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 in another. Insinuating, I think, that if something is mostly fantasy in essence you would be remiss to call it science-fiction regardless of the extra trappings or themes that read that way. And then there was kind of a dog pile of people telling him how wrong he is, which I feel bad about, because I think we're all dealing in semantics.

Art, by its very nature, will be interpreted differently by everyone. What I see as fantasy or sci-fantasy another might call science-fiction and another yet still may just call speculative fiction. I think that there's always going to be a certain amount of subjectivity in any attempt to place a genre on something. What I do not think is possible to ignore though, is the fact that for better or worse science-fantasy has become an actual genre term that people use. In some ways it doesn't matter whether or not I AGREE that something is science-fantasy, just that someone else thinks it is and has named it so. After all, I cannot tell you how many times something vaguely Victorian has been labeled steampunk and I've wanted to throw up my hands and go home.

What I AM interested in, however, is where people draw those lines. For instance, getyourguns thinks space is one of the science-fiction shorthands, while I think that a focus on or use of technology would be a more concrete one. I know that pointing at an apple and saying it's a banana doesn't make it so, but if it came off an apple tree and was long and curved and yellow I'd be inclined to admit that it did share certain characteristics with a banana that made it a new breed. Because no matter how many times we go around about it, if I find a different collection of themes and tropes to be more one than the other, another person and I can argue till our faces turn blue that they actually aren't and no one will budge. So I thought I'd get a hive mind going about it and see where the discussion takes us. There is no right or wrong answer here, and I mean that. (Though, feel free to argue amongst yourselves.) You can tackle all of them, or cherry pick the thing(s) you find most interesting.

* How do you define straight up Science-Fiction (hard or soft)?'
* How do you define straight up Fantasy (urban or dark or high or anything)?
*What themes or tropes do you find common in Science-Fiction that you think never appear in Fantasy?
*What themes or tropes do you find common in Fantasy that you think never appear in Science-Fiction?
*What do you believe a successful blending of the two would be?
*Do you think it's possible to blend them at all?
*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.]

If you think there are any other questions that would add another layer to the discussion let me know and I'll add them to my list. I'm leaving this post unlocked, because I think it would be interesting to get a larger sample. Send your friends over! Anonymous commenting is on until someone starts being a jerk.

Comments

[momebie.livejournal.com]

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 about it.) As far as I can tell, the novel is your average vampire fare set in the 1800s. I would not classify that as steampunk, since steampunk is a science-fiction genre. I would classify that as Victorian Fantasy. HOWEVER. I am currently working on a story where I send a group of volunteer vampires (it's science! they signed up for it! it's done in a lab!) into space on a Victorian space ship and play around with the tech of the period. I would consider that science-fantasy, because even though the vampires are created in a lab scientifically, they're still vampires, which aren't real and can't be, and the other tech is front and center in the story. Would you classify those things differently?

Randomly, it occurs to me that the many races of aliens found in science-fiction are also not plausible and therefore fantastic in nature. I think the reason I consider those two things different is because we don't know what form life could take outside of our galaxy and it's speculative in nature to give them whatever traits we do. Drastically altering the way the human body works so that it is vampiric, however, is not speculative in nature, but merely fantastic because the way we view vampires makes it impossible for one to actually survive that way.

I HAVE A FEELING THIS WHOLE POST IS GOING TO RIDE THE SEMANTICS TRAIN.

As a side note, I always tend to read virus zombies as not being dead at all, simply addled by the disease, so it doesn't bother me that their bodies function and it's not explained. After all, the 'zombies' in 28 Days Later (which I still consider to NOT be a zombie movie) starve to death after a certain period of time and then do not come back.

[kel-reiley.livejournal.com]

Re: Star Wars - and I would mostly consider that Sci-fi, actually. Granted, I don't know all the ins and outs of its universe (I've still never seen the "prequels" and I'm not gonna...). Doctor Who, though, has definitely gone off any sci-fi track it might ever have been on. I'm pretty sure Moff did that on purpose when he took over (it just sort of happened when RTD was in charge).

My understanding of Steampunk is pretty limited. I understood it to focus on the Victorian time period, but strictly with the inclusion of advanced technology (that is still steam-powered?) like that awful remake of Wild Wild West with Will Smith... No?

Considering that your vampires are created in a lab, that is definitely basing it in science and not magic or mythology, so I think it could be sci-fi. All that depends on how much you want to explain about your vampires. Are they simply genetically altered humans, with superstrength and such, a thirst for blood, but not undead? I'd be willing to put that in the sci-fi pile. It's when you get into myth and magic that veers into fantasy territory.

I HAVE MANY THOUGHTS ON DIFFERENT ALIEN SPECIES' IN "SCI-FI" SHOWS AS WELL. (Surprised?) Like with fantasy and magic, I... disapprove of fancy aliens that have ~things~ that make no practical sense for a species to develop. I can get behind the theory that most evolved species from different planets might be "humanoid" (and not just b/c they are played by humans painted green and wearing funny hats and shit) if that's what evolution does on life-sustaining planets. But, still, your aliens need to make some fucking sense, yo!

The infected in 28 Days Later are not zombies - they are living, breathing humans with a virus. Not unlike the "Croats" in Supernatural (which... basically kinda stole that same idea, no?). The OTHER zombies in Supernatural were the rising from the grave voodoo kind. But the zombies in The Walking Dead are both dead bodies and infected with a virus (as explained in s1e06) and my suspension of disbelief is firmly in place b/c OMG THEY TRAVEL IN FUCKING HERDS NOW! WHYYYYYYYY?!

Ahem. Yeah. I, um, I could talk about this all night, man.