SF Fanatic: I Am Not A Fan Of Fantasy, Here’s Why
Yesterday Tor.com published a piece by Jo Walton entitled ‘In Sheep’s Clothing: Why Fantasy and SF might be disguised as each other‘ where Jo discusses books where fantasy settings have SF-nal underpinnings. Most of the series she discusses I’ve never read and, being fantasy, I’ve never wanted to read. Bingo! The perfect topic for an SF Fanatic like myself, why am I not a fan of fantasy?
As you might expect, being a SF fanatic, I like science fiction. A lot. It’s my preferred genre of choice for TV, movies, books and games. It’s not that I haven’t read/watched/played fantasy stuff, I have. Some of it I’ve enjoyed quite a bit, but even so, there’s still a reticence, a reluctance on my part to try new fantasy offerings. It doesn’t matter how highly recommended or how much I may have enjoyed a particular book I still won’t go running to the newest fantasy offering.
I think I’ve narrowed down the reasons to the following:
For the longest time, fantasy settings always seemed to take place in a medieval style setting and this type is still popular today. Now medieval settings don’t have to be styled after our own history, with kings, commoners, royalty, merchant classes and the like, though there are a lot of these. They are basically anything pre-industrial in technology with ships of the sail and mounted cavalry, huge cities with poor or no plumbing and so on. Even if these settings are populated with strange or fantastic creatures, there is still an underlying sameness about them that doesn’t ignite my imagination. It seems that the worldbuilding for these fantasy settings are using the same basic toolbox, with different window dressing. It feels limited both in terms of the society being used and the technology in play.
This is why, when the fantasy turns out to be science fiction in disguise, I tend to like that a lot more. Series like Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun and Friedman’s Coldfire Trilogy come immediately to mind, seemingly fantasy but on closer inspection with a heavy SF underpinning. And thinking further, where are the fantasy settings that take place in a ‘modern’ world, where ‘magic’ has taken the place of technology?
Recently there has been move to ‘urban fantasy’, set in the modern day with vampires and werewolves and such. At first glance these would seem to be more appealing, being set in the modern world with the potential for conflict between science/technology and magic/fantasy. But for me, while many of these stories are more intriguing with wider possibilities, they also suffer from the same thing fantasy as a whole suffers from.
Both urban fantasy and especially epic fantasy have a strong ‘derivative’ feeling to them. It seems that urban fantasy, for the most part, has to contain some sort of vampire or werewolf and, quite possibly, a good dose of romance (hello Twilight), otherwise it’s off mining the vastness of human mythology (hi there Harry Potter). That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but I’m looking for something new, different and not something that looks like something else rehashed.
This problem is even more pronounced in epic fantasy were the barbarian hero can’t swing a two-handed broadsword without hitting an ancient prophecy, a royal heir in hiding, orcs, elves or an epic quest to complete. The ones that really bother me, and seem to be on the decline, are the Tolkeinesque stories, but even the more modern sword and sorcery stuff, that avoids the Tolkein trappings, still has the quests and heirs and stuff that just gets old, even before it starts.
That said, there is one fantasy series that I love and I read the newest book whenever it comes out as soon as I can. Jim Butcher’s Dresden series is some of the best stuff I’ve read lately and he just keeps getting better.
However, there’s one thing, the big thing, that I really don’t like about fantasy.
Magic. You need to kill someone from afar? Magic. How about getting from here to the other side of the world, quickly? Magic again! Want to read someone’s mind? Why not use magic? Magic, is, in effect, a deus ex machina built into the foundation of almost every fantasy story. Sure there may be rules governing what type and how much magic can be used, but in the end, it’s the easy way out.
“How did you that?”
“Magic!”
See? Easy! No explanation needed, it’s ‘magic’ FTW! Spell, potion, wand, it doesn’t matter, the answer lies with magic. I like something with a little more explanation, or at least something that sounds possible, behind what happens. Magic doesn’t generally have that. Why yes, I’m an engineer, why do you ask?
Now I’m not saying fantasy sucks, that no one should write fantasy or trying to demean fantasy in any way. Fantasy is obviously very popular, outselling science fiction on a daily basis and on the whole, people are generally more accepting of fantasy than science fiction. These are just my reasons for not being a fan. I don’t hate the genre, but I don’t go out of my way to read or watch it, but games? I’ll play a good fantasy game (Baldur’s Gate II). You may wonder if there are any fantasy books I have liked, and there are. For instance The Name Of The Wind, The Lies Of Locke Lamora, The Thomas Covenant Chronicles, and The First Law series by Abercrombie all spring to mind. I enjoyed these for various reasons, but the general rule of thumb for me is: enjoyment is inversely proportional to how much magic is used. So series like The Kingdom Of Thorn And Bone, The Age Of Unreason and A Song Of Ice And Fire all start out strong but become less interesting as more magic is added. Steve Erickson’s Malazan series is also quite good, but I had more issues with that.
