Science Fiction --OR-- Fantasy

Cafe Society
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I’m not quite sure if this is the right forum. I can’t seem to muster up enough vitriol for the Pit; it could go in Great Debates, but I’m starting in the Café Society since it is about books. Mods, please feel free to move it wherever seems most appropriate.

I hate that all bookstores seem to think that Science Fiction is the same as Fantasy – they label the section Science Fiction and Fantasy. I cannot even imagine what kind of story could be both Science Fiction AND Fantasy.

I love Science Fiction! I always loved science in school, so naturally, as a reader, I am drawn to Science Fiction. I have tried to read fantasy, but it is just to easy for an author to make up the rules as they go along. Does the hero need to get somewhere in a hurry? No problem! There’s a spell for that.

That flies in the face of Science.

It was bad enough when swords and sorcery tales were clogging the Science Fiction bookshelves, but now they seem to think that anything different belongs there as well. Like werewolves and vampires.

Is it any wonder that the SciFi channel changed their name to SyFy? They haven’t showed any Sci-Fi for a very long time.

Here is an incomplete list of things that are NOT Science Fiction and do not belong on the same shelves:

Harry Potter
Elves and gnomes
Swords and spells
Vampires and werewolves
Ghosts and goblins
The Lord of the Rings
HP Lovecraft (Stephen King is in the Horror section, why not Lovecraft?)
Superheroes
Neil Gaiman
Star Wars (or any other space operas, like Firefly/Serenity)

To me, this would be like putting Romance in the Mystery section, because sometimes, detectives fall in love , or lovers have secrets.

My personal opinion. Obviously, ymmv.

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A friend of mine is a cataloger for the library, and she is glad this distinction isn’t recognized by the system, because figuring out where to put things can be a pain. In order to separate out science fiction from fantasy, the usual definition I’ve heard is that if weird stuff is explained by science, it’s SF, but if it’s explained by magic, it’s fantasy. In order to do that you have to read the book.

Thor: Your ancestors called it magic; you call it science. Where I come from, they’re one and the same.

Oh, and, serious objection to Firefly & Serenity not being science fiction.

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I was with you until you said no space operas. They are staples in classic science fiction – the Lensman series, for example.

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To a lesser extent, the same situation exists with the genre of Alternate History. Most of it has no Science Fiction or Fantasy elements but it gets lumped in with those categories.

On the other hand, Horror - which actually has a lot in common with Fantasy - almost always gets its own category.

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If you made a Venn diagram of fandom, the middle section would be huge. And it doesn’t really make sense to devote shelf sections to “WWII fiction,” “WWII nonfiction,” “Triumphant Civil War romocoms.”

Should an author who straddles both have their books separated? Gaiman does mostly urban fantasy or “fantasy” fantasy, but not all. Where does Gene Wolfe go? Jack Vance? (for that matter, where does Iain (M.) Banks go currently in most bookstores, I haven’t checked).

Yeah, Lovecraft is mostly horror. Ghosts 'n Goblins goes in video games, silly!

Shelver: “Now, are these virus zombies, or voodoo zombies, or magic zombies? It matters!”

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Damon Knight spent most of the 1950s complaining about people who couldn’t make a proper distinction between fantasy and science fiction.

Those people are called publishers and readers.

It’s a huge generalization - but generalizations is how all businesses operate, since they deal with people in units of millions - but people who like that sort of stuff like to read both fantasy and science fiction. And they don’t like to have to go to two separate places to find it. Especially since many authors write both (and all the myriad other subgenres that go into it).

Libraries have always struggled with this. Some put f&sf separately; some put it in with other fiction. People complain vociferously whichever way they do it.

Publishers have mostly solved this by coding the cover illustrations. Yes, you most certainly can tell a book by its cover. Science fiction has a large muscled person in a uniform holding a Kirbyesque weapon; fantasy has a large muscled person in medieval garb holding an implausibly large historic weapon.

It all works - unless you’re an author who happened through some streak of obstenancy or insanity to insist upon writing a work that can’t be depicted by such a cover. Fortunately most such incorrigibles has been forced out of the industry.

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Does the hero need to get somewhere in a hurry? No problem! Just step into this here transporter.

Is that better?

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Stephen Stasheff’s Warlock series is a combination, as are Piers Anthony’s Phaze books. Both are set in technological universes with single planets of fantasy tropes.

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There are things that are definitely, no doubt about it, science fiction. And there are things that are definitely, no doubt about it, fantasy. But there are a hell of a lot of things that are somewhere in the middle.

I’d be curious to know what things the OP would include in science fiction. How about faster than light travel, for example?

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Ray Bradbury.

Pray tell, what is really “scientific” about the most “sciency” sounding of his novels “The Martian Chronicles”? Once we meet the Martians, aren’t they essentially ghosts or spirits?

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One of my favorite authors is Andre Norton, who mixed science fiction and fantasy together on a regular basis. Flamethrower armed armored vehicles being destroyed by a tower collapsed on them by a magician, captured witches being used to power a high-technology facility, magic-using starship crews, you name it.

