Recently I’ve noticed that there’s been a lot of writing regarding science fiction. As a genre dear to my heart I took notice. Topics included whether sci-fi and speculative fiction should embrace a post-genre view, rules of reading that differ when it comes to sci-fi and so on. Some of these articles were wonderful but the tendency was to move away from genre and towards a more inclusive literary view. Even in the rules of reading sci-fi there were comparisons to using the casual acceptance of certain points and trying that perspective with literary fiction. That’s all fine. I have no problem with sci-fi/spec fiction moving away from strong genre and towards a wider audience. But I want to touch on something that travels in the opposite direction, delving deeper into the genre rifts.
Science Fiction vs. Fantasy
How this will diverge from the usual argument of literary value between the two types of writing is that I will address the problems that come up between sci-fi and fantasy audiences, mainly being that I’m seeing more and more people not know the difference. So here’s a cheat sheet to distinguish the two by way of the worlds created for their settings:
- Science Fiction/Speculative Fiction: If advanced science plays a large part in the world or plot then it is science fiction.
- Fantasy: If magic exists in the world it is fantasy.
NOTE: Fantasy supersedes science fiction.
“Why?” You may ask. That’s simple. The reason is that magic is a bigger world shift than advanced science. The leap between the present and any new technology will be a much smaller, more likely shift than one to magic. In short, magic is more of a world shift than new science discoveries; the change in worlds between our world and that of Star Trek is more minor and feasible than the change between our world and that of Harry Potter. While we are 70% of the way to tricorders since the ‘60s and now we are 0% of the way to harnessing magic since, well, ever. And in case you want to argue that we do have access to magic/vampires/transworld wardrobes then I invite you to write your own essay and support it with real world examples. I can show you an iPhone, the aforementioned 70% tricorder.
Let’s take a little quiz and see how you do. Name That Genre:
- Harry Potter – fantasy
- Star Trek – sci-fi
- Chronicles of Narnia – fantasy
- Planet of the Apes – sci-fi
- Star Wars – sci-fi? WRONG. This one is fantasy.
And this gets to my point. Star Wars is fantasy. You may cry out about hyperspace, fleets of starships, interplanetary commerce, lightsabers! Cry all you wants but you’re forgetting one thing: The Force. The force is a mystical energy that permeates all living things (and apparently rocks and robots as well). You can call it ‘sci-fi fantasy’ but the core of the Star Wars universe, the biggest divergence from our world is this mystical, magical Force. We can travel to other planets and we may one day create a hyperdrive, or not if it necessitates some fictional but physical element (unobtainium, dilithium, etc) but as of now our world doesn’t seem any closer to divulging evidence of The Force than it was millions of years ago.
To pull in another genre to illustrate the difference between these two, let us look at the Pirates of the Caribbean movies for a moment. They take place in the past, have pirates, use magic, have sea monsters and zombie/ghost/damned people, Aztec curses. Are these fantasy movies? Yes. Are they historical fiction? Only by the most liberal definition of historical fiction. In the same way, Star Wars is very much fantasy and only science fiction by a very generous classification.
All of this started to form in my mind when one of my friends saw the Shane Acker film 9. He said he felt betrayed because the whole film established for him a science fiction world and then at the end (SPOILERS) the story suddenly focuses on the existence of a fantasy element, a soul. The problem I had with that criticism is the rag doll characters are animated in these burlap bodies without any sort of mechanical elements to move them. From the beginning I saw 9 as a fantasy film, and indeed the plot seemed like a mini version of Lord of the Rings.
What I took from this perceived betrayal was the importance of discerning the two genres. I realize that a lot of people must have the same confusion at times. It’s evident as even in book stores the two types of books get lumped into one section despite the fact that there’s the easy test one can put to any item to figure out its proper classification.
There are a few other instances of this confusion that has led to issues with the audience between these two genres. One is the famous Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate. There are many aspects of the two that can be debated, respectively: character vs. plot, romance vs. drama, archetypes vs. contemporary cultural and political deconstruction. The one that people don’t really look at this in light of, but should, is fantasy vs. science fiction. People sometimes get a little bothered when you say that one of these franchises is better than the other (by people I mean nerds and geeks). You don’t really find the same irritation if you claim either fantasy or sci-fi to be better than the other. Instead you usually get either agreement or simple disagreement, but the divide on that preference is so large and fundamental (magic vs. science) that it rarely goes any farther than agreement or acknowledgment. The irritation really comes when people feel that Star Wars vs. Star Trek is a value judgment within a treasured genre and it’s not.
The other example where this creates trouble, and this one has perhaps come to eclipse the Star Wars vs. Star Trek debate, is the Star Wars vs. Star Wars debate. I’m talking about the Original Trilogy verse the prequels. IV-VI vs. 1-3. The same problem occurs here as it does in the previous example because a false dichotomy is created; people start arguing about the value of two genres without realizing it. The original movies have The Force, a mystical energy that flows through all living things and binds them together. Jedis and Sith are warring factions of an ancient religion. When we get to the prequels the force is actually a manifestation of blood parasites called midichlorians. These are measured and studied by the Jedi Council, a political collective that is fighting against the totalitarian Sith. Arguing between the originals and the prequels isn’t like arguing between Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi. In the latter the argument is within the same fantasy setting, but told differently. In the former the argument is really between two nearly unrelated worlds where one is a fantasy adventure and the other a political science-fiction drama. A lot of the points people clash actually puts them on the same side; both sides saying the weakest aspect is the awkward connecting of these two barely related trilogies.
More recently Battlestar Galactica has suffered from this muddled distinction. I was lucky enough to start the show after it completed its full run, with only the half-spoiler that the finale didn’t fit the hard science fiction of the previous episodes.
(For readers not familiar with ‘hard sci-fi’ it is a sub-genre recognized but a focus on realistic and usually well explained speculative scientific developments. The lack of lasers and realistic plotting of battles, along with the lack of multiple faster than light travel speeds pushed this series closer towards ‘hard sci-fi’ than most television. The lack of sound in space in the show Firefly is another example of this realistic approach.)I went in knowing that it was like Star Wars, a fantasy world full of technology. Knowing this the finale of the show was much more in line with the world I perceived the series to take place in. While religious beliefs were often a discussion point in the show knowing that the actual religion played a part in their reality helped ground my watching in something somewhat closer to their “reality” and farther from the “reality” that people expecting science fiction assumed to be true.
I’m not coming out to say that between fantasy and science fiction there is a better genre, though I do have my preference. The point I want to make is that even recognizing the difference between the two is an oft missed aspect in the genre debates. And seeing this split early on simplifies a great deal when looking at these two uncomfortable siblings. Being aware of the fundamental differences can even help outside of head to head issues. Take the current Steampunk trend. The reason I think it’s so widespread among both sets of fans is that a fictionalized Victorian setting has the potential to grow into either, or both) genres. Coal powered automatons have just as much potential to exists as do the Ancient Ones, perhaps even to both show up and battle. In addition, the science of brass pressure tanks and steam power have already been surpassed so any retroactively advanced technology becomes just as indistinguishable from magic as sufficiently advanced technology would. The suspension of disbelief required for Steampunk is much more akin to that required for fantasy than science fiction. Could a Terminator ever be built? Possibly, and that’s science fiction. Could a steam-powered Terminator be built? Infeasible and it is closer in likelihood to a Golem than a cyborg, thus pushing closer to the realm of fantasy.
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