Why lump SF and Fantasy together

[tompe]

Originally Posted by TheLongshot

Oh, they certainly exist. I have a friend of mine who goes to a couple. (Along with Scifi/fantasy cons.)

Nice. I meant type small cons with maybe 100-200 people at the con.

[TheLongshot]

BTW, no one seems to like to mix their peanut butter with their chocolate more than Wen Spencer. Her Elfhome series certainly does a lot of mixing of genres. The first book, Tinker, is part of the Baen Free Library.

[Freeshadow]

Originally Posted by applesauce

How to pick between sci fi and fantasy. I have seen every star trek ep more than once, but would poke my eyes out before reading a book. I demand a more adult theme for my reading. I would love to try a Firefly book.
Fantasy I loved adored the Game of Thrones books but would never in a million years read Harry Potter or Lord Of The Rings. Again I do not do children's books and require real action with adult themes, lots of real violence and you can throw in some sex.
Finding adult theme sci fi and fantasy that is not child like themed or dry as old bones is difficult.
Now add in the over running of the lists with ikkkkkk paranormal romances.

For SF try Doc Travis. He even makes Ringo readable.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

For SF try Doc Travis. He even makes Ringo readable.

Good heavens - is that really possible?

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Good heavens - is that really possible?

Yes, it is.
Try VORPAL BLADE.
A modern take on the old Space Explorer travelogue story.
With a tad of the whimsy that characterizes the Looking Glass series. (Space Hamsters!)

[HarryT]

I will. I probably have it if it's a Baen thing. I've only read a rather small fraction of my complete set of Baen Webscriptions .

[Freeshadow]

If you don't go for the book CDs
The 'claws that catch' disc has, apart from the looking glass series, he co authored with ringo
Doc's solos too. I read both warp books and they are awesome. Am at one day on mars now.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by ebusinesstutor

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

Yes; they are commonly referred to as rodeos, county fairs and car races.

[gweeks]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

Yes; they are commonly referred to as rodeos, county fairs and car races.

You forgot gun shows.

Greg Weeks

[Freeshadow]

Just like a lot of fantasy readers frequent RPG cons. Hmm... while we are at it; I wonder where erotica readers meet

[BeccaPrice]

Well, this past weekend was the RWA (Romance Writer's of America) convention, open to a lot more than just the writers and other industry professionals, although it is aimed primarily at them rather than readers. RWA has pretty traditionally not wanted to think about erotica, and there's no erotica category in the RITA awards. They are becoming more open to indy authors and small publishers, though, and this may change their openness to erotica as a category.

[Freeshadow]

Ohhh no NastyCon? *sigh*

[niggle]

Back in 1968, one rainy lunchtime in highschool I went to the school library looking for more books to satisfy my craving for science fiction. There was a set of three books on the shelves which I had been distantly aware of for some time. On the flyleaf inside Volume one was a quote (forget from whom) which said: "This is really super science fiction"... so I took the first two volumes out. That started my adolescent obsession with Lord of the Rings. I hadn't read the Hobbit, and the Lord of the Rings craze (already by that time well-established in the US) had not really made much impact yet in the UK.

I think it would be rash to say that there is a blanket disregard of "genre" fiction in literary circles...after all what about the great dystopias of the twenties, thirties and forties? Orwell's "1984", Huxley's "Brave New World" and Yevgeny Zamyatin's "We" are all science fiction. I'm pretty sure Orwell called "Animal Farm" a "fairy story". Mervyn Peake's "Titus" series is fantasy/dystopia. And what about HG Wells? He considered himself a journalist more than a literary writer, but Henry James (then the "doyen" of literary London), thought him a gifted writer, and had a long correspondence with him.

I don't know whether this is any more than an unqualified personal observation (because I certainly haven't done any research) but there seems to have been in the last 30 years a huge expansion in the number of books published in the broad "fantasy" genre. When I was a kid back in the sixties the published output in "fantasy" seemed fairly small compared with science fiction. Now it seems to me there is a lot more fantasy (including all the sub-genres) than science-fiction. Does anyone else share that perception?

[MikeB1972]

Originally Posted by Freeshadow

Just like a lot of fantasy readers frequent RPG cons. Hmm... while we are at it; I wonder where erotica readers meet

Cheap hotels that charge by the hour

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by niggle

I don't know whether this is any more than an unqualified personal observation (because I certainly haven't done any research) but there seems to have been in the last 30 years a huge expansion in the number of books published in the broad "fantasy" genre. When I was a kid back in the sixties the published output in "fantasy" seemed fairly small compared with science fiction. Now it seems to me there is a lot more fantasy (including all the sub-genres) than science-fiction. Does anyone else share that perception?

Pretty much everybody.

Fantasy exploded in the late 70's and early 80's.
For a time you couldn't walk into a bookstore without running into a half-dozen new fantasy trilogies every week. (Always trilogies, always Tolkienesque--publishers wanted the next LoTR.) After a while the genre started to mature and we started getting new voices and tropes and the genre moved on. Better quality and readability when everybody wasn't trying to be Tolkien or Brooks.

Nowadays the sparkly vamp fad has started to fade just as the tough monster-hunting cute chick fad has faded into a background sub-genre. The good news is the next publisher fad isn't SF or Fantasy but watered down S&M. So we should have a few years of relative peace.