So, on the whole, I’d much rather read/watch a good old science fiction story. SF appeals to me more than fantasy does, but if a fantasy book gets enough good press, I’ll definitely give it a go. I’m still trying to get around to Blood Of Ambrose as a for instance.
Maybe there’s hope for me yet.
Related posts:
- The SF Fanatic: SF Explores The Ideas Mainstream Fiction Won’t
- Nickelodeon Interviews Young Adult Fantasy Authors
- World Building: Fantasy vs. Science Fiction
- SF Fanatic: The Problem With Fringe
- SF Fanatic: Current Science Fiction On Television
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Sometimes the wall between fantasy & science fiction can be very thin indeed. I’m half way through Jack Vance’s novel “The Miracle-Workers” (<a href=”http://variety-sf.blogspot.com/2010/02/astounding-science-fiction-july-1958-ed.html”><i>Astounding</i>, July 58</a>) – <i>obviously</i> fantasy set in medival retro society, precisely the kind of stories I hate, but so lovable & hey – is it really fantasy? On top of that, Vance sold it to Campbell for Astounding, so you know it can not be pure fantasy!
What you seem to be complaining about, I would classify as ‘bad writing’. And you will find that in any genre. I agree that what you’ve listed occurs with irritating frequency within the fantasy genre. But as a fan of both, I feel I have to point out that your three reasons above apply equally well to sci fi as they do fantasy – to the point where I can just play fill-in-the-blanks:
Location: For the longest time, [sci-fi] settings always seemed to take place in an [Asimov or StarTrek] style setting and this type is still popular today.
So many, many sci fi books seem to be ‘take space. Fail to actually research things like basic astrophysics and star construction. Ignore anything but the simplest concepts of economics, politics and resource management. Assume most planets are habitable with some work, and FTL exists. Add aliens.’ If they’re not space, they’re dystopias or there’s-a-terrible-secret utopias.
There’s nuance to be found and of course there are exceptions – but the same can be said for fantasy.
Derivative: Many [Sci-fi stories] have a strong ‘derivative’ feeling to them.
Sci-fi has its tropes just as fantasy does. Humans Are Evil Bastards, or Humans Show ‘Em How It’s Done, Technology Wants To Kill Us – they’re all just transposed myths. I’ll grant you they’re often a little less obvious, but I’d put that mostly down to the fact that Joseph Campbell explained his theories in fantasy terms rather than science fiction, and our original myths relied on magic instead of science to explain the world.
Magic: [Techno-babble]. You need to kill someone from afar? [Techno-babble]. How about getting from here to the other side of the world, quickly? [Techno-babble]again! Want to read someone’s mind? Why not use [Techno-babble]? [Techno-babble], is, in effect, a deus ex machina built into the foundation of almost every [sci-fi] story. Sure there may be rules governing what type and how much [Techno-babble]can be used, but in the end, it’s the easy way out.
I can’t even count how many SF books I’ve read where the author just pulled tech out of their arse to achieve RandomGoal #47.
Now, these three things drive me nuts no matter where I find them, in either genre. But I think if you’re looking for why fantasy isn’t really your cup of tea, you missed the mark. Perhaps you don’t enjoy the themes that are more typically explored in fantasy, or you prefer the illusion of “this could happen” that sci fi offers. Or maybe you just like science over sparkles.
From what you’ve written (and your implied opinion that these things don’t happen in sci-fi) I would suggest a possible reason you don’t like fantasy is that you’re far better versed in SF – you read fewer examples of the above in SF, because your radar is well-tuned to putting those books back on the shelf from the blurb. Reading less fantasy, you don’t have that same spidey-sense for crap, so you likely experience more of it when you do venture into fantasy, and you find it hard to find something that you’ll like.
(Must say, I loved Coldfire. Might check out Book of the New Sun based on that comparison.)
JP- Have you read The Steel Remains (Richard K.Morgan)? I love Morgan’s Kovacs books, but I’ve refrained from reading Steel Remains partially because I dislike fantasy books for similar reasons, but also because I really don’t want to encourage Morgan to steer away from writing the (noir?) science fiction that I love. Still, I’m curious what one of my favorite authors did with the genre, wondering if he brings something to it that would interest me.
First and foremost, I’m looking for a good story. It doesn’t have to be the best written thing in the world nor award winning in any way but it does have to entertain me. If it doesn’t, I’m not reading it. Sure, a lot of fantasy is totally derivative and even if it is not a direct rip-off of Tolkein, it certainly owes a lot to Arthurian legend, Fritz Leiber, Robert E. Howard or any number of role-playing games. I don’t need every book I read to be something that changes the literary landscape and often a bit of confection will do.
As for Thomas Covenant, you must not have gotten the memo that you’re not supposed to like these books.
