All fiction does the same thing: Shows how people feel about and deal with events. Fantasy shows how people deal with the fantastic/magical events. The story is always about the people (if it’s any good), not the events.
Okay, that is cool! That’s exactly what I’m talking about.
Fantasy is mostly just mythology and religion that isn’t intended to be taken as actual fact.
Of course it’s not intended to be taken as actual fact. That’s how fiction works.
But religion was. Mythology and bible stories whet the human appetite for supernatural fiction.
Ah. Gotcha.
There’s something to that. After all, Tolkien basically invented the modern fantasy genre because he wanted to create a mythology for these languages he made up.
Consider a well-known fantasy story - “The Ones Who Walk Away from Omelas” (it’s definitely fantasy - there’s no realistic justification for the apparent fact that bad treatment of one child makes everything perfect for the city of Omelas). We get a discussion of morality, responsibility, and (in a meta way), the difficulty humans sometimes have in believing that improvements are possible without a dark cost. You could do the same things in a science fiction story, maybe, but it would probably make the story significantly longer and that would weaken the point.
Yeah – the example I was thinking of here is Ursula Le Guin’s Earthsea trilogy. In the first book, the protagonist has to contend with the literal dark half of himself. The second book involves the protagonist both enslaved by and able to work through a way to freedom through various magical means (it’s a lot more complicated than that, that’s a terrible description, sorry). The third book is about death and the fear of death, and through magic the protagonists (and the antagonist, too) can be faced explicitly with the land of the dead.
The related thing that I think fantasy does is – there is a certain numinous quality about some fantasy that I think arises partially from it not being completely centered in this world. Le Guin also said, “We like to think we live in daylight, but half the world is always dark; and fantasy, like poetry, speaks the language of the night.” Of course you can write non-fantasy that way too to a certain extent (or postulate everything that looks like magic is actually explainable using science, etc.), but feel there is something about the fantastical images and themes of fantasy that reflect that we don’t really understand everything that goes on inside of ourselves either. To quote Le Guin again (this is from that third book I mentioned above):
"The dragons! The dragons are avaricious, insatiable, treacherous; without pity, without remorse. But are they evil? Who am I, to judge the acts of dragons?… They are wiser than men are. It is with them as with dreams, Arren. We men dream dreams, we work magic, we do good, we do evil. The dragons do not dream. They are dreams. They do not work magic: it is their substance, their being. They do not do; they are.”
“In Serilune,” said Arren, “is the skin of Bar Oth, killed by Keor, Prince of Enlad, three hundred years ago. No dragons have ever come to Enlad since that day. I saw the skin of Bar Oth. It is heavy as iron and so large that if it were spread out it would cover all the marketplace of Serilune, they said. The teeth are as long as my forearm. Yet they said Bar Oth was a young dragon, not full-grown.”
“There is a desire in you,” said Sparrowhawk, “to see dragons.”
“Yes.”
“Their blood is cold and venomous. You must not look into their eyes. They are older than mankind…” He was silent a while and then went on, “And though I came to forget or regret all I have ever done, yet would I remember that once I saw the dragons aloft on the wind at sunset above the western isles; and I would be content."
It seems to me that this passage would lose a lot of its power if the dragons turned out to be, say, complicated clockwork machines, or alien technology. (In fact, I must append that Le Guin returned to Earthsea later on and in one of the later books the dragons are squabbling like any ordinary human being, and when I think about that, which I try not to, it does rob this passage of part of its power as well.)
Somewhat true, but more he wanted to write a great myth for English to stand with the likes of Greek and Norse legends and cycles.
I’ve been going over this with my husband, and I’m starting to get it. Going through what happens in Penric and the Shaman. The idea of the layered spirits or whatever - it’s a unique idea, but by itself, what is it? But if I really look at what was done in the story, the approach was “What if this process goes wrong?” What happens when it goes wrong opens the door to themes of grief, regret, atonement. Human stuff.
Another thing about fantasy I was thinking about - on the big screen, it can be visually arresting, no? Maybe some people can see these amazing visual pictures in their head when they read? I cannot. I have a very difficult time visualizing pictures with words.
(Which is absurd when you consider I wrote a fantasy book. But it’s less epic landscapes and more gritty and intimate.)
