Short treatise on Fantasy

[muhcashin]

A bit out of topic

Note: I didn't read all the posts in this thread. So I might be repeating someone else's words.

To me the whole debate on whether anything can happen in Sci-Fi and Fantasy doesn't make much sense to me. It's rather irrelevant, since most Sci-Fi and Fantasy fiction aren't about the rules. First, Sci-Fi and Fantasy are very different kinds of litterature.

Sci-Fi generally plays with ideas and concepts. Blade Runner has many bits about artificial life, 1984 deals police states. The definition

QUOTE]Science Fiction: a genre of speculative fiction which works within known existing physcial laws and theorems and does not alter them or add new ones.[/QUOTE]

does apply to Science Fiction, but is in no way the essence of the genre. Sci-Fi's main objectif is not to describe radical changes of known physical laws, but to take long looks at many of the most complex concepts such as isolation, love, life, etc... through a different perspective. A change of laws makes it much easier to see things differently. Let's take Blade Runner for example. The meaning of life or its value undergoes a great change with the arrival of artificial life.

The problem here is that too many people automatically associate Sci-Fi with Star Wars-esque fiction. Sci-Fi is much more than epic stories with spaceships. I am a great fan of Star Wars, but I wouldn't really call it Sci-Fi. Well, Star Wars has in no way the same effect Blade Runner or 1984 or even Neuromancer would have on its viewers/readers.

Star Wars is more fantasy. It's space fantasy. In the Fantasy genre, physical rules are bent and broken, but they don't have really any effect on the reader. The reader just takes it for granted that their is teleportation or that dragons exist. The core of a good fantasy literature rarely has to do with the changes to physical laws. Going back to Star Wars, a Death Star is basically impossible to build yet that fact is completely irrelevant. The only thing that matters is what it represents: evil, power, tyranny, you name it.

From my perspective, the Science Fiction you're talking about it the Space Fantasy type.

 

[FraserRonald]

My easy definitions of science fiction and fantasy have always been:

Science fiction is fiction of the possible. Fantasy is fiction of the impossible.

Maybe too abrupt, but I think it covers a lot.

Edit: spelling error!

 

[barsoomcore]

Thank you, NoOneOfConsequence! What a great recollection!

Hurrah for Phil and Dixie.

Why anyone cares about making distinctions between "Fantasy" and "Science Fiction" is beyond me If you're a bookseller then I guess it makes sense, but otherwise -- who cares? You're never, ever going to come up with a definition that

A) Everyone agrees on, and

B) Easily distinguishes not just every book under scrutiny but every possible book that might be written.

So given that there will always be people who disagree with any definition, and that no definition will allow us to separate all books in a snap, it's clear that no definition is ever going to, for once and for all, solve the problem of "Is this book SF or Fantasy?"

Which, frankly, isn't a problem. Not in my life, anyway. A much bigger problem is, "Is this book worth my spending the time to read enough to find out if it's worth reading the rest?" That's got nothing to do with what genre or category it falls into.

Good writing has nothing to do with rules. It has nothing to do with avoiding deus ex machina or anything like that. There are no rules in writing. It's a sad fact to anyone who has struggled to learn those rules. For people who have spent years trying to be good writers, learning their grammar, or expanding their vocabulary, or watching carefully for the 101 Most Common Errors of Young Writers (as seen in Writer's Digest), it can come as a horrible shock to learn that no, Virginia, there are no rules.

It's a funny thing about art. As soon as you erect a boundary, it immediately finds a way around it. As soon as you figure out how it works, somebody comes along, breaks every rule you ever wrote down, and turns out a tremendous story.

Spending time figuring out rules and distinctions only gets in the way of telling great stories. Or painting great pictures, or whatever. Don't worry about whether or not your story is Science Fiction or Fantasy. Worry about what people say when they read it, how you feel about the characters, or whether or not you want to bother continuing with this no-good piece of tripe that you'll never finish anyway and even if you did who's ever going to read it Oh Dear Lord why did I even start this thing?

Um, where was I? Oh yeah, Phil and Dixie. I love them.

 

[Frelaras]

Good writing has nothing to do with rules. It has nothing to do with avoiding deus ex machina or anything like that. There are no rules in writing. It's a sad fact to anyone who has struggled to learn those rules.

I know you're saying more than this, but from the point of view of craft I'd have to say that there are rules surrounding writing. If nothing else, these rules are built on your audience's expections:

ie, we expect a good writer to spell words properly in the appropriate language barring typos; we expect a good writer to be consistant in presenting characters and their attributes; we expect a good writer to base plot events in an interesting story on character decisions, etc.

These may not be good examples of rules, but to me they're some small subset of useful rules. If you totally ignore them, you will likely have negative results.

That being said, again in pursuit of good craft, once you "know" the rules, they are yours to bend, break, alter, and enjoy - so long as your audience enjoys along with you. Perhaps that is the only real rule.

I know what you mean about not being bound by rules - but if a writer acts like they are above rules or they don't matter... that arrogance alone will likely lead to problems. Consider writers who rely on words in an invented language (names, places) as good tokens of the fantastic. In my opinion, the first, horrible, sign of the amateur.

Just a thought regarding magic, tying into something someone else mentioned earlier...

To me, technology is the ability to enhance and extend our natural abilities - perhaps dramatically; magic does so without an interface (what we normally call the device) - or perhaps with a mystical interface such as dealing with supernatural beings or inner spirit energy.

Speculative fiction is about the interface: sci fi - the predictable or probably interface and its implications; fantasy - the impossible or indescribably unlikely (possibly null) interface and its implications.

IMHO.

/Frelaras/
Iconic Wage Mage
"Without style there can be no originality." (J. Ravetz)

 

[Umbran]

As for Galdalf "dying" and waking up, he got promoted and replaced Saurman. The implication is that all of the "Whites" in Tolkien's world also go through the same process to get promoted...

Um, no. For one thing, there aren't any other "Whites". There were only 5 Istari - Saruman, Gandalf, Radaghast, and two who aren't named in LotR.

For another, Gandalf's single transformation does not imply a pattern - you don't get a line from one data point. IIRC, in the books Gandalf mentions that he himself supported making Saruman the leader, because of his wisdom and his power.

Saruman's fall is nasty not because he had been reincarnated - before he was Saruman, he was a minor angel. His fall mirrors that of Sauron, and of Melkor before that...

 

[maddman75]

The best coining of the idea that fantasy worlds have to have some semblence of reason behind them was best summed up IMHO in the introduction to the 2e Spelljammer setting.

Its been a long time, so I'm paraphrasing

"The universe still has laws of physics. Its just that instead of the laws of Kepler, Newton, and Einstein, we have the laws of Elminster, Raistlin, and Mordenkainen."