I would have to agree with everything Sofie has said. She has hit the nail on the head, the problems you list with fantasy aren’t inherrent problems of the genre, but problems with poor/lazy/formulaic writting and this is a problem that infects all genres. I could list a dozen fantasy authors and probably hundreds of books that use none of these gimicks in the way you mentioned.
Personally I read huge amounts of fantasy when I was younger but now find myself reading far more scifi. Both genres still excite me its jsut that my preferences have altered slightly, I also am getting a bit bored of some of the fantasy tropes that are all too familar after reading thousands of fantasy novels over 20 odd years, however there are still new novels and authors that excite. I love the epic fantasy of Jordan’s Wheel of time series (even if he did loose his way around the half dozen mark), I relish the dark grittyness of the likes of G.R.R. Martins Game of Throne series, Richard K Morgan’s The Steel Remains was also a very refreshing read (better than his last couple of scifi novels by a good stretch). There are authors such as Robin Hobb who makes characters sing (and scream) as she crafts exciting worlds (soilders son trilogy aside) for them to inhabbit. Authors like Katherine Kerr draw huge intricate worlds and histories that are layred to perfection. Then there is the untouchable Pratchett and his sheer brilliance.
I find that my problem isn’t finding decent books, its finding enough time to read them all. Sticking within genre bounds is an effective way to reduce my ‘want to read pile’ to something approaching managable, but I get get sick of critisim that all I read is ‘rubbish’ and of such a narrow focus e.t.c. (usually by people who read about as many books a year as I read a month). I wonder how much of this article is about you trying to justify your reading habits, rather than a ‘credible’ attack on fantasy.
Regarding the Tor article, there has always been a certain amount of cross over between the genres. Pern is a classic example, there are also novels like Game of Universe by Eric Nyland where both magic and technology exist side by side. Mayne of the concepts in scifi that go along the lines of telepathic/telekinetic lines are pure fantasy, they are nothing but magic with psuedo-scienctific names. Sometimes these form sub-genres of their own, steampunk for me is blatently a mix of a fantasy world setting with strong elements of scifi/technology being mixed in.
I’ve read fantasies that I enjoyed, but frankly, after Tolkein, most feel like bad copies. Urban fantasy is better, has some interesting twists, but ultimately there is a thematic divide between SF and Fantasy that puts the Fantasy, for me, in the column of disinterest.
Magic is a problem, but let’s be honest, a good deal of the tech in SF is little more than magic with a better vocabulary. It is what the magic is tied to, though, that’s the problem, and it’s the same thing that the 800 Pound Centaur in the paddock at the core of Fantasy is tied to.
Destiny.
Without destiny, fantasy doesn’t work very well. It can be done, certainly, but 90% of the time, scratch the surface, and someone is fulfilling a destiny. Someone is “born to the throne” or is the “one who will come” or is the “prophesied one” of some cyclic myth of redemption etc.
Destiny renders such stories essentially religious stories. I don’t mean in the sense of a given theology, but in the basic idea that Reality, in this world, is a sewn up whole, tied together by strands of Prophecy which can only work if there is no free will to speak of. (This is one of the reasons the setting is more often than not feudal—can’t have democratically-minded field workers screwing with the mechanism by rejecting both the evil overlord and the one true king.) Destiny and it’s PR handmaiden only work if the rules of the game are set in advance and unchangeable.
It’s boring. And it’s irrational.
Consequently, it’s also irritating.
Sorry Mark but I haven’t seen ‘destiny’ used in anything like 90% of fantasy novels. The fact that a lot of fantasy does resolve around concpets such as victory, surivial against all the odds, achieving pre-set out goals is neither here nor there, I feel its the journey that the novel takes the characters (and the reader) on that makes for a good novel.
If you want to read destiny into the genre and dismiss it then fine, but again every genre can be just as easily dismissed. Romantic fiction always ends up with the girl getting the boy (or vica versa), crime fiction always ends up with the criminal getting caught, coming of age novels always end up with the characters being older and wiser e.t.c.
If you don’t like the genre thats fine its your choice not to, but to come up with such trite reasoning is boring, irrational and ultimately irritating to those who do enjoy the genre.
A good story, after all, is about people and conflict, whether on a galactic scale or a personal one, whether technology or “magic” is the tool set (Clarke’s Law of Indistringuishability), whether the aliens are called Fairie or Chtorr. I too have a preference for SF… Speaking of Modern Urban Fantasy, have you tried reading and Charles de Lindt? This is heady stuff, with excellent story telling, and a “between worlds” feel to it.
I think that your complaints are with bad fantasy novels, and not fantasy per se. A person can say the same about Sci-Fi: its all a star trek rip off and everything can be explained with techno-babble. That is bad sci-fi, not sci-fi in general.
The settings of good fantasy are varied. Earthsea is different from Middle Earth which is different from the Dying Earth which is different from Bas-Lag.
