Science Fiction, Fantasy, or…?

[Lith]

I thought this thread was about SF's relationship to mainstream fiction, not fantasy?

SF at its more serious moments is about man's relationship with technology, and about the technology itself, its possibilities and implications. Mainstream fiction is more about how people relate to each other, regardless of how SF the setting can be.

Which doesn't exclude the possibility of a book tackling both subjects at the same time. Just that writers usually focus on one or the other. The core of SF will always be different from the core of mainstream fiction, but it will always leave a huge pile of books that don't quite fit into either category, or fit comfortably into both.

[Mary Hoffman]

Has anyone mentioned Orson Scott Card's Writing Science Fiction and Fantasy? It's a rare example of a "how to" book which is an interesting read in itself. Quoting from memory he starts by saying that SF readers want rivets, while fantasy readers expect valleys.

It made me laugh but it's mostly more profound than that.

My daughter Rhiannon Lassiter's Hex trilogy which she wrote for Macmillan in the '90s, she described as Science Fantasy, using a sort of fantasy-based idea in a futuristic setting.

My own Stravaganza series was marketed by Bloomsbury niot as fantasy but as "literary fiction with a fantasy element." There's a new category for you! And it seemed to be read by fantasy fans anyway, so I think they might have been barking up the wrong tree ...

Mary

[Anthony G Williams]

Originally Posted by Lith

I thought this thread was about SF's relationship to mainstream fiction, not fantasy?

SF at its more serious moments is about man's relationship with technology, and about the technology itself, its possibilities and implications. Mainstream fiction is more about how people relate to each other, regardless of how SF the setting can be.

Which doesn't exclude the possibility of a book tackling both subjects at the same time. Just that writers usually focus on one or the other. The core of SF will always be different from the core of mainstream fiction, but it will always leave a huge pile of books that don't quite fit into either category, or fit comfortably into both.

Both, actually. The long article on my blog which kicked this thread off does discuss all of these points.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Lith

I thought this thread was about SF's relationship to mainstream fiction, not fantasy?

LOL... Now, what would a thread at the Chrons be like that didn't go off-topic in the blink of an eye.....?

[Lith]

LOL... Now, what would a thread at the Chrons be like that didn't go off-topic in the blink of an eye.....?

Something that I definitely have absolutely NO experience with, of course.

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Lith

Something that I definitely have absolutely NO experience with, of course.

*bats baby -blues innocently* Why, I have no idea what you're talking about.....

*ahem* Well, somewhat more on topic.... Mention of the term "magic realism", of course, brings quite a few writers to mind. I'm not sure any of them ever used the term for their own work, but certainly it's been used by others. Writers such as Borges, for instance; who (as I recall) simply called such work "fantasy". And, of course, there's a long tradition behind them, dating well back into the nineteenth century at least. The two Blackwater books edited by Alberto Manguel serve as a very good example of this:

Amazon.com: Black Water: The Book of Fantastic Literature: Books: Alberto Manguel

Incidentally, there's a rather interesting article on this here:

http://www.seattleschools.org/school...gic_primer.pdf

So the blending of fantasy and mainstream, of course, goes back quite a long way. Blending of sf and the mainstream (at least, sf as currently understood) is much more difficult, I'd say... but not impossible. One of the things that allows for it to occur is when sf (or any other branch of imaginative literature) speaks to a common, but often unspoken, dread or underlying tension in the society as a whole, so that it can be blended into a more mainstream mode... in which case it transcends the general tendency to separate genre off from the "accepted" literature. We saw some of this in the 1950s, and again some experimentation of this in the 1960s, but not much since (with a few rare exceptions).

Part of the reason for this, I think, is similar to what Ian was saying above (at least, as I understand it): that science fiction is, while not necessarily futuristic (though it can be, certainly), it is a future-oriented fiction philosophically, almost exclusively; whereas fantasy, magic realism, and realism can be retrospective, contemporary, or future-oriented (though this last is less common than the other two). What I mean by this is what Ian was getting at above, as that mindset is relatively new to the species; which is also why it is less common, I think -- while it has become rather pervasive on the shallower levels of the average consciousness, on the deeper levels the majority of people still react with much of the orientation toward the world we've seen through most of history. This is due to a lack of understanding of how the world works in a rationalist/mechanistic context, rather than a nonrational/mystical Weltanschauung which was, frankly, the natural mode given our lack of refined tools for understanding the nature of reality. We see the remnants of this (some quite strong) in the belief in astrology, crystallomancy, rhabdomancy, goety, etc., as well as the continued belief in Satanism (in the formal, antique sense rather than simply a distaste for a particular religion -- or anti-religion, as the case may be). Thus the mindset behind the majority of science fiction is less comfortable, less familiar, and less comforting, to the greater number of people... making it less amenable to the mainstream.....

