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Genre Conventions: What is fantasy?
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<blockquote data-quote="Dannyalcatraz" data-source="post: 2314249" data-attributes="member: 19675"><p>Absolutely incorrect.</p><p></p><p>Go back to my first posts on this thread (#23, to be exact), and you'll see I used Venn diagrams to describe my initial overview of SF/F. So you don't have to go looking:</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Something can be within SF but not be an essential quality of it. If it is not essential, then it cannot be used to define the limits of the genre. The fact that I can find (as you say) squirrels in SF just means that there are squirrels within SF- once I find squirrels in other, non-SF fiction, I know that squirrels are not an essential quality of SF.</p><p></p><p>Instead of squirrels (<em>is there something going on on the boards with all this talk of squirrels?</em>), a better example might be swords. Swords show up in all kinds of fiction: SF, Fantasy, Civil War fiction, Japanese modern and imperial-period historical fiction. Swords can thus be said to be part of any of those genres, but they don't even begin to <em>define</em> any of them. Including the presence of swords as part of the definition of Fantasy (or any other genre) doesn't help because it allows the inclusion of things that are not part of that genre- it is insufficiently exclusive.</p><p></p><p>THAT is the point of my discussion of taxonomy: to illustrate that its the differences, not similarities, that define species as apart from other species. We don't point at "fur" as a distinguishing characteristic between dogs and wolves, we look at things like reproductive cycles (Wolves reproduce only 1/year, dogs may do so up to 2/year), diet (Wolves can digest bones and other things that would make a dog throw up) and so forth.</p><p></p><p>Analogously, we can't say that "X" is a <em>defining characteristic</em> of SF if "X" is not <em>unique</em> SF.</p><p></p><p>We MAY, however, say that "the combination of A, Q, T, X and Z" defines a genre, much as we say that creatures with the same diet and reproductive cycle as wolves, but lacking the fur, the mammary glands, the "warm" blood, or a non-cartilaginous skeletal structure, aren't wolves.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Dannyalcatraz, post: 2314249, member: 19675"] Absolutely incorrect. Go back to my first posts on this thread (#23, to be exact), and you'll see I used Venn diagrams to describe my initial overview of SF/F. So you don't have to go looking: Something can be within SF but not be an essential quality of it. If it is not essential, then it cannot be used to define the limits of the genre. The fact that I can find (as you say) squirrels in SF just means that there are squirrels within SF- once I find squirrels in other, non-SF fiction, I know that squirrels are not an essential quality of SF. Instead of squirrels ([I]is there something going on on the boards with all this talk of squirrels?[/I]), a better example might be swords. Swords show up in all kinds of fiction: SF, Fantasy, Civil War fiction, Japanese modern and imperial-period historical fiction. Swords can thus be said to be part of any of those genres, but they don't even begin to [I]define[/I] any of them. Including the presence of swords as part of the definition of Fantasy (or any other genre) doesn't help because it allows the inclusion of things that are not part of that genre- it is insufficiently exclusive. THAT is the point of my discussion of taxonomy: to illustrate that its the differences, not similarities, that define species as apart from other species. We don't point at "fur" as a distinguishing characteristic between dogs and wolves, we look at things like reproductive cycles (Wolves reproduce only 1/year, dogs may do so up to 2/year), diet (Wolves can digest bones and other things that would make a dog throw up) and so forth. Analogously, we can't say that "X" is a [I]defining characteristic[/I] of SF if "X" is not [I]unique[/I] SF. We MAY, however, say that "the combination of A, Q, T, X and Z" defines a genre, much as we say that creatures with the same diet and reproductive cycle as wolves, but lacking the fur, the mammary glands, the "warm" blood, or a non-cartilaginous skeletal structure, aren't wolves. [/QUOTE]
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