Distinction between s.f. and fantasy?

[Damelon]

off topic is an understatement and how come everytime i bring up structure and hero journey everybody patently IGNORES me???

*stomps off in a huff*

Luci, did you say something?

[Menolly]

High L-rd!! That's downright mean...

There, there, Luci. He didn't mean it...

:::giving Damelon the practiced "pissed off mother" look:::

[Damelon]

Sorry, mom.

Couldn't resist.

[Menolly]

Don't aplogize to me young man!! You know to whom the apology should go!!!

[lucimay]

off topic is an understatement and how come everytime i bring up structure and hero journey everybody patently IGNORES me???

*stomps off in a huff*

Luci, did you say something?

(and thanks for stickin up for me menolly!! )

yeah and i'll reiterate...

STRUCTURE is what sci-fi and fantasy have in common.
you can analyze it till the cows come home but the distinction
between most modernist sci-fi stories and fantasy stories (generalizing here for sake of discussion) is setting and props.
(i am not going near more post-modern works like jonathan lethem's As She Climbed Across the Table or Gun, With Occasional Music)

[aliantha]

<ali thanks the gods that the conversation has been turned, literally, from the brink of chaos >

I'll see you your structure, Luci, and raise taraswizard to boot.

Sci-fi/fantasy aren't alone in using the "hero's journey" structure; I think a lot of coming-of-age novels have the same setup. (For some reason, the kids' book "Shiloh" by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor springs to mind as an example. Granted, it's not exactly a "Sword in the Stone" setup, but certainly the main character finds himself in a situation where he has to reach beyond his age and abilities in order to save the dog.) I agree that speculative fiction , particularly epic fantasy, does use the "hero's journey" a lot -- but I can also think of other structures (man v. machine a la "2001"; same events, different POVs a la "Hyperion"; just to name two). I actually get kinda tired of reading "hero's journey" fantasy after awhile, unless it's *good* fantasy -- which is to say that, as SRD has observed, the author needs to be dealing with the larger questions of life, and not just wowing us with the surface "gee whiz" magic.

I think some of the folks in this discussion have been getting hung up on the window dressing -- robots-and-ray-guns v. swords-and-enchantments -- and missing the main thrust of SRD's point, which is that sci-fi questions the effects of man's actions on the civilization, while fantasy questions the effects of man's actions on and within himself.

Now then:

A final point to say all fiction is fantasy, since it's by definition fictional is really a reductio ad absurdum and adds little meaning to the dialogue. Furthermore, there is really little fantastical about the mimetic texts of Robert B. Parker, Sarah Paretsky, John Cheevers, or Jack Kerouac.

Kerouac wrote fiction? I thought he wrote autobiography that he passed off as fiction. Same (to a degree) with Cheever and John Updike and a number of other modern literary greats. If all you do is change the names, it hardly qualifies as fiction in my book.

And speaking of reductio ad absurda, your library's penchant for categorizing books with little stickers proves nothing. The library in my old town splits off sci-fi but shelves fantasy with the rest of the fiction. The library in my new town shelves all fiction together (I discovered this when I went to our new library for the first time on Saturday). I consider this an enlightened stance. Why, for instance, should Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books of magical realism be shelved with general fiction when SRD is stuck in "fantasy"? It's the same bloody thing with a different accent.

[lucimay]

Why, for instance, should Gabriel Garcia Marquez's books of magical realism be shelved with general fiction when SRD is stuck in "fantasy"? It's the same bloody thing with a different accent.



well...few of marquez's stories could be counted as "modernist fantasy".
he's so post modern it aint even funny!!! see that's why i explicitly said i was staying away from post modern in this discussion. heh.

(read Eyes of a Blue Dog in the archives of my blogspot for a taste of Marquez if you've never read him)

[I'm Murrin]

Well, that's the shape of contemporary SF. There are plenty of big names in the fantasy and scifi genre these days who have more in common with Marquez than with much of the 'traditional' SF. The hero journey is still very much alive--and threaded through all genres of literature, rather than just SF--but it is only one part of a much larger whole.
I do agree, however, on the point of structure in general. Genre is a set of tropes used to tell the story, but structure defines the story being told. As I said back on page one, the story's structure can be more defining of a book than its genre.

