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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 2299430" data-attributes="member: 19675">Wayside, you can't have it both ways, and I'm not confusing anything.  I'm not asking for a pure SF/F story without narrative elements of other genres.  I'm asking you (or anyone else) to find an SF/F story that has any narrative element ABSENT from other genres, in order to satisfy your argument.If, as you assert, "SF/F cannot be considered literature" if it has "no narrative of its own," then my critique of barsoomcore's working definition on the grounds that it is not a narrative unique to SF is valid.  Ditto Zander & Andor's partial deliniations.  By your own criterion- that any valid literary form requires a unique narrative- those working definitions cannot help to establish the unique nature of SF/F vis-a-vis other genres because they are not unique to SF/F.  They may be popular themes found in Sci-Fi, they may be common features of Fantasy, but they cannot be the defining criteria because they are not SF/F's own narratives-they are shared.If someone defined a dog as "furry and cute animals," then pointing out other furry, cute animals other than dogs destroys that as a working definition.  Dogs may still be furry and cute, but it doesn't define them as distinct from other furry cute animals.I'm not conflating individual works with genres.  I'm using individual works to refute assertions by noting that they are exceptions to proposed working definitions.  In other words, an exception does not prove a rule, it is a refutation that something IS a rule.If, on the other hand, we can/do find a unique narrative (and ANY single one will do) that nobody finds elsewhere, we will have found that core that distinguishes SF/F from other genres.  As yet, we have failed in that particular endeavor.</blockquote>

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