I hadn’t thought about it in that way, great insight.
The core of science fiction is speculation and extrapolation of the current world and society; the core of Fantasy is usually morality and behavior.
Sci-fi explores what if these things are stretched to a future extreme. Fantasy explores ideas of how characters react and influence the world and events around them.
That isn’t to say Sci Fi can’t explore morality or Fantasy can’t speculate but that isn’t at the core of their respective genres.
And beyond all that, as has been said before, Sci Fi is the art of the possible and Fantasy is the art of the impossible.
I’m also aphantasmic. I’m not speaking for @Spice_Weasel sp this is totally my own experience.
- I do not visualize a dog so much as a schematic of a dog. I know what a dog is and that puts a tag up that says dog. It does not indicate breed or coloring or movement, just a memory of having seen a dog.
- I know what a leash is so I can add that tag. If I concentrate I can move the leash so that its pointed toward a hand or dragging on the ground, but those are fleeting images that vanish without the effort.
- Doing anything with the dog, even merely putting it in a room, requires building the construction step by step. It’s not even a children’s drawing of what a dog on a sabretooth might look like, it’s flashes of memory put together for an instant.
- Colors, as I said, are difficult. Backgrounds are difficult. Cluttered scenes are difficult. I could figure out such an image and write it into a story because I know what all the words mean, but if I wanted to use it again I’d have to go back and try to reconstruct what I meant because no image would persist to draw upon.
Despite this I’ve published fiction, and with considerable descriptions. The cloud of word tags form the images on the page because, I think, words themselves contain images of what they mean. Whether the reader connects to their word tags or visual images doesn’t seem to matter for most prose, although it will undoubtedly make the experience individual and possibly affect their liking for certain writers over others. It also might be why reading Joyce is so nearly impossible for many.
Yet imagine showing the linked image to someone who doesn’t already have all the words to tag the components to. Would it have any meaning other than color or a sense of motion? Science fiction writers lose many readers because they invent alien or future worlds without existing tags. People say the result is impenetrable. Maybe that’s another reason why fantasy, which tends to draw from deep societal familiarity, works better for them.
That was kind of my point. You could “translate” Lord of the Rings into Science Fiction and keep almost all of the narrative events of the story, but it would no longer be fantasy. Precisely because of that spiritual element. A fictional world in which spirit is no longer mere sentiment or a psychological analogy but a real force in the world, is fantasy.
Ah gotcha ya, sorry!.
Another thought that I had, about what fantasy does…
I had originally thought to include, as a feature of fantasy fiction, “conflict between the forces of good and the forces of evil.” It’s certainly something that’s true of Tolkien’s works, and much of the Tolkien-esque fantasy books which followed him, but as I thought about it, I realized that it’s by no means a universal aspect of the genre.
I mentioned upthread that, when I was in high school, I was a fan of Fritz Leiber’s “Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser” stories. Those guys weren’t really capital-H “heroes,” they were thieves and adventurers, in it for the gold and the glory. They might have fought “bad guys,” but for mostly selfish reasons. My memories of reading Conan stories are fuzzier, but I suspect that they were often much the same.
All of that made it no less “fantasy,” and no less enjoyable for me. OTOH, I’ve not read any of the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser stories (mostly written from the '40s through '70s) in years, and it wouldn’t surprise me if they haven’t aged well, as far as how they treat women, for example.
Boy and howdy. I read them in the 80s as a teenager, and even then they kinda skeezed me out. I tried rereading one about a decade ago, and it was a big old nope. There are other fantasy heist antihero novels out there that manage the genre without being steeped in misogyny–look at Leigh Bardugo’s Six of Crows, for example.
A lot of times, the fantasy elements feel like the jam that you spread on the bread. The bread might be good or bad, but whichever it is, the jam makes it sweeter to eat.
Something like Black Leopard, Red Wolf would be extremely difficult for me to read without the sweetness of magic and mystery. In fact, I put down the first book I read by the author, a realistic fiction set in Jamaica with an early, brutal murder scene watched by a child–I just couldn’t take it.
You reminded me: back then (when I was in high school and college), I was also a big fan of Roger Zelazny’s “Chronicles of Amber” books. I decided to revisit it a few years ago, and listened to the first book – “Nine Princes in Amber” – on Audible. I didn’t enjoy it nearly as much as I did when I was 18, and the use of female characters – including Corwin’s sisters – largely as sexual and political props was one of the reasons why. I finished that book, but didn’t care to re-do the rest of the two series.
