One quick and easy way to differentiate between SF and Fantasy.

[Dave]

Originally Posted by the smiling weirwood

I'd rather read a thousand unique novels about the same village in France than the same novel set in a thousand different places and times.

That is very profound and a great concept. True as well, 'bar room' telling stories and 'detective' stories use that format.

MTF - I do agree with you except for the fact that by your definition of 'Fantasy' I think that every work of Fiction could be classified into some small subset of an over-arching 'Fantasy', even Dickens and Hardy, even 'Mills and Boon'. Maybe they are, every book does have some fantastical idea at it's core, otherwise it would be humdrum people with a humdrum existence.

Most people who read Fantasy know what they mean by it, even if they can't put it into words, and it would be a much more limited field. Maybe the problem we have here is that everyone has a different idea of Fantasy, and yet everyone thinks that their idea of Fantasy is the real one. So, this thread is forever going to go around in circles until we can agree what we mean by it.

[ManTimeForgot]

Fantasy is counterpoint to Realism. Tom Clancy novels are not fantasy even if they aren't factual (fiction definitionally is predicated on a non-real premise). They seek to imitate life in such a way as we forget about real life for a moment and see life through the eyes of this other "real" (but still fictional) individual.

Features of "Realism" that you generally won't see in Fantasy (since everything tends towards idealization): Permanent death or meaningless death (dying without a cause, any effect on the world, no saving grace, etc); Non-important characters/things (people or objects that have little or no effect on the world around them); people can lack goals and their motivations are often dirty, short-sighted, and are sometimes confusing (just like real life); and there doesn't have to be a true villain or obstacle ("people are people" there doesn't have to be a "truth.").



Subjective truth is what separates Realism from Fantasy. There isn't some hard and fast rule clearly dilineating one from the other. When something is more epic in scope and tends towards idealized notions and characterizations, then its probably Fantasy. When something is limited in scope and the depictions all tend to mirror reality (or what was reality for historical pieces) with all their faults and confusions, then its probably Realism. There is a spectrum (subjective truth will never have anything more than a probabiliy curve as none of the premises are incremental or definitive) and if more things appear like real life than not, then we say that this is realistic. If more things differ, then we say it is fantasy. I admit that there are some who are want to call all fiction: fantasy and that anything realistic is what it is and that whatever isn't realistic is "escapist," but these are usually the same people who think that playing D&D leads to summoning demons in your living room.



The reason why we "all know it when we see it" is because deep down we all use a variation on that powerful inductive reasoning Dustinzgirl layed out for us earlier. If the rationale for something is magical, then its High Fantasy. If the rationale for something is scientific, then its Sci-Fi. Most people drop the "high" when talking about fantasy because High Fantasy also connotes a setting of sorts (dark age to medieval European or Oriental society with knights or samurai depending on what flavor your world has).

I am actually considering a remodeling of what I proposed earlier due to my current reanalysis. Perhaps magic and science are exhaustive options and mutually exclusive when it comes to sub-genre (I don't think so I played RIFTS and magic and science happily co-existed there and the Gargoyles TV show pulled off a co-existence quite nicely: "Energy is energy; whether created by science or sorcery" Puck as Owen), but a monster movie can be set in either a science fiction, magic fantasy, or a contemporary setting. A super hero fantasy can be contemporary, futuristic, or a hero's epic set in mythic history (gilgamesh anyone?). An alternative history gets similar treatment (though changes for the worse end up yielding "post apocalyptic" sub-genre; something that I didn't mention earlier, but perhaps bears mentioning now). And what about steampunk? Is it magic or science? Seriously? Does anyone think that a giant steampowered robot could actually work by scientific principles alone?


And what about post apoc? Is that Sci-Fi? Does it have to be? Why couldn't post apoc occur in a purely "fantasy" setting? I think the answer to this is because it would have less meaning for us (an apocalypse that happens to someone else's world doesn't quite have as much meaning for us since we aren't as heavily invested into it emotionally).



When assigning labels to what we watch we use those powerful inductive reasoning tools that we have developed over the course of our lives. We look at the spatial/architectural/environmental features of the setting; the "relative" time of the setting; we look at what aspects of the plot are most emphasized; we look at what obstacles are most weighted (is it a villain, the environment, political intrigue, what?); and we look to see how the whole thing differs from our world. It is almost entirely certain that we all have slightly different internal definitions of what features make something fantasy versus whatever else (we all have different tastes in literature and media). But there is almost certainly a grain of shared truth, or we wouldn't be able to even have this conversation at all (we all know it when we see it right?).


I think the more interesting question is what do "genre benders" do for you? If you had a world populated entirely by elves and faeries that then went about living normal, banal lives (like going to work at a corporation, divorce proceedings, a mugging every now and again, shopping for groceries, etc) with only slight differences to account for different body abilities and slight cultural differences, how would we classify it? Would it even be something we would want to read?

MTF

[chrispenycate]

How about James Blish's "Black Easter" (the Devils day) pair? Genuine apocolypse, magic and demonology with rules as rigid as quantum physics?

And in my dragon stories I've taken 80,000 words to get to the point I can get a mixed dragon/human supermarket (and even then I've not managed to get the freezers on one aisle stocked with fillet of insurance adjustor, while the other side has dragon thighs, suitable for roasting if your oven is big enough (and your family hungry enough).

Though a troll might not conveniently fit into traditional corporate structure there have been a number of books investigating integrating supernatural entities into a modern society; try Freisner "Elf Defense" or Turtledove "The case of the toxic spell dump". And aren't a number of recent vampire stories doing the same?

[Ursa major]

For what it's worth, MTF, I think it's pointless trying to divide fiction into Fantasy and Realism, when many people (probably most who've given it any thought) define Fantasy in a much narrower way by omitting SF** and Horror. If you want a name that encompasses all three, why not use the term, Speculative Fiction?




* Wonders whether a zombie supermarket ought to be called Sanesburies. *



** - Scifi: now that's a different matter entirely....

[the smiling weirwood]

I think "genre" barriers are pretty superficial and pointless to begin with, but I've noticed a growing trend towards completely demolishing them.

For example, George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series on the surface looks like a traditional "High Fantasy" epic, but read it and you'll discover something, that place names and dragons aside, could be found in a history book. It possesses all of the features MTF describes for "Realism" and features of "Fantasy." The same goes for much of China Mieville's work, although his is much darker. In a similar vein are Michael Swanwick's latest two books, Iron Dragon's Daughter and The Dragons of Babel.

[Mostlyharmless]

I don't think that it is a quick and easy way to differentiate but science fiction authors tend to explain in some detail how things work. Thus Charles Stross is a science fiction writer and when he writes something like "The Atrocity Archives", he explains the magic! George R.R. Martin is a fantasy writer and when he writes something like "Hunter's Run" it seems to use the rules described in "The Incomplete Enchanter by L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt (unfortunately, I stopped halfway through Hunter's Run because it became hard to suspend disbelief).

[TheEndIsNigh]

Originally Posted by Dave

...

MTF - I do agree with you except for the fact that by your definition of 'Fantasy' I think that every work of Fiction could be classified into some small subset of an over-arching 'Fantasy', even Dickens and Hardy, even 'Mills and Boon'. Maybe they are, every book does have some fantastical idea at it's core, otherwise it would be humdrum people with a humdrum existence.

...

Oh I don't know Dave...

Seems to work for The Archers

(For our friends across the pond who are not fully familiar with The Archers, this is a radio soap that has been transmitted for over fifty years. The most exiting part of which is they occasionally change the signature tune - Though it has been suggested by some - Billy Conneolly- that this should become the new national anthem. A widely approved idea in my experience.)