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

[theemdash]

I HAVE SO MANY FEELINGS ABOUT THIS TOPIC. TO MANY TO ARTICULATE EVEN. THIS IS GOING TO BE MESSY.

For one, I have to agree with matthewbowers that sci-fi and fantasy can be separate genres and that there are things that are exclusively sci-fi and exclusively fantasy. Though I have to disagree about them rarely being crossed because there are a lot of examples in which the two genres blend.

Genres, on the whole, exist within continuums. There's the easy to define traits, the THINGS that make up a genre (like aliens, emphasis on how technology works, magic, vampires) and there's the more difficult to define traits, the THEMES of a genre (for example, steampunk focuses on "can-do," a lot of sci-fi focuses on philosophy or existentialism, some fantasy focuses on the importance of the individual (magic from within)). Some stories are easily defined by the THINGS of the genre, but the THEMES can throw a kink in. I think the thing that is most important is to find what feels correct for the story or blend the damn genres (or to learn to not fuss too much about labels).

AND NOW I'M THINKING TOO MUCH AND HAVE CONFUSED MYSELF AND AM ARGUING INTERNALLY ABOUT WHETHER OR NOT FMA IS BOTH SCI-FI AND FANTASY OR JUST FANTASY. I NEED TO GO THINK.

[spinfrog.livejournal.com]

Dude! You said it so much better than I did!

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

FMA is both, because the tech is essential, IMO.

[theemdash]

The science is important, but it's totally fueled by "magic." Also, how science-y is automail?

I AM SO TORN. I honestly am not sure if it's a blend or if it's more fantasy than sci-fi.

[lady-ganesh.livejournal.com]

I'd actually consider automail one of the more tech/science-y aspects of the universe, especially with its parallels to modern prosthetics. Winry and Pinako aren't alchemists, and they don't use alchemy -- it appears to all be conventional technology, albeit one we're not familiar with.