I’m a bit torn on the term “speculative fiction”. I mean, spec fiction is all about “what if…?”, but doesn’t that describe all fiction?
I know, it’s trying to make a collective set for science fiction, fantasy, and some add horror. But given the modern writing culture, a lot of genres are being blended. Like the romantacies - romance fantasies. Or the SFWestern - space cowboys. Or the alternate history books that mix in science fiction as the cause of the deviation. Or alternate histories where fantasy causes the deviations, like the Temmeraire books.
So I think a more insightful description is needed for what SF does versus what Fantasy does versus how Horror interrelates.
All art actually does something. A painting provides a touch of visual stimulation to speak to the soul. If it’s a portrait, it tries to portray not just the physical likeness of the subject, but a symbolic presentation of the subject’s purpose of image or reason to inspire. A landscape can try to depict the beauty of a place that you might not be able to visit, or capture a time and place long gone.
Music is similar in stirring emotions and meaning via sounds and rhythms. It creates shared emotional bonds.
Yes, science fiction and fantasy should be entertaining. But saying that is the purpose misses what kind of entertainment. You could also say the purpose of sports is entertainment. Yes, it’s perfectly true, but it’s also almost completely useless. (It does serve as a reminder some authors write completely uninjoyable dreck.)
I’d say that’s some of what sci-fi does. I think it’s also often about escapism / fantasy, interesting thought experiments, even an educational aspect when it comes to hard sci-fi, and more besides.
I think it’s too tempting for us to look at sci-fi from the 60s, say, note how much it reflected views and society at the time, and declare that that’s what sci fi really is.
When that is really only the significant thing for us, from the future, watching that media. It’s not necessarily the main or only goal of the people making that media, nor of why people watched or read it at the time.
But I did not say that they should be entertaining (though IMHO they better be because whatever other thing they are will be lost if the reader gets bored and closes the book), I said that they shouldn’t “do” anything, meaning that they don’t need to have a purpose, the purpose of art is art.
And art is, as you more or less said, something that provokes and emotional response.
Oh, I read Kraken and loved it. That book was a vibe, and I think I could sustain myself entirely on his prose.
Yeah, you lost me. Humorous side note, sometimes when I’m reading romance I have a hard time figuring out what the characters are doing in flagrante, to the point that it’s distracting. It doesn’t help that a lot of authors imagine scenarios that defy the laws of physics.
Yes, and in my quest to become a better writer, I’ve been down a billion rabbit holes trying to deconstruct fiction. For a solid two years I studied Story Grid, which has its flaws but generally agrees with the sentiment that science fiction and fantasy are settings, not story types. That works nicely when you’re trying to construct a story, but I’m just more interested generally in how such settings, or aesthetics, shape storytelling and the reader experience. It seems unlikely that either science fiction or fantasy genres don’t in some way shape the stories they tell.
I think it helps to understand what you’re doing in order to do it well. Of course there are some fantasies I’ve really enjoyed, mostly on screen which lends credence to the theory that I need to see it to be enthralled with it. I’ve enjoyed Lord of the Rings, plenty of Marvel films, Buffy, Supernatural. For books I’ve read a lot of Pratchett, a little of urban fantasy (very popular detective of the supernatural, it’s on the tip of my tongue…) and one of my favorite books ever is Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland - did it help to have John Tenniel’s beautiful illustrations? Probably so.
The Dresden Files.
I love The Dresden Files.
I like that even with the wizard protagonist explaining the spells he’s doing, they still work as magic and not tech.
Well, yes and no: some science fiction stories are stories about science and technology (e.g. the main problem the story’s plot revolves around is one created and/or solved by some scientific or technological phenomenon).
I’d also say that McGuffins are much more common in sf/f than they are in, say romances. I don’t think that’s a setting issue.
MacGuffins are characteristic of many action plots, so it could be an action story in any setting. My fantasy romance had one because there’s an action plot. Kind of a MacGuffin because it was an actual person, not a thing.
I don’t know how to write romance without violence. I mean that’s the God’s honest truth. I know all the component parts of a romance but everything I write comes out bloody. I’d be bored, otherwise.