Genre Conventions: What is fantasy?

[Wayside]

Joshua, and anyone else interested, I have taken the liberty of uploading a short and fairly recent (1996) article, "Disputes About Art," from The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. I think it will particularly interest you because the author's approach to the problem of classification is to consider whether or not a role-playing game like D&D or Shadowrun can be a work of art. I don't think anyone will entirely agree with the line of thought, as I certainly don't, but it does have an interesting application here.

 

[Desdichado]

Joshua, and anyone else interested, I have taken the liberty of uploading a short and fairly recent (1996) article, "Disputes About Art," from The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. I think it will particularly interest you because the author's approach to the problem of classification is to consider whether or not a role-playing game like D&D or Shadowrun can be a work of art. I don't think anyone will entirely agree with the line of thought, as I certainly don't, but it does have an interesting application here.

Thanks for the tip! I'll try and read it today.

 

[Desdichado]

Joshua, and anyone else interested, I have taken the liberty of uploading a short and fairly recent (1996) article, "Disputes About Art," from The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism. I think it will particularly interest you because the author's approach to the problem of classification is to consider whether or not a role-playing game like D&D or Shadowrun can be a work of art. I don't think anyone will entirely agree with the line of thought, as I certainly don't, but it does have an interesting application here.

Oh, and sign me up for some of that Jane Austen d20 action...

 

[barsoomcore]

Wow, this has been a great thread!

I'd feel better if JD and Cel would shake hands and say sorry for calling each other names at times, but we're all still standing, it looks like. Phew.

I keep going back and forth on all this. And I think I know why.

Because different genre definitions serve different purposes.

You CAN define genres based on "trappings". Which is, broadly what JD is doing. It looks like SF, it sounds like SF, it's SF. Whether you describe the trappings as "mechanical" or "plausible" or "derived from a theoretical framework", you're deciding which texts fit into which genres according to the trappings of the text, as opposed to the themes or "meanings" (can we just pretend those terms aren't problematic, for a second?) of the STORY (and once more, thanks).

That's a perfectly valid way to divide books into groups. It's the most commonly-used method, in fact, as any quick trip to a bookstore will show. That's because it's the EASIEST. You don't have to read the book to know which section it belongs in. Open to random page and scan.

"drive", "reactor", "plastic", "hyper-*", metric measure units -- SF

"dragon", "eldritch", "mystical", "cloak", ancient measure units -- Fantasy

That works for 90% of the books out there, so people use it. It's starting to break down a little now as assorted "-punk" genres start to evolve (my favourite being JD's very own "Lovecraftian Ringwaldpunk"), but it still works most of the time, and it's easy to use, so it's the most commonly-employed.

I don't happen to like it, but I'll agree it's useful for the purpose of deciding where to stack a given book so that people will find the books they expect to find.

Now, I don't work in a bookstore. And I don't organize my shelves by genre. So such a definition is frankly useless to me, so I have no interest in it.

I am, however, a writer. And a person who likes comparmentalizing things according to their "fundamental natures" (let us maintain our cordial willingness to let problematic terms lie, shall we?) just for the fun of it, so I'm looking for a way to distinguish fantasy from SF (assuming of course that they CAN be distinguished, which it's interesting nobody yet has asked about) that relies on, let us say, story considerations.

My question is, is there a TYPE OF STORY that all (or a reasonable subset of) fantasy stories make use of? Is there some quality to the stories that we generally call fantasy (as opposed to the settings, or the prose style or what have you) that distinguishes them from other stories? And if so, is that quality universally found in all stories we generally call fantasy, or only some subset thereof? And are stories that we generally DON'T call fantasy also demonstrating this quality?

Now if the answer to those last two questions are No and Yes, respectively, to portions sufficiently large, then we would have to conclude that the quality we've identified, however interesting it may be, does not in fact correspond to "Fantasy" and probably shouldn't be conceptually tied to that term. Otherwise people get confused and yell at us and start quoting Heidegger. And nobody wants that.

Okay, so what, core?

Well, I happen to like Celebrim's efforts. I find his efforts far more interesting than any "setting-based" definition, because it's more intellectually challenging. I need to spend more time thinking about the books themselves in order to determine which category they fall into. It seems to revolve around more "inherent" qualities of the stories the texts tell (as opposed to the texts themselves).

Let me try to refine Celebrim's a bit. To me, his definition suffers from broadness -- it can too easily be interpreted to apply to virtually any story.

