Quote:
Originally Posted by Dazrin
I did find myself wondering how many of the obvious clues wouldn't have been obvious if I didn't know that this was a science fiction book rather than a fantasy book.
|
Dazrin: It's a good point. I'm always interested in finding out at what point each reader realized that it was science fiction -- but in this case you all knew right up front.
In talking to readers in the past, I've found that it's very individual, and a lot depends on what you expect when you're going in. And for some really dedicated fantasy readers, they'll continue to consider the books to be fantasy, even when the science is absolutely explicit -- they'll just assume it's a fantasy book with some science in it.
Even professional critics can get murky on this. For example, there's an Encyclopedia of Science Fiction,
and an Encyclopedia of Fantasy. And I'm listed in the Encyclopedia of Fantasy. Because (and I find this interesting), even though there's no magic, the plot of the book operates entirely in within the classic fantasy mode, and to the editors of the Encyclopedia of Fantasy, that was the most important thing.