Stories that mix-and-match the two are quite common these days, actually.

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Clarke’s Third law, also part of the ambiguity I mentioned above: “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

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Or…how about Alexei Panshin’s “Anthony Villiers” novels, or Walter Jon Williams’ “Drake Maijstral” novels? They’re science fiction in overall envelope – spacecraft and aliens and the like – but formally, they’re “comedies of manners.” The elegance of the future societies is the centerpiece of the storytelling.

There are lots of other examples of “sociological” or even “political” science fiction.

And fantasy!

The only real beef I have with bookstore categories is when clerks don’t comprehend the difference at all. I used to find Isaac Asimov’s collections of science fact essays in the Science Fiction shelves! Well, gosh, it’s by Asimov, and has a title like “The Tragedy of the Moon,” so obviously it’s SF. WRONG!

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If the author is making up rules as s/he goes along, then s/he’s a poor writer. This applies to ALL genres. A mystery writer can’t reveal that the victim was killed by a fictional (or even quite rare) poison that no reader would reasonably have heard of, unless the writer had introduced the poison earlier in the story, for instance. A fantasy writer needs to work out the rules of the world or universe of the story, and has to introduce those rules as the story unfolds. The writer can’t just say “There’s a spell for that!” and expect the readers to be happy with it.

I read a lot of fantasy as well as science fiction. And I do mean hard SF. The best fantasy writers will not only show magic being worked, but the quirks and limitations of the magic.

Jim C. Hines has started a new series of fantasy books and stories about a libriomancer…someone who can literally reach into a book and pull almost anything from its pages. You want the One Ring? Just grab your copy of Tolkien and pull it out…if you’re a libriomancer. Except, of course, I’m sure that the authorities have “locked” those particular books. There’s a ruling group of libriomancers who decide what can be pulled out, and if an artifact is too dangerous, they lock the books so nobody can get that artifact. There are other limits, too. The main attraction that the stories have for me is the way the author sets up the limitations, and then has the character overcome the problems.

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So does FTL.

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Also writers. I mean, I’m sure Ursula K. LeGuin would want all of her books to be on the same shelf. Also Gene Wolf, Dan Simmons, George R.R. Martin, Robert Silverberg… not to mention Jack Vance or Roger Zelazny, if they were still alive. Some of the best writers didn’t care to distinguish between the genres, so why should we?

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I did my thesis on genre (specifically, sub genre in film and specifically neo film noir), then my husband spent years categorizing movie genres for the internet (well, he did lots of other things, but genre categorization was a big deal).

Genre is hard. Putting anything into little boxes means you have to ignore the other stuff that is there - or file it in more than one place. Get enough categories and everything fits into more than one, too few and there is no discernment. Someone is always going to disagree. The whole purpose of categorizing by genre is so people can find what they want - and in two directions…I’m looking for a Robert Heinlein novel, and “I liked Robert Heinlein, what should I read next.”

For SF&F there is a lot of crossover in the fandom. Little hard SF is actually written, it isn’t worth it in a regular bookstore for it to have its own shelf space, it isn’t effective. Now “teen paranormal romance” - that is a genre worthy of shelf space. :slight_smile: But there is enough of it to fill a shelf - and another one - at my B&N.

I’d like it all filed under fiction, myself, and get rid of the genre shelves. I find genre to be limiting and I think having a “mystery” shelf means that “mystery” readers don’t branch out - they define themselves as “mystery” people and might never discover how much fun Science Fiction is.

Neo Film Noir is an example - Blade Runner - a SF movie? Its clearly an example of modern Film Noir. Its clearly a detective movie.

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Margaret Atwood pisses of the SF community with regularity because she doesn’t like the concept of genre - finds it limiting and frankly insulting.

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George R.R. Martin once wrote something like*, Knights, astronauts, cowboys, it doesn’t matter. It’s all just stories.*

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The el cheapo Used Book Superstore chain here in the Boston area actually makes a distinction between Science Fiction and Fantasy, and segregates its books accordingly. Barnes and Noble doesn’t even think about doing that. I agree that the distinction isn’t always very sharp, but they definitely make a serious effort to do it.

Authors usually seem to have a sense of what they’re trying to do, as well. Fredric Brown wrote science fiction, fantasy, and mystery stories, and always kept them straight. This is all the more significant because I don’t think Brown knew enough actual science to fill a thimble*, but his SF stories were always distinct from his fantasy stories, even when the SF stories were filled with “imaginary science”.

One useful definition I’ve seen on Nancy buttons is that The Difference Between Science Fiction and Fantasy is that, in Science Fiction, Dragons can’t Hover

*Read his short novel Rogue in Space sometime. Even if you stretch your imagination to accept sentient planets – an idea others have used – Brown doesn’t seem to appreciate how gravity really works, and doesn’t consider the power of Tides.