Science Fiction vs. Science Fantasy

[Nellisir]

But, that's the thing. If you rewrote Doctor Who as fantasy, the themes would be totally different. No more dwelling on the Doctor trying to maintain his humanity (and what that actually means) in the face of incredible power. Instead, he's a wand wielding wizard out to stop the evils of the universe from doing bad things. The focus stops being about the Doctor's humanity and becomes more about the action of the story.

Or, to put it another way, if you rewrite Doctor Who as fantasy, it becomes a morality tale. The Doctor helping people by using his magic powers. As SF, it's about The Doctor, not really about what he does.

I'm not sure that's true. CJ Cherryh's Morgaine Cycle is "science fantasy": it's technically sci-fi, with interplanetary and time-travel via gates, but treated as fantasy (medieval worlds, etc, etc), and it is very much a Doctor Who-esque story of a powerful outsider, possibly the last of her kind, who travels different realms with a companion (who serves as the reader's proxy) on a possibly infinite quest to end the threat time-travel poses to the universe.

Much of the book is about Morgaine and her relative inhumanity, and about learning to be human, not about using magic powers to help people. Her job is bigger than helping people, but doing it has eroded her humanity and her connection to other people, so...can she do her job and be human about it?

 

[Umbran]

A big issue with Star Wars being any kind of science fiction is that the story is rather entirely separable from the trappings. Compounding the issue is the core resolution point of the movie, where faith in the force provides the final necessary impetus to overcome evil. Here, the force is a mystical power beyond reason and which requires faith to unleash fully. That seems roundly unscientific.

Quite.

But, that's the thing. If you rewrote Doctor Who as fantasy, the themes would be totally different. No more dwelling on the Doctor trying to maintain his humanity (and what that actually means) in the face of incredible power. Instead, he's a wand wielding wizard out to stop the evils of the universe from doing bad things. The focus stops being about the Doctor's humanity and becomes more about the action of the story.

You realize that you just described two and a half decades of Doctor Who - pretty much everything prior to Eccleston's Doctor? You're talking about a new theme, on the scale of these things - it only entered with Eccleston's Doctor, with his history in the Time War. For most of the show's history, it was pretty much him as a wand-wielding wizard, out to save the universe.

And, even in the more recent episodes, there's still many episodes where the Doctor is in his old "force of nature" mode, where the question of his morality runs a far second to his role as wizard - a lot of who is still morality tale.

But, nothing in the movies really deals with what R2D2 actually is. And, what he is is an intelligent machine whose creators are so horrific that they don't even let their slave creation have a voice.

Technically incorrect - it is just that the *viewer* cannot understand his language. Luke can understand Binary, however. So does C3PO, Annakin Skywalker, and arguably Chewbacca.

But, that whole concept is completely swept under the carpet because this isn't what the movie is about.

Yes. But the newest Star Trek movie wasn't about who and what Sulu is, either. Most movies have secondary characters. The movies aren't about them. "This movie isn't about what the secondary characters might be about" is not a good basis for what genre it should fit into. It's like trying to say that Mulan isn't science fiction because it fails to explore the inhuman insectoid mental workings of the cricket character. Sure, Mulan isn't sci-fi, but failure to explore the cricket isn't the reason it fails to fit the genre!

 

[Meatboy]

After a few days thinking about sci-fi and sci-fan I think I have a good way to spilt the two. Here goes.

1. Science fiction is a genre that uses what if scenarios to examine philisophical ideas like the nature of man, technology or even politics. It uses these "what ifs" like a mirror so that we can more closely examine ourselves.

In Frankenstein, Shelly uses the what if of "what if we can bring back the dead?" to create a discussion about who is the true "monster".

2. Science fantasy is really just fantasy but instead of using psuedo medieval europe as a back against which stories are told it uses near or far future settings as a back drop. The focus here is on the characters and the story and although there may be deeper themes in them they are not the focus the way they are in sci-fi.

Star wars is a great example hear because it just re-skins what is for all intents and purposes a fairy-tale and throws it into space.

Using these definitions something like Star Trek TOS is pretty much sci-fi but as the series progressed they drift farther from that and over into sci-fan. A lot of what is considered science fiction today is really science fantasy. Laser and spaceships don't mean sci-fi.

 

[tomBitonti]

In Frankenstein, Shelly uses the what if of "what if we can bring back the dead?" to create a discussion about who is the true "monster".

Frankenstein is perhaps more about creating new life (albeit using parts from the dead; the flesh is re-animated, but the consciousness is new). The creation is physically grotesque, but is quite intelligent. I don't know if the crimes that the creation ultimately commits can be attributed to a fundamental moral failing (hence the creature also being morally grotesque), or are expected and fairly normal results of the creatures suffering.

From Wikipedia, but ultimately from Shelley's writings:

I saw the pale student of unhallowed arts kneeling beside the thing he had put together. I saw the hideous phantasm of a man stretched out, and then, on the working of some powerful engine, show signs of life, and stir with an uneasy, half vital motion. Frightful must it be; for SUPREMELY frightful would be the effect of any human endeavour to mock the stupendous mechanism of the Creator of the world.

Thx!

TomB

 

[MarkB]

1. Science fiction is a genre that uses what if scenarios to examine philisophical ideas like the nature of man, technology or even politics. It uses these "what ifs" like a mirror so that we can more closely examine ourselves.

