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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 2286438" data-attributes="member: 19675">This, I hope, helps.  According to the above, posters on all sides of this discussion (myself included) have been guitly of violating the process of defining fantasy and sci-fi, both in defending their positions and attacking others.Why?  Because sci-fi and fantasy overlap, and they do it a lot.You can't define the 2 genres by type of story- both can and have told any kind of story you'd care to mention.For instance, I got up this morning thinking that the only storyline I have seen in sci-fi that I haven't seen in fantasy are stories dealing with what it means to be a sentient life form, the "Who am I""Who are we?", "What does it mean to be human?" set of questions Celebrim posted...then I remembered Pinnochio and all those stories about monsters trying to be accepted into human society.  Some of them were hominid in form...others weren't.And if stories dealing with time-travel (to assassinate Hitler, to change one thing about your own life, to hunt dinosaurs, etc.) with all their attendant issues about looking backwards, or about facing impossible odds and effecting change on a massive scale aren't STILL sci fi...(Side note: I am unaware of any obvious fantasy story/series dealing with time travel- anyone know of any?  The closest I can come are a series of short-stories from Fantasy & Science Fiction Magazine which is a clear hybrid.)I would counter that Lieber's Lannkhmar stories aren't about power- they're about 2 mercenary human beings getting through life in any way they see fit.Jacqueline Carey's Kusheil books are about a powerful romance- not the kind of power you describe.  Terry Pratchett's Discworld books are also seldom about power.  They all tell stories about human relations and societal interactions...and jokes.  Glenn Cook's Garret books are murder mysteries based on the "Nero Wolfe" books, and as such aren't directly about power as you describe, but rather about the inevitability of capture and how society enforces its laws- the struggle between good and evil (as opposed to Good and Evil) within each of us.  Piers Anthony usually tells stories of personal discovery and self-realization.And then there's Harry Turtledove's Darkness series, a re-imagining of WW2 as a fantasy world war.  It is concerned in equal parts about power, society and individuals (a long, but good, read, btw).On the sci-fi side, I need look no further than Ben Bova's Planetary series which strikes a similar balance.And as to your second point, I would counter with the output of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Neal Stephenson- all writers who focus a great deal on the individual.Larry Niven has a host of stories in his Known Universe setting (home of Kzin, etc.) that are not about society.  Gil "The Arm" Hamilton, Beowulf Schaeffer and many of his main human characters in that setting are used to tell HUMAN stories, not societal/reactionary ones.  Ditto his Dream Park series with Pournelle.  Ditto his Beowulf (the epic poem) based series with Barnes and Pournelle.  As is Greg Bear's Forge of God/Anvil of Stars series.So?This is all a roundabout way of returning to a point I made earlier:  The criteria for distinctions between sci-fi and fantasy with the fewest illustratable exceptions are the setting and the trappings.</blockquote>

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