It's not a fact, it's an opinion. JRR Tolkien is the father of modern high fantasy. Feel free to argue...but it's really not the point I was trying to make.
Was that an intentional reference to Sturgeon's law? (Technically, "Sturgeon's revelation")? It's a fine, fine line...
Thoughts possibly cluttered by sleep deprivation: 1) Urban Fantasy is in fact popular today: Dresden Files, Supernatural, Percy Jackson, Sleepy Hollow (would I be dating myself to say Buffy the Vampire Slayer?). It just looks like Medieval Fantasy dominates because Urban Fantasy isn't called Fantasy in "respectable" conversation, it's called "supernatural fiction" or some-such. 2) Most of us have probably Googled "unrealistic TV/movie scenes" at some point or another, and the fact that the laws of physics are so broken even in non-SF action movies - let alone "science fiction" - means that the writers don't need to add "magic" outright in order to accomplish the same result. 2.5) Adding magic to a modern setting feels like rubbing salt in the wound because so much of the technology we already have might as well be magic to most people.
There's a lot of REALLY stupid behavior and history behind fantasy that keeps the genre stagnant. I doubt anyone's interested int he details. But to anyone who thinks fantasy is just LOTR, you need to use google. Fantasy is an umbrella genre that encompasses The Halloween Tree, Frozen, Avatar: the last Airbender, the Discworld series, Xena and Hercules series, all the Disney Princesses (and LOTS of other Disney movies), Elfquest, Naruto, and tons more. You don't have to like it, but saying it's one setting is like saying bread only comes in Wonderbread packages.
The Princess of Mars (and it's sequels) is a genre called "Sword and Planet". Grey Mouser and Conan are from a subset called specifically "Sword and Sorcery".
I think a lot of it has to do with what we think of as fantasy. In my mind Star Wars is just as much fantasy as The Lord of the Rings is when it comes to the "initial concept" of what fantasy is. The thing is that Star Wars can easily be reclassified as science fiction whereas an equivalent term hasn't stuck in most people's minds about The Lord of the Rings only being a specific fantasy sub-genre. That so many people have copied Tolkien doesn't help. Had gungans, ewoks and wookies been as commonly featured in fiction as elves, dwarves and orcs (which could have been the case if Star Wars had been made and become popular half a century earlier than it did), speculative fiction would look a whole lot different today.
I think you'll find many people considering it science fiction, and that was my point. Nothing in this thread is based on facts. It's all based on people's perceptions about what each genre represents.