[lucimay]

thank you Murrin!!! the structuralists are NOT dead!!


( ya'll can go talk about conciousness and user created reality in the Close!! )

[I'm Murrin]

Allow me to steal a couple of the quotes Hal used in the post I linked earlier:

"Science Fiction is what we point to when we say 'science fiction'."
-- Damon Knight

"If this appears that I am arguing for a deconstruction of our ideas of generic norms, returning us to a primal chaos of fictive forms in which all fictive forms are equally privileged; if this appears that I am arguing for the dismantling of the concept itself, ‘science fiction,’ as more a barrier than an aid to reading; if this seems as if I am saying that all fiction worth examining is, one way or another, science fiction; it is because that is what I am doing."
-- Frank McConnell

[taraswizard]

Aliantha wrote

Kerouac wrote fiction? I thought he wrote autobiography that he passed off as fiction.

In defense of Jack. Dean Moriarty is not Neal Cassidy, and Japhy Rydyer is not Gary Snyder, the poet and translator. Both characters have certain and maybe numerous characteristics and idiosyncrasies that are based on the RL people named. Additionally, On the Road is not a verbatim travelogue, nor is it a creative non-fictional account, of cross country road trips taken by Jack and Neal, nor is Dharma Bums snapshot of activities Jack and Gary went about doing in the 1950s.

Basing fictional characters in some part on people authors know is something many Spec Fic writers do to. Example, Heinlein based the main character of Double Star very clearly on a TV character who used to host his own TV show. Addtionally, Robert based many of his characters in space based governments on figures he knew in the US government in the 1950s.

Now for an ON TOPIC point. Lastly, previously in this discussion the point has been raised regarding some authors who mix fantasy and science fiction together. Well, to quote Fred Pohl

that's been done since the begining of SF writing

.

Lucimay keep giving us the structuralist POVs and content I love reading that stuff.

Now to somewhat take some issue with the structuralist POV. Delany for example, would discuss how the labeling of texts and narratives provides to readers the proper protocols of reading that one needs in order to actually give meaning to a text (Delany can give many examples, of sentences and phrases that mean one thing in mimetic fiction and mean something else in speculative fiction) And I know that Frye would explain that structure of texts and narratives would provide the needed protocol of reading.

[lucimay]

OMG!! someone mentioned FRYE!!!

[Damelon]

This thread interested me a few days ago, but it had kind of strayed. Now that by razzing Luci, I helped push the thread back on the rails, let me give my two cents.

Unlike every other form of storytelling . . . fantasy is not *about* material reality, or even material plausibility. It does not describe or comment upon rational or tangible observations of the external world; the world of science and technology. Nor does it describe or comment upon verifiable observations of the human condition, in general or in particular, through research into the past or extrapolation into the future. Fantasy is *about* metaphysical reality, the intersection of the spiritual with the psychological. It describes and comments upon non-rational and (ideally) universal observations of the internal world; the world of the unverifiable; the world of imagination and nightmare, of hope and despair and faith; the world of magic.

All in all, I agree with this. Let me opine that Fantasy today, for the most part, is in a tight orbit of the immense influence of Tolkien. The medieval setting, the journey of discovery, the use of the unexplained, or barely explained, to influence events. Almost every book of Fantasy today owes to him.

It wasn't always so. To me an example of early Fantasy is Lewis Carroll's Alice's Adventures in Wonderland.

Nevertheless the distinctions are important. In sf, the differences between our reality and the secondary creation are explained materially (rationally): x, y, or z has happened in science/technology, and therefore reality is changed. In fantasy, the differences are explained magically (arationally): x, y, or z powers (which can be imagined, but which defy any material explanation) exist, and therefore reality is changed. As I see it, such distinctions have profound implications. For example, fantasy is--sort of by definition--a journey into the non-rational possibilities of the human mind (a journey inward): sf is a journey into the rational possibilities of consensus reality (a journey outward).

