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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wayside" data-source="post: 2287041" data-attributes="member: 8394">I agree, in that we could rewrite the diary using the "imagery" of science fiction or fantasy, yet the product itself would not be science fiction or fantasy, however much of their imagery it may have. Conversely, I think there ought to be something about science fiction and fantasy that, if we were to take a story from either genre and rewrite it with different imagery, survives the translation.This is true to a point, but I think it misses what Dannyalcatraz was getting at. Different definitions of a genre will provide for different exceptions from those rules--that much goes without saying. So you're right that under your definition, what he sees as an exception is easily handled; conversely, under his definition, what for you is an exception might be just as easily dealt with. His point, I think, was only that the "setting/imagery" approach can best account for genre because it excludes the least amount of material (or requires fewer exceptions to admit this material than another approach). I still think he's wrong, not least because any time you draw a hard line, you pave the way for someone to specifically contradict your definition, making all hard definitions inferior to loose ones; but I don't think the fact that two different definitions may exclude different material has anything to do with it.edit: Ah, I see where you are coming from in your last post. I don't think there is any point arguing with someone who lays down a rule, then simply sticks to it when confronted with something most people agree ought to be an exception to the rule. So if I produce a story that most people agree is science fiction, but your definition labels it fantasy, and you simply insist that it's fantasy because according to your definition it is, then I think the conversation has basically failed, and we can't go any further. Anybody can hide behind a definition.Yes, it invalidates science fiction and fantasy as literature if science fiction and fantasy are nothing more than an aesthetic. That doesn't mean a particular science fiction book isn't valuable--it means that whatever is valuable about the book, it's not the fact that it's science fiction. The science fiction aspect of the book is disposable. Now, if you want to say that science fiction is legitimate because it explores what ought to be, and that fantasy is legitimate because it illustrates morality and archetypes, then great--you've just defined science fiction and fantasy in terms of something other than their imagery.Not so obvious or trite as you might think, though I was expecting that answer. The difference between fiction and non-fiction is at least partially only a difference of expectation on the part of the reader. Once upon a time Homer was considered to be non-fiction, as was Virgil's 4th Eclogue. And contemporary writers are actively looking for ways to blur the line between the two, as in Pat Barker's Regeneration trilogy.And this is fantasy simply because it has magic, not even as a central story element? Shouldn't this be one of your exceptions, if you're approaching fantasy as a set of imagery?How so? They don't really seem comparable to me, just from looking these Kushiel books up, reading a chapter and so on. I don't claim to know them well by any means, so is there something particuarly Sadistic (in the literary sense) about them?Thomas Mann's Faust, Joyce's Ulysses, Julian Barnes' Flaubert's Parrot, Maurice Blanchot's Thomas the Obscure, Rilke's Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge? It seems a little naive to say there's nothing genre fiction hasn't done. I don't need to be a big fan of the stuff to know it hasn't done what these books and many others have done. Or if you really believe there is some genre fiction that accomplishes what any of these books accomplish, I would be intensely interested in hearing about it. The only comparable example I have experience with is Dune, which is still a major cut down from the parody of Messianism in Ulysses, or the tragic elements of Faust.Question: are Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-glass fantasy? Why?</blockquote>

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