# 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:** 2
**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 10, 2003, 8:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/21 "2003-03-10T20:31:10Z")
**G.B.H. H.** You’re quite right about the general sales success of the Carter line. I was trying to compress my explanation too much. And of course you’re correct about the importance of Judy-Lynn del Rey. I should have mentioned her, but again I couldn’t quite figure how to get it in without needing lots more explanation. She was a giant in the field. I’m also a big fan of Sprague’s non-fiction. His works, though dated today, were standards in their time. ---
**Author:** ![MusicJunkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df788c/32.png) [@MusicJunkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MusicJunkie)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 9:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/22 "2003-03-10T21:35:26Z")
I always saw them both together as SF and Science Fiction as a sub-set of fantasy. I mostly read Science Fiction though. ---
**Author:** ![MusicJunkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df788c/32.png) [@MusicJunkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MusicJunkie)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/23 "2003-03-10T22:05:47Z")
If Bradbury started writting Magical Realism before 47 I’ll agree with all of you (but from what I remenber, at this time it was mostly horror). Murilo Rubiao, a fellow Brazilian wrote Magical Realism from the start with his first book published in 1947. He had a really weird writing method, having written 22 short-stories throughout his career but constantly re-writing them. He got some attention in the seventies but has mostly been forgoten. ---
**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 10, 2003, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/24 "2003-03-10T22:30:36Z")
**MusicJunkie** , Citing someone who didn’t get attention until the 1970s isn’t exactly a refutation of the rant that Bradbury was denied his due until magic realism became fashionable in the 60s or later. I personally don’t think that Bradbury wrote much of what I would call magic realism (a small bit of it may appear so retroactively) or that he was denied a place in literature. Although he never stopped writing for genre magazines, the majority of his post-1950 stories were published in mainstream. He was a famous writer, period, separate even from the Big Three of Asimov, Clarke and Heinlein, in the 1950s. It really doesn’t matter when a few obscure individual storeis were published, except for historic reasons. Magic realism as a genre comes later. It is funny, though, that the first story by Borges to appear in the US was the 1943 “The Garden of Forking Paths,” translated by Anthony Boucher, in Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Aug. 1948. ---
**Author:** ![PigArcher](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/bcef8e/32.png) [@PigArcher](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PigArcher)\ **Post date:** [March 10, 2003, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/25 "2003-03-10T23:56:47Z")
I remember something Rod Sterling said in an episode of the old **Twilight Zone** series. To paraphrase - “Science Fiction and Fantasy are opposites. One is the probable made improbable, the other is the improbable made probable.” I don’t know if that’s an original quote or if he was quoting someone else. To summarize the answers to the O.P., the main reasons for the dual categorizations are: 1. Historical - Early writers such as Wells and Verne blurred the line, so that later, when the sub-genres were better defined, the publishers and retailers still lumped them together. 2. Marketing - Many writers do both or blur the line some what, and both apeal to the same type of person, generally speaking. 3. Literary - Both are considered “pulp,” and therefore not worthy of any literary standing, so it made sense to lump them together (basically the same reason as #1 above). For my own personal gripe, I’m annoyed that Vonnegut’s early work was considered Science Fiction at the time it was written (e.g. Cat’s Cradle, Sirens of Titan, Player Piano), but has since been “reclassified” as literature. I believe it has to do with his politics (Player Piano is downright Marxist). Meanwhile, writers with more conservative world views (e.g. Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein) remain classified as Science Fiction. This is a similar situation to Ray Bradbury v. Marquez and the Latin American school of Magic Realism discussed above. The books with fashionable politics are literature, everything else is genre fiction. ---
**Author:** ![MusicJunkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df788c/32.png) [@MusicJunkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MusicJunkie)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2003, 12:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/26 "2003-03-11T00:16:34Z")
Sure. Just wanted to mention Rubiao, whom I like a lot, and point out that he wasn’t first. Personally I know next to nothing about magic realism. ---
**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 11, 2003, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/27 "2003-03-11T00:26:52Z")
I don’t know that I can buy your argument totally, tjblack. Asimov was pretty liberal, especially if you read his columns for MF&SF, and I wouldn’t call Clarke exactly conservative, either. Some of Asimov’s views, especially on the desirability of world government, strike me as being close to communistic. I also think the Good Doctor was very proud of being a science fiction writer. As for Bradbury being the first to write magic realism, that is quite possible. However, the first to write in a genre often isn’t the major writer or the one who transforms it into a literary movement. John Daly’s Race Williams was the first “hard-boiled detective,” but Dashiell Hammett turned out to be that genre’s “ace performer,” to quote Raymond Chandler’s “The Simple Art of Murder,” and I think many critics would claim Chandler and Ross McDonald wrote even better hard-boiled stories than Hammett. I think the majority of Bradbury’s output can accurately be labeled science fiction or fantasy, but it is a damn shame that he never won the Pulitzer or the Nobel Prize. He is a damn fine writer. ---