[Lith]

I would argue with some of that, but I'd quickly get into terminology I don't understand that well.

So instead I'll just say that we still don't understand the nature of reality that well, though we've worked out the basics of the physical world. I'll also say that ancient peoples weren't all that irrational about the world around them. There was a huge amount of half-formed rational thought in the systems of magic that people practiced. It was often rational in a sense, but incomplete and simplistic. And I'm inclined to think we think we understand more about the universe than we actually do.


And I make no claims of understanding the mainstream mindset. Why on earth someone would want to read a story about a world just like ours (which is, incidentally, not real), rather than jump to the stars on the back of a dragon or talk with aliens in a spaceship is beyond me. Where's the adventure in reading about what you can just walk out your door and do?

[Ursa major]

Speaking of physical world....

In spite of the best efforts of Brian Greene (or, perhaps, because of them), I certainly don't have a secure grasp of fundamental physics, e.g. Quantum Mechanics, Entanglement and the activities of Inflaton Fields. The last two in particular seem to me like fantasy, but only because no-one seems to understand how they work ;-) .

[j. d. worthington]

Lith: just for clarification, my use of the terms "rational" and "irrational" were not by their general meaning of "sane" or "not sane", or something similar, but rather "mechanistic" or "animistic" (or perhaps humanocentric) in intent. (In other words, staying with the 19th- to early-20th-century use of the term in this context.) I would hardly argue that early societies were "irrational" in the larger sense of the term; after all, sympathetic magic makes a logical sort of sense, once you understand the basic premises behind it. But these ideas were, so to speak, "proto-sciences", very heavily influenced by mystical ideas concerning conscious entities which were like humans in motivation (in most ways) only magnified to a huge degree, rather than in terms of unconscious natural forces, which is the view supported by the evidence.

I would also agree that "we think we understand more about the universe than we actually do"... though over the past century that cockiness has taken rather a beating, with some of the newer models of the fundamentals of the universe (which themselves sometimes seem to border on the mystical in some ways -- certainly they are as imagination-stirring, anyway....).

The mainstream mindset? Well, if I may venture a guess or two... Because it is: A) familiar; B) does not require an unfettered imagination; C) does not require much work on the reader's part to picture the world, only the characters; D) because a huge number of people simply don't get the ideas of metaphor, fable, parable, etc., all of which can be used quite well by any of the more imaginative forms of literature; E) because fantasy "feels" old-fashioned ("Why should I read fairy-tales at my age?") and science-fiction is "too far-out", either because of a lack of grounding in science enough to understand the concept, or because a lot of the visions of sf are threatening to the beloved status quo, or both. There's also the fact that a huge amount of imaginative literature has been artistically immature, written hastily for low-paying markets, lacks the subtleties and refinements of the more established branches of literature, etc... which prevented it for a long time from being taken seriously by academics (though that has changed considerably -- though not completely -- over the past 50 years). (Obviously, this is not the case with all of it, but given the entirety... a disproportionate amount does suffer from these things.)

Also (and this is especially true with the fantasy and sf genres), historically speaking (as well as, to some degree, now) a lot of the fans have tended to be just that: fanatical, obnoxious, anti-intellectual, opposed to any form of classicism, have clung to the "us-against-the-world" mindset more suited to teens than adults, etc... all of which is largely reaction to the larger, unsympathetic group, but which in turn tended to provoke a suspicion and distrust of any "literature" (it tended to be set off that way) which engendered that sort of often uncritical adoration.

Put all that together, and it became quite an obstacle to overcome for the average reader. It still is, though sf&f are less derided than they once were. Lovecraft addressed something similar to this in the opening paragraphs to his Supernatural Horror in Literature:

The appeal of the spectrally macabre is generally narrow because it demands from the reader a certain degree of imagination and a capacity for detachment from every-day life. Relatively few are free enough from the spell of the daily rojtine to respond to rappings from outside, and tales of ordinary feelings and events, or of common sentimental distortions of such feelings and events, will always take first place in the taste of the majority; rightly, perhaps, since of course these ordinary matters make up the greater part of human experience. But the sensitive are always with us, and sometimes a curious streak of fancy invades an obscure corner of the very hardest head, so that no amount of rationalisation, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimney-corner whisper or the lonely wood. There is here involved a psychological pattern or tradition as real and as deeply grounded in mental experience as any other pattern or tradition of mankind; coeval with the religious feeling and closely related to many aspects of it, and too much a part of our inmost biological heritage to lose keen potency over a very important, though not numerically great, minority of our species.

