It was a response to a personal opinion presented as fact that "Tolkien
was wrong"! Police your own side, I'm not claiming that his opinion is
fact.
I was policing my "own side," as well as making my position clear.
And since the personal opinion presented as fact was a response to
Tolkien cautioned against the introduction of science and technology in
fantasy. Hickman and Weis even used the incompatibility as the theme of
their Darksword novels and RPG.
I wanted to be perfectly clear that neither position had superiority.
The fantasy genre has evolved over millennia starting with the earliest
mythology and distilled by countless storytellers and audiences over the
ages. Along the way, such greats as Homer, Apollonius of Rhodes and
Edmund Spenser have contributed to it.
WotC are happy to disregard that tradition and, by extension, all the
people great and small who have contributed to the genre.
Most literary students and their teachers would seperate mythology and
legend from modern fantasy because, despite having similar trappings,
the mythology of the ancients was not mere storytelling for
entertainment. Instead, much was considered reportage- basically
historical fact- as they saw it. It was used to teach both history and
morality.
Modern Fantasy is accepted as fiction and fiction only, even if it
contains morality tales or slices of history. While the genre depends in
large part upon the mythologies of the past, it is not correct to equate
them. Modern Fantasy is the child of mythology, they are not one in the
same.
And even if you do want to equate them, the mythologies of times past
STILL contain references to the technologies of the day, as well as
speculation over the possibilities of the future- usually in the form of
tales about war or artificer gods or heroes.
Again, to merely lop off an entire branch of a genre of fiction as
somehow illegitimate because it doesn't meet your narrow definition
is...stunning.
Science abhors the irrational. If after 20 years of scientific
research you found that various phenomena were due to magic, you would
need to continue your research until you found otherwise.
Whenever you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however
improbable, must be true.
If your research continuously shows that Phenomena Z violated the Laws
of Thermodynamics, and you can't prove that those Laws are wrong except
in the case of Phenomena Z, you're probably looking at magic, improbable
though that may be.
They can argue with Karl Popper, perhaps the most eminent philosopher of
science of the 20th century, if they like.
As the holder of a Phi Sigma Tau National Philosophy Honors Society key,
I'm a little familiar with Popper's work. While a great thinker, his
work isn't even close to universal acceptance. The reason for this is
that some of his theories follow the reasoning of other philosophical
theories that are somewhat discounted or discredited, like Cartesian
Dualism.
(Don't get me wrong- he's brilliant. He's just not an undisputed authority.)
But while we're discussing him, Popper himself would disagree somewhat
with your response to my hypothetical about scientific research,
dragons, and the like.
He believed that science was not verifiable, but only falsifiable. That
is, at no point in human cognition is it possible to determine the
objective truth of a scientific principle. No matter how many scientific
experiments support Therory A, one demonstrable counterexample is
sufficient to falsify it.
The dragon who flies by means that violate the laws of thermodynamics,
then, is either evidence for magic or the fatal blow to at least one of
the 3 laws.
When comedy is being used to parody fantasy, that may tell you more
about comedy than it does about fantasy.<snip> When addressing the
science / fantasy question, it helps not to introduce other complicating
factors.
In what way is Twain's work a parody of fantasy?
Fantasy is a genre and, as such, is limited.
OK. Essentially, that IS the definition of a literary genre.
If you believe that fantasy = all fiction, then my own view of fantasy
might be considered "very narrow".
I don't believe any such thing, and I still consider your view of
fantasy very narrow. I easily distinguish between genres like sci-fi,
horror, fantasy, mystery and so forth...
But I also understand if you plot out the genres of fiction using Venn
diagrams, you'll see that genres are not mutually exclusive- they
overlap. You can have a horror story that is also a science fiction
story. You can have a mystery that is also a fantasy.
And I also understand that the history of fantasy literature is laid out
in black and white, and it includes far more than you are willing to accept.
Are the works of Albert E. Crowdrey any less fantasy because they're set
in modern day New Orleans? Absolutely not. That garden Foo Dog statue
that comes to life to defend his major protagonists from evil spirits in
his many short stories is clearly a fantasy element.
I'm not alone though. If you look at the various threads on these
boards about gnomes, knights and so on, you will see that other posters
not just myself have voiced dissatisfaction with the flavour of these
elements in the latest version of D&D.
Unhappy people ≠ Correct people.
Large numbers of unhappy people ≠ Correct people.
The criticisms raised by many of them are a result of WotC's
willingness to over-write fantasy tropes.
With other
perfectly legitimate fantasy tropes...that
you
(and some others) don't like.
Just because it isn't fantasy
to you doesn't make it not fantasy.
