I don’t believe in anything supernatural either. Atheist and anti-woo pretty much down the line. But I love fantasy. Who wouldn’t want to be able to turn some random asshole into a gerbil ;)?
Go for the eyes, Boo! Go for the eyes!
Great for their period, but now, sadly, dated. And, as has been said, suffer greatly from sequelitus. I do hate the whole R’ob’er’t naming meme, which exists mostly in fantasy. I joked once as a DM that there’d be a 10% penalty for each apostrophe in a name.
Well, as I said, “different things for different people.” A love of analyzing things into categories is certainly one of those (and I say that as a fellow pigeonhole lover).
But some people really are cranky on the topic of where the line lies because they feel it important to distance themselves from fantasy. That’s not coming from any sort of disinterested systematic examination of the components of the genres.
Indeed. Or even a pillbug!
For me, a fantasy can be enjoyable if some sort of world rules are laid out and pretty much adhered to. There’s an intellectual pleasure in being surprised by a plot that’s resolved without any contrivances, beyond those established in the beginning.
Reminds me of Neal Stephenon’s “Reamde”, which features a World of Warcraft type game written by a prolific fantasy author. Somewhere during development, the game went through the “Apostrophopocalyse”, when they hired a linguist who showed how pointless all the fantasy apostrophes were, and how they didn’t follow any sort of consistent logic.
I didn’t have a problem with the weyr apostrophes per se: the usage was consistent, and didn’t really create any unpronouncable tonguetwisters. (Although J’xom would’ve been.)
My problem with it is that I still can’t imagine how such a system could have developed in the first place. It’s seems like something to simplify names by eliding syllables – like you’d do if you had to communicate quickly and concisely when you’re in a stressful situation. But dragonriders communicate through their dragons’ telepathy when fighting Thread; they don’t need shortened names for rapid communication! And dragons seem to have no problem telepathing the names of anyone, so it’s not like it was necessary because they had poor telepronunciation.
I wonder who you think those people are?
They’re certainly not me–I love fantasy, from CS Lewis to David Eddings to J.R.R Tolkien to Lawrence Watt-Evans. The very first book I can remember reading on my own* was The Wonderful Wizard of Oz and I spent years collecting the other 39 books in the series.
My objection is to people who see a book that’s clearly science fiction, look at the covers and say “Lookit! Dragons! There must be wizards and magic and goblins…cause…dragons! Amirite?”
So, I’m wondering which posters in this thread you were talking about who are trying to “distance themselves from fantasy”?
All I see are people who are trying to fight a clearly mistaken notion–up there with the idea that “HEY! The Foundation series mentions “The Mule”–clearly the three original Foundation books are ‘horsie’ novels…because…“mule”=“horsie” amirite?”
*And I’m sure there were earlier, easier books–but this is the memory that sticks with me
If you haven’t read Watt-Evans Esthshar books, you should–he’s a master of saying “Here are the “rules” of how magic works, now figure out how to use them to get out of this problem.”
Great stuff
A slightly more interesting and perhaps parallel argument would be that the Mule makes the Foundation series into “fantasy” and moves it away from SF, because the Mule makes use of psionic mental telepathy, which is far more akin to magic than science. A lot of people feel this way about Star Wars: once “The Force” becomes dominant to the plot line, the movie becomes a fantasy movie.
Vague memory. It was the first or second gen. of dragonriders started slurring the names and it became a custom/status sign. Remember Lytol lost his dragon and reverted to his full name.
Dragons. Noble and peasant classes, and damned little upward mobility. Fortified keeps. Patriarchal conventions. Guild system. Magic/psionics.
Now, the lack of religion DOES argue for SF rather than fantasy, but we have God Walking Among Us (Robinton).
The line between Fantasy and SF is an interesting sideline. I do read both, so I don’t have a strong “Leper outcast unclean!” reaction against the Fantasy subgenre, though I’ve lost most of my taste for it as I’ve aged. There really isn’t a bright dividing line. Some works deliberately blur it; Lord of Light, for example.
Here are the things I consider to be ways to slot things, if you have the inclination:
[ul]
[li] Language. Ursula Le Guin, in one of her essays, pointed out how important language is to Fantasy, that contemporary language kills the feeling. Word choice, register, sentence structure all affect this. [/li]
[li] Attempted explanation and exposition marks an attempt at SF. Fantasy powers generally don’t require explanation.[/li]
[li] Outlook. If the characters are consulting prophecies, trying to find a quest item, looking to oracles for advice, it’s shading toward fantasy even if the setting is SF-ish. If they’re doing research, puzzling out how to do something, and solving problems, it’s weighted toward SF, even if it’s ostensibly a fantasy world.[/li]
[li] Power systems. Generally, magic is inborn, or gained through ritual initiation. Science is learnable. Magic usually draws from mystical sources, or occasionally from personal sacrifice or energy. Science features external or artificial sources of power.[/li]
[li] In fantasy, there aren’t any morally neutral things. Objects are associated with their creator. Evil guys can’t use good weapons/jewelry/etc. without corrupting it or changing it first. Scientific objects are usable by anyone.[/li][/ul]
Leave out dragons and magic, and you’ve got Heinlein’s Starman Jones. And that had centaurs. 
[quote=“Sleel, post:113, topic:667048”]
[li] Language. Ursula Le Guin, in one of her essays, pointed out how important language is to Fantasy, that contemporary language kills the feeling. Word choice, register, sentence structure all affect this. [/li][/QUOTE]
“From Elfland to Poughkeepsie” in Le Guin’s The Language of Night
P.S. Thanks for the entire list of indicators - good stuff.
[quote=“Sleel, post:113, topic:667048”]
[li] Power systems. Generally, magic is inborn, or gained through ritual initiation. Science is learnable. Magic usually draws from mystical sources, or occasionally from personal sacrifice or energy. Science features external or artificial sources of power.[/li][/QUOTE]
I don’t agree with this one unequivically.
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Ever hear of the wizard’s college? Magic can be learned. Tolkien called magic “lore”, which is another word for “knowledge”.
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To someone who doesn’t know the lingo, when Wesley “shunts the plasma flow back through the power invertors, bypassing the flow regulators, and redirecting it all through the deflector array (to reverse polarity, 'natch)”, all they see is him chanting a litany, making some arcane jestures (or pressing magical runes on a table, if you wish), and allakazzam tremendous energies leap forth from seemingly nowhere to do his bidding.
No, Tolkien’s magic was inborn and not learned.
Well, for one example, Aule taught metal/stone/gem crafting to the Dwarves and to the elves. Feanor, without this knowledge (which he learned from another elven craftsman), would not have been able to craft the simarils.
Sauron taught the elves about ring crafting, as well. using this knowledge, the elves made the three rings of power Narya, Nenya, and Vilya.
Leave out the dragons and centaurs but keep in the single-instance, low grade psionics, and you have Niven’s A Gift From Earth
Also? This is the weirdest—but still educational/interesting—thread I’ve been in, in a long time. Thanks folks!