The line between fantasy and science fiction has always been a lot blurrier than the Hard Science Fiction fans were willing to admit. Faster-than-light travel has always been scientifically dubious, and the more we study, the less likely it gets.
The earliest superheroes were openly fantastic. The golden age Green Lantern was a modern take on Aladdin. The golden age Hawkman was a reincarnated Egyptian prince. The golden age Flash was Mercury in long pants.
When the genre revived in the late 1950s, it was the age of astronauts and atom bombs. The editors put a sci-fi aesthetic on the characters, because they thought it would sell better. But, like steampunk and Star Wars, the “science” is mostly cosmetic. Hawkman still violates the laws of aerodynamics. Iron Man still violates the laws of conservation of momentum.
For my part, I have a great respect for comics, and grew up in an environment where basically no one else in my family or school shared this. I stuck with it, eventually becoming an English teacher in countries where comic books and superheroes have a very different significance.
I’ve been rereading some of the comics I loved as a kid, and they just don’t hold up. When I was 14 I believed that Steve Gerber and Steve Englehart deserved to be in the canon of literary greats. Now those stories seem embarrassingly bad. I don’t feel the same way about the novels I read around the same time.
The generation of writers who took over comics in the 70s were not, for the most part, professional writers who had distinguished themselves in other media. They were fan writers who came up through the fan system and were primarily appealing to other comic book fans. “So THAT’S who’d win in a fight between Thor and the Golden Age Superman!” It kind of reinforced everything that was bad about being “comic book-y.”
In the 80s, right when I got out of college, Alan Moore raised the bar for what comics writing could be. Editors discovered there was a whole wave of UK writers who were about as gook as Moore, and their effect should have ushered in a new Golden Age of comics. Unfortunately, American writers tried to ape the surface mannerisms and pushed through a lot of really awful stories where Robin got killed, Sue Dibney was raped by one villain and murdered by another, and the Joker was so far off the rails that it made absolutely no sense for Batman not to kill him any more. “Comics aren’t just for kids anymore” indeed!
The last few writers to come up through the American fan press–Kurt Busiek, Mark Waid and Brian Michael Bendis–bucked this trend and brought a respectable level of craft to the medium. Both major publishers resolved to only hire writers who had distinguished themselves as novelists and TV and film screenwriters, like J. Michael Straczynski, Joss Whedon and Kevin Smith. Screenwriters couldn’t make big bucks in comics, but they could play with charavters they’d loved as kids, and also there was a benefit to seeing something you wrote turn around and go public in weeks instead of years.
There are more really good writers and artists in comics now than at any other point in the medium’s history. I think it’s entirely reasonable to expect better stories that reflect this. There is good, competent science fiction to be had. We won’t get it if the prevailing attitude is “It’s just comics, why SHOULDN’T Scott and Jean keep coming back from the dead?”
Bad example. According to the silver age, getting bathed in chemicals after being struck by lightning twice cause people to gain super speed.
Also a bad premise. If you can say the same magic spell like “emoh em ylf” and it works every time, then it’s repeatable, so Zatanna must be science fiction.
I could have answered “partly,” since some of it is science fiction. But I find that it’s mostly magical, and the SF is mostly the type that is just magic in disguise. (Plus, of course, there’s the argument that all SF is a subset of fantasy, for broader definitions of fantasy.)
I don’t think fantasy needs to at all invoke the tropes of high medieval fantasy. Most fantasy isn’t like that. There’s no reason stuff has to be set in the past to work, or reuse the ideas of Tolkien.
As for Worm and Watchmen: both seem like you could replace the “science” with magic and nothing would change. What if a magical being came to Earth and gave people powers? What if it was a magical ritual that created a blue demon? Is there really any difference?
And I really don’t see how “speculative fiction” is an improvement. Speculative just means based on conjecture, or inquisitive. I’m curious how the term came about.
If he relied entirely on technology that can be realistically created in today’s world, I’d agree. But given what we’ve seen of his arsenal, I’d say he’s no less a super-hero than Iron Man. If you wish to say that both of them, and any hero whose above-human abilities are purely technological is not a super-hero, then fine, but I doubt that most peoples’ definitions of the term are that restrictive.
I’m having trouble thinking of much fiction that supports this statement. Magic seems to generally be treated as another branch of science: it’s repeatable, testable, and often as not, teachable. Hell, the biggest fantasy franchise of the last twenty years takes place at a literal school for wizards.
At a school for people who innately have the ability to use magic because they just do. Maybe some fantasy treats magic as something that can be learned and used by just anyone, but it’s not too common. In fact, the only example I can think of was written by a physics professor.
Of course, it’s hard to get people to agree on the relationship between science fiction and fantasy. Is one a subset or sub-genre of the other? Are they two separate genres? Are they all one thing, and it’s hopeless to distinguish between them? Are they two ends of a continuum?
For what it’s worth, Brandon Sanderson’s Mistborn trilogy is classified as fantasy, which it is, but when I read it I thought it was, in a way, a superhero story.
With my science goggles on, I can say “Well, obviously it’s genetic, then.” I mean, there are things in real life that some people are just able to do, and some people aren’t. Admittedly, the only ones that I can think of that are as binary as “muggle or wizard” are relatively minor things like being able to taste phenylthiocarbamide. Still, the principle isn’t unscientific.
I was kind of being pedantic, and Iron Man is indeed the equivalent of Batman (billionaire who fights in a powered-suit) but I do think the sub-genre of superheroes who don’t have actual super powers, and are just humans with technology and fighting skills (Black Widow and Hawkeye, or Green Arrow for example), is a distinction worth making. Otherwise we’re going down the “James Bond is a superhero” path and that gets complicated fast.