# Why Science Fiction AND Fantasy? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** books-writing-myths\ **Created:** [March 8, 2003, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938 "2003-03-08T18:10:29Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Profane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47774/32.png) [@Profane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Profane)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/1 "2003-03-08T18:10:29Z")
The thread about the “top 50” Science Fiction/Fantasy books got me to thinking about why the two are always paired together. [generalization] What could be more opposite? Swords n’ Sorcery and Spaceships, not a whole lot in common there. [/generalization] I’m not a fan of Science Fiction books (although love sci-fi movies.) I love fantasy, mainly urban fantasy/magical realism/whatever we’re calling it this week, and enjoyed the magic & dragons stuff when I was younger. It’s not that I’m planning to picket my local Barnes and Noble with “Separate Sections Now” signs, but I don’t see why they don’t each deserve their own space. I tend to think that fantasy gets the short end of the stick in this arrangement. IIRC, the majority of the books on the list were Science Fiction, for example. Thoughts? ---
**Author:** ![Khadaji](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/9e8a1a/32.png) [@Khadaji](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Khadaji)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 6:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/2 "2003-03-08T18:13:12Z")
A valid question. I suppose that it started long ago when neither were considered to be main-stream. I further suppose that most book stores had a small inventory of either and then lumped them together. After that, it became the norm. Of course, this is only a guess ---
**Author:** ![Bottle\_of\_Smoke](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/b9e5f3/32.png) [@Bottle\_of\_Smoke](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bottle_of_Smoke)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 6:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/3 "2003-03-08T18:16:47Z")
I always thouth this way too. I read quite a bit of fantasy when I was younger and it always bugged me that it was lumped in with SF, which i was never really into. They’re grouped together in bookstores and it always seemed strange to me. I took it as the bookstores saying “This is the section for _those_ kind of people – you know, those people that read that escapist stuff.” ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 6:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/4 "2003-03-08T18:37:58Z")
Hmmm… common element: the story is in a setting where one or more of the following – (a) technology, (b) magic © the different natural processes of another world (d) the different social constructs of an alternate history, – make the characters have to react to things that _would not happen_ in contemporaneous “reality” (e.g. contacting aliens, talking to dragons, recycling people for food). Swords _without_ sorcery, in a known historic time would be period adventure-fiction, not fantasy, even if princesses got rescued by heroes. A Clancy-esque techno-thriller would not be SF if the physics behind the superweapon are real and an understanding of the impact of its deployment is already being worked on. ---
**Author:** ![mbh](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/a6a055/32.png) [@mbh](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mbh)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/5 "2003-03-08T18:38:18Z")
Well, a lot of my friends and I are fans of both. A number of popular authors have written in both. A lot of the stuff written for younger readers kind of muddles the boundary. Andre Norton and Alan Dean Foster often cross over. Harlan Ellison hates both classifications, and insists that his stuff should be referred to as “Speculative Fiction”. {rant} Ray Bradbury was writing Magical Realism decades before the Latin Americans made it fashionable. But their stuff is on the Literature shelves while he is relegated to the SF ghetto. {/rant} ---
**Author:** ![Profane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47774/32.png) [@Profane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Profane)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 6:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/6 "2003-03-08T18:51:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by JRDelirious \* > \*\*Hmmm… common element: the story is in a setting where one or more of the following – > (a) technology, > (b) magic > © the different natural processes of another world > (d) the different social constructs of an alternate history, > – make the characters have to react to things that _would not happen_ in contemporaneous “reality” (e.g. contacting aliens, talking to dragons, recycling people for food). Swords _without_ sorcery, in a known historic time would be period adventure-fiction, not fantasy, even if princesses got rescued by heroes. A Clancy-esque techno-thriller would not be SF if the physics behind the superweapon are real and an understanding of the impact of its deployment is already being worked on. \*\* That goes without saying. Maybe I should have phrased it as more of a debate. