I read a lot of both SF and fantasy. Most communities I’ve dealt with have commingled the genres, in part because the line between them can be blurry. Is this community supposed to be strictly SF, or are discussions of fantasy also okay?
I was going to post my mini review of Days of Shattered Faith, by Adrian Tchaikovsky, but it’s clearly fantasy (though Tchaikovsky writes quite a lot of SF), so I thought I should ask.
Edit: it seems like I’ve had pretty good response to the question, and the vast majority would prefer to be more inclusive rather than draw a line. I’ll go ahead and continue posting both, though note that so far a moderator hasn’t weighed I in, and that could change things.
Are the Edgar Rice Burroughs Martian Tales books science fiction, or fantasy?
Its written as a classic sword & sorcery fantasy story. But it takes place on Mars, and features aliens and flying machines. If Lord of the Rings had aliens and airplanes, but everything else more or less stayed the same, is it still high fantasy, or is it now science fiction?
Personally, I call them Science Fantasy, as they blend Fantasy and Science Fiction, but also don’t belong in only one or the other. Fantasy Fiction wouldn’t make sense since fantasy is always fiction already. Science Fiction often doesn’t focus on science, but it usually features elements that are scientifically plausible, or have a science-back explanation as opposed to something purely fantasy like magic. So combining the two makes sense to me. I don’t see why it cant be here.
I still maintain that it’s a spectrum, with some things certainly belonging at one end or the other, but with many things in between.
I will say, though, when I’m reading something categorized as SF, but I find some element of outright magic, it bugs me. As soon as there’s magic, or an element that doesn’t seem to have any sort of scientific basis at all, it moves out of SF into that middle ground for me. And it might be just personal preference, but the reverse isn’t the same for me. I feel like a story can be fantasy and still have elements with a scientific basis. Again, I’m very willing to admit that that’s a personal bias.
yes please. Only SF.
Not the moderator, but post away! I see no advantage to gatekeeping. It would be different if this community had too many posts a day to keep up and the SF was flooded under the fantasy. As is, this is not the case and I welcome any post roughly in the genre
That’s how I personally feel about it as well, but on one of my DCC reviews there was a small argument about whether it’s SF or not, and it made me wonder what people generally felt.
There’s always going to be people who gatekeep sci-fi. “That story is fantasy”, “the science is unrealistic,” “I only read hard sci-fi…”
I take a more liberal stance on the matter: stories can have many genres, and if one of them is sci-fi then it’s good enough. DCC to me is fantasy/dark comedy in a sci-fi setting, so it’s perfectly cromulent for this community.
If things get too busy in the future I may advocate for splitting by subgenre for example, but in the end as long as there is a reliable enough way to filter posts I see no point in excluding contributions made in good faith.
My view is almost exactly like yours, except I tend to feel if there’s even a touch of outright magic then it’s fantasy (e.g., the typical example of Star Wars).
Okay, I’ll continue posting my mini reviews until the general attitude of the community shifts. Thank you.
Sorting by new, the first page in this community goes back 2 months. I don’t think we need to worry about narrowing the topic anytime soon.
I’d want to revisit the question around the time the first page of posts in the community only takes you back to yesterday.
Agreed
SF&F is a spectrum, and it’s pretty hard to draw a defining clear cut line. For example I’d rate star wars as space fantasy, but there’s plenty of people who consider it sci fi. Given the sheer lack of content on the fediverse, I think you should post whatever you can :)
Thank you, I’m with you.
I think the line between fantasy and SF is blurry enough that there’s no value in trying to find it.
I tend to agree - anytime you draw a crisp line, there’s going to be an example just on one side or the other that prime will argue about. On the other hand, there are things that no one will disagree about. No one of going to because whether The Lord of the Rings is SF or fantasy. The book I was considering posting a review of has magic and gods in it, though there’s a major faction in the series that’s trying to end all that and replace it with technology.
A lot of sci-fi has magic and gods. The gods are frequently not omniscient omnipotent bodiless entities, but they’re still gods, and the magic is often given a reason it exists, but it’s still magic.
Basically everyone agrees that the Dune series is sci-fi, but it’s got effectively magic, and effectively gods (with them even using those terms in the story IIRC —they at least use “god”), and they’re usually fighting with swords. It’s, by all reasonable arguments, fantasy. They aren’t mutually exclusive.
Exactly. This is not a problem worth solving.
In my opinion, sci fi and science fantasy are fair game, but personality I would abstain from posting fantasy alone, without sci fi elements.
I’m not a moderator, nor worried about what other people might post. If someone decides to post all their GoT/LotR/whatever content here I’ll downvote accordingly, but if the consensus is that it’s fair game, I’ll just block it.
Yeah this here. Obviously pure fantasy should be taken elsewhere.
(Even though I love some of it, and otoh some SciFi isn’t worth the electricity it took to put on your screen)
Okay thank you. You’re one of the only ones so far who would prefer we really do keep it to SF, but I totally understand that position.
My preferences are just that though, mine. Doesn’t make it the right answer. I appreciate you asking the community how they’ll feel about it, but don’t put too much stock in what that one crotchety old guy (me) thinks. It’s a community for everyone!