Also, there is actually a lot of fantasy that is not set in the middle ages and is not about vampires. The Annubis Gates and Last Call by Tim Powers, the Bas-Lag stories by China Meiville, or Mainspring by Jay Lake, for example.
Magic in good fantasy is not arbitrary. Its based on a fantastical cosmology and should have particular rules. Some interesting magic systems include those in ‘The Name of the Wind’ by Patrick Rothfuss, ‘Nine Princes in Amber’ by Rodger Zelazney, and yes even ‘The Lord or the Rings’.
Andy,
It would be nice to have an example of that “90%” that doesn’t deal with a form of destiny. That’s a big number to use to dismiss my argument.
Nor did I say it was flawed for that reason. I didn’t dismiss it, either. I merely said there is a reason some of us don’t like it. For those who find the themes, conceits, and trappings of fantasy a fun time, more power to you, enjoy yourself.
What I did suggest is that for those of us who do find it a tiresome genre, the causes for our reaction are deeper than window dressing.
As to your thumbnail sketches of other genres, all true, and as such you describe the reasons why people read them. And also suggest why some people don’t like them. It’s not that ion Romance the boy always gets the girl (or vice versa) but that the thematic structure of such works suggests that this is the ONLY right answer in that particular universe.
My apologies for tripping over your prefered trope.
Mark,
My use of 90% was in response to your stating that 90% of fantasy was about fullfilling destiny.
It can be done, certainly, but 90% of the time, scratch the surface, and someone is fulfilling a destiny.
I simply think that if you actually read those 90% of fantasy novels that you refer to then you will see that they don’t actually fit into your classification of ‘destiny novels’. If you read the back cover or a synopsis of the books it maybe easy to catergorise them as such, but thats just lazy and not being fair to the novel or the author.
JP -
A number of people have already pointed out that what you cite as you problems with fantasy are just as arguably problems with bad writing, and that you can apply similar arguments to SF (or crime, or horror, or…). My situation is the exact opposite: I seem to find lots of examples of “uber-hero” or “obscure tech saves the day” or “random dystopian world with dark hero” or “ooh, look, weird abandoned world with strage tech” or…well, you get the idea, in SF. It’s for that reason I find myself reading far more fantasy, and generally avoiding SF — SF almost always seems predictable and boring to me. But I don’t doubt that what Sofie said also applies in my case: my bullshit detector is likely better honed towards fantasy than SF, and so it may be that I avoid the more trite examples of the former, but pick up more of the latter. I have been making a more concrete effort to pick up SF again, but honestly, I still find more non-fiction or non-genre fiction I will read before most SF (and I say that as a fantasy writer, so it’s not like I’m genre averse).
Looking at the fantasy you do like, I wonder if it comes down to people who write good characters that ultimately solve the core conflict on their own, without over-reliance on the bells and whistles that can be “generic magic.”In other words, good stories that involve good characters and worlds. That’s how I would characterize almost all of the fantasy you listed that you like.
I’m with you and others about the over-used destiny/quest/epic story lines that we see in the field. I mean, if you know Bob is destined to save the world (or is clearly going to defeat the attacking B’Faar Galactic Fleet, for that matter), then part of the underlying tension of the book is already cut away. Likewise, if the world is simply medieval-lite with an overlay of of sprakles or grit, without any real world or society building, then it’s easy to not care about what happens to Merchant #2 or Kingdom #5. (Can you tell I am a medievalist?
They aren’t real and don’t matter. But then, I could care less about World #3 or or Rogue-ish Space Smuggler #543, too.
Good story is good story. Good character is good character. Unique world-building is unique world-building. That applies just as much to fantasy as it does to SF.
So, yes, I think it is more a case of bad writing/characterization/world building than it is the genre as a whole. You just seem to find it more in fantasy, while I seem to find it more in SF. That doesn’t mean that either genre is better or worse than the other, just that our respective samplings (and preferences) have steered us towards the better examples in one or the other.
Sofie nails it, and moonglum mentions the central point explicitly: good stories have a non-arbitrary magic/tech system.
I would go one step further and say that even when a magic (or tech) system is well-defined and bounded, I find stories underwheming which ignore their economics (in the broad sense). I’m surprised that JP mentioned The Lies Of Locke Lamora, for instance, because I found the socio-economics of its magic system pretty unconvincing: a cabal of a few hundred humans who have nearly limitless power–and all they want to do is be left alone in their distant city, except when they want to subjugate themselves to any rich mortal’s whims. What??? If you have telepathy, invisibility, physical invulnerability, and can kill people at a distance with a few arcane words–and you are unethical enough to work as a mercenary, killing a lot of people quite gruesomely for a pile of gold–why would you work for it rather than just killing your would-be employer and taking it?
Of course, it’s the same for SF: Star Trek taught us that just about any problem whatsoever can be solved by a single talented engineer who builds a novel theory from scratch in 15 minutes and then reverses the tachyon beam.
A man’s gotta know his limits; so does a magic or technical system.