2. Science fantasy is really just fantasy but instead of using psuedo medieval europe as a back against which stories are told it uses near or far future settings as a back drop. The focus here is on the characters and the story and although there may be deeper themes in them they are not the focus the way they are in sci-fi.

Yeah, that about sums it up for me. Science Fiction proposes a "what-if" and then explores the implications of that proposal. Fantasy proposes a setting, but doesn't care about the what-if - it simply uses it as a backdrop for its storytelling.

Science Fantasy, then, uses familiar SF tropes but does so purely to establish setting, not to explore their implications.

And SF-style fantasy (which really needs its own genre name - perhaps Fantasy Science) uses fantasy setting tropes, but posits them as a "what-if" and consistently explores their implications.

 

[Nellisir]

1. Science fiction is a genre that uses what if scenarios to examine philisophical ideas like the nature of man, technology or even politics. It uses these "what ifs" like a mirror so that we can more closely examine ourselves.

2. Science fantasy is really just fantasy but instead of using psuedo medieval europe as a back against which stories are told it uses near or far future settings as a back drop. The focus here is on the characters and the story and although there may be deeper themes in them they are not the focus the way they are in sci-fi.

This really doesn't do it for me at all. Whether you mean it or not, it comes across as "science fiction is deep and meaningful, and fantasy is about twinkly fairies." Fantasy can absolutely examine philosophical ideas about the nature of man, etc, and so forth - that's just good literature, not one genre.

I will perhaps posit that sci-fi is more often directed towards examining cultural & societal change, whereas fantasy is concerned with individual & personal change, but that's as far as I'd go.

 

[Hussar]

But many vampire and werewolf stories are about trying to stay human, even though you are a monster. Are you saying that all those stories are SF, rather than fantasy?

No, these stories are horror.

If the purpose of the story is to scare you, it's horror. That works for me anyway.

 

[Hussar]

After a few days thinking about sci-fi and sci-fan I think I have a good way to spilt the two. Here goes.

1. Science fiction is a genre that uses what if scenarios to examine philisophical ideas like the nature of man, technology or even politics. It uses these "what ifs" like a mirror so that we can more closely examine ourselves.

In Frankenstein, Shelly uses the what if of "what if we can bring back the dead?" to create a discussion about who is the true "monster".

2. Science fantasy is really just fantasy but instead of using psuedo medieval europe as a back against which stories are told it uses near or far future settings as a back drop. The focus here is on the characters and the story and although there may be deeper themes in them they are not the focus the way they are in sci-fi.
/snip

Yes, this.

This really doesn't do it for me at all. Whether you mean it or not, it comes across as "science fiction is deep and meaningful, and fantasy is about twinkly fairies." Fantasy can absolutely examine philosophical ideas about the nature of man, etc, and so forth - that's just good literature, not one genre.

I will perhaps posit that sci-fi is more often directed towards examining cultural & societal change, whereas fantasy is concerned with individual & personal change, but that's as far as I'd go.

It's not that fantasy doesn't examine philosophical ideas. You're right, that's not true. But, fantasy most often is examining moral issues, rather than ethical ones. Fantasy is far more concerned with good and evil, rather than right and wrong. That's a whole lot reductionist, but, at the core, I do think that is the basic differentiation.

Time travel was mentioned. I'm currently reading the Black Company series. The book, Bleak Seasons, is a time travel story. The main narrator is being bounced back and forth in time to, essentially, tell three different stories. Time travel is used as a narrative mechanic in order to tell the story in an interesting fashion. It's no longer truly linear. Considering the Black Company stories are written as a "history" book of the experiences of the Company, it changes the way the story is told considerably from the way the earlier books were written.

But, the whole time travel thing is simply a plot device. It has no effect whatsoever on the characters within the story.

Which is the basic difference, IMO, between SF and Fantasy. In SF, the "magic" stuff impacts the narrative. In SF the "magic stuff" drives the narrative. The existence of robots gives us Asimov's Three Laws. The Time Traveler's Wife in indelibly linked to time travel. That the method of time travel is never explained and might as well be magic, doesn't matter. That's not what the story is about. But, it wouldn't work as a fantasy story.

Ender's Game isn't about good versus evil. It's about humanity. Heck the later books are all about what humanity is.

 

[Umbran]

But, fantasy most often is examining moral issues, rather than ethical ones. Fantasy is far more concerned with good and evil, rather than right and wrong. That's a whole lot reductionist, but, at the core, I do think that is the basic differentiation.

I think there's that tendency, yes. I think that largely comes from the basic difference of magic vs science. In magic, whether or not you can do a thing is largely based upon your moral (and thus spiritual) character. In science, there's no question about whether you can or not - that question is answered by an entirely neutral Universe, and you're left with the question of whether you should do it or not.

Thus, we draw the line between a necromancer (who can do what he does because he is evil, and is evil because he can) and Doc Frankenstein (who is unethical because he was so absorbed in his actions that he didn't think through the consequences).

 

[Hussar]

Yeah, Umbran. I'd agree with that. Now, to be fair, any genre discussion is automatically reductionist, so, there will always be outliers. But, painting with a larger brush, it works for me.