Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 2286846" data-attributes="member: 19675">Re<img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f600.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":D" title="Big grin    :D"  data-smilie="8"data-shortname=":D" />ragnlance Novels- Thanks,  I'll take your word for it- as a rule, I don't touch franchised fiction.It doesn't invalidate them as literature.  It invalidates them as genres that are meaningfully distinct from each other.  They both do things that other genres don't do regularly or do well: sci-fi routinely explores the normative (what OUGHT to be) rather than actual world (what is), whereas fantasy routinely illustrate morality lessons and heroic archetypes, in the same way old fables and legends used to do.  (And, look hard enough, and you'll find normative fantasy and sci-fi morality tales.) Well, the obvious and trite answer is that The Diary of Anne Frank is a work of non-fiction.  It also covers a sensitive matter that, if fictionalized, might be offensive to some...BUT WAIT: Harry Turtledove's aforementioned Darkness books examine the very ground Ms. Frank lived upon in a fictionalized way.  That's not the series' exclusive focus, but it is amply covered in the epic 6 book (3900+pgs) series.And De Sade would be very intrigued by Jacqueline Carey's Kushiel series.To try to answer your bigger question: I have not personally seen a type of fictional literature that either sci-fi or fantasy HAVEN'T ventured into.  I'm not saying I've personally read everything, but within the scope of my own personal library of books and visual media, I have sci-fi or fantasy romances (Flatland, The Time Machine), action adventures (the Worldwar & Battlefield Earth series), political thrillers (CJ Cherrhy's Foreigner), murder mysteries (the Garret books), military fiction (Hammer's Slammers series), horror stories ("Sandkings"), slasher fiction (Alien), comedies (Pratchett), westerns (Valley of Gwangi), survivor fiction (Dawn of the Dead any other movie with a lot of zombies) and retelling of epics and classic literature (Niven and many more).  This is especially true of the old stuff when the pioneers were trying new fictional paths by branching off from extant ones.  IMHO, it might be easier to find a genre that DON"T have sci-fi or fantasy analogs than to define all the genres that have.Where they differ from the archetypes of those ennumerated genres is in the number and nature of available solutions to the problems presented within the storylines.  In a typical murder mystery, a locked door homicide has only a few solutions available, but if the murderer can teleport (via spell or Scotty) or walk through walls... And yet it is also possible to define Star Wars as Sci-F (in the Space Opera subgenre)i, as is routinely done (<a href="http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery;jsessionid=1a20cmy49y56y?method=4&dsid=2222&dekey=Space+opera&gwp=8&curtab=2222_1&sbid=lc02a" target="_blank">Again</a> ), so I can consider it an exception.  My favorite quote from that link, in terms of relevance is this:  "Star Wars, with its Death Star and 'Force' lies close to the original pulp science fiction."  Space Opera expressly includes the possibility of mystic abilities.Using setting/trappings as a distinction is highly objective.  We can all look at each peice of fiction see space-ships or dragons, chainmail or reflec-vacc enviro suits.  Generally, if you just look at the surface, the differences are there.  It is exceedingly rare to find something like a pure fantasy story that is set on another planet (like Elves vs Dwarves on Omicron-Ceti IV), slightly less so a sci-fi story in a fantasy setting (Terminators invade Underhill!).But when you delve into narrative types,  storytelling techniques, predominant tropes, etc. the waters get much muddier and subjective.  Where you see pure fantasy in the Force, others see pure sci-fi Psi Powers (telekinesis, astral projection, electrokinesis, molecular agitation/disruption), or Shao-lin Chi.  Where you saw the Emperor as the Dragon to be slain, someone familiar with Akira Kurosawa's body of work (from which Lucas derived his main plot) would see the powerful leader who has shown himself to be unworthy of his position, and who therefore must be overthrown- entirely an outgrowth of bushido, not mysticism, not dragonslaying.  Yes, European fantasy and Japanese historical fiction both have swords, but there are fundamental differences- the latter is based entirely on the real world.Its because of this muddiness that some have (unsuccessfully) tried to supplant the terms "Sci-fi" and "Fantasy" with the broader term "Speculative Fiction."  It recognizes the commonality they share is greater than their respective differences.Edited to add some stuff about Star Wars.</blockquote>

Verification