Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Yes, I think the Quest is the dominant form. Fortunately, it's not the only one.
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It's the reason I used to think I'd given up on fantasy, though. For a while I was actively avoiding fantasy, reading SF only, because it seemed like every new fantasy book was part of a long series with yet another quest.
More recently, I've found that I'm actually reading more fantasy than SF, but it's usually either contemporary/urban fantasy, or has a really strong worldbuilding element, or has excellent characterization. Charles de Lint is an example of the first category; contemporary/urban fantasy. Patricia Briggs (Mercedes books) might be another, though she's a little heavy on the romance for my tastes. Garth Nix would be an example of strong worldbuilding (although the Old Kingdom books are arguably SF as much as fantasy....) For strong characterization, I'd point to Tamora Pierce, in particular the "Protector of the Small" series, which I have re-read and enjoyed many times despite the world being a medieval fantasy (at least without elves, orcs, and dwarves) and the plot being based around a military organization.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Jordan
I personally agree: If it isn't credible, it shouldn't be part of an SF story. Of course, that just means that if you use it anyway (as I did in Berserker and Sol, for instance) that you just consider it "soft" SF, which is generally defined as SF with additional non-credible elements tied in... like Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.  |
I always thought of "soft SF" as being a story with credible science, but a story more focused on social sciences, rather than physical sciences. Stories like
Star Wars get the tag "Science Fantasy" in my internal system, though I think "Space Fantasy" might be even better.
I'd say that regardless of whether a story is supposed to be SF or Fantasy, it will need to be credible, unless it's being written for humor or sheer adventure (e.g. "pulp" as Steve noted in another post). I think that's what Dennis is alluding to, above.
Lately, I've come to feel that SF and Fantasy really can't be easily distinguished. You can try to categorize by the types of props used, e.g. spaceships, but then you run into Melissa Scott's
Five Twelfths of Heaven (the Silence Leigh series that Dennis mentioned, above). You can say if the story has technology in it, it's SF, but then you have Garth Nix's Old Kingdom stories (starting with
Sabriel). Not only do the inhabitants of one region have machine guns and airplanes, but across the Wall, where those don't work, magic seems to operate via construction with symbols in a manner rather similar to computer programming, making the whole series impossible to categorize.
In fact, I'd say my favorite stories are those that
can't easily be categorized.
