfdom, infant mortality, the Elizabethan police state, trial by ordeal, and witch burning doesn’t count then.
The fantasy I like tends to be the more metaphorical stuff. The genre can be really effective when it uses all the trappings of fantasy – the invented backdrops, the magic, the larger than life tone – symbolically to back up the story. The Gormenghast trilogy is a good example of that.
On the other hand, science fiction loses me when it becomes engineering porn. Sometimes SF writers just fall in love with describing spaceships and rayguns and futuristic military hardware, and forget that they’re supposed to be telling a story about people the reader can relate to. And no, hardened space-marines who kill the alien bugs because it’s us or them, and this is war son not a Sunday-school picnic, are not, by and large, sympathetic characters you can relate to. I think sometimes people forget that Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War was an anti-war novel.
To my mind, science fiction is best when it’s about the big ideas. There’s a good reason why HG Wells is considered the father of the genre. He tackled all sorts of big ideas. What is society going to look like in the future? (When the Sleeper Wakes.) How fragile is this civilization we take for granted and think will last forever? (War of the Worlds.) How would people from an enlightened future view our current society and all its foibles? (In the Days Of the Comet.) What happens when the gap between the haves and have-nots reaches it ultimate conclusion? (The Time Machine.) Good stuff.
I like both fantasy and SF, but I’m slightly more drawn to fantasy.
Mostly, I like good stories about believable, interesting characters that draw me in. I tend to find this sort of story slightly more in the fantasy genre rather than the SF genre, because SF often gets sidetracked into focusing on engineering porn or big ideas and forgetting about the people.
Which is not to say that I can’t enjoy the “big ideas” SF. I’m happily re-reading Peter F Hamilton’s “Commonwealth Saga” at the moment, for example.
I like fantasy and not science fiction for one simple reason – I don’t like guns (or lasers or photon torpedoes or whatever). I like how, in fantasy, if two opponents go after each other sword against sword, it’s man-vs-man, expertise vs expertise, years of training vs years of training, master vs master. Conversely, if Star Wars were even the slightest bit realistic (I know, I know, but hear me out), lowly Stormtrooper #24878 would have blasted Han Solo in the first scene (or, if not him, then one of the other hundreds of Stormtoopers firing at him). It’s silly, and I don’t like it. I like my heroes to be epic and heroic because they’ve worked all their lives to be the best, not simply because of some inexplicable, preternatural ability to dodge laser beams.
And while arrows could nominally take the place of laser beams, (a) armor is at least somewhat effective against an arrow, if not at close range and (b) becoming a competent archer takes a lot of training – more so than becoming competent with a handgun, in my wholly uninformed opinion. (Crossbows, on the other hand, are the medieval equivalent of guns, and I don’t much like them either).
Magic could, I suppose, also allow one character to zap another without much thought. But, again, you’ve got to work hard to become a mage. (And, in good fantasy, it costs something to lob a fireball or whatever. All it costs Stormtrooper #24878 is a quick squeeze of the trigger. Yawnsville.)
G’ahead, tear into me, you science fiction folks. I’ll probably be too busy to respond
See, all these “well SF is something that could be real” and “well fantasy is more interesting because it’s arrows and SF has blasters and that’s boring and not-skilled” kind of makes me think people are reading some pretty shitty genre fiction.
This, too. I like modernity and have no desire to read about pastoral experiences.
I even take this attitude towards SF. There are a number of novels I’ve read that partly depend upon (for want of a better word) medieval settings and it is those passages that I skim or skip entirely. Vinge’s A Fire Upon the Deep had this problem as well as Peter F. Hamilton’s Void trilogy.
That last was particularly irritating - I didn’t spend 30 odd dollars on a book so I could skip the 1/3rd that had to do with Edeard, the Waterwalker. :rolleyes: Loved the futuristic society stuff, hated, hated, hated the Edeard passages.