Something I liked best about both the Lord of the Rings movies and Harry Potter movies is how much they brought the look of these worlds to life.
The Shire, Minas Tirith, Rohan were exactly what I always pictured. Rivendell wasn’t but I loved the look.
Most amazing was the scene of them passing by the Argonath on the Anduin was exactly how I had it in my mind.
I loved the Lord of the Rings movies. I never read the book, but I would imagine my reaction to the film, if I had read the book first, would be, “ah, so that’s what that looks like.”
For the purposes of this thread, I’m acknowledging that science fiction is a type of fantasy, but that’s not the fantasy I’m talking about. I’m talking about the form of speculative fiction that often involves magic and supernatural abilities - though it doesn’t always. (I wrote a fantasy novel without magic, so I know it’s not required.)
Could you touch on this a little bit? Fantasy without magical elements is basically just historical fiction, isn’t it?
Then there’s “fantastical historical” fiction in a more postmodernist vein, like Thomas Pynchon’s Mason & Dixon.
I already commented about this in another thread, but I think is relevant, the Penric books (and the whole world of the five gods) are IMHO not fantasy, the rules of how the gods and magic works are so detailed that it’s just science fiction in an alternate universe.
What if it’s set in a clearly fictional world, with totally fictional cultures and geography?
Well, if you mean my book, it’s set somewhere else that is not Earth, but it’s also very futuristic, so it has kind of the veneer of science fiction, but I don’t think it’s really science fiction. It’s not about high concept existential questions. It has no magic system, just very advanced technology in some places (indistinguishable from magic, natch.) Originally when I wrote it, it was very low tech, but the modern dialogue didn’t work for me, with the setting, so I slapped a technology skin on it.
The story is a romance about two people dealing with trauma in the middle of a revolutionary war. Lots of complicated politics and action. It could probably work in any setting.
One of the characters belongs to a race that is human, just with weird eyes, pale skin, great night vision, and a pretty strong resilience to cold. I don’t really explain this, I just thought it would be cool. That’s about as wild as it gets, though.
I have heard the book described as fantasy, science fiction and speculative fiction from different people who have read it. I don’t think it’s science fiction. Just because it has advanced technology don’t make it so.
Now I have also read at least one romantasy series that didn’t have magic. It was in a medieval setting with zero magic and concerned the relationship between a wall watchman and a woman starving to death in this cordoned-off village. This didn’t happen in a real geographical place, it’s just a story that’s somewhere else. (Defender of Walls.) Very much like something I would write, which is why it stood out to me.
One reason I liked the Paladin Series by R. Kingfisher is that even though there’s magic, it’s pretty low level. It doesn’t really feel like magic. I don’t know how else to explain it. It’s very grounded fiction.
But doesn’t magic often have crazy detailed rules? I’m just thinking about the fantasy writers I know. They talk about multiple levels of world-building and detailed magic systems and things I frankly don’t understand, but are rigorous in their internal consistency.
For me, I just like the medieval-esque setting. Though any historic period setting can work for me, as it still achieves what I like. Which is, it replaces science with magic, cars with horses, guns with swords, and democracy with monarchy. And then they have an adventure with a different set of limitations to work within than I am familiar with.
For me, science fiction is too much science, not enough fiction, most of the time. Star Wars is really space fantasy, which I enjoy far more than Star Trek, even though there is crossover appeal (Trek still has whimsy and adventure on occasion).
There’s more to it than just that, but that’s Fantasy’s main appeal for me.
Interesting. I am pretty much the exact opposite.
I love Star Trek, because it asks the big questions.
The only time I like Star Wars is when it’s deconstructing itself, which is how I feel about Andor. Andor and Rogue One are the Star Wars I love. They ask big questions.
I would love to write what I consider real science fiction because it’s my favorite genre. I could never write hard sci-Fi because I lack the knowledge, but I could write soft sci-Fi. I’m trying to launch a sci-Fi story right now, but it’s not happening for me yet. I can’t get a grip on characters or story.
Now a lot of classic sci-fi shit the bed on character development, but not all the time, and a lot has changed.
Let’s jump through wormholes all day long.
It’s magic where I have trouble suspending my disbelief.
But maybe fantasy and science fiction are two sides of the same coin, we’re all getting the same stuff out of it no matter which skin we choose.