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Originally Posted by DMcCunney
She certainly made it to the best seller lists in the US, and won the 2005 Hugo Award. I don't recall hearing that she ever denied it was a genre work.
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Sorry for the confusion, my remark about Susanna Clarke being filed in Fantasy was in response to HarryT's naming her as a possible example of a successful mainstream-crossovered writer; I certainly didn't meant to imply that she was engaging in the same silly genre-denial that the other authors mentioned before her were.
I think I need to learn to multi-quote better (or at all).
As for Mr. Bradbury, he has apparently in recent years been claiming that the Martian Chronicles are in fact fantasy, not sf, and while he does have a point that they're more representatives of wishful/made-up portrayals than plausible/known facts-grounded speculation, it's not like the two are mutually exclusive. Oh, and that Fahrenheit 451 is his one and only science fiction book (no idea how he counts short stories).
Here's a
link to a B&N customer discussion re: Bradbury's stance on e-books, technology, and writing NOT REALLY SCI-FI, KTHNXBYE!
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Out and out fantasy seems far more acceptable for the mass market than SF based on technological advances.
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Fiction based on advances in science and technology doesn't have that remove. At least the nearer term stuff could happen, and might even be happening.
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I think it may not just be the sense of immediacy, but also the perception of prerequisite knowledge.
A lot of people think that science fiction has to be "science-y" and it'll have lots of hard figures and technobabble and make them do the math. Which admittedly the ability and knowledge helps for certain kinds of hard sf, and probably increases one's enjoyment if already so inclined.
Whereas fantasy, by comparison, looks easy. All you have to do is clap your hands and believe in fairies, and whenever you see something, a wizard did it.
My personal pet crackpot theory is that it's no coincidence that the times when SF seemed to be at its height of popularity and public acceptability were during the 50s-60s when the Cold War was on at its height and science education seemed to be better due to wanting to reap future recruits for the space/arms race, and also during that Jules Verne to H.G. Wells period when it was rather rare, but the entire Victorian/industrial Better Living Through Scientific Advances meme was in play and there were new significant inventions (telegraph, telephone, railway transit) coming out practically every decade.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
I read both genres, and don't see a hard dividing line between them. There's a gray area where they overlap, and books where you can cheerfully argue about which category they should be placed in.
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And there's the surprise switch books like
, where it turns out that the angels and the witches are the descendents/engineered creations of space colonists. I'd say good luck categorizing that one, but happily for the librarians, it can be safely placed in the YA section.