[j. d. worthington]

Yes, that's a good part of the problem. As iansales and I have debated in other threads....

If you go back and look at sf published from (abiding by the benchmark he prefers) 1926 on, especially from the 1920s, '30s, '40s, '50s, and well into the '70s at least, a fair amount of what was published in sf magazines or as sf books, is closer to what we think of as fantasy now. Brown Rat mentioned something of that sort concerning Edgar Pangborn's Davy ... that it was more like a "non-magical" fantasy world than what most think of as sf now; this is frequently the case. Nelson Bond's stories were full of it; Kuttner and Moore's stories frequently bled through both; even John Campbell's "Twilight", "Cloak of the Aesir", etc., and Poul Anderson's work often vacillated between the two. (Even in The Broken Sword, Anderson was concerned with giving a scientific rationale to why the creatures of Faerie couldn't touch iron and thus had need of changelings. This in a book where we're dealing with the Norse gods, trolls, elves, and witchcraft and necromancy!) The thing is, that an awful lot of "sf" writers were also the ones writing fantasy through the majority of the 20th century... only after the '70s did it bifurcate so severely. While before that point there were stories that were obviously science fiction, and ones that were obviously fantasy, there was a huge middle ground that accommodated stories that were a blending of the two. And even the "hard" sf frequently borrowed motifs, images, ideas, and archetypes from fantasy (think Gordie Dickson's Dorsai stories, for instance... especially with Necromancer!); while fantasy often used a blending of technological gadgetry and magic -- still does to this day, really. Where would you class Andre Norton's Witch World... at least, the early novels? There we're given what amounts to psi-powers as the basis for most of the magic the witches of Estcarp use... but there are hints of spiritual beings lingering around, as well, such as Volt. Or "The Witches of Karres"? That was picked as one of the best sf stories of all time by the SFWA, yet it definitely straddles the genres. And the examples are well-nigh endless....

Which, for me, is why (aside from the marketing aspect, including writers marketing to agents and publishers) it's rather pointless to try to develop a rigid division of the two, as some of the very best in either field have been in that grey area, whether from the "hard" sf writers or those associated more with "fantasy"... which itself has become defined far too rigidly; it's a broad field, but these days we tend to think "heroic fantasy" or "sword-and-sorcery" when we hear the term, and it encompasses so very, very much more. Despite all the efforts to the contrary, the division between the two is more apparent than real, and their origins are much the same. One tends to take a more rationalist view (though the other frequently takes that tack as well), while the other tends to take a more magical or supernatural view (though both have been known to do that, as well). Both evolved from elements taken from older forms of literature (that is, if one doesn't include mythology and fairy- or folk-tales in with fantasy, which would make it the oldest known form of literary endeavor -- a view with no little justice to it, but rather pointless for classification), but over time they have generally tended to approach things differently... but by no means consistently or exclusively so. If one looks at the history of either field, one will find more common ground that most modern readers are willing to admit.....