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

[Neon Genesis]

Why is it some people hate any fiction that's not "realistic" and will write something off entirely just because it might have magic and aliens even if it has a really good plot?  Like my dad hates everything sci-fi and fantasy "because it's not real."  He never says anything about plots or characters he doesn't like that made him not like it.  He just doesn't like it "because it's not real."  The irony is that my dad is a fundamentalist Christian who believes in magic talking snakes but he gets bored watching anything that might have wizards or space aliens in it even though it's not intended to be real.

[MikeHz]

Meh--matter of taste. Many people who love fantasy will not bother with historical fiction, such as Patrick O'Brian, no matter how well written.

I have trouble with a lot of fantasy because I don't believe in magic and so have trouble swallowing the yarn. However, I will sometimes make except for some works. And, I love science fiction, so long as it does not lapse into too much outside the realm of the possible with things like ftl.

[David E.]

It's the story that matters, I have never cared what World it is set in.  Fantasy and Sci-fi can tell a reader just as much about the human condition as any type of fiction or non-fiction.   

[Neon Genesis]

Meh--matter of taste. Many people who love fantasy will not bother with historical fiction, such as Patrick O'Brian, no matter how well written.

But it's not like "reality" fiction is any more realistic than fantasy and sci-fi.  My dad likes to watch "reality" TV which seems to consist of nothing but stereotypes and documentary drama films are notorious for twisting historical facts for the sake of being entertaining.

[Dirty J. Martini]

I love SciFi because I can reasonably suspend disbelief that an alien race or humans in the far future could have technology that is unthinkable today. But when it comes to ghosts/angels/supernatural, the story automatically falls apart because it's almost always a case of "Oh, if they can do that, then the entire plot doesn't matter because in real life they would just do x,y,z and it would be over in 10 seconds." Like reading minds. If one person can read the mind of others, then that person can pretty much figure out anything the other people are going to do before they do it, and it would be pretty easy to beat the other side. Then the writers usually start inventing contrived rules about when the powers do and don't work, and the suspension of disbelief just goes out the window. But if the world is different enough, I can usually deal with it. It's just annoying most of the time, though.

[Neon Genesis]

Of course one could ask why aliens need UFOs to travel to Earth to invade it when they could just all build dimensional travel gates like in Stargate hence the sci-fi authors have to invent contrived rules about why this particular alien race's technology is advanced enough to blow up a planet but not advanced enough to invent interdimensional space travel.

[Dirty J. Martini]

Of course one could ask why aliens need UFOs to travel to Earth to invade it when they could just all build dimensional travel gates like in Stargate hence the sci-fi authors have to invent contrived rules about why this particular alien race's technology is advanced enough to blow up a planet but not advanced enough to invent interdimensional space travel.

I don't follow your analogy. Any given alien race could plausibly have access to star gates or not. Or they could be in a universe where they haven't figured out faster than light travel or it's not possible. Both of those things are similar to real life in that there are technologies we have today that we didn't before, so it's easy to see how some other race of beings could have some technologies and not others. It may be somewhat contrived, but it's at least believable without being completely stupid.

But take something like Heroes or X-Men. OK, mutations can cause people to have new abilities. I can get on board with that. I can even deal with some ridiculous ones like invisibility or flying for the sake of the plot, and I can even deal with the fact that evolution happens much more slowly. It's a visual medium, and they're telling a story. Fine. But when Micah on Heroes can "talk to" and "understand" machines by touching them, it seems ridiculous because beyond the basic detecting the flow of electricity through the machines, there are things like the communications protocols they use, and encodings, encryption, compression, etc. It's just stupid at that point and I lose my ability to suspend my disbelief because it's so obviously just a way to cover over a plot hole.

Is that distinction more clear? And while Heroes and X-Men are sci-fi, I see that sort of plot convenience much more in fantasy than in sci-fi. It could just be that I notice it more there, but that's what I get out of it.

[Citizen Skeptic]

I like fiction to be real in it's substance.

[Neon Genesis]

Is that distinction more clear? And while Heroes and X-Men are sci-fi, I see that sort of plot convenience much more in fantasy than in sci-fi. It could just be that I notice it more there, but that's what I get out of it.

