Jeff Edelstein Asks -- Nay, Demands! -- That Icky Fantasy Be Kept Out of His Yummy SF
Jeff Edelstein, writing in The Trentonian, wants to know why SF and fantasy