A long time ago we got a note from someone at Bookshare on list that the science fiction and fantasy categories would be split. I don't remember who that was, possibly the Bookshare librarian. However, it was a long time ago and there has been no sign of that category being split. Now, as long as I am on that topic let me go into one of my favorite rants when it comes to literary discussion, that is, the difference between science fiction and fantasy. Let me first explain what science fiction and fantasy have in common. They are both speculative fiction. As speculative fiction each story implicitly asks the question, what if? The word if is then followed by a fantastic supposition and the story itself is at least one answer to the question, By fantastic supposition I mean an event, a being or some kind of scenario that is outside the experience of anyone who has ever lived. That is, it just has not ever happened, at least not yet. Now the difference. The word science is not in science fiction for nothing. Science is the study of reality. That means that in science fiction the fantastic supposition is assumed within the context of the story to be a manifestation of reality. When Hugo Gernsback invented the genre he invented it as a gimmick. His actual purpose was to promote science and specifically, as he put it, electrical invention. That was in 1928 and true to his vision most of the science fiction he started publishing was very gadget oriented. He thought that entertaining stories was a good way to get people interested in science and gadgets. Science fiction has come a long way since then, but it still makes the assumption that within the context of the story the fantastic supposition is a manifestation of reality even if it is extremely unlikely or even utterly impossible. Fantasy has been around a lot longer than science fiction. In fact, it predates science fiction by thousands of years. In fantasy the fantastic supposition is assumed within the context of the story to be a manifestation of the supernatural. That is, it is magic or some other kind of hocus pocus. As I understand it the two genres started to be lumped together just after the American publication of Lord of the Rings. Ballantine published that and it was a hit. That led Ballantine to consider starting an adult fantasy imprint and they did. However, it was a risk. Just because Lord of the Rings was so popular there was no guarantee that other fantasy for adults would be popular and so there was some reticence about how much to invest in the new adult fantasy imprint. Well, they already had a science fiction imprint and the editor was one Lin Carter. Lin Carter was given the additional job of fantasy editor. Then there was the problem of where to get the fantasy. Even though fantasy had been around thousands of years before science fiction was even invented fantasy for adults was very rare in the United States. There was plenty of it for children, but not much for adults. Since Lin Carter had a working relationship with so many science fiction writers he started recruiting science fiction writers to write the stuff. That explains why science fiction writers are also fantasy writers so frequently. And then the fantasy started being lumped together with the science fiction. Obviously Balantine's gamble was successful because if you go into a bookstore nowadays you will see that a lot more shelf space is taken up with fantasy than science fiction, but they are still very unfortunately still being lumped together. The difference is profound though. Again, the difference is that within the context of the story the fantastic supposition is assumed to be a manifestation of the supernatural in fantasy and it is assumed to be a manifestation of reality in science fiction. Any two or more genres of fiction can overlap and that includes science fiction and fantasy, but the genres are still distinct enough from one another that most anyone can tell which is being read while reading them. As long as there is a distinction between genres, though, science fiction and fantasy have to be about as far apart as any two genres of fiction can be. Again, it is the difference between reality and the supernatural; it is the difference between chemistry and alchemy; it is the difference between astronomy and astrology. I would dearly love to see this lumping of them together stopped. Genre fiction itself came about in the late nineteenth century with the pulp magazines. Some magazines published detective stories. Other magazines published westerns and so forth. Each magazine had certain requirements for its authors and each author knew which magazines to submit a story to without being summarily rejected and, knowing what kind of story each magazine published, the reader would know which magazine to buy to get the kind of story that he or she wanted. Then in 1928 science fiction was added as an additional genre. The usefulness of genre to the reader has led to the concept of genre being retained and even some new genres being added since the pulps disappeared, but the concept is still useful. If you like to read a certain kind of story then it is well to know what genre it will be in before reading it. Before the advent of the pulps fiction was not divided into genres even if some stories have been retrospectively classified into certain genres like the writings of H.G. Wells and Jules Verne have been classified as science fiction even if they were not considered to be genre fiction at the time of their publication. If we were to go back to that time of unclassified fiction then I suppose it wouldn't matter, but as long as it does matter what genre a story is in then it matters that fantasy and science fiction not be lumped together. By lumping them together the usefulness of genre is degraded. I prefer science fiction and so it is annoying to me that when I browse a list of books of science fiction I keep finding fantasy mixed in with it and I would suppose that the person who prefers fantasy would feel the same way about science fiction being mixed in with their fantasy. Then worse, there is always the possibility of picking up a book that was listed under science fiction and while reading it finding out that it is fantasy. At least I like fantasy too even if I prefer science fiction, but the lumping of them together still gets in the way of selecting the book one wants to read.
On 12/24/2014 10:44 AM, Kim Friedman wrote:
Hi, I don’t see Bookshare changing its categories list any time soon do you? Regards, Kim Friedman.*From:*bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:bksvol-discuss-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] *On Behalf Of *Sue Stevens*Sent:* Wednesday, December 24, 2014 4:52 AM *To:* bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx *Subject:* [bksvol-discuss] Re: Fairy tales versus Fantasy Hi Judy,Yes, I would consider it as fantasy, but the problem on Bookshare is that they class fantasy with science fiction, and I wouldn’t consider fairy tales science fiction. So I would probably leave that classification off. Bookshare needs to update and expand the categories.Sue S. *From:*Judy s. <mailto:cherryjam@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> *Sent:*Tuesday, December 23, 2014 8:27 PM *To:*bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx <mailto:bksvol-discuss@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> *Subject:*[bksvol-discuss] Fairy tales versus FantasyAny thoughts about how to classify a book as to type if it is a child's fairy tale? It's obviously a children's book, and it's literature and fiction, but would you consider a fairy tale, like Little Red Riding Hood, a fantasy novel as well?-- Judy s.Follow me on Twitter at QuackersNCheese <https://twitter.com/QuackersNCheese>
