You earthlings and your third dimension. It's cute.

[momebie]

Over on twitter getyourguns was musing about how X-Men: First Class had been labeled as Fantasy at the Scream Awards, because she considered it to be more Science-Fiction instead. matthewbowers responded to her and said that Science-Fiction and Fantasy are rarely crossed together. He contends that each has a set of tropes and themes that you never (or hardly ever) find

Comments

[kel_reiley]

Too many thoughts. Must regroup. Return later.

[momebie]

*gently feeds your thoughts bits of peanut butter crackers*

[kel_reiley]

I see I am a mouse caught in your maze...

OK!

I do have many (conflicting) feelings on this very topic and have been known to get into heated debates with anyone stupid enough to go there with me. But I'll start with this:

I think if something is saying it is Sci-fi, then it needs to be Sci-fi. There must be some basis in science (actual science, futuristic science, whatever, SCIENCE! maybe even sKience!) with appropriate explanations for the ~stuff~ that happens within this universe. (I'm looking at you, Torchwood, and your confusion about what the hell you were

[momebie]

The need to explain things is a good marker, I think, and why I consider Doctor Who to be fantasy instead of science-fiction. That said, I do consider Star Wars to be a space opera and therefore both, because there is enough future tech and politics in those stories with enough of the plot revolving around it that I can't in good faith classify it as only fantasy. (I realize that many people do not agree with me there, which is fine. But it's not like Han ran the Kessel Run on a winged dragon.) The reason I classify this differently than Doctor Who is that technology does not play a huge part in the world of Doctor Who as I see it. It doesn't do wood!There's an example I was going to use, but didn't because I didn't want to get too into the weeds on a thing I'm still hemming over. There's a certain Victorian era vampire novel that is being classified as steampunk by the publisher. (I say certain not because I'm being coy, but because I don't remember the title of the novel OR the publisher, just the reading from/discussion

[honeybearbee]

I'm not very eloquent at these types of things, but I'll do my best.

* How do you define straight up Science-Fiction (hard or soft)?
Technology, Star Wars/Star Trek

* How do you define straight up Fantasy (urban or dark or high or anything)?
Something with little to no tech at all.

*What themes or tropes do you find common in Science-Fiction that you think never appear in Fantasy?
Alien sex >.>

*What themes or tropes do you find common in Fantasy that you think never appear in Science-Fiction?
Magic did it.

*What do you believe a successful blending of the two would be?
World of Warcraft or Harry Potter do it fairly well. And so do most comics.

*Do you think it's possible to blend them at all?
Yeah.

*Are there any works of art (movies/books/tv shows/cartoons/oil paintings/sculptures/hair collections...) that you feel DO successfully blend the two? [Aka, show your work for extra points.] DC for examples has heroes and villans that use magic, but others use tech.

[seratonation]

ooo tech vs magic is a good one.

i would have put harry potter in strickly fantasy though, where is the science in harry potter?

i thought Doctor Who did the combination better. i cant speak for WoW or comics though.

[honeybearbee]

I see the muggle stuff as tech and even Hermiones Time Turner. That's just me though.

Personally, I thought Doctor Who was more sci-fi, but I can see what you mean.

[blamebrampton]

For me. Space doesn't work as a defining line, because Star Wars is very Fantasy, while Star Trek is usually more Science Fiction, but even then, both have elements that sneak a foot over into the other camp

[lady_ganesh]

Oooh, I like that distinction.

I wonder, though, where it would put something like Oryx and Crake?

[scintillulae]

Oh man, we totally talked about stuff like this in my science fiction class freshman year, and I completely forget all of it. I do vaguely remember that we discussed how "real" science fiction requires the science-y tech part of it to tell the story. Like, you could take all the space and laser and stuff out of Star Wars and set it in Medieval England and still have the same basic story of Star Wars. Which makes some sense, I think, because say, if you took the Doctor's TARDIS away and gave him magical powers that let him travel through space and time, I'd lean towards calling Doctor Who science-fantasy more than straight-on science fiction (assuming all the alien-y space stuff was still there). Or you can't take the AI tech out of Neuromancer and still have a story because the tech is the story.

But idk, I tend to lump sci-fi and fantasy into one category and then divide it by magic/no magic, so I don't think too deeply about these things. xD AND HALF THE TIME THE "SCIENCE" IN SCI-FI IS LIKE MAGIC TO ME ANYWAY.

[kel_reiley]

What's that saying? "All science looks like magic until we understand it." Or something along those lines.

[scintillulae]

Aha yeah, pretty much. Especially when you get into the super advanced stuff and the author is like "oh yeah we're going to be really vague about how this works. and by vague I meant not tell you at all."

[kel_reiley]

That's generally my motto. It's why I like to write from the POV of the character who doesn't know jack shit.

Other characters: *explainy-splainy SKIENCE!*

POV character: Bzuh? I DON'T CARE HOW IT WORKS JUST GIMME! (...or something like that)

[mrsquizzical]

i haven't studied this stuff, so there may be very obvious answers to my queries as to why this is such an 'important' question. i think it's an interesting question where people draw lines, but can't really see that it must have this black&white thing. and what about stuff that likes to be cross genre? as a music fan it seems too similar to people not liking bands they can't classify easily