I believe that fantasy stories involve an element that serves no other purpose than as a metaphor for power. Fantasy stories are stories that deal primarily with power -- the acquisition of, the loss of, the wielding of, whatever -- through metaphor. Whether that metaphor be dragons, or sorcery or the Force, they represent power, and their interactions with the characters in the story displays some sort of thinking/assumption/understanding of the nature of the relationship between power and the individual.

That's an important point, but I'm not sure it's central. Fantasy stories tend to be about the individual, as opposed to society. I think that distinction is actually starting to break down with writers like Mieville and Erickson, but if properly motivated I might make a run at defending it.

SF stories, on the other hand, ARE about society. Specifically, SF stories are speculations on what society will look like if some aspect of our life/technology/worldview changes. Often that's a technological breakthrough or contact with some other society, but the focus of SF stories is on how society responds to such a transformation. Greg Bear, Arthur C. Clarke, David Brin, all fall very clearly into this camp. Likewise Jerry Pournelle, Larry Niven's SF stories (phew!) and Asimov.

Okay, so how do well-known works stack up? Pretty well, I think.

LotR is obviously fantasy by this definition, as is Moorcock's Eternal Champion, Leiber, Howard (how many Conan stories are about how the barbarian's strength and natural cunning allows him to overcome the fearsome magic of the bad guys? Right, all of them. Except "The Phoenix in the Sword", I guess. But that STILL fits the definition beautifully), Brust, Cook and Erickson. And that's everyone I like, so THAT'S alright.



Some border cases that are maybe more controversial:

ERB's Barsoom books -- these are definitely fantasy stories by my definition, so I agree with Celebrim here. I frankly don't think the "setting" definitions do a very good job of classifying these as SF, either, so I don't think that weakens my definition much. But Barsoom is about John Carter's ability to weild power, which is "metaphorized" in the story by his superior strength and agility, and by the many goofy races and technologies, all of which do a good job of acting like assorted power tropes -- power through cranial development, power through religious fervour, power through philosophical goofiness, etc. John Carter interacts with these various metaphors for power and thus displays a certain relationship to power.

Star Wars is definitively fantasy, and again, I think the other definitions fall down on this one, too. The stories are about individuals coming to terms with power, as represented by the Force. Star Wars is a very long, very shiny, very noisy, rather infantile discussion on what it means to possess and make use of power, and how that possession and use affects the individual.

Well, that wasn't as thoroughly-thought-out as it might have been, I guess, but there you go. I've been on a cruise ship for seven days, what do you want?

 

[Wild Gazebo]

Well, that wasn't as thoroughly-thought-out as it might have been, I guess, but there you go. I've been on a cruise ship for seven days, what do you want?

What do I want? I wanna be on a cruise ship for seven days.

I forgot about this thread. I was gonna give mythusmage a good and proper response--and I will, just not today. I'm gonna be DMing in about an hour, so probably on Monday or Tuesday...after my weekend without internet...sorry. Still, this is a pretty fun thread.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I've read Moorcock's entire Eternal Champion arc, including the short stories and the Jerry Cornelius/Dancers at the End of Time stuff, and even listened to the music (like Hawkwind).

If ever there was a series that is almost 50/50 sci-fi and fantasy, its this one. While the modernist stuff (JC/DatEoT) still has a strong fantastic element, a great deal of it can be explained away by the extreme psychedelic nature of those works. They aren't so much fantasy as they are LSD on paper.

 

[Celebrim]

I'd feel better if JD and Cel would shake hands and say sorry for calling each other names at times, but we're all still standing, it looks like. Phew.

Bah. I have asbesteos underwear, which give me complete immunity to flames of every sort. And let me tell you sonny, they just don't make flames like they used to. Back in my day, before anyone was allowed to log on to the internet, they recieved a verbal warning that they were about to enter into an extremely dangerous and forboding place. Back in my day, the internet wasn't some kiddy friendly schoolyard filled of all sorts of pretty flashing pictures. We didn't have these fansy-schmancy internet explorers and netscape navigators. We scoffed at Mosiac like it was some Duplo sized information building block. Real men surfed the ethernet, drank from the WELL, posted on usenet, and thought gopher was a bit too high tech. Back in those days we had REAL flame wars, and not these namby pamby little sissy things that you call flame wars.

And as soon as I take my meds, I'm going to let JD have it...trying to make an argument from the ultilitarian about something that is fundamentally useless. What does he thing this is, genera engineering or something?

