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[bneuensc]

For those of you not aware of why I might be posting this, there's been a hoedown going around the Internet lately, of various people arguing about the difference between fantasy and science fiction, and/or why fantasy is selling better than SF. I haven't followed all of it, but to my understanding, it began with Greg Benford posting on the

Comments

[wadam]

Just look at William Morris' fantasies -- definitely looking backwards, but certainly not with a regressive bent. He saw aspects of the past as desirable in the future, but his interest in fantasies was markedly in the future. This, I think, is generally the way of socialist ltierature in England: looking backwards without retreating...

[gollumgollum]

is anyone out there writing fantasy-as-current-social-commentary? i know there are the feminist reimaginings/rewritings/reworkings of fairy tales out there; is there anyone writing, say, a fantasy novel/series about a king who's taking away civil liberties (or, the flipside of that, about a bunch of revolutionaries talking treason and attempting to overthrow the legitimate king)? weren't CS Lewis and Tolkein writing during World War II, and isn't what they had to say with their fantasy worlds somewhat of a reaction to what was going on in the real world? i'm definitely not up on my fantasy (or even my Lewis and Tolkein!1) but i would be surprised to find that there are no fantasy writers who are using their stories as a lens to view the modern world.

and i think you're onto something with Martin.

[ombriel]

is anyone out there writing fantasy-as-current-social-commentary?

Lots. I'm writing a paper about it right now. Which is why I can't elaborate. See paper proposal posted a week ago.

[bneuensc]

Yes, though the flip side is that it's difficult to do well without it looking like modern America (or England or wherever) dressed up in fantasy clothing. Fantasy, I think, does better at addressing underlying major themes (like the abuse of power) than more situation-specific details (like a king passing the equivalent of the Patriot Act).

Also, it does depend on what kind of social commentary you mean. There are a lot of topics people could be commenting on, not all of them political.

[laurelwen]

This sort of notion has also colored Tolkien's works for a long time. With the recent success of the movies and assorted other phenomena, academia is actually bothering to pay some attention to LotR, but for many many years, it was scoffed at as "juvenile, "reactionary," etc. and not treated as "real" Literature. Sure, Tolkien was hella nostagic, but nostalgia is not necessarily a bad thing. I believe that in the best sorts of fantasy (like LotR) you can find "an emotionally empowering nostalgia, not a crippling one." That is to say, we can look behind us and think of the way things were, or more appropriately for fantasy, the way they *might* have been, and from there see how things might be different now. Tolkien makes it clear that nostalgia alone is not enough--just look at the Elves, who despite their preservation of and longing for the past, present no real solution to the problem of the Ring or Sauron. Such radical nostalgia can have real power. There are even examples of ways in which LotR itself has directly inspired

[bneuensc]

Oh, I didn't even touch the idea of consolation in this because that tends to set off its own huge firestorm in a teacup -- often a firestorm driven by people who haven't read the essay in question, but have just heard others say that Tolkien thought the primary purpose of fantasy was consolation, and who rightly think that (in its obvious sense, which isn't the one he meant) is bullshit.

[ninja_turbo]

So here's a funny bit

[moonandserpent]

I don't, and never have, seen any essential difference between fantasy and science fiction.

[bneuensc]

I think the closest I've seen anybody come to a worthwhile distinction between the two (on a level more meaningful then magic vs. rivets) is this essay by Delaney. Even then, though, it's problematic, in part because how you can define "events that have not happened" and their subcategories, or "events that could not happen." Not everybody agrees on the operating rules of the world we live in. Not to mention that the two get blended.