Quote:
Originally Posted by crich70
Yeah. Writers like Lovecraft and Howard often seemed to have elements of both fantasy & horror mixed together and of course fantasy is often the flip side of science fiction. In one you push a button to do something and in the other you call upon a genie or such.
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Well, that is only true in the sketchiest of views; good sf needs to be scientifically plausible as well as self-consistent, while even good fantasy only requires consistency of its world.
But they are both sibling genres that take us to worlds beyond and both overlap with horror from time to time: early FAFRHD/MOUSER tales had the two face some clearly lovecraftian horrors, and one who didn't know "better" could hardly be faulted for seeing the Eddorians from LENSMEN as elder gods from a demonic realm. Heinlein's GLORY ROAD is so wrapped in the logic of SF it can be easy to forget it is actually a fantasy at heart, while the early Harold Shea fantasies put up a faint veneer of SF to get past the bias of the day.
CL Moore's classic SHAMBLEAU is as much a horror tale as it is adventure SF.
And Hollywood has rarely bothered with border formalities whether it be the classic TWILIGHT ZONE or OUTER LIMITS or more modern efforts such as Scott's ALIEN or the execrable EVENT HORIZON.
The three genres are distinct at their cores but at the frontiers there's ample room for creative overlap. Fortunately.