Re: Splitting the genres

On Fri, 20 Jan 2006 14:46:25 -0800, Jake <jakmal@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

>Christopher Adams wrote:
>>
>> Jake wrote:
>> >
>> > Where are your wizards and witches, your
>> > elves and orcs, your magic ringy thingies? If anything similar to the
>> > latter ever comes about, it will be through science, and predicted first
>> > in sf, not fantasy. Want a unicorn? Look to biology, not a spell
>> > book. Or anything written by Tolkien and his countless imitators.
>>
>> Let me ask you four very simple questions:
>>
>> Yeah? And? So? What?
>
>The "so what" is that while there is some very good fantasy, and I've
>enjoyed some of it, most of it is dreck because it's easy to write about
>stuff that not only doesn't exist, but _can't_ exist. And while there
>is a great deal of awful science fiction, and I've suffered some of it,
>(heck, maybe _most_ of it is bad -- I haven't read most of it), the very
>nature of most science fiction as forward-looking in _this_ world
>compels the self-respecting sf author to try to conform as much as
>possible to real-world natural laws (including human behavior), with
>maybe one exception per story. And the exception is typically
>exceptional only in the sense that it doesn't exist yet, not that it
>can't exist because it unambiguously violates several solid laws of
>nature.
>
>For magic to exist, we'd have to completely overhaul everything we know
>about physics, and biology, and chemistry, and who knows what else. The
>same is not true for, say, an FTL drive (quod vide Alcubierre).
>
You are aware, of course, that fantasy does not automatically equal
magic, right? Or do you split stories about the supernatural into a
different genre (horror, most likely)?

>Writing good fiction that not only conforms to the real world (e.g.,
>Robert Bloch's human killer in PSYCHO) but looks forward into the
>uncertain future (e.g., Mary Shelley's artificial killer in
>FRANKENSTEIN)

And yet, I would put Frankenstein much closer to fantasy than to SF,
myself. The science used in the reanimation is shaky, at best, and
the concern of the story seems to be much more about ethics and
morality than it is about science.

Rebecca
.

Relevant Pages

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