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Message: <blockquote data-quote="F5" data-source="post: 532076" data-attributes="member: 4607">Interesting conversation.  I never have conversations like that.  Closest I ever seem to come to deep, introspective discussions on fantasy literature is discussing with people I meet why The Two Towers is/isn't going to suck.  Sigh...I have a definition of Fantasy, as it relates to Science Fiction, that applies.  I'm sure a lot of you will disagree with this definition, but it's served me well over the years.I see sci-fi as an author's explorations of what could be, while fantasy is an author's exploration of what should be.  Fantasy, in general, revolves more around an author's moral convictions than sci-fi.  It's such a satisfying genre because it presumes a universe in which things work the way the author (and many of their readers, too) really want them to work.  There's often an easily-identifiable Evil for the easily-identifiable Good to overcome.  The Dedicated and Worthy often wield great power, even (especially?) if they don't yet realize how worthy they are.  Through bravery, friendhsip and determination, the forces of Good are able to beat the vastly more powerful forces of Evil.  Things very seldom work out that way in the Real World, but they appeal to many readers of fantasy.  It doesn't have to be rationally possible, as long as it feels Right it makes sense.Sci-fi can be just as moralisic as fantasy, but it's a different kind of morality.  It's more reasoned, and, well...scientific?  You take a premise, and extrapolate what the implications are.  "What would it mean to humankind if we could use complex mathematics to predect the future?"  That kind of thing.  Fantasy is more visceral than that.  It can be just as well-reasoned as sci-fi, but it speaks to what we (or the author, at least) really feel, rather than what we think we would feel given a certain set of criteria.  With that in mind, I think the problem some peole have with fantasy (our favorite potter's gift shop friend included) is when their view of what should be doesn't match up with an authors' on some fundamental level.  I've read books (and seen PLENTY of movies) whose moral convictions seemed to boil down to "excessive and graphic violence is fun, when emotional and moral repercussions can be ignored".  And I've enjoyed enough Die Hard movies, and hack-n-slash gaming sessions to say that I can't totally disagree with that statement.  But I can see where it could be disturbing and unappealing to someone with strongly held convictions to the contrary.  It becomes anathema to their fantasy ideal of what should be.Wow.  This got really long, and kind of rant-ish.  I'm cutting myself off now.  I guess what I'm trying to say is...yeah, alsih20, I think I've encountered what you're talking about <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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