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 6:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/7 "2003-03-08T18:59:15Z")
This discussion could go on for pages, but I’ll try to compress my understanding of it into a paragraph or three. Once upon a time, everything was fantasy. Poe was a fantasist. Even Welles and Verne were fantasists. (They were also romantics, in an older use of the term that isn’t heard much today.) The engineering-obsessed Hugo Gernsback started a whole series of magazines dealing with radio and other hot technologies. He finally started _Amazing Stories_ in 1926 and used the term “scientifiction” to describe its contents. This eventually became science fiction and was intended to apply to the melding of radio and other hot technologies of the day (as well as just around the corner technologies like space travel) to fiction. But pulp magazines were themselves a marketing offshoot, not related to “real” literature except in the most nebulous manner. Science fiction was just another slice of specialized fiction, along with romance, westerns, nurse stories, railroad stories and a million others. They were handled by the same publishers, usually by the same editors, and often filled with stories from the same authors, although many became specialists in their narrow fields. John W. Campbell is famed as the editor of the sf classic magazine, _Astounding Stories_, but he simultaneously edited _Unknown_ to cater to fantasy tastes. Again, the authors overlapped to a great extent. There were few books in these categories until specialty presses began in the late 30s and 40s. Arkham House was created to reprint H. P. Lovecraft’s work and has remained almost entirely fantasy-oriented since, but others like Shasta, Gnome Press and even Fantasy Press (whose first book was by A. E. van Vogt) published both fantasy and science fiction. It was a marketing category first and foremost, but the readership and authorship were largely the same, even if there were vocal minorities who were devoted to one side or the other. Even _The Magazine of Fantasy_ changed its name to _The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction_ with its second issue in 1950 and immediately became a better magazine and a better seller. Lin Carter changed this delicate balance in 1969. You’d think that Tolkien did, but you’d be wrong. The mantra among publishers, as it was and as it ever will be, was not that x sold, but that brand-name author sold (x being fantasy and brand-name author being Tolkien in this case). But the Ballantines brought in Carter, who had been writing Conan books, to edit a line of adult classic fantasies. Oddly enough, these did sell, so in 1975 Ballantine made Lester del Rey the editor of a new fantasy line. He started with Terry Brook’s _The Sword of Shannara_, and it too sold and spawned millions more imitation Tolkiens and they too sold and this is the reason that Brooks made the top 50 significant sf and fantasy books list. [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=167408](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=167408) For the first time, there appeared to be a market, a separate market, for high fantasy. An increasingly separate readership developed, and increasing numbers of female writers and readers entered the field. Internally, however, fantasy publishing lines and science fiction publishing lines relied on the same set of editors, the same marketing channels, the same advertising channels, the same distribution channels. The readership still overlapped to a great extent. Many authors continued to write both. The Science Fiction Writers of America changed its name to the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, but nothing else about them changed at all. And although some bookstores really do separate out the sf and fantasy books, most don’t for very good reasons. Doing so places the books of some authors in two different places; the line between fantasy and science fiction is extremely hard to draw; and their idiot staffs have to alphabetize twice and try to find things in two different places when it all could more easily be smooshed together. And it all comes from the same places to begin with. OK, that was more than three paragraphs but less than pages. There is not fantasy and science fiction in the world but **f&sf**. And lo shall it ever be. ---
**Author:** ![Gorsnak](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gorsnak/32/7587_2.png) [@Gorsnak](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gorsnak)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 7:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/8 "2003-03-08T19:01:15Z")
There’s also no really good way to distinguish between the genres in some cases. Example: Anne MacCaffrey’s Pern series SciFi or Fantasy? It’s set in the future, but the tech (at least till the story takes a major twist in The White Dragon) is way behind modern, and the dragons are rather fantastical creatures. There are, of course, many many other books which blur the lines. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/9 "2003-03-08T19:07:29Z")
I hate it when others misspell authors’ names and I can’t believe I just did so. Wells, as in Herbert George. And Brooks, Terry. Brooks’ The Sword of Shannara. I hope that’s all. Grumble. ---