Oh, I get it. My thought was basically to see what the majority though, though if most people were ambivalent and a few people were strongly in one direction, I might have gone that way.
I don’t think so… I mean it’s really hard to draw to line. Like is Book of the New Sun sci-fi, or fantasy? One might think fantasy by looking at the cover or just reading the synopsis, but it really isn’t a fantasy book.
Right, there are lots of examples that have the trappings of one genre but are the other at heart. I feel that way about the Shadow of the Leviathan series. It seems like people are taking magic potions to make genetic changes, but they’ve found these sea creatures that have properties that can be distilled to make genetic changes, and it’s handled in a way that feels more like chemistry than magic.
Cool! You know, if you get down to it; any fantasy book is sci-fi if you try to explain how the magic works. Mostly I think it would be attempting to satisfy the First Law of Thermodynamics, like it does in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood.
Man Book of the New Sun was one of the best reads ever. That shit was like borderline a different language at some points. I’ve never had to reread a book in the same way to understand what was being said sometimes. Absolute masterpiece.
It’s like a fantasy with a sci-fi backdrop it’s crazy.
In my opinion, they’re effectively the same genres. There’s some differences, but they’re usually aesthetic, not functional. Fantasy is usually swords and stuff, and sci-fi is usually spaceships, but what about Dune?
I think anyone arguing for a hard separation is having the same argument as the “is a hotdog a sandwich” argument. It’s fine to discuss for fun, but there’s nothing to be gained from it.
Basically, my opinion is to go for it. As long as there isn’t an attempt to turn the community into a Lord of the Rings community, I think you’re fine posting either, as long as there’s a good faith attempt at relating it to the community.
I’m amazed at how reasonable this whole discussion has been; bravo everyone. To stretch things a little, I’ll point out that Days of Shattered Faith has some political-science fiction!
(mostly /s; I enjoyed that whole series and I’ll be interested in your review :)
I’m really enjoying it. Tchaikovsky has become my favorite living/writing author.
I’m three books in to the Children of Time series, my first exposure to his work, and I’m absolutely loving it. Planning to devour his entire body of work next lol.
That series is one of my very favorites of all time, and I’ve read a crap ton of SF including the early classics. And the whole series is good. Lots of very inventive stuff. One of them is a little more confusing than the others, but well worth pushing through. I read the last one recently (released this year, I believe).
I suspect that’s the one I’m reading now, I’m about halfway through and still not sure what’s going on lol. Still an interesting read though.
It’s one of those you just have to go with and trust that it will eventually make sense.
Personally I think
- there is a difference between scifi and fantasy
- the term scifi often sucks, it should be something like future fiction? Most scifi I like isn’t really about the science
And while the term speculative fiction is valid, it’s an umbrella term, not an actual genre. Also I think most fiction is, at its heart, an answer to a “what if” question, so maybe the term is too broad.
Your example is tricky.
There’s one novel of Iain M Banks’ Culure series that is like that. Without context you’d think it’s typical fantasy, all medieval-like, except for one or two scenes that are either weird magic or a knife missile/drone. Of course we know it’s the latter.
So as long as it has even 1% of “scifi”, even by association, I’d say it’s OK.
All that said I much prefer to read good books, no matter the genre.
edit: !fantasy@lemmy.ml or make a new one, it’s easy!
Yeah, I just replied to someone else about the spectrum between SF and fantasy. It’s really hard to draw a hard line between them. I wouldn’t go for “future fiction,” because there’s good SF (even hard SF) that occurs in present or the past.
Sci-fi is a big umbrella that includes 1984 and Star Wars. But what about the non-Jedi parts of Star Wars that do deal with technology, ethics, politics, religion, and the human condition? Banning “future fantasy” would mean getting rid of things like Andor, which does have a lot to say and is much closer to 1984 than A New Hope.
Anything relating to time is a bad term I think. Much of it’s in an alternate universe with different timelines. For example, Star Wars is in the past, if you listen to them.
I think a better term might be “technology fantasy” and “magic fantasy,” but they aren’t mutually exclusive. To use Star Wars as an example again, it has magic and technology. There shouldn’t be an attempt to separate them as exclusive to each other because they’re essentially the same things just with different settings.
For example, Star Wars is in the past, if you listen to them.
Not sure how you mean that, but in any case it requires humanity to become spacefaring beyond the solar system first, so in the future. And there’s the “Sci” again. Or “Tech”.
the first words on screen are “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away”
so it’s definitely set in the distant past.
people in the Star Wars galaxy don’t know which planet humans are native to, so while they may be native to that galaxy, there’s equally little evidence against a time-travel event, and humans there are Earth humans from our future who went tens of thousands of years back in time as well as moving to a far away galaxy. This could also help explain why humans there use Latin and Greek letters so much.
Speculative fiction may be the term you’re looking for
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”
So, go nuts!
I’d be happy for 5x the posts on either topic here, so go for it!
I may only be speaking for myself, but I think fans of one tend to also be fans of the other. I generally gravitate to sci-fi, but have still read plenty of fantasy, and not many other genres of fiction. Go for it.
That describes me as well.
It’s speculative fiction 😆