I’m probably going to be criticized as being too general, or simple, but that’s okay because I’m generally a simple person.
This thought, this desire, to have rational, scientific explanations in fiction interests me greatly. It’s apparent that the writer of this article has a tonnage of disbelief, and mostly strong science fiction is able to suspend that weight. Hard science fiction employs science to underpin the fantasy.
I see science fiction as fantasy with a degree from M. I. T. It’s fantasy supported with reason. Applied science given a boost of fancy.
I’m not trying to smoosh the genres together; the Cimmerian and Sir Arthur Clarke rarely have time to drink together. I understand the distinctions, but when DUNE was published in 1965, I’m sure the idea of a distant desert planet ribboned with melange seemed fairly “magical.”
Although I love science fiction, hard science-fiction turns me off for the most part. I may be an inversion of Mr. Frantz. Technicalities begin to bore me. I love the idea of magic because, if treated properly (there’s no doubt that magic is abused by legions of dim-witted fantasy writers), magic becomes a black hole of mystery, a force beyond our power to comprehend, but still present for us upon which to marvel.
One of my favorite science fiction series is THE HYPERION QUARTET by Dan Simmons. It’s a wonderful combination of science fiction and fantasy.
I enjoyed the article. As far as a fantasy novel that rips away from the location, location, location disease, you might pick up China Mieville’s PERDIDO STREET STATION. It’s lovely.
Andy,
Fair enough. One superlative deserves another. My bad.
But you don’t know how much I’ve read. I suppose if I culled through all my memories and lists, I’ve probably read a few hundred fantasy novels. Most came laden with a destiny trope of one kind or another.
How many should I read before I can claim to see a trend?
Among the fantasies I’ve read that I find superb (and largely lacking any kind of destiny) are John Crowley’s Aegypt series; Samuel R. Delany’s Neveryon novels; Walter Jon Williams’ Metropolitan duology; Tim Powers’ Declare and The Stress of Her Regard; Emma Bull’s Territory; Ian McDonald’s King of Morning, Queen of Day; Mary Gentle’s The Architecture of Desire. A few more.
But I think the idea of the universe acknowledging the specialness of the hero is as wired into fantasy as philosophical materialism is wired into science fiction. It’s this thematic difference that I think defines them as in many ways unreconcilable. The attempts to combine them can be fascinating, as in many of Roger Zelazny’s works, but I have yet to see a really successful one.
What do you consider the destiny trope though? Does the fact the hero wins out at the end make it a ‘destiny novel’? For me the destiny trope belongs to authors like David Eddings, Terry Brooks and the legions of immitators. Would you class Lord of the Rings in the same group? For me I wouldn’t class LotRs as ‘destiny’ because he main story arc doesn’t involve it, the closest the novel comes to it is a bit of stuff about Aragorn, which is a tiny part of the novel.
If you change the word hero to protagonist then I struggle to think of any novel that doesn’t have the universe recognise the ‘specialness’ of the main character(s) regardless of genre, however I will give you that fantasy is probably the worst genre for over egging the pudding when it comes to heroes.
JP, I’m glad Blood of Ambrose is on your to-do list; I think you’d dig it. It approaches traditional fantasy trappings (the heir, the wizard, dragons, the Big Bad, and DESTINY) in a fresh and fun way, and it is not predictable.
I swear on a stack of walruses I did not come here by ego-googling; I followed John DeNardo’s link from Facebook and was startled and pleased to read your penultimate paragraph. With that disclaimer out of the way, I’ll add: for a potentially inflammatory piece, this column has some good points and has provoked a good discussion; kudos all around.
I resist the word system with reference to magic–or, for that matter, science. There are many systems in play in science and we don’t know everything we want to know, so a lot of our knowledge is not really systematized. An imaginary world should aspire to echoing, at least, that kind of complexity. But magic which is good for a fantasy novel should be like the science which is good for a science fiction novel: it should make sense and evoke wonder. (These two things may work at cross-purposes.) And it should impose limits, not simply supplying get-out-of-jail-free cards whenever the hero needs them.
Zelazny (in the original five Amber books and also the underrated _Jack of Shadows_) has a lot of magic in his worlds that’s good in this way. Le Guin’s original Earthsea books have it too. The magic in Leiber’s Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser stories is often bewildering to the heroes, but I think that fits with the existential nature of the series: they’re always strangers to the world, even when they’re at home getting snotfaced drunk in the Silver Eel.
The Harold Shea books (by Pratt and de Camp) are the quintessence of the old _Unknown_ tradition–sort of “if fantasy were science fiction it would work like this.” I don’t think the very greatest fantasy is written this way, but it did produce some amusing (if increasingly dated) work.
LotR is rife with it. Aragorn couldn’t not be the king if he wanted, which he tries to want throughout. And that it’s all about bloodlines and so forth, which implies a kind of genetic destiny.
