# 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:** 10\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![Yodalicious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yodalicious/32/8195_2.png) [@Yodalicious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yodalicious)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 6:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/61 "2021-11-27T18:17:06Z")
The Barnes and Noble I was at yesterday has a science fiction section and a fantasy section. They were right next to each other, but not mixed together. It was the first time I’ve seen this in a bookstore. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 6:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/62 "2021-11-27T18:26:05Z")
Long time fan who’s gone through periods where I prefer “hard” SF, others where I’m more excited by “soft” fantasy. But a lot of the books I love the most contain elements of both. That’s why I’d vote for keeping the umbrella SF&F label. Besides I could never decide whether a work was SF or F. ---
**Author:** ![DPRK](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/4491bb/32.png) [@DPRK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DPRK)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 6:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/63 "2021-11-27T18:45:58Z")
> [@DPRK](#): > > It would be better to quote her exact words here. [Found it!](https://web.archive.org/web/20210723081925/https://www.tor.com/2010/07/06/timeline-of-a-trend/) > [@](#): > > If ten people are talking about urban fantasy, they’ll actually be talking about six different things. When I first started paying attention to things like sub-genre definitions (early 1990’s), the term urban fantasy usually labeled stories in a contemporary setting with traditionally fantastical elements—the modern folktale works of Charles de Lint, Emma Bull’s punk elf stories, the Bordertown series, and so on. > > […] > > Lately I’ve been wondering—when did “urban fantasy” come to be used almost exclusively to describe anything remotely following in the footsteps of Buffy and Anita? Stories with a main character who kicks ass, and with supernatural beings, usually but not exclusively vampires and werewolves (with liberal sprinklings of zombies, angels, djinn, ghosts, merfolk, and so on) who are sometimes bad guys but often good guys. Those ubiquitous covers of leather-clad women with lots of tattoos. > > I’m using my own career to set up guideposts here, since the books in the Kitty series have nicely mirrored the rise in popularity of the current urban fantasy wave. For example, when the first book came out in 2005, no one was calling this kind of thing urban fantasy. That all changed within a couple of years. > > […] > > August 2004: I had an embarrassing conversation with my new editor in which she compared my book to those of Kim Harrison and Kelley Armstrong. I had not heard of them. > > A couple of weeks later, I went to the dealer’s room at Worldcon in Boston with the mission of checking out these titles and others, and I found a ton—L.A. Banks, Charlaine Harris as well as Harrison and Armstrong. I thought, “Holy crap, the market is oversaturated, my book will sink like a stone out of sight.” I was wrong. > > November 2005: _Kitty and The Midnight Hour_ was released. Reviews often referred to the growing popularity of the genre, but didn’t use the term “urban fantasy.” ([This 2005 review](https://web.archive.org/web/20210723081925/http://www.sffworld.com/brevoff/234.html) called the book “supernatural fantasy.” Another common label was “the werewolf/vampire genre.”) > > 2005-2006: [RT Book Reviews](https://web.archive.org/web/20210723081925/http://www.rtbookreviews.com/author/carrie-vaughn) categorized the first two Kitty books as “Paranormal, Mystery/Suspense/Thriller.” (The link goes to a list of all my books on the site, showing the evolution of the genre label.) ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 7:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/64 "2021-11-27T19:10:00Z")
> [@E-DUB](#): > > Forget SF&F and what bookstores do. I’ve been to library sales where they threw Westerns into the mix labeling the section “genre fiction”. Imagine having to wade through Louis Lamour to find Heinlein. Well, the back cover of Galaxy Vol 1 No 1 (which I have right here) is titled “You’ll never see it in Galaxy” with an exactly parallel story set in space and the West. "Jets blasting, Bat Durston came screeching down the atmosphere: versus “Hoofs drumming, Bat Durston came galloping down through the narrow pass…” ---
**Author:** ![LurkMeister](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/3da27b/32.png) [@LurkMeister](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LurkMeister)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/65 "2021-11-27T20:52:27Z")
On a slightly related note, I once went into my local Borders to look for some of Walter Mosely’s “Easy Rawlins” mystery novels. Could not find them in the Mystery section, so I tried General Fiction. Nope, not there either. I finally looked them up on the store’s computer, and found that they were kept in the “African-American Literature” (or something similar) section. Oddly enough, they still stocked Octavia Butler’s books in the SF section. ---
