Why lump SF and Fantasy together

[speakingtohe]

In my world science fiction and fantasy have always been linked together. Since the 1960s bookstores, both new and used had them in the same section. Most libraries today seem to lump them togeter as well.

Sometimes the distinction was almost clear as in Asimov's robotics, but where would you lump Harrison's Stainless Steel Rat series. Damn fine reading even today IMO, and I no longer read much SF and fantasy.

And Heinlein's Lazarus Long series was pretty erotic for that day and age for high school library material. I would classify it as wishful thinking

[DrNefario]

Publishers don't seem to have too much trouble putting one or the other on the back cover. It's just stores and libraries that pile them all together.

I think I read both fantasy and SF for the ideas. I want flights of imagination and a good story. I can do without one of the two, but not both.

I think claiming SF is possible is a bad way of looking at it. Time travel? Psionics? Or are they relegated to fantasy when they're deemed impossible? SF is about the present. I think the key difference is the kinds of stories you can tell, and the kinds of people that inhabit them.

I don't especially have a problem with contemporary fantasy. I imagine I'd like the best of it. My issue is that I like epic fantasy and I can't find out what's hot any more, because the charts are flooded with the urban supernatural variety. Surely that's what the genre distinctions are there for? So fans can find what they're looking for?

[teh603]

Originally Posted by DrNefario

Publishers don't seem to have too much trouble putting one or the other on the back cover. It's just stores and libraries that pile them all together.

Its all because sci-fi and fantasy don't register on anyone's scale of great Literature. They aren't part of any of the literary movements, don't strive toward incomprehensibility, and prove that Literary fiction really does have conventions that must be obeyed.

I think the last one is the greatest offence, because of how much effort the average Literary editor or professor will put into denying that Literary fiction has rules and conventions, right before ripping apart a manuscript for violating those same conventions.

[DrNefario]

I don't think it's really anything to do with that. It's about enabling people to find the things they want to read. I guess there must be enough of an overlap between SF and F that it makes sense to shelve them together, where it doesn't for horror, romance, crime, etc.

[ebusinesstutor]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

It's harder to decide where to put some of Harlan Ellison's works, or McCaffrey's... "psychic teleporting dragons" is obviously fantasy; "lost colony planet" is science fiction; "flesh-eating menace falling from the sky" is easily horror.

Loved this phrasing! What a concise dissection of the Pern series from a genre perspective.

[ebusinesstutor]

Originally Posted by QuantumIguana

It's not an external thing. No one would blink an eye at a fantasy panel at a science fiction convention. But put a western panel at a science fiction convention, and people will think that is strange.

Are there "Western" conventions? Or is it just us scifi and fantasy fans to like to go to conventions?

[ebusinesstutor]

Originally Posted by Catlady

As I read through this thread, I'm thinking that science fiction and fantasy seem to refer more to the setting than to specific plot elements, as the reader expects in a romance or mystery, for example.

Good point. Many science fiction authors write what are effectively detective stories (Asimov's Robot series), but in a futuristic, multiple star system future.

Over my long reading career, I've read science fiction that included almost every genre, inclding fantasy (Darkover, Pern), romance (Vorkosigan), historical fiction, humour and others.

I sometimes like to think of science fiction as including all other genres, but without the hobbles and restrictions. "Normal" romances, fantasies, mysteries etc. just seem like paler, less vibrant versions of the science fiction or fantasy ones.

Of course, this is my own personal perspective.

[ebusinesstutor]

My local Chapters store and my local library both have separate shelving for science fiction and fantasy, which I am grateful for.

I like both, but sometimes I am in the mood for one or the other and this makes it easier to find.

[elcreative]

And by lumping them together in a shop, you end up with a shelf section that is a noticeable large section as well as having the overlap phenomenon where people look at anything in the section and may find SF they wouldn't have seen in a Fantasy only section and vice-versa for Fantasy in an SF only section. It also solves the problem of splitting the output of authors writing in both genres as well as increasing the chance of a reader finding that they also like the "other" genre from an author doing both...

[Critteranne]

Originally Posted by ebusinesstutor

My local Chapters store and my local library both have separate shelving for science fiction and fantasy, which I am grateful for.

I like both, but sometimes I am in the mood for one or the other and this makes it easier to find.

One of the local bookstores separates them, and in their case, it's a real pain. SF books often end up in the fantasy, and fantasy books end up in the SF section. It's like the old Reeses Peanut Butter Cup ads. "You got fantasy in my SF!" "You got SF in my fantasy!"

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by ebusinesstutor

Good point. Many science fiction authors write what are effectively detective stories (Asimov's Robot series), but in a futuristic, multiple star system future.

Over my long reading career, I've read science fiction that included almost every genre, inclding fantasy (Darkover, Pern), romance (Vorkosigan), historical fiction, humour and others.

I sometimes like to think of science fiction as including all other genres, but without the hobbles and restrictions. "Normal" romances, fantasies, mysteries etc. just seem like paler, less vibrant versions of the science fiction or fantasy ones.

Of course, this is my own personal perspective.

There's a sense in which this is true, of course, but I think that "genre" means more than just having a particular element in a story - almost everything you read - from the Kingkiller Chronicles to The Corrections has romance in it, but I wouldn't put either of them in the romance genre, since readers of that genre have certain expectations about the focus of the book.

I think the same is true of Asimov's detective stories. I like "The Caves of Steel," and its detective element is what drives its plot. But it's not really "about" solving the mystery; it's really about the future society and the relationships between overcrowded earth, the spacers, and robots.

Of course, part of me thinks that CSI should be classified as science fiction, since it doesn't bear much relationship to how crimes are solved on planet earth today.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

McCaffrey's... "psychic teleporting dragons" is obviously fantasy

And the science behind creating the dragons from the dragonettes makes it SF. The Pern books are science fiction with fantasy elements.

[charlesatan]

Originally Posted by Catlady

As I read through this thread, I'm thinking that science fiction and fantasy seem to refer more to the setting than to specific plot elements, as the reader expects in a romance or mystery, for example.

Depends.

I think that (can) apply to more specific sub-genres.

Space Opera for example has specific plot elements, as well as Paranormal Romance (not to be confused with Urban Fantasy). Steampunk does not.

Epic Fantasy, Sword & Sorcery, Military SF, has some tropes, archetypes, etc.

[starrigger]

It's useful to have the terms SF and fantasy to describe different kinds of stories. But when you really get down to it, I think you have to say that science fiction is a subset of the much broader category fantasy. (I mean beyond the sense in which all fiction is fantasy.) All SF/F is concerned with worlds that are somehow different from the one we live in. In science fiction, the premise is that the fictional world is possible, through extrapolation from what we know about science and human nature. In "pure" fantasy (the stuff we're pointing at when we say the words), that premise isn't applied, at least not the science part. It may be every bit as much about human nature as "pure" SF. I liked the Philip K. Dick distinction that someone quoted early in this thread.

No doubt the real reason for SF and fantasy being lumped together has more to do with the historical reasons mentioned earlier (overlapping readership, overlapping publishers and editors, etc.) But I'm fine with it, because I think there's a commonality between fantasy and SF that even extends to include the hardest SF.

[Freeshadow]

Another crossover example: Niven; Barnes: Dreampark trilogy: detective, SF, RPG