Destiny comes into play when one character is “prophesied” to be “the one” or, more subtley, is born to the quest, whether he or she knows it or not. Most wizard tropes do not so much learn their craft as come with “the gift” already in place.
As for the hero being recognized by the universe in other genres, no. The context of the story does by virtue of them being the protagonist, but the outcomes of other genres do not necessarily have cosmic consequences. The universe at large could care less.
When I say the Universe, I don’t mean it in the sense that we use the term, as an indifferent collection of interesting matter, but the universe as embodied by concepts of the gods (or a god) which render it aware and involved. Magic swords, talismans and rings are manifestations of that kind of universe. The hero often does not so much win as restores harmony or order. Such tales are circular. What set LotR several cuts above this is Tolkein’s implicit recognition that things can never return to the way they were and, furthermore, the hero cannot go home. You can certainly write a psychologically insightful SF (or any other kind of) novel using these notions, but in fantasy there seems often (if not always) to be a cosmic connection to such outcomes.
And when magic makes an appearance, it’s always a special gift…
I mentioned Delany’s Neveryon stories as a favorite fantasy, but really they aren’t fantasies in any sense other than the trappings. There’s no magic, no quest as such, nothing like that. There is politics, which is marvelously absent from many fantasies (which substitute some form of court intrigue in place of politics usually), there is economics, there is all the stuff of a good historical, only set in a non-historical, prehistory milieu.
Now, let me stress, I don’t necessarily find any of this intrinsically bad. I’m just saying it’s one way in which fantasy tends to separate itself from SF, and obviously there is an audience for it and that’s just fine. I’ve been listening to people wonder to my face how I can read any of it, with all that “weird stuff” going on, for decades, and have come to a conclusion that the elements that make SF valuable to me are (1) there in the work and (2) not everyone’s thing primarily because of those elements, whether consciously recognized or not. I’ve accommodated myself to it. For myself, I would no more try to write a science fiction story using fantasy themes than I would try to write a romance using noir themes. Not that it couldn’t be done, but I’m not interested in those themes.
BTW, just as a curious observation, I find that I can watch fantasy with nary a hiccup. When the HBO series comes on of Martin’s Song of Ice and Fire I will likely watch it and probably enjoy the hell out of it. I just can’t read the stuff.
You’ve convinced me to read nothing but mainstream literary! Thank yew jaysus!
Ah. See, my attitude about the magic trope is that I’d rather you hand-waved over the explanation by just openly asserting that “magick happens here” than try to bullshit me with some warmed-over crackpot theory that my four-year-old could refute, or worse, with some transparently techno-jazzhanded gibberish loosely translated from “magick happens here.”
Wow, Fantasy lovers get really upset don’t they?
In my book Sofie doesn’t nail it. When I read her description of the tropes of familiarity in Science Fiction none of it sounds remotely familiar to the Science Fiction I read.
However, I agree with the sentiment that maybe the problem is that Bad Writing = Bad Writing whether it’s in Fantasy or Science Fiction. Assuming that badly written Fantasy is Bad Fantasy and badly written Science Fiction is Bad Science Fiction…
I’m of the opinion that the main issue is that bad Fantasy still sells and populates the best seller charts whereas bad Science Fiction does not. And on top of that most of the fantasy lovers that I come across are fans of Bad Fantasy.
I cannot stomach Bad Science Fiction in any more and this directly relates to the main reason I don’t watch most of the dreck on the SyFy channel.
After some further reflection, my main issue with ‘magic’ is the lack of a rational or scientific underpinning. As an engineer I really like to know the ‘how’ and ‘why’ behind stuff and magic, usually, doesn’t have that. On a similar note, I really really really detest technobabble because it has all the hand waving and pulling it out of your nether region of magic. I like my SF to have at least some semblance of a possibility of being logical or plausible.
And as for setting, as stated, it seems to be either a medieval modern day urban setting, with little variation. SF seems to have a wider array of possible universes to work with which appeals to me more. Now that could be a result of my comparative lack of reading in fantasy, which is why I’m still open to reading more.
As I stated, I’m not trying to denigrate fantasy or its fans, just trying to lay out my feelings on fantasy and my reticence towards reading it. Please don’t take it as an attack!
For me, I see SF as more aspirational while Fantasy seems purely escapist. I can’t in any way read a fantasy novel and think that someday life might be like that, but I can with most sci-fi novels. To be sure they are all fantastic and can be bad or good. I don’t dislike fantasy (even the tropes) but I do feel sci-fi is more aligned with my interests.
Very nice to see Delany’s Neveryon quartet and Crowley’s Aegypt quartet get a mention here. Mark has good taste, IMHO.
Basically, I prefer SF to fantasy, for reasons similar to those given in the article above. And I’m with Mark on the notion of “destiny” as having a little too active a role to play in much fantasy, whether well- or poorly-written. I’ll describe my own sense of what this means, specifically by contrasting it with SF.
