Science fiction and/or/versus Fantasy

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 5:42 pm

These posts were split off from my "Getting Published" thread. The discussion began as a comparison of science fiction and fantasy, and went on from there.

<pedant hat>

"What if" makes it (excuse me, not sci fi, but) SF. Some supposition, based in the possible or at least defensible, that is different from the here and now (though not necessarily both).

I know you guys were joking, but:

You don't need spaceships for it to be SF.

You don't need aliens for it to be SF (my published books have no aliens in them).

SF can be set in the past, present, or future, and it can be set right here on Earth in 4000 BC or 1944 or 2009, and still be SF.

It's the "what if," which has to be the essential element of the story. A romance novel set on a spaceship is still a romance novel; if there were no romance, there'd be no story, no matter how many spaceships and rayguns and alien planets there also are. My three books are still SF, even though they include a relationship; the future they're set in, fighting the Cold Minds, is the element without which there'd be no story. Iain and Linnea could just be best pals through all three books and there would still be a science-fictional story.

</pedant hat>

ETA: We're all aliens. Or so I've always believed. From near the end of my unpublished first novel:

. . . I remember what Kelru was first to teach me: that we are all aliens, one to another. All of us, men and women, people of Earth and people of Windhome. And when we meet, all we can offer each other is kindness. Or love, if that is granted to us.

Post by **WampusCat** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 5:55 pm

What if -- notice the "what if" -- I had a friend named Ellen who was sick. Would she be Ellen the Ailing Alien?

See, I'm learning.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 6:01 pm

Well, if she really was an alien, that would be SF. . . . But not because she's an alien; because that's something that is not (to our knowledge) true in the real world.

Post by **axordil** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 6:51 pm

Isn't the "What if" also the province of fantasy, though? And what if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly, anyway?

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Thu Aug 06, 2009 6:58 pm

axordil wrote:Isn't the "What if" also the province of fantasy, though? And what if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly, anyway?

Sure, Ax. That's why the two genres are so linked, and why so many people read and write both.

But the dividing line between SF and fantasy is whether the "what if" is possible in the world as we understand it, based on known physical laws.

Magic means it's fantasy; magic isn't based on physics.

Wild handwaving that attempts to base the impossible (such as faster-than-light travel) on something that sounds like a future understanding of physics—that means SF, for most people. (Some very strict SF fans would still call that fantasy, since by all we understand about the world at present, FTL is impossible.)

Post by **axordil** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 2:18 pm

Touching again on the sf/fantasy question. For me it's not so much basing things on the laws of physics as it appealing to them: thus a story with contrafactual (as we know it) physics like FTL is sf, if it requires engines and fuel and spaceships. If it requires magical wishing or a djinn, it's fantasy.

Conversely, some "fantasy" is very sf-like in its construction. I recall, once upon a time, a listing for Del Rey in a Writers Market where they said they wanted fantasy where the rules of magic were explained. My first thought, one which I maintain to the present day, is that what they really wanted was sf in a feudal setting. If you look at something like LOTR, there is an order to things, but it's never laboriously explained. Gandalf never sits down and goes over how the flow of mana must be shaped by the psychic frammenstanz before it spirals out through the whositz. Then again, there's not all that much "magic" visible in LOTR by contemporary fantasy standards. You can see the effects, but it's not waved around, wandlike. The most obvious example in the first fifty pages of the book is fireworks, and those are actually produced by honest to goodness, well, fireworks, albeit shaped by Gandalf. Subtly.

Post by **Maria** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 3:41 pm

Ax wrote: I recall, once upon a time, a listing for Del Rey in a Writers Market where they said they wanted fantasy where the rules of magic were explained.

I've run across several books where the magical aspects are explained quite clearly. The Dresden Files by Jim Butcher are probably best at that. "A Warlock in Spite of Himself" series by Christopher Stasheff is really good at explaining seeming magic by way of psychic powers, as is Katherine Kurtz's "Adept" series. Calling it psionics instead of magic makes it more science-like in that one isn't appealing to deities for intervention, or using some sort of ritual-- but is instead using the power of one's own mind to affect changes in reality.

So that's nothing new, really.

Synthesizing life in a lab would be very hard the first time it was done, accoring to the morphic resonance theory. http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Paper ... paper.html After the first time, it should be easier and faster to do.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 4:12 pm

Thanks, Voronwë, but I think if it ever happens it will have to be their idea.

Ax, explaining the rules is playing by the rules, I think, in fantasy.

After all, how can you even tell a story where some of the characters have magical powers that are not limited somehow? How can such a character ever be in danger, or ever not get what he wants as soon as he wants it?

Maria, psychic abilities is another thing I don't use in my books because, to me, it would make them not SF. There is no physical mechanism for such powers, and we know physics pretty well.

My interstellar jump technology reads as pretty woo, but in my mind it is just an attempt to describe what happens when a human brain interfaces with the incomprehensible. The strange sensations and phenomena are the human brain attempting to explain odd stimuli to itself, just as in dreams.

Linnea does sometimes get premonitions of disaster, but in these books, she'd be stupid not to.

