shewhomust (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
shewhomust) wrote2005-12-18 05:01 pm
shewhomust) wrote2005-12-18 05:01 pm
Fantasy and the fantastic
I proposed a rule of thumb for distinguishing between fantasy and SF. It's descriptive rather than prescriptive:
![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
durham_rambler points out that SF is not necessarily concerned with the impossible, only with the not yet possible:
Meanwhile, over atmatociquala's comments, adrian_turtle makes a case for reading the Aubrey / Maturin books as science fiction:
What connects these two points in my disordered brain is that speculative fiction is in the eye of the beholder: my definition, for what it's worth, is based on the contract between author an reader (that's assuming a degree of good faith on both parts, obviously: there is no definition which will work for people who dismiss all speculative fiction as giant squids in space). All the early SF about manned space flight didn't get reclassified once manned space flight shifted from a remote possibility to something almost routine, something that doesn't make the headlines.
This seems obvious enough to be barely worth saying. But I read a moderately serious piece about the history of fantasy (it was in a friend's copy of Prism, the newsletter of the British Fantasy Society) which claimed as belonging to the genre everything which was in any way fantastic, from the Greek myths to the travellers' tales of Sir John Mandeville. Anything that a modern reader would recognise as taking place in a world which demonstrably does not match our objective reality (whatever that may be) was classified as fantasy, which thereby gained a long and heroic pedigree.
In a sense, all fiction is fantasy: it takes place in an invented world, because in the real world, these things did not happen. That's true, but not helpful. To talk about fantasy as a genre is to recognise a difference in the response to "realistic" fiction, set in what the reader agrees to accept as the "real" world, and fantasy. In times when the "real" world was less thoroughly mapped and documented than it is now, it was possible to believe in Prester John and his Christian kingdom where the rivers of Paradise run. Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae is a history, before that word split from story: it includes the story of King Arthur (and the Prophecies of Merlin) without renouncing its claim to be taken literally, to be believed.
This isn't to say that fantasy is a modern invention. I've talked recently about the marginalia of the Macclesfield Psalter, the anthropomorphic animals and the grotesques which decorate its pages. There is a distinct difference in flavour between Geoffrey of Monmouth (and his contemporary translators) and the romances which took the figure of Arthur and the setting of his court, and hung upon them adventures which were presented as pure fiction. We can't be certain of the response of every medieval "reader" - but then, there are modern readers who believe what they read in the Sun
SF tells you that in certain circumstances, the laws of nature could operate in certain way, and invites you to set aside your disbelief; fantasy concedes that the laws of nature do not operate in a certain way, and invites you to imagine how it might be if they did:
durham_rambler points out that SF is not necessarily concerned with the impossible, only with the not yet possible:Given that scientific knowledge is always growing, there are always going to be writers who write speculative fiction that postulate new discoveries that are consistent with the laws of nature as we know them.
Meanwhile, over at
matociquala's comments, adrian_turtle makes a case for reading the Aubrey / Maturin books as science fiction:It's science fiction where the science is navigation, natural philosophy, and political science of 200 years ago.
What connects these two points in my disordered brain is that speculative fiction is in the eye of the beholder: my definition, for what it's worth, is based on the contract between author an reader (that's assuming a degree of good faith on both parts, obviously: there is no definition which will work for people who dismiss all speculative fiction as giant squids in space). All the early SF about manned space flight didn't get reclassified once manned space flight shifted from a remote possibility to something almost routine, something that doesn't make the headlines.
This seems obvious enough to be barely worth saying. But I read a moderately serious piece about the history of fantasy (it was in a friend's copy of Prism, the newsletter of the British Fantasy Society) which claimed as belonging to the genre everything which was in any way fantastic, from the Greek myths to the travellers' tales of Sir John Mandeville. Anything that a modern reader would recognise as taking place in a world which demonstrably does not match our objective reality (whatever that may be) was classified as fantasy, which thereby gained a long and heroic pedigree.
In a sense, all fiction is fantasy: it takes place in an invented world, because in the real world, these things did not happen. That's true, but not helpful. To talk about fantasy as a genre is to recognise a difference in the response to "realistic" fiction, set in what the reader agrees to accept as the "real" world, and fantasy. In times when the "real" world was less thoroughly mapped and documented than it is now, it was possible to believe in Prester John and his Christian kingdom where the rivers of Paradise run. Geoffrey of Monmouth's Historia Regum Britanniae is a history, before that word split from story: it includes the story of King Arthur (and the Prophecies of Merlin) without renouncing its claim to be taken literally, to be believed.
This isn't to say that fantasy is a modern invention. I've talked recently about the marginalia of the Macclesfield Psalter, the anthropomorphic animals and the grotesques which decorate its pages. There is a distinct difference in flavour between Geoffrey of Monmouth (and his contemporary translators) and the romances which took the figure of Arthur and the setting of his court, and hung upon them adventures which were presented as pure fiction. We can't be certain of the response of every medieval "reader" - but then, there are modern readers who believe what they read in the Sun