I’ve often thought that one of the big differences in flavor between SF and fantasy is that on some level, fantasy appeals (as Mark said) to a sense of destiny, while SF, by contrast, appeals to a sense of freedom. As has been said already, in much genre fantasy the fate of the characters is tied to some larger cosmic-magical situation. The characters know where they fit in, they know what they’re supposed to do and how it connects to the grand scheme of things. (And even if they don’t know, there’s still a sense that there *is* a grand scheme of things.) Whereas SF appeals to the sense that there is no grand magical order that one “fits into” — just a grand *natural* order that one must “make one’s way in”.
To support this point, I’ll draw from an SF series I don’t like and a fantasy series I do like. Wolfe’s Book of the New Sun quartet (what is it with quartets?) is sort of like a fantasy-SF-fantasy sandwich. Its surface-texture is fantasy (riding around on “horse”-back, in a quasi-feudal landscape, with creepy monsters lurking about, on a quest, with a magical talisman, etc.), its underpinnings are SF (it’s the far future, it’s a decaying civilization, virtually everything has a natural explanation), but its overall “meaning” is fantasy (at the end of the day, the protagonist does have a destiny, which is to rule the world and transform it; everything that happens to him turns out to be “fated” in one way or another to put him on that throne). Now, this is a very well-written SF series — and I do not like it, because it tries to have its SF freedom-cake and eat its destiny too. I simply don’t “believe in” the *kind* of story this series is telling.
Indeed, I think much of the most popular SF is popular precisely because it *is* subliminally about destiny — you know: the protagonist finds out he is “The One.” I have always found these stories boring and offensive. Sorry, in real life people don’t find out they’re God. (Why is “Star Wars” so popular, if not for these reasons? You have this humongous universe, teaming with life and variety — but if you are, say, Luke Skywalker, you *also* have a destiny. Lucas was very astute in recognizing and explicitly indicating that this world was a fantasy world, not an SF one.)
Contrariwise, I very much like Mervyn Peake’s “Gormenghast” series, which — at least the first two books, which I think are the core ones — is fantasy, in the sense that no attempt is made to “explain” or “naturalize” the world of the narrative. But if it is a fantasy, it’s a “secular” one, in the sense that not only is there no magic, but, more importantly, there’s no cosmic order holding everything together. We’re just in this crazy castle filled with demented characters and we watch the mayhem ensue.
I do feel that fantasy, broadly speaking, appeals to a sense of destiny, or in other words, a cosmic “order” to which one has a special relationship. Whereas SF, broadly speaking, appeals to a sense of freedom, or in other words, to a cosmic “field” in which one can move about.
Beyond all this, though, I think it’s important to say that there’s a strong component of idiosyncratic personal taste in our genre preferences. Different people find appeal in different sorts of genre vibes. I could never get personally interested in the western, horror, or mystery genres, even though I’ve read beautiful writing in all three, because the flavor, the trappings, the emotional textures just don’t do it for me. Same goes for most fantasy. But SF, somehow, does do it for me — to the degree that even “bad” SF does *something* for me. I imagine the same is true for many if not most genre readers (though I apologize if I’m getting to all-encompassing there).
Oh, come on. Not another iteration of the same old same old, “I hate fantasy because fantasy is essentially Fantasy, which I hate.” In SF terms, that’s functionally identical to “I hate science fiction because science fiction is basically formulaic Sci-Fi / Space Opera, which I hate” — i.e. if it’s SF it can’t be good; if it’s good it can’t be SF.
All the features you point at are aspects of formulation inherent in all marketing category fiction: stock backdrops (pseudo-medieval realm, intergalactic federation/empire, the Wild West, the concrete jungle); stock everything actually (character types, plot structures, MacGuffins, you name it); and plot cheats (magic, technobabble, the gun that somehow never runs out of bullets, the hero’s fortunate ability to hotwire a car, suddenly revealed just at the point he needs to.)
There’s certainly a highly generic idiom of formulaic Fantasy, and that has shaped a very specific brand image that’s imposed on the field in general, but this is just the same process that’s taken place with science fiction, where a highly generic idiom of formulaic Sci-Fi / Space Opera has shaped the specific brand image it has with the general public. Talk to people that “don’t like science fiction” and they’ll characterise the field in almost exactly the same way you characterise fantasy — in terms of the hokiest clichés of setting, tropes and plot cheats.
As an SF fanatic, you’re boned up on the field enough to see how that misrepresents science fiction, right? But you have no qualms about doing the same with fantasy? Thing is, even the works you talk about liking are pretty much squarely in this one particular epic/heroic idiom, fantasy’s equivalent of space opera. No Ray Bradbury, no Jeffrey Ford, no Kelly Link, no Graham Joyce, no Tim Powers. It’s like that person who “dislikes science fiction” saying, well, they enjoy it at the movies, and they liked Starship Troopers, and Dune, and the Lensman series, and a couple of other such works; only they’re talking as if they’ve never even heard of Philip K. Dick, William Gibson, Neal Stephenson, and the countless other SF works that aren’t remotely space opera.