**Author:** ![RealityChuck](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/realitychuck/32/195_2.png) [@RealityChuck](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RealityChuck)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/10 "2003-03-08T19:30:10Z")
Note, too, that writers of science fiction often write fantasy and vice versa. Ultimately, there is only one major difference between fantasy and science fiction: in science fiction, it’s assumed there’s a “scientific\*” explanation for the fantastic events. I fantasy, the events have a non-scientific explanation. I’m always amused by people who hate one and love another when the difference is usually the furniture involved. \*I put “scientific” in quote because they do not have to have any basis in real science. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/5f8ce5/32.png) [@The\_Peyote\_Coyote](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Peyote_Coyote)\ **Post date:** [March 8, 2003, 8:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/11 "2003-03-08T20:40:28Z")
> [@](#): > > Lin Carter changed this delicate balance in 1969. You’d think that Tolkien did, but you’d be wrong. The mantra among publishers, as it was and as it ever will be, was not that x sold, but that brand-name author sold (x being fantasy and brand-name author being Tolkien in this case). But the Ballantines brought in Carter, who had been writing Conan books, to edit a line of adult classic fantasies. Lin Carter actually did something good !?!?!?!?!?!? Holy jumpin’ Jesus, the Apocalypse is at hand. ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 1:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/12 "2003-03-10T13:57:44Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by mbh \* > \*\*{rant} Ray Bradbury was writing Magical Realism decades before the Latin Americans made it fashionable. But their stuff is on the Literature shelves while he is relegated to the SF ghetto. {/rant} \*\* Hear, hear. Call it the curse of the market segments. Many Latin-Am countries never homegrew a Sci-Fi “pulp” mass-market (unlike romances or thrillers), so Borges, Bioy Casares, Garcia Marquez etc. were being published in their home markets’ regular fiction/general interest magazines just as Bradbury and Ellison were being published in mags featuring busty alien princesses on the cover. Plus it helps in explaining how GGM & Co. got “discovered” in the 60s, that their politics were fashionably chic. ---
**Author:** ![Evil\_Captor](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/f17d59/32.png) [@Evil\_Captor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Evil_Captor)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/13 "2003-03-10T14:18:33Z")
It’s science fiction and fantasy because fantasy is the lesser art form. Science fiction demands some intelletual rigor if it is to be done right. Fantasy can be mere brainless babble. Did someone say, “Lin Carter?” And what about “L. Sprague de Camp”? ---
**Author:** ![Wumpus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8c91f0/32.png) [@Wumpus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wumpus)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 2:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/14 "2003-03-10T14:21:03Z")
What RealityChuck said. Unless you restrict the term “science fiction” to only the hardest of hard sf, many science fiction classics could be redone as fantasy with relatively minor changes. The best example would be Dune. Change a few descriptions and terms, and viola! you have a fantasy novel. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 2:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/15 "2003-03-10T14:55:32Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Evil Captor \* > **It’s science fiction and fantasy because fantasy is the lesser art form. Science fiction demands some intelletual rigor if it is to be done right. Fantasy can be mere brainless babble.** Please. I have seen plenty of brainless babble using the label “science-fiction”, and plenty of fine, intelligent work using the label “fantasy”. There’s good and bad work in any genre. In re the OP, the real answer to the question “Why Science Fiction AND Fantasy?” is “Because geeks got to stick together!” 😉 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 3:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/16 "2003-03-10T15:04:34Z")
> [@](#): > > Did someone say, “Lin Carter?” And what about “L. Sprague de Camp”? Are you suggesting L. Sprague de Camp is “brainless babble”? You obviously haven’t read much the man wrote. Have a look at **The Ancient Engineers Lost Continents The Ragged Edge of Science The Great Monkey Trial Great Cities of the Ancient World** Oh, that’s science/historical fact. Well, then: **The Best of L. Sprague de Camp The Compleat Enchanter** (and all variations thereof) **Genus Homo The Glory that Was Lest Darkness Fall** Not to mention his underappreciated historical novels **The Bronze God of Rhodes The Dragon of the Ishtar Gate** and many others. ---
