Topic: Fantasy and Sci-fi versus "Realistic" Fiction

[David E.]

In all fairness to LOTR the Eagles did not do anything but save the Happy Ending. 

[Guillermo]

In fantasy, no matter how bad any situation gets the author can always whip up a bit of magic (such as a giant eagle in LOTR) to clear things up.

You can do that in Sci-fi too, It's called Dues-Ex Machina. And it is usually a bad trope to use in speculative writing. It is better to have a Chekhov's Gun ready for this.

[MikeHz]

In fantasy, no matter how bad any situation gets the author can always whip up a bit of magic (such as a giant eagle in LOTR) to clear things up.

You can do that in Sci-fi too, It's called Dues-Ex Machina. And it is usually a bad trope to use in speculative writing. It is better to have a Chekhov's Gun ready for this.

Sure, but in science fiction--or at least well written science fiction--the author limits actions to things within the realm of actual or conjectured science. The author keeps at least one foot in reality, whereas in fantasy anything goes.

I'm not saying that fantasy can't be written great. It can, and I have enjoyed reading it. But, I happen to prefer stories more grounded in reality. Personal choice.

[Vincegamer]

Good fantasy AND good science fiction do exactly the same thing: Take the world we know and say "what if this one thing was different?"

(and the eagles were more a chekhov's gun because they had been mentioned previously, had saved Gandalf, and in the Hobbit were shown to hate orcs as much as anyone yet did not participate in the white tower fights so readers should have been thinking all along "where are the eagles?")

[ting-bu-dong]

Sure, but in science fiction--or at least well written science fiction--the author limits actions to things within the realm of actual or conjectured science. The author keeps at least one foot in reality, whereas in fantasy anything goes.

I disagree. I can write science fiction where in the beginning I establish that in my world there is FTL travel, energy weapons and that mortality has been cured. I don't have to explain how this was done, only that it was, and it would still be science fiction because my story hinges on fictional technologies.

Technology still has to behave like it was derived from science, though. Unlike magic, it has to be rational, replicable and predictable, and using it is only a matter of having enough knowledge. That's the difference between science fiction and supernatural fiction. Of course, plenty authors don't understand this and that's where you get worlds in which supertech behaves likes magic and worlds in which magic is as controllable and as demystified as electricity. The end result is always cheapened by this category error.

[Johnny Slick]

Yeah, this idea that fantasy can invoke the deus ex machina while SF can't is just, well, garbage. I'm a bit more into SF than fantasy (and, admittedly, into other genres a lot more than either) but that has more to do with an overall level of general quality than anything like this.

I do have to disagree that fantasy and SF share the "what would the world be like if X was different" thing. By and large - and yes, there are many exceptions, the super-awesome Fullmetal Alchemist series being one of them - SF does often adhere to this but fantasy is something totally different. We can pretty well trace the fantasy genre to Tolkien and the King Arthur tales and from there to what the world looked like through the eyes of a medieval person. That world is far, far different than the world we know today. It's not simply "one thing" as in "what if there really was magic"; at its root, it's "what if there really was magic" and "what if all those made-up animals in the medieval bestiaries were real" and "what if the quests of Arthurian legend were real things and not fanciful stories to keep knights in line" and so on. Of course, we've also had several generations of authors expanding on these themes and intermixing them with other genres but that's the root, which is way different from the SF, which I think *is* the "what if X" thing as defined by H.G. Wells' "The Time Machine" and so on.

I love medieval history but my biggest issue with fantasy in general is that there is a *lot* of crap out there. The existence of RPGs and publishing houses by those RPGs are nice in the sense that they get inexperienced authors to start their careers, but the downside is that the vast majority of the books these places produce - pretty well all of them I'd say - are high in milieu but very, very low in character and quite simple in plotting as well. That just doesn't interest me. If I want to read about a cool location I'll buy a sourcebook or read the Silmarillion. SF doesn't have the same kind of support and although there is an awful lot of "Star Wars" type series out there, there are also a lot of just plain good authors in the genre. I mean, fantasy has Terry Brooks and G.R.R. Martin and Robert Jordan I guess, but on an aesthetic level I just prefer Asimov and Philip K. Dick and William Gibson.

[Neon Genesis]

I think part of that is because most fantasy has traditionally been geared towards children and preteens and you haven't seen a whole lot of adult fantasy whereas sci-fi seems to be written more for older readers and science geeks.  But I think as series like Game of Thrones becomes more popular, we'll see mature fantasy becoming more common and I think fantasy will be more free to break the traditional cliches if it can break out from its limited young adult audience. 

[Guillermo]

I treat them both as the same genre: Speculative writing. But the distinction is there. I like both equally, i don't particularly prefer one over the other.

[Neon Genesis]

I find that I read far more fantasy novels than I read sci-fi novels but I watch sci-fi TV series and movies more often than I do fantasy TV and movies.

[Soldier of FORTRAN]

A work of art has to signal something from the real world to achieve any measure of salience, and the more realistic or logical fantasy or sci-fi is, the tighter its connection to the real, the more salient is can be.

If it's all wacked out for artistic reasons that can work to, it doesn't have to signal physical objects or places but it can also focus on situations, feelings, or pretty much anything you can think of.  I like artistic movies, too, but those are hard to do, and generally, the best effect is achieved from works that are either 'hard sci-fi' or just internally coherent fantasy a la Lord of the Rings.

[amysrevenge]

My life is plenty realistic for me.  I make no such demands of entertainment.

[Vincegamer]

The one thing that will ruin any fantasy writing for me is the "Technology doesn't work here" trope.
If guns don't work, then fire won't work either because a gun is nothing more than fire applied in a specific way.  So you can't have some rule that makes nothing beyond medieval tech work.

(exception being Terry Pratchett, where even fire is magic)

[ting-bu-dong]

The one thing that will ruin any fantasy writing for me is the "Technology doesn't work here" trope.
If guns don't work, then fire won't work either because a gun is nothing more than fire applied in a specific way.  So you can't have some rule that makes nothing beyond medieval tech work.

(exception being Terry Pratchett, where even fire is magic)

What are some examples of that? All the fantasy I know just have a stagnant technology level because there is no science as an institution and because the genre doesn't emphasise progress and romanticises the past. But technology actually not working beyond a certain point is something I haven't seen.

[Ah.hell]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Emberverse_seriesIts set in the real world only in 1999 any sort of high energy technology stops working. 

[ting-bu-dong]

That reads like science fiction, not fantasy.