 

[Celebrim]

SF stories, on the other hand, ARE about society. Specifically, SF stories are speculations on what society will look like if some aspect of our life/technology/worldview changes.

Woo hoo!! I've almost made a convert. Good show, but not quite (unless of course you convince me otherwise). SF stories are about identity. SF is about the question, "Who am I?", "Who are we?", "What does it mean to be human?", and the method it employs is to speculate who we would be if we weren't who we are or who we would be (and what we would do) if we were someplace completely outside our ordinary experience.

Alot of SF stories are about society, but that's just because our society is one of the ways in which we define who we are. Greg Bear, Arthur C. Clarke, David Brin, Asimov and the like are fundamentally concerned with how are identity is defined by the societies we are in and form. But if you move to some more introspective author, say a Robert Silverburg or even (when he's in good form) a David Gerrold then you are dealing with the question of identity on a very intimate level.

I keep trying to point out that the reason so many people think my definitions overly broad is that they are using a truncated version of what I actually said. I did not say fantasies were merely stories about good and evil. I did not say that science fiction were merely stories about what it means to be human. I said that they were stories that approached these questions using a particular sort of device.

 

[Wayside]

Oh, and sign me up for some of that Jane Austen d20 action...

That's madness man--the Jane Austin RPG has to be World of Darkness!

My question is, is there a TYPE OF STORY that all (or a reasonable subset of) fantasy stories make use of? Is there some quality to the stories that we generally call fantasy (as opposed to the settings, or the prose style or what have you) that distinguishes them from other stories? And if so, is that quality universally found in all stories we generally call fantasy, or only some subset thereof? And are stories that we generally DON'T call fantasy also demonstrating this quality?

This is exactly the way in which I've been chewing on the question, not because I think fantasy or science fiction have to be defined in such a way, but because fantasy and science fiction have to be defined in this way if we want to make them legitimate, in the sense that a bildungsroman or a tragedy are legitimate narratives. The problem with the "setting" or "style" approach to genre is that it means all fantasy or science fiction narratives are, as narratives, something other than science fiction or fantasy, so there's no point to science fiction or fantasy as genres in that case. The point would always be the bildungsroman (Anakin in Eps I and II, for example), or the tragedy (Anakin in Ep III).

Yet I almost want to say fantasy isn't necessarily anything to do with the narratives, styles or settings themselves, but with the conditions that make it possible, desirable or imperative that we invent such styles, settings and narratives. This sort of definition makes a unified idea of fantasy impossible, I admit. The unity of the genre would be anterior to every actual work, not in the sense of an ideal that the work approximates, but in the sense of a problem the work solves, but solves only for itself and only for the present--other works would solve the problem in their own ways, and the link between these works would not be the similarities of their solutions (which could be amazingly different) but that they were attempts to work out the same problem.

One thing that struck me today, as an example, was the difference between Star Wars and LotR. LotR, by I'm sure anyone's standard, is fantasy. Many others, myself included, often think of Star Wars in terms of fantasy as well, usually by drawing 1-to-1 parallels like magic=force, Jedi=knight and so on. But many of the major themes of Star Wars aren't fantastic at all. The politics, for example, the societal models, the level of tolerance among alien species; whereas in LotR we're working toward a King, all the good guys are white humans or close approximations thereof, evil bares a certain (certain hypersensitive citizens of the modern world might even say offensive) resemblance to cultures of our own world, etc. So it occured to me that I might call Star Wars science fiction because it looks forward on a lot of contemporary social issues, whereas LotR is very medieval and looks backward, which might be a characteristic of fantasy.

I disagree that fantasy has to be about power, whether metaphorically, symbolically, allegorically or any other way. Perhaps because I see metaphor, symbol, allegory and so on as being relatively recent ways of authoring and dealing with texts, which, while they may hold true for some of what is and has been written, need not hold true for what is yet to be written. And for whoever leaves these things behind, I don't think they are barred from writing fantasy as a result. If we say that metaphors of power, for example, come up in fantasy because of an anxiety about the modern impotence of the individual, I can see different authors tackling this problem in different ways. Dune might be an interesting example in that you could say it meets your power requirement, thus making it fantasy; yet it also isn't about having power at all.

 

[JEL]

My two favorite definitions:

"ScienceFiction is something that could happen - but usually you wouldn't want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn't happen - though often you only wish it could." - Arthur C. Clarke

"...[Science Fiction] means what we point to when we say it." - Damon Knight