The Yin-yang of science fiction.
- Thread starter GreenDragonKnight
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The Infinite Improbability Drive is based on quantum mechanical manipulation of probabilities but I admit Douglas Adams does take the side effects of tampering with quantum states to ridiculous extremes for comedic effect. In many respects his humour reminds me of The Cyberiad by Stanislaw Lem, which it would also be difficult to shoehorn into the Real or Hard SF category. Both works are also satirical commentries on society in the tradition of Gulliver's Travels, which included many wacky ideas taken seriously by the Royal Society of the time.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cyberiad
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laputa
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Well gee that's probably because that was the first post in which I mentioned Edgar Rice Burroughs.
Exactly. It's easy to point to the extremes and say that LORD OF THE RINGS is fantasy and RINGWORLD is SF, but things can get pretty mushy in the middle. I have on occasion stumbled onto bookstores that tried to maintain separate sections for fantasy and SF; it's usually an unholy mess with no consistency or logic to it whatsoever. Where do you file Andre Norton or Poul Anderson or Gordon Dickson or Anne McCaffrey or Orson Scott Card or Ursula K. Le Guin or whomever? Is THE ISLAND OF DOCTOR MOREAU sf or horror? What about THE INVISIBLE MAN?
Honestly, I love getting chocolate in my peanut butter and vise versa. Blurring and breaking boundaries is often more fun and interesting than keeping everything sorted in neat little boxes.
Says the guy who edits Weird Westerns, fantasy pirate epics, and science fiction-superhero-vampire novels . . .
Here's something else to consider: look at my avatar, Kaileena, the Empress of Time from my all-time favorite video game, Prince of Persia: Warrior Within. It's set in an Arabian Nights-ish setting, but with strong overtones of Gothic horror and, yes, even a hint of science fiction, as parts of it (I'm not going to worry about spoilers for a game first released in 2004) look very modern, not at all like the Middle East of the Middle Ages. Major anachronism, or does it mean it's not really set in the Middle East of the Middle Ages but rather an alternate world that looks like it? I seriously doubt anyone cares, especially once you get really caught up in the game.
Point being, fantasy, sci-fi and horror are all three distinct things but, by the same token, they can be blended, and, if blended well, the results can be terrific.
Point being, fantasy, sci-fi and horror are all three distinct things but, by the same token, they can be blended, and, if blended well, the results can be terrific.
I'd add Harlan Ellison to that list. These are the folks that can fry my brain and break my heart with their amazing stories and exquisite use of language.
Some of Bradbury's favorites of mine that have stuck with me for years are "All Summer in a Day" and "Night Call, Collect", tales set on Venus and Mars, respectively. "Summer" can still make me tear up. And "Something Wicked This Way Comes" remains one of my all-time favorite novels, even though I'm not particularly a horror fan. The enduring friendship of the boys just shines through. I reread it again last year. The movie adaptation was OK. I can forgive much for the chilling scene of Mr. Dark (Jonathan Pryce) tempting the father of one of the boys to reveal their whereabouts, offering to restore his youth, then as he resists, ripping pages from a book to flare and disappear, another year lost for each page that burns. Simply amazing.
Anne McCaffrey's Dragonriders of Pern had a science fiction background, expanded in her later novels. But it could easily be seen as a straightforward fantasy about a society of dragon riders protecting their world from a hideous threat.
I actually avoided the books for years because I thought it was straightforward fantasy.
Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson aren't too hard to figure out, for the most part. Dickson's Dorsai novels are obviously science fiction. Poul Anderson's Time Patrol and future history stuff are obviously science fiction.
I agree that Andre Norton is basically impossible to pin down. How do you categorize novels in which sentient house cats fly spaceships?
But both Anderson and Dickson wrote plenty of fantasy as well. Dickson had his whole "Dragon Knight" series, while Anderson wrote lots of fantasy novels and short stories: "The Merman's Children," "A Midsummer Tempest," "Three Hearts and Three Lions," "The King of Ys," etc.
(Full disclosure: I once edited a collection of Anderson's fantasy stories, The Armies of Elfland.)
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Excession featured an intelligence with technology beyond that of the Culture. The representatives of the Culture were in a position similar to African tribesmen confronted by European colonizers-they were very much over matched. There was little that the Culture could do to cope with the situation.
Yes, I know they wrote fantasy. I have copies of all the ones you mention. I just haven't read them yet. But for classification purposes, it's obvious which of their books are science fiction and which are fantasy.
Fun facts: Both Dickson and Anderson were active in the Society for Creative Anachronism, and both wrote filksongs. Other people wrote some really excellent filk music based on the Dorsai series.
If I was running a bookstore, they would all go under fiction. All books would just be under fiction. Mystery, fantasy, literary, just put it all under fiction.