**Author:** ![Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/spectre_of_pithecanthropus/32/12343_2.png) [@Spectre\_of\_Pithecanthropus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spectre_of_Pithecanthropus)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2003, 12:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/28 "2003-03-11T00:58:13Z")
Then you run into the debates about whether things like warp drive is permissible in real science fiction. To the best of my knowledge, any notion that we may be able to invent such technology is still pure fantasy; yet without it, space travel in SF stories is hopelessly limited to the sleeper and generational ships–the interstellar equivalent to “boat people”. ---
**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 11, 2003, 2:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/29 "2003-03-11T02:00:37Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by tjblack \* > \*\*For my own personal gripe, I’m annoyed that Vonnegut’s early work was considered Science Fiction at the time it was written (e.g. Cat’s Cradle, Sirens of Titan, Player Piano), but has since been “reclassified” as literature. I believe it has to do with his politics (Player Piano is downright Marxist). Meanwhile, writers with more conservative world views (e.g. Asimov, Clarke, Heinlein) remain classified as Science Fiction. This is a similar situation to Ray Bradbury v. Marquez and the Latin American school of Magic Realism discussed above. The books with fashionable politics are literature, everything else is genre fiction. \*\* Wow. It’s a good thing that Asimov isn’t alive to hear you call him a conservative. And Clarke and Heinlein stopped speaking over their differences on SDI. The field almost broke in two over Viet Nam. There’s a conservative streak in sf, all right, but there’s a huge liberal population among the writers. Same thing in mysteries. Hammett was a communist, Mickey Spillane was an arch-conservative. People of every possible variation filled in the middle. Vonnegut is not considered genre because he conducted a long, loud, public campaign to dissociate himself with the field, which finally worked after he stopped writing anything that even resembled genre fiction. And Bradbury, as I’ve already said, has been considered a major writer outside the field since long before you were born. ---
**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 11, 2003, 3:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/30 "2003-03-11T03:22:35Z")
The claim of a liberal/conservative fantasy/SF axis is just plain silly. Take the acid test: the Vietnam War. In the famous Galaxy ads for and against the war, you had Fantasy writers Marion Zimmer Bradley, L. Sprague De Camp, R. A. Lafferty (a magic realist if ever there was one), and Thomas Burnett Swain in favor of the U.S. involvement and SF writers, Asimov, Harry Harrision, Damon Knight, Robert Silverberg, and Norman Spinrad against. It’s as silly as the assertion that women write fantasy while men write sf (because, one critic said, evidently with a straight face, men had more thrust in their writing). ---
**Author:** ![Weird\_AL\_Einstein](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/c67d28/32.png) [@Weird\_AL\_Einstein](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Weird_AL_Einstein)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2003, 4:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/31 "2003-03-11T04:46:48Z")
> [@](#): > > \*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.** > [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Lamia \* > \*\*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. > \*\* I would have said, fantasy _also_ demands some intelletual rigor if it is to be “done right”, and “brainless babble” can wear any label. ---
**Author:** ![Hometownboy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/5e9695/32.png) [@Hometownboy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hometownboy)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2003, 4:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/32 "2003-03-11T04:59:01Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Exapno Mapcase \* > \*\*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. \*\* I just want to point out, as someone who has read and enjoyed both for over 40 years, that the above might just be the clearest, sanest exposition on the subject I’ve ever seen. Bravo! (or Brava!, as the case may be). ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2003, 5:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/33 "2003-03-11T05:30:50Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Weird\_AL\_Einstein \* > \*\*I would have said, fantasy _also_ demands some intelletual rigor if it is to be “done right”, and “brainless babble” can wear any label. \*\* Um, okay. Sorry if my phrasing doesn’t meet your standards. ---
**Author:** ![tanstaafl](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ba8739/32.png) [@tanstaafl](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tanstaafl)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2003, 7:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/34 "2003-03-11T19:33:11Z")
It’s also because it is often hard to determine if a particular book is Science Fiction or Fantasy. Quoting from the rec.arts.sf.written FAQ > [@](#): > > 1. What is the difference between science fiction and fantasy? > > This also has been done to death. Virtually every answer you give will fail to clearly indicate which category a large number of books belong to. Familiar books mentioned that test the boundary conditions include Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragon” series, Piers Anthony’s “Apprentice Adept” series, STAR WARS, and anything that uses FTL. The most concise definition I’ve heard was given by John Clute in a radio broadcast 22 March 1997: " “Science fiction: the model is that it is a kind of story which argues from this world a kind of possible outcome. It’s possibly an improbable outcome, but it is arguable. Fantasy essentially, as I have been seeing it, is a series of stories, self-coherent stories (a term we use, kind of a bad neologism to describe stories which as [it] were understand themselves as stories; they’re told stories), that are set in worlds that are technically impossible, that