Post by **axordil** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 4:37 pm

The fantasy/sf discussion could be decanted without objection from me.

So that's nothing new, really.

It has its roots in the Western hermetic magical tradition, which is VERY old. The notion that by using the right words, or symbols, or numbers, or whatever, one can make one's will manifest, or bind a powerful entity to do it for you, is as old as words, symbols, numbers and whatever.

But it's an awful lot like engineering. It's hard for me to think of engineering being magical. Magic to me implies a certain mystery, an otherness that is elusive, capricious even. Magic should not be testable in a laboratory setting and still be thought of as magic.

After all, how can you even tell a story where some of the characters have magical powers that are not limited somehow? How can such a character ever be in danger, or ever not get what he wants as soon as he wants it?

Limits are fine and necessary. It's the presentation that makes the difference. The limits of magic should not involve a gauge pegging, or a little blinking red light. They should be, for lack of a better word, fuzzy. Maybe Gandalf can take the Witch King, maybe he can't--the only way to know is to face off, sans the spreadsheet analysis before hand.

Post by **Frelga** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 4:43 pm

Now I want to make a magical universe where a wizard duel is conducted via spreadsheets. "Well, the gibbous moon gives you a 0.75% advantage but that is offset by the nip tides which still leaves me with a 0.01% margin of sensibility, except that..."

OK, so I just described a D&D geek, but still.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 4:44 pm

I agree that the thread could be split. I'm just not sure where to split it to. Should it stay here, as a discussion of the mechanics of genre, or go to the Library of Rivendell as a discussion of books?

Post by **Frelga** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 4:46 pm

Perhaps it can stay in the Red Book, in case some of us want to bring up their WIP. It doesn't even have to be split, we can just take it up in a new thread?

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 4:49 pm

Good point, Frelga. I think I'd like to split a few posts off, though, because there are some definitions in them that might be useful and that way they don't have to be re-posted.

Let me see what I can do, and if anyone has a better suggestion or wants any posts moved back, let me know.

This may take a while; the thread is about at the limit of size for manipulation.

Post by **Crucifer** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 6:50 pm

I have read somewhere, recently (but I can't for the life of me remember where) that SF is a sort of a branch of Fantasy, but that while mainstream Fantasy deals with whole universes that could not, in the world that we know, be possible, SF deals largely with what MAY be possible as understood by what we currently hold to be the laws governing our universe. Granted, FTL travel stretches the limitations of physics, but I'm sure there are theories grounded in real physics floating about somewhere...

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 7:01 pm

SF is a branch of fantasy? Them's fightin' words. . . .

The theoretical universe in which SF stories can be told is probably smaller than the universe for fantasy stories, SF being constrained by the possible or at least plausible. But that doesn't mean they overlap at all, or that one is a subset of the other. To my mind they are different modes entirely; the slightest element of fantasy (magic, say) in an "SF" story means it is not really SF at all and never was.

Science fantasy exists, of course. Star Wars is an example, at least until George Lucas trotted "midichlorians" into the story as a physical explanation for the Force. That changed good science fantasy into weak SF.

Post by **narya** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 7:20 pm

My mom always scoffs at fantasy and sci fi and says she can't watch that kind of movie. She wants to watch "real" things like, say, the musical "South Pacific".

To me, fantasy has always tapped into that visceral yearning to break the laws of nature. Like the desire to have a parent who is powerful enough to always make it better (Gandalf), or people who are wise and immortal (Sam's magic elves), or intelligent beasts who can talk and take you flying(dragons).

Growing up at the begining of the space age, when the future was promised to be saved brightly (or horribly destroyed) by technologies just around the corner, sci fi felt comfortable. Star Trek is a great example - life will be the best of today's world plus some labor saving devices. With our basic needs taken care of, we could spend our time getting to know others, exploring, and just being kids, in complete security (if you weren't wearing red).

Post by **axordil** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 7:30 pm

I think anything more than a hand wave in terms of explanation pushes a story into SF. Sometimes, even if there is one, but it's exuberant.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 7:32 pm

I agree. Fantasy allows unknowns, mysteries, that remain unexplained at the end of the story. SF really doesn't; sometimes a whole book or series of books is about finding the answer to an unknown.

Narya, that's an interesting take on the appeal of fantasy. I can't speak to it myself, because not a lot of fantasy appeals to me much. At its best, it's wonderful. At its most generic, it's (to steal a metaphor) playing tennis with the net down.

Post by **Frelga** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 7:41 pm

Primula Baggins wrote:Narya, that's an interesting take on the appeal of fantasy. I can't speak to it myself, because not a lot of fantasy appeals to me much. At its best, it's wonderful. At its most generic, it's (to steal a metaphor) playing tennis with the net down.

But that's true of all writing.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Aug 07, 2009 7:50 pm

Certainly. But fantasy provides so many easy tools for sloppy writers. In no other genre of writing is deus ex machina quite so easily available. D&Dish cliché characters require almost no thought, and a cardboard medieval setting is a snap to establish. All you need is a quest, and you've got your outline.

That's unfair, I know. Bad SF can be just as clichéd and tends to be more badly written. I just think it's not quite as easy to write as bad fantasy.