Am I the only person in this forum....

Given the size of the fantasy and science fiction sections at the Barnes and Noble bookstores around here, I think it is very popular with the readers as well

 

It's not. But I think Pretentiousness should be.

 

Really? That would be a good new for me, I heard that the market wasn't that good...as a matter of fact I don't remember any memorable sci-fi book in the last decades.

 

Lamex, face it: I'm writing the Lord of the Rings in space, and there's nothing you can do about it!

 

Children of Men caused a bit of a shout. That's one just off the top of my head.

Merry and Pippin in Dead Space. I think my childhood just died.

 

I hope you know, not ALL Fantasy novels focus on Trolls, Dragons, Goblins, etc. etc. There is plenty of novelists on this very site who are writing novels with a mixture of real creatures and entirely made up ones. Fantasy is a pretty common genre. and book like Hunger Games and Harry Potter along with many others have inspired us to do the same. You notice most of the very popular books are thier Science Fiction or Fantasy in some shape or form. It's just how the writing idustry is. Comedy, Mystery are less common.

 

It's true -- a large percentage of people who like one like the other as well. And both are treated dismissively by people who don't "get" them.

 

R.I.P. Lemex's Childhood.

btw, I'm not seriously planning on doing a sci-fi/fantasy crossover. =) You can strike that from your list of things to worry about.

 

Human beings have a tendency to stereotype people or things that they don't understand and aren't interested in understanding.

 

1)I haven't read it yet.

2)In my brilliant masterpiece Merry and Pippin have been replaced with a pair of jerkish space pilots who are trying to get out alive from a galactic war, a cross between Top Gun and Hot Shots, I'm sure you'd love them!

 

You can have comedy and mystery in sci-fi and fantasy, some of the best fantasy is humouristic.

 

I wasn't stereotyping. I was just saying other genres are less common for some reason. It's nothing personal. It's just alot of people these days write in those two genres. And it'
s not like im not interested, it's because i know why it's less common. I have nothing against other writers. My work has already been stereotyped, which is fine cause there really isn't a way out of that wrong. I bet yours would have a good shot even if it isn't Fantasy or Sc-fi. Try to understand i wasn't stereotyping, im not judging other writers by genre. That's not me. I don't do that to people.

 

There's so much overlap with Genre's though. Is Star Wars sci-fi, right? All the alien, make-believe creatures and races though... You'd class that as typical Fantasy stuff wouldn't you? And the force is basically magic...

Genre's are awkward. Definitions are not always completely stable either; earlier I noted the Shining as having fantasy elements, but that was based on this definition from wiki; "Fantasy is a genre of fiction that uses magic and other supernatural phenomena as a primary element of plot, theme, or setting."

 

Sorry, I meant that the people claiming that all fantasy was the same were sterotyping. I was agreeing with you.

 

Where are you located, btw? The shelves here are pretty full of science fiction and fantasy. More fantasy, but still plenty of science fiction.

The Windup Girl was a notable one from a couple of years ago. But I see new science fiction on the shelves all the time. I was at Barnes and Noble today and they had their usual display of recommended new paperback reads, and just in glances at it briefly I noticed four or five new science fiction books in there.

 

That's not the reason genres aren't accepted. Romance and mystery are both more or less set in the real world, but they're both not accepted as literary and not lumped with science fiction/fantasy.

Absolutely nobody questions the literary quality of Slaugterhouse Five, despite the fact that it has clear science fiction themes. Obsession with the real world isn't what separates literature from genre.

What I find disconcerting about the lumping together of science fiction and (heroic) fantasy is that I see science fiction as forward looking while I see (again, heroic) fantasy as backwards looking and somewhat reactionary.

 

A futuristic setting doesn't always mean forward-looking, and a historical setting doesn't always mean backwards-looking.

I'll agree that there are enough differences between SciFi and Fantasy lumping them together doesn't make a lot of literary sense. I suspect they are conflated for cultural reasons instead.

But trying to make generalizations of a genre based on the worst examples (which is what "backwards looking and somewhat reactionary" is doing) doesn't accomplish much.

ALL fiction -- genre, literary, anything else -- when done well is insightful in exploring the human condition.

When writers get this wrong, it's true that the ways in which they get it wrong tend to be strongly correlated to genre. But if you look at the examples in each genre that get it right, it's much more difficult to make broad generalizations.

 

Yeah, genres are difficult. They are broad generalizations rather than definite categories. And as you say, where do things like Science Fantasy fit in?

I think that's another reason why genres get lumped together -- fewer borderline cases to worry about.

 

I was referencing a specific sub-genre of fantasy - high heroic fantasy - which I think merely by its form does look backward nine times out of ten (and that's not Sturgeon's Rule or whatnot). That doesn't imply it's bad art - I would say that the Lord of the Rings is very much backwards looking, but it's still great art.

 

Hmm, this thread got rather heated overnight! I'd like to add a few more points...

All fiction *is* fantasy, if it didn't really happen then it's a fantasy. It just so happens that some fantasies are set in the real world, with characters and circumstances that could actually happen.

Not all 'real-world' fiction is considered literature, there is plenty of trash in books set in the real-world, far outweighing the really good stuff.

And if you're still feeling elitist about fantasy vs literature, think of books like 'Life of Pi' and 'The Book Thief', both prize-winning novels, both sit on the literature shelves, and both are fantasy!

 

I feel like that usage of fantasy is equivocal and somewhat abusive of the word. It reminds me of alternate history fans claiming that all literature is alternate history. That's trivially true, but it's missing the point (and I also would not say that it's trivially true of "fantasy").

 

I don't write fantasy, and I'm only interested in science fiction so far as it envisions the near future. Mostly, though, I am a literary fiction snob, and I don't care who knows it. The real world with all of its subtext still seems vastly more interesting than a faraway world, and I don't feel compelled to dress up the complexities of human behavior in an alien skin. I think the reason for that is because I am simply older now, and I've gotten all of that out of my system.

 

You can address any of the subtexts and complexities of the real world in science fiction or fantasy. Genre isn't really relevant to those issues.

 

Nice points. I like Fantasy novels, and I've even tried writing some, but I enjoy sticking on the reality side because I enjoy writing about things that actually COULD BE in real life. When in Fantasy, you know for a fact that nothing is real. But I still enjoy Fantasy because observing other's creative imagination is quite entertaining. I love to know what can come out of someone's mind.

 

Not writing fantasy here either. Fictional kingdom? Yes. Magical? Kind of? But only in the anthropological sense. It is actually a pragmatic interpretation of magical rituals that were common in the time era I'm writing in. It would be like writing a story about Renaissance Italy without the catholic church. However, there is nothing mystical about my tale. And a lot of doubt surrounding the "magic" that is not.