We may be thankful that such will always be with us, and that such "streaks of fancy" do sometimes invade "an obscure corner of the very hardest head"....

[Anthony G Williams]

Originally Posted by Ursa major

Speaking of physical world....

In spite of the best efforts of Brian Greene (or, perhaps, because of them), I certainly don't have a secure grasp of fundamental physics, e.g. Quantum Mechanics, Entanglement and the activities of Inflaton Fields. The last two in particular seem to me like fantasy, but only because no-one seems to understand how they work ;-) .

The latest issue of New Scientist has an article on "Bolzmann brains"; arising from the cosmological theory that anything can pop into existence, which must therefore include sentient consciousness, and such Bolzmann brains may begin to outnumber human observers in a far future mulltiverse.

This prompted me to send the following email to the editor:

"I think that the cosmologists who are busily counting the number of Bolzmann brains in a far-future multiverse may be overreaching themselves. After all, they have yet to provide the definitive answer to the number of angels which can dance on the head of a pin."

[Ursa major]

I have just read the said article in the New Scientist and don't know whether to laugh or cry. The author sounds like a refugee from a bad 1950s Sci-Fi (not SF) B-movie. I can only assume the author is of the anthropic tendency, otherwise why would he worry about whether we're typical observers (whatever they are) or not.

I'm more worried that the author and his sources may be typical of those working in fundamental physics. If they are, it might explain why the rest of us find the theories so odd. ;-)

[Lith]

While we're clarifying... do you mean mechanistic, as like the deist's "world machine"? And animistic, I assume, has something to do with an energy present everywhere?

I was actually using the word rational as more logical, or based in reason, which much magic was (thus making it a proto-science). Not in the more abstract sane/insane way. And rather than argue the validity of the idea itself, I would have to agree that much of SF has been written from a rationalist worldview. Though it makes you wonder, with the affinity a lot of authors had for re-using elements from mythology in their futures.

re: the mainstream mind- I can see reasons people might shy away from SF (esp. regarding the quality of the writing for many years and the mentality of the hardcore fans), but my mind still rejects any real understanding (or sympathy) of it. It also seems to be closely related to an intellectual non-curiosity that rejects anything requiring more than five minute's thought, which I just don't understand. It feels alien not to be interested in wildly imaginative, crazy stuff. But then my household was never much for "normal".

[HardScienceFan]

well spoken JD,Lith

[j. d. worthington]

Originally Posted by Lith

While we're clarifying... do you mean mechanistic, as like the deist's "world machine"? And animistic, I assume, has something to do with an energy present everywhere?

Not quite, though the Deist's approach was certainly a part of that tradition. What I'm thinking of dates back (in origin, anyway) at least as far as Democritus, though with modification along the way, of course. But, yes, that rationalist view was more what I had in mind. As for animism... not just an energy, but distinct spirits that inhabit natural objects and cause natural phenomena... in other words, something having a rather anthropomorphic nature and motivations being, if not the primum mobile, something very close to it....

re: the mainstream mind- I can see reasons people might shy away from SF (esp. regarding the quality of the writing for many years and the mentality of the hardcore fans), but my mind still rejects any real understanding (or sympathy) of it. It also seems to be closely related to an intellectual non-curiosity that rejects anything requiring more than five minute's thought, which I just don't understand. It feels alien not to be interested in wildly imaginative, crazy stuff. But then my household was never much for "normal".

No... I've not much sympathy (in the sense of agreeing with or understanding emotionally) such a view myself... always tended to argue this point with my family, who simply didn't understand my interest in such things, and kept asserting I'd "outgrow" it.... Well, I'm nearing my half-century and, if anything, I'm even more enamored of it than ever.....

[Connavar]

Originally Posted by Lith

It feels alien not to be interested in wildly imaginative, crazy stuff.

I feel the same.

I have several siblings that read books both hardcore readers like me and casual readers and HP reading only type reader.

Several of them i have made them like alot of different books fantasy,crime etc But recommend to them a SF of any kind and they look at like you like you are wierd. That makes me sad sometimes.

I have to sell SF books to them but show them the most generic fantasy or crime book and they will look at like its the best thing ever......

They watch I,Robot and every stupid hollywood SF and think they are great but to read SF book is like something unnatural to them.

Its weird cause we are not talking about people that dont read books but people that read books of any genre except SF apparently.