Science as magic

[oursin]

I note, across the flist, that someone has been claiming that science fiction and fantasy are entirely different kettles of fish/horses of different colours and that it is only due to a mere historical accident of publishing that they get shelved together and considered anything like the same thing. Because science fiction is all about Ye Real Hard

Comments

[dsgood]

Rpbert Sawyer (the sf writer who I see being quoted about all this) apparently says confidently that fantasy began with the US publication of Lord of the Rings.

On Mary Shelley -- As I recall, she was part of a group who set out to write ghost stories -- which term seems to have covered, for them, much of what would today be considered fantasy and/or supernatural horror.

[ironed_orchid]

It's not like anyone in sf or fantasy has played around with mixing up between science and magic. The idea that magic is science, but people have forgotten how it works, or time travellers/aliens with tech are interpreted as magic has been done.

[oursin]

And where do you classify something like David Lindsay's Voyage to Arcturus, which is both 'surreal fantasy' and involves interplanetary travel (see also CS Lewis, Out of the Silent Planet et seq)?

[sollersuk]

HG Wells sort of wobbled between the worldviews; one of his early stories - cutting edge occult - concerned a spirit that took over a medium's body and went on the rampage.

[oursin]

Though given the respectability of e.g. psychical research at the time, the boundaries were probably drawn in different places anyway.

[oursin]

Depends on the university - and I think BL is supposed to hold microfilms.

[ironed_orchid]

I hear the science PhDs are stuck in labs, running their supervisors' experiements and doing their own when when they get a little time.

[ankaret]

I have always darkly suspected that this is something to do with fantasy being what girlz buy, and SF wanting to ditch it and slink off to hang with the airport novels who will finally, for once, be impressed with SF's mastery of arcade games like that scene out of Tron instead of punching it and running off laughing.

[oursin]

Which is weird when you think how much fantasy is about mighty-thewed male heroes of impeccable cardboard hacking and slashing their way through demonic hordes... or (inevitably male) Chosen Ones who appear to have been chosen because they are Perfect and Absolute Blanks.

[ankaret]

Or have alarmingly explicit yet weirdly routine sex scenes spatchcocked in at 'waiting at the airport... half an hour until the in-flight movie starts... gosh, we must be over Berlin... waiting at the baggage claim' intervals.

Actually, considering the attitudes of some fantasy writers, 'baggage claim' would probably do as a description of the aforementioned sex scenes also.