I agree with SRD here. Science Fiction operates with rational explanations for events. Sure there are examples of hybrids in SF where some aspect of Fantasy is involved, but in the main it's more logical. Processes are familiar or are explained as an advance of science. That's not to say that SF can't suspend belief; I'm thinking here of ships jetting about the galaxy without thought of the speed of light. Historically, this genre owes much to Verne and H.G. Wells.

[lucimay]

Alice in Wonderland is a hero journey.

[Damelon]

Alice in Wonderland is a hero journey.

That may be so, but it's not medieval, and she had no hidden talent that I recall.

[Zarathustra]

Holy crap, fantastic posts people! I'm going to go back and read more carefully, but I just wanted to say thanks for the wonderful contributions here. Back on topic with a vengeance! (Though, if Menolly is arguing that we never left the topic, I'd agree.)

[Zarathustra]

Lucimay, Murrin, and Menolly: the Hero’s Journey can be either inner, outer, or both. So it could apply equally to s.f. or fantasy, if you want to use SRD’s distinction of inner and outer journey. And this mythic archetype does indeed run through other genres, so it does exert a unifying effect across these distinctions. However, I agree that there is more than one archetype. There are more than Hero Journeys being told. But I don’t necessarily think the varieties of archetypes fall along genre lines.

Murrin: those quotes were great.

Damelon: I, too, liked Donaldson’s distinctions. I think they work well as descriptions of the highest-level structures of his narrative goals. He claims not to be a polemicist, but he can’t deny his philosophical intentions. In fact, they are so ingrained in his work, that he describes them as universal genre differences.

But I think this is merely a justification. I don’t think his particular distinctions are actually universal genre distinctions, but rather his own personal philosophical goals. In my not-so-humble opinion, he doesn’t want to recognize them as goals, so that he won’t be labeled a “polemicist” himself; so he generalizes and convinces himself that his goals are inevitable consequences of his chosen genre—which is determined “purely” by the story he wants to tell.

For instance, you say: I agree with SRD here. Science Fiction operates with rational explanations for events.

But what about cyberpunk? Is this really an exploration of rational explanations? What about Matrix? Surely there is an element of the mystical, the irrational. Aside from specific examples, there is absolutely nothing which precludes s.f. from expressing an existential, nihilistic, irrational worldview.

[lucimay]

Lucimay, Murrin, and Menolly: the Hero’s Journey can be either inner, outer, or both. So it could apply equally to s.f. or fantasy...

yep. that was my point.

and...i once again remind you that i said i wasn't going near the more post modern works and that i think is what you're all approaching here in the discussion.
once you start messing with the structure its no longer modernist. rules are set aside. and that can include any way you mess with the structure, i.e. character, pov, time/place setting, etc.

does sci-fi have a different set of rules than fantasy?
if so what are they? (i'm really asking because i read so
much of both that i'm not sure i can distinguish them anymore)

or...are you really all discussing the difference between magic and technology? cause that's a different discussion iddent it?

ok. i've blathered enough.

[Damelon]

Malik, While I'm not familiar with cyberpunk, I've watched the first Matrix movie. My opinion is that Matrix is fantasy in a future setting, an a attempt to be a quasi-religious, philosophical work, dealing with the old uneasiness over the man/machine relationship, rather than science fiction. It's not plausible as a state of existence, which is what pure SF is.

In any case, I allowed for some hybrids, which in SF is usually an attempt to deal with the creation's philosophy or religion. I'm thinking of the Force in Star Wars as an example. A somewhat more plausible state of existence than Matrix, but Star Wars though popularly thought of as SF, really aims at being other things than an SF story.

[Avatar]

Great posts folks. I agree with Murrin and Aliantha that the "props" are what places any given story in its genre.

The structure, whether its a hero journey or anything else doesn't define the genre.

--A