Why shouldn't Bradbury and Hemingway by on the same shelf? Le Guin, Gaiman and Rushdie?
It's one of those things that bugs me when I go into a Barnes and Noble. They'll put Crichton in their Literary Section but Gaiman in Science Fiction. Why is Andromeda Strain more literary than American Gods? Bleh.
TEAR DOWN THE WALLS!
Why shouldn't Bradbury and Hemingway by on the same shelf? Le Guin, Gaiman and Rushdie?
It's one of those things that bugs me when I go into a Barnes and Noble. They'll put Crichton in their Literary Section but Gaiman in Science Fiction. Why is Andromeda Strain more literary than American Gods? Bleh.
TEAR DOWN THE WALLS!
It's not necessarily a status thing, but done for the convenience of the shopper. Do you really want to wade through shelves of unsorted titles just to browse the science fiction (or mystery or romance) section? Or, more significantly, do you want some promising new SF novel by a brand-new author to get lost amidst a sea of unrelated books?
An SF fan is more likely to stumble onto that amazing new novel (or author) if they're not buried on the same shelf as a western, a couple of historical romances, a gritty crime thriller, some cozy murder mysteries, and multiple copies of Madame Bovary.
Yeah, if you're looking for Neil Gaiman specifically, you just have to look under "G". But if you want to pick out a new SF book, possibly by an author you've never heard of before, you're going to have to scan a lot of spines just to find the SF needles in the haystack.
An SF fan is more likely to stumble onto that amazing new novel (or author) if they're not buried on the same shelf as a western, a couple of historical romances, a gritty crime thriller, some cozy murder mysteries, and multiple copies of Madame Bovary.
Yeah, if you're looking for Neil Gaiman specifically, you just have to look under "G". But if you want to pick out a new SF book, possibly by an author you've never heard of before, you're going to have to scan a lot of spines just to find the SF needles in the haystack.
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Oh, I know it's for the convenience of the shopper. I'm being a bit silly. But, then, sometimes it feel arbitrary and silly who goes where.
Would I really want to wade through shelves of fiction? Yes. Honestly, I LOVE wading through books, I'm more likely to discover something I have never heard of.
And, in my imaginary bookshop, promising novels would be featured prominently. Balloons, fireworks, the author themselves.
An SF fan is more likely to stumble onto that amazing new novel (or author) if they're not buried on the shame shelf as a western, a couple of historical romances, a gritty crime thriller, some cozy murder mysteries, and multiple copies of Madame Bovary.
To play devil's advocate: the SF might discover something they never imagined reading. They might even like Madame Bovary.
True. But, I love all kinds of needles in haystacks.
B&N hasn't had a designated horror section in ages, so the more mainstream horror (KIng, Koontz, Matheson, Rice, V.C. Andrews, etc) tends to get shelved with Fiction, unless it's sold as "dark fantasy," in which case it ends up in the SF/Fantasy section, which is where most of the Lovecraftian stuff ends up these days.
But, yeah, there's not much logic to it. Matheson tends to get shelved in Fiction these days, including books like The Incredible Shrinking Man or I Am Legend, which would probably end up in SF/Fantasy if they were by anybody else.
A battle I lost years ago: When I edited a line of all-new ZORRO novels, I really wanted them shelved in the SF/Fantasy section on the grounds that Zorro was a superhero . . like Batman. But I was overruled on the grounds that the Zorro books were technically historical adventure stories with no fantastic elements in them, so they were banished to general Fiction, where they went unnoticed and pretty much disappeared. I still wish I had fought harder to have them classified as SF/Fantasy, since that's where superhero tie-ins usually go . . . and where the target audience would have had a better chance of finding them.
But, yeah, there's not much logic to it. Matheson tends to get shelved in Fiction these days, including books like The Incredible Shrinking Man or I Am Legend, which would probably end up in SF/Fantasy if they were by anybody else.
A battle I lost years ago: When I edited a line of all-new ZORRO novels, I really wanted them shelved in the SF/Fantasy section on the grounds that Zorro was a superhero . . like Batman. But I was overruled on the grounds that the Zorro books were technically historical adventure stories with no fantastic elements in them, so they were banished to general Fiction, where they went unnoticed and pretty much disappeared. I still wish I had fought harder to have them classified as SF/Fantasy, since that's where superhero tie-ins usually go . . . and where the target audience would have had a better chance of finding them.
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^^^
Since it's set on an alien world with an alien culture which has FTL technology. (and strictly scientifically speaking) no alien world has been discovered with intelligent life - nor has FTL travel been proven as doable/survivable...sorry, it's firmly in the Sci-Fantasy realm. Nothing borderline here.