What you're talking about is called a deus ex machina which is something that plagues writing in general and I don't think is inherent to fantasy.   The best fantasy series are those where they have magic systems which would be unrealistic in our world but are consistent in their world and follow a set of rules and restrictions rather than just being a method of doing whatever you want.  An example would be the alchemy system in the anime series Fullmetal Alchemist.  Although the characters in Fullmetal Alchemists use alchemy to do magical things, like transforming ordinary objects into weapons for combat, it follows a system of "equivalent exchange" where you can only transmute something of one matter into another object that's made up of the same matter.  Like the characters can use alchemy to turn a stone wall into a doorway made of the same material but they couldn't transform it into a spaceship or something like that because it wouldn't be made of the same matter.  Even when characters use the Philosopher's Stone to break the laws of alchemy, it always comes with a terrible price, like you have to kill a massive amount of people in order to create just one Philosopher's Stone.  Though Harry Potter is a bit more deus ex machinaist than Fullmetal Alchemist, there are still rules to the magic system in that series.  The characters still have to go to a wizard school and spend rigorous amounts of time practicing their magic and memorizing dozens of spells to use and even in the Harry Potter world, the characters express skepticism to some forms of magic, like psychic powers are generally met with a fair amount of skepticism in the Harry Potter world.

[stonesean]

I have trouble with a lot of fantasy because I don't believe in magic and so have trouble swallowing the yarn.

Do you seriously think that people who like Fantasy believe in magic?

[Moloch]

I have trouble with a lot of fantasy because I don't believe in magic and so have trouble swallowing the yarn.

Do you seriously think that people who like Fantasy believe in magic?

^This

I love fantasy and science fiction. Just because I don't believe in something doesn't mean I'm incapable of fantasizing about it. The oldest written story known to man is a fantasy story as are some of the most respected texts ever written like The Iliad and The Odyssey.

The human experience is an extraordinarily complex thing and sometimes magic and the imagination can invent places and beings that are far better able to tell a story than hum-drum reality is.

[ting-bu-dong]

I have trouble with a lot of fantasy because I don't believe in magic and so have trouble swallowing the yarn. However, I will sometimes make except for some works. And, I love science fiction, so long as it does not lapse into too much outside the realm of the possible with things like ftl.

Skepticism has actually increased my enjoyment of good supernatural fiction and science fiction because of the added attention to internal logic and the premises that go into the worldbuilding. For me it's all about execution and it doesn't matter whether FTL is possible but how internally consistent the portrayal of FTL is and whether the implications are properly thought through.

The only case where I find it grating is where the show actively preaches a believer mindset and actually ridicules critical thinking.

[Dirty J. Martini]

Is that distinction more clear? And while Heroes and X-Men are sci-fi, I see that sort of plot convenience much more in fantasy than in sci-fi. It could just be that I notice it more there, but that's what I get out of it.

What you're talking about is called a deus ex machina which is something that plagues writing in general and I don't think is inherent to fantasy.

While I don't think it's inherent to fantasy, I think it plagues fantasy much more than sci-fi, and that is my complaint.

The best fantasy series are those where they have magic systems which would be unrealistic in our world but are consistent in their world and follow a set of rules and restrictions rather than just being a method of doing whatever you want.

I think we're in agreement on that. But it feels to me like there's a much much wider gulf between "the best fantasy" and "average fantasy" than there is between "the best sci-fi" and "average sci-fi." But maybe that's just how I lean.

For what it's worth, I found the Harry Potter movies (never read the books) to be decent. I agree with your assessment of their world. I think I dislike fantasy that has religious elements in it the most. Talk about "Deus ex Machina"!

[Neon Genesis]

One sci-fi movie I can think of that uses the deus ex machina in a horrible cheesy way was in the original movie version of War of the Worlds where when the aliens are burning down the rest of the city, all the good Christians are safe inside the walls of the church and are saved by the evil aliens from the magic church.   So the world is saved by Jesus and the message of the movie is make sure you hide in a church when aliens invade because only Christians get saved or something.  And for some reason, people think the original War of the Worlds is supreior to the Steven Speilberg remake.

[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.