Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Clint_L" data-source="post: 9109081" data-attributes="member: 7035894">So, here's why the genre distinction matters to me, and I think is significant: fantasy is backwards looking and science fiction forwards looking. I actually think the two genre have very little in common except for (typically) exotic settings. Science fiction stems from the ideals of the Enlightenment, fantasy from the ideals of the Romantic period (ironically, its first great text was written by the spouse of one of the great Romantic poets, though there's a lot of nuance there).I argue that Dune is essentially a fantasy novel because the core elements of the plot and themes - the things that are at the heart of the text - could all be transposed into a fantasy setting without any great difference. Just take out various science words, and you still have an essentially medieval story of great houses vying for power in an empire, witches and prophecies, sword fights, and even dragon riding (or at least worm/wyrm riding). The "orphaned Chosen One battles their way to the throne" plot is the quintessential fantasy plot. There's no way that George R.R. Martin wasn't heavily influenced by Dune - the similarities between it and Game of Thrones are immense.George Lucas has himself declared that Star Wars is fantasy, not science fiction, and I think that one is hardly up for debate (I might argue that it is as much a western as it is a fantasy text, though). As for whether or not this debate matters - it doesn't, unless you are interested in these distinctions. Dune is still a great book, whatever genre it falls into. For me, this distinction is significant because I generally dislike reading fantasy and greatly prefer reading science fiction, so I am interested in understanding why the difference between the two is so stark, from my perspective.</blockquote>

Verification