**Author:** ![Horatius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/horatius/32/3572_2.png) [@Horatius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Horatius)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 8:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/66 "2021-11-27T20:57:57Z")
> [@E-DUB](#): > > Someone needs to write that “werewolf on the moon” story. I don’t normally read Fantasy, but that sounds like something I’d try! ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 9:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/67 "2021-11-27T21:29:49Z")
I had a collection of “urban fantasy” stories, currently on loan to a friend, and there certainly is a broad variety under that label. One of them, for instance, was set in a society where supernatural creatures were taken for granted, and covered under equal protection laws, and so on. The focus was on a real estate company that specialized in supernatural clients and dwellings (how do you sell a condo where a curse has left the walls perpetually crawling with bugs? Where can a vampire live, who hasn’t had centuries of compound interest to build up a trust fund? What kind of dwelling is acceptable to both Dr. Jeckel and Mr. Hyde?). Another one has a group of coal miners find… someone… or something? fully encased in a coal seam. She might be some sort of fey? Or nature spirit? Nobody knows for sure. But she’s been trapped in a humanoid form by the expectations of the miners who found her, and she’s not at all happy about that (what’s her true form? Nobody knows). Yet another spans centuries, and focuses on personified forces of entropy who destroy cities whenever they become too prominent. They’re not from any stories, because where they go, no stories are left. But one of them discovers that, in every city through the ages, there recurs an architect, a designer of cities, that they can never quite destroy. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [November 27, 2021, 9:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/68 "2021-11-27T21:39:46Z")
Interesting. That’s one of those evolutions that you don’t quite notice while it’s happening. The Encyclopedia of Fantasy also talks about the change in meaning [https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/urban\_fantasy](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/urban_fantasy) > The above is a rare instance in which this encyclopedia’s terminology has been superseded by common usage. As a publishing category which has risen to enormous popularity in the twenty-first century, Urban Fantasy has come to denote the subgenre of stories set in an alternate version of our modern world where humans (often with special [Talents](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/talents)) and supernatural beings – most typically [Vampires](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/vampires), [Werewolves](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/werewolves), assorted other [Shapeshifters](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/shapeshifters_shapeshifting), and very humanlike [Elves](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/elves) or [Fairies](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/fairies) – interact via adventure, melodrama, intrigue and [Sex](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/sex). A closely related, indeed overlapping, publishing classification is [Paranormal Romance](https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/paranormal_romance). [DRL] ---
**Author:** ![E-DUB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/e-dub/32/403_2.png) [@E-DUB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-DUB)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/69 "2021-11-28T02:17:25Z")
ICYDK, Mosley’s also written some SF. Wonder where they shelve that? [http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/mosley/mosley\_walter\_scifi.html](http://www.math.buffalo.edu/~sww/mosley/mosley_walter_scifi.html) ---
**Author:** ![MrAtoz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@MrAtoz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrAtoz)\ **Post date:** [November 28, 2021, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938/70 "2021-11-28T18:55:37Z")
I’ve also started to see a lot of “paranormal cozy mystery.” Set up like typical cozy mysteries–quaint little village setting, regular cast of colorful characters, snarky heroine who solves murders and has an antagonistic-yet-flirty relationship with the local policeman–except that said snarky heroine is some kind of supernatural being. She’s usually a witch, although she may be a psychic or a werewolf, and all or most of the people in the village are also various kinds of supernatural creatures. A bit like urban fantasy, but usually less action-packed and sexy. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-science-fiction-and-fantasy/159938.md?page=3)