**Author:** ![G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c67d28/32.png) [@G.B.H.Hornswoggler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/G.B.H.Hornswoggler)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 4:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/17 "2003-03-10T16:40:52Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Exapno Mapcase \* > \*\*Lin Carter changed this delicate balance in 1969. You’d think that Tolkien did, but you’d be wrong. The mantra among publishers, as it was and as it ever will be, was not that x sold, but that brand-name author sold (x being fantasy and brand-name author being Tolkien in this case). But the Ballantines brought in Carter, who had been writing Conan books, to edit a line of adult classic fantasies. Oddly enough, these did sell, so in 1975 Ballantine made Lester del Rey the editor of a new fantasy line. He started with Terry Brooks’ _The Sword of Shannara_, and it too sold and spawned millions more imitation Tolkiens and they too sold and this is the reason that Brooks made the top 50 significant sf and fantasy books list. [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=167408](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?s=&threadid=167408) \*\* Most of your post is quite correct (which might be to say: “I agree with it”), but this paragraph isn’t. Actually, Lin Carter’s line sold decently (but not wonderfully) at first, and then dropped off sharply. To put it bluntly, Carter was doing classics (E.R. Eddison, James Branch Cabell, etc.) that just weren’t selling. Lester del Rey was brought in precisely because the people who ran Ballantine knew that “fantasy” could sell in large numbers (they then pointed to Tolkien), and they wanted some of that success for themselves. And Lester (along with his wife, Judy-Lynn del Rey, mostly forgotten today, though she basically created the modern SF/Fantasy field in the late '70s through her marketing savvy and editing of the SF side of Del Rey Books) gave it to them – in 1977 alone he launched _The Sword of Shannara_ by Brooks and Stephen Donaldson’s “The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever.” Both huge successes, of course. Within a couple of years, Del Rey was the dominant publisher in the field. I’ll also second what **CalMeacham** said about L. Sprague de Camp – he was one of the greats of both science fiction and fantasy, over a writing career of more than fifty years. I suspect **Evil Captor** has only read _The Unbeheaded King_ (or something similar) and just doesn’t know who he’s talking about. But that’s a problem that _Lest Darkness Fall_ can easily cure. ---
**Author:** ![Isaac\_Cashman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a9a28c/32.png) [@Isaac\_Cashman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isaac_Cashman)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/18 "2003-03-10T19:05:15Z")
To answer the question. III. Because they didn’t want to be deluged by an endless debate about the definition. II. Because there are few enough hardcore SF fans who will resent having LOTR in the mix. I. Because They Sll Both. ---
**Author:** ![Isaac\_Cashman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a9a28c/32.png) [@Isaac\_Cashman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isaac_Cashman)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 7:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/19 "2003-03-10T19:06:40Z")
To answer the question. III. Because they didn’t want to be deluged by an endless debate about the definitions and boundries of SF and Fantasy. II. Because there are few enough hardcore SF fans who will resent having LOTR in the mix. I. Because They Sll Both. ---
**Author:** ![NicePete](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ee7513/32.png) [@NicePete](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/NicePete)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/20 "2003-03-10T19:40:07Z")
Just a little gripe-y hijack here. It really burns me up to have SF, Fantasy, Speculative Fiction-- whatever we are to call it-- labelled “escapist”. What type of popular literature isn’t escapist? How is science fiction more escapist than a murder mystery or a historical romance? Isn’t any form of reading we do for entertainment escapist? If I relax at the end of the day by reading histories of civil war era door stops written in Estonian, that’s escapism, isn’t it? Hijack complete. As to the OP re: SF and Fantasy being shelved together. In my view there’s a marketing reason and a literary reason. Here’s the marketing reason – the large intersection between the two groups of readers could tend to cross-sell books. Put SF in close proximity to fantasy fans and you may sell more SF. And vice versa. But I believe they are grouped together (and should be grouped together) for a literary and philosophical reason. Fantasy and SF are simply two ends of the same literary continuum. Both rely on alterations to the most basic assumptions common to everyday life. If we create a literature based upon an altered set of axioms we get SF or Fantasy. For instance, change the axiom that “Man is the only sentient animal;” or “Travel between stars is impossible;” and you get archtypical Fantasy or SF stories. What I think is rare in the genre is the combination of unique or novel axiom changes with the sort of insightful character drawing and development that is supposedly found in more respected literary forms. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938.md?page=2)