SCIFI's best picture...when?

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Nope, science fiction isn't fantasy.

Of course it is - just like horror and alternate history. Just like superhero comics. Just like animated cartoons about talking toys.

Fantasy is fiction unconstrained by reality.

You think it's coincidence that fans of all these things tend to congregate together?

 

[Trent Roman]

Well, that's wonderful. Dennis has solved the entanglement of speculative genres. Do be sure to call up the people who have been working on this for the past few decades to let them know not to waste their time anymore. I wonder what Darko Suvin is doing these days?

Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, that's wonderful. Dennis has solved the entanglement of speculative genres.

The "speculative genres" are no more troublesome an entanglement than the Gordian knot. The Alexandrian solution is to be preferred.

Do be sure to call up the people who have been working on this for the past few decades to let them know not to waste their time anymore.

Someone really, really should - actually, a number of people have over the decades; the analysts are just so engaged in counting those angels on pinheads that they don't look up or listen:

"I have run with [science fiction writers] some, and they are generous and amusing souls, but I must now make a true statement that will put them through the roof: They are joiners. They are a lodge. If they didn't enjoy having a gang of their own so much, there would be no such category as science-fiction. They love to stay up all night, arguing the question, 'What is science-fiction?' One might as usefully inquire, 'What are the Elks? And what is the Order of the Eastern Star?'" - Kurt Vonnegut

Oh, BTW - "the past few decades?" Please, these guys have been going on about genre distinctions since the 1920s and are as unlikely to come to any useful conclusions as some teenager surfing Twistys is to get his keyboard with child.

 

[Ensign_Redshirt]

Nope, science fiction isn't fantasy.

Of course it is - just like horror and alternate history. Just like superhero comics. Just like animated cartoons about talking toys.

Ass pull definitions aside, the umbrella term for these genres is still speculative fiction and not fantasy.