we can’t argue. We may believe in them, but we can’t argue them.” > > A more complete listing of the borderline cases includes: > Poul Anderson’s “Operation” stories, collected in OPERATION CHAOS > Piers Anthony’s “Apprentice Adept” series > James Blaylock’s “Elfin Ship” > Marion Zimmer Bradley’s “Darkover” series > David Brin’s PRACTICE EFFECT > Rick Cook’s “Wizard’s Bane” series > L. Sprague de Camp & Fletcher Pratt"s “Incomplete Enchanter” series > Charles de Lint’s SVAHA > C. S. Friedman’s “Coldfire” series > Lyndon Hardy’s “Master of the Five Magics” series > Robert A. Heinlein’s MAGIC, INC. > Rosemary Kirstein’s STEERSWOMAN and THE OUTSKIRTER’S SECRET > Julian May’s “Pliocene Exile” series > Anne McCaffrey’s “Dragonrider” series > Walter M. Miller’s CANTICLE FOR LEIBOVITZ > James Morrow’s THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS > Kristine Kathryn Rusch’s ALIEN INFLUENCES > Robert Silverberg’s “Majipoor” series > Christopher Stasheff’s “Warlock” series > Michael Swanwick’s IRON DRAGON’S DAUGHTER > Sheri Tepper’s “The World of the True Game” books > Lawrence Watt-Evans’s “Three Worlds” series > Lawrence Watt-Evans’s CYBORG AND THE SORCERERS and THE > WIZARD AND THE WAR MACHINE > Walter Jon Williams’s METROPOLITAN and CITY ON FIRE > Gene Wolfe’s “Book of the New Sun” > Roger Zelazny’s LORD OF LIGHT > (anything with faster-than-light (FTL) travel, time travel, > parallel worlds/universes, psionics, or shoddy science) > > (Often someone suggests that fantasy and science fiction can be easily divided and this list is brought up, the original poster responds by saying they haven’t read any of these so they can’t say which category they go in. This is not likely to convince people that such a division is possible. 🙂 ) > > Of course, you can also check out Jerry Oltion’s essay on this in the March 1997 issue of THE MAGAZINE OF FANTASY & SCIENCE FICTION. ---
**Author:** ![Profane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47774/32.png) [@Profane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Profane)\ **Post date:** [March 11, 2003, 10:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/35 "2003-03-11T22:50:12Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by RealityChuck \* > \*\*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:** ![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 12, 2003, 1:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/36 "2003-03-12T01:05:07Z")
Many thanks, **Hometownboy**. That’s high praise indeed. ---
**Author:** ![MusicJunkie](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df788c/32.png) [@MusicJunkie](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MusicJunkie)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2003, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/37 "2003-03-12T18:02:10Z")
David Brin’s THE PRACTICE EFFECT and Morrow’s THIS IS THE WAY THE WORLD ENDS are clearly fantasy. And it’s been a while but I remenber Miller’s A CANTICLE FOR LEIBOWITZ as straight science fiction. ---
**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 12, 2003, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/38 "2003-03-12T18:30:05Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by MusicJunkie \* > \*\*David Brin’s THE PRACTICE EFFECT [is] clearly fantasy. > \*\* Why? It’s set in a parallel world (SF) with slightly different physical laws. That makes it SF. What if a novel has witches and warlocks and elves, etc.? Fantasy, right? Now what if all those have a scientific explanation? Science fiction (and I’m describing Stasheff’s Warlock series). Ultimately, it’s **Your** personal definition of the two that separates them, not an intrinsic difference between the genres. Science fiction is what you mean when you point at something and say “that’s science fiction.” Fair enough (it is the only 100% accurate definition, at least for you). However, the lines between the genres are very blurred and ultimately meaningless. Everything that people say makes SF superior to fantasy is in fantasy and everything that makes people say the opposite is in science fiction. As far as classification purposes is concerned, SF is a subset of fantasy. Fantasy is any work that describes events that never occurred (and yes, this makes all fiction fantasy). Justification: it’s not real, so it’s fantasy. SF is only that branch of fantasy that pretends to have a scientific justification. ---
**Author:** ![Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bosda_di_chi_of_tricor/32/16845_2.png) [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2003, 6:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/39 "2003-03-12T18:30:08Z")
Part of the unification of science fiction & fantasy was the post-WW2 collapse of the fantasy market. After the techno-leaps of the War, & the prospect of space exploration & atomic energy, imaginative young people took to scorning magic. So, bookstores & magazines tended to “clump” the two together, tying to hold onto the fantasy market, while expanding science fiction. It worked. The 60’s counterculture turned the rejection of fantasy around, but the 2 are still linked in publishing fields. The current shrinkage of the number of science-fiction novels, & a cynicism about the merits of technological advancement has turned many younger readers towards fantasy. So some store have taken to labeling their shelves “Fantasy & Science Fiction”. ---
**Author:** ![Profane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/e47774/32.png) [@Profane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Profane)\ **Post date:** [March 12, 2003, 6:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/40 "2003-03-12T18:31:45Z")
Huh, where did the rest of that post go? I don’t hate SF at all, it just doesn’t really appeal to me. To tell the truth, Swords n’ Sorcery type fantasy doesn’t appeal to me much anymore either. I’m more into Charles de Lint, Neil Gaiman and so on. Maybe if someone could recommend some Sci Fi more along those lines I would change my mind? Thanks for all the good info, it’s been most enlightening. Another question for you all then. Do you mainly read within the SciFi/Fantasy genre? I’d estimate that about 20% of my books come from the ‘geek’ section, the rest mainly from general fiction, with a few mystery and horror novels thrown in. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938.md?page=3)