Really if you’re talking about “fantasy as a whole,” you’re not talking about Fantasy, no more than someone talking about “science fiction as a whole” is talking about Sci-Fi / Space Opera. You’re talking about a mode of fiction that uses the fantastic in the same way tragedy uses the tragic and comedy uses the comic. If you don’t take into account the range of fiction as evidenced in Best American Fantasy 3, say, if you just point at the brand image… this is exactly like someone not acknowledging the range of science fiction as evidenced by Dangerous Visions, say, someone just pointing at the brand image of Boy’s Own Adventure stories in outer space, stories of evil aliens, killer robots and heroes with ray-guns. And saying, “That’s shite.”
There is some new and very interesting Fantasy coming out at the moment which avoids a lot of the stereotyping mentioned in your article.
I am thinking of UK authors like Mark Charan Newton, whose Nights of Villjamur uses a magic system based on ‘relics’, artifacts from an older civilisation and integrates SF elements into a dark fantasy world.
Also Mark Chadbourn… his Age of Misrule trilogy is set in modern Britain but uses existing mythologies to enhance a basic good v evil, saving the world plotline. Two more trilogies follow on and all are excellent reads.
Jaine Fenn mixes Fantasy and SF to great effect in Principles of Angels and Consorts of Heaven. A new imprint, Angry Robot books, has recently launched in the UK and has a highly innovative catalogue. Some of their offerings do not fit neatly into genre classification and are well worth exploring e.g. Kaaron Warren – Walking the Tree (see my review here http://templelibraryreviews.blogspot.com/2010/03/review-walking-tree-by-kaaron-warren.html ) and Aliette de Bodard – Servant of the Underworld (Aztec setting).
The boundaries between Fantasy and Science Fiction are becoming blurred, especially with up and coming authors trying out new ideas and breaking out of the old tropes. Which is all good for the reader!
“I don’t read fantasy books. Here’s a list of things that I think are in those books I don’t read. Which is why I don’t read them”.
I have read all of the Heinlein, Assimov, Clarke, etc. books and stories. To me Science Fiction should be called Science Future because it is about things that are now science fact projected into the future and how the changes will affect man and the environment in which he will be living. Even Dick Tracy was Science Fiction during his popular reign. Will the moon and near planets have colonies from earth? What problems will be encountered? How will these problems be solved? A really good story will make a good read regardless of which planet it occurs on. New invention ideas will ultimately grow from the solutions that are arrived at. i.e. the water bed(Heinlein), communications satellites(Clarke)…I don’t see that happening from Fantasy.
I believe Fantasy is about the Mystery of the universe, with a capital “M.” When Fantasy does what its suppose to do it brings a sense of outside powers (destiny, magic, what have you) bearing down on humanity. It reflects the Big Unknown; what we feel to be true, not what we know.
Science Fiction is that bit of literature, where we wrassle that Big Unknown to the ground through that use of our singular intelligence and rational thought. It’s a celebration of our ability to interpret and understand the universe (even though we may not understand ourselves).
That’s why we see such great arguments in each camp about the other. Philosophically, the two fictions are at odds. The sf fan does not see that the world without toilets isn’t the point of the fantasy. But a world whose priorities are not those set by the Industrial Revolution and modern politics is a good place to talk about the irrational things that confront us as we live.
And the fantasy fan insists that all that “technobabble” is what’s wrong with sf, doesn’t understand that the explanation of things, events, inventions, is a celebration of the Man’s ability to succeed in a harsh world. SF fans llike it when their brains have to solve a problem, and especially like reading about other people who use their brains to solve problems. (That’s why so many are history buffs. They love to read about ingenious humans solving incredibly complex problems against terrific odds.–ooops that sounds like every sf book ever written doesn’t it?)
In ‘practice’, I prefer science fiction (I’ve read more science fiction and swords/dragons/wizards etc. do not interest me). In theory, however, I prefer the idea of fantasy over the idea of science fiction. Fantasy is the oldest genre of story telling. To read about or create a world where logically implausible things occur requires (even) more imagination than to read about or create a world where everything is explainable. The whole point of story telling is to experience what we aren’t directly experiencing, I’m more interested in experiencing (through imagination) what I never will directly than about something I may very well experience in future.
Sci-fi and fantasy are close cousins so if you enjoy one, you should give the other a chance. Both genres deal with things we will most likely never experience. Besides, a lot of science fiction stories involve things that are logically or practically implausible, the fact that they’re explainable in the story doesn’t change that. Why offer a pseudo-scientific explanation for backwards time travel or shapeshifting aliens if these things are so obviously not realistic?
“If you want your children to be intelligent, read them fairy tales. If you want them to be more intelligent, read them more fairy tales”-Albert Einstein.