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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wombat" data-source="post: 2268458" data-attributes="member: 8447">Have to agree with this.  I mean, I love Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser, but the notion that their tales are all about Good vs. Evil, or any other specifically moral centerpiece, is rather ridiculous.  Those tales, which are definitely fantasy, are more about rollicking good times, close work with swords and danger, and Boys' Own Adventures writ large and bawdy.  Yes, I would agree that several fantasy works deal with Good vs. Evil, but not all or even necessarily the majority.  The Conan tales might be labelled as having a social darwinist feel to them, but that is about as close as you come to Good vs. Evil, and given the many hands that have written Conan stories after the fact the tales go all over the board.And then what of Lovecraft?  Does he count as horror or as science fiction?  His antagonists are aliens in an alternate dimension who would crush all of humanity, not out of any hatred of humans, per se, but rather simply because humans cannot fathom the reality that the Great Old Ones represent; still, later writers try to impose morality or at least elemental identifications on several of these beings.And for all of this you will always have books that defy definition.  Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun will never really feel "set" in any category.  It is at the end time of our planet, in that the sun is red and will soon go out altogether.  There are space-travelling aliens with strange devices that defy description.  There are sword fights.  There are strange monsters and maidens in distress.  There are psychic powers.  There are dungeons and torturers.  There are doctrinaire communists versus ardent royalists.  There moral considerations, considerations on what makes one human, and literally hundreds of embedded stories -- where do these books fall in a category?I think the problem with these definitions is that no one will agree.  Offered for your consideration are three possible solutions:1)  Call it Speculative Fiction and include everything we consider sci fi, fantasy, and horror, withouth further differentiation.2)  Breakdown between Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror, based primarily on gut reaction or publisher's whim.3)  Subdivided into 200+ micro-genres that everyone gets confused over and can never remember.I am willing to walk into a bookstore and find the SciFi/Fantasy area, which usually has Horror right next door.  I am quite willing to look for the books that I like, withouth worrying about which books truly belongs where.  The most important distinction I can think of is Authors I Like versus Authors I Do Not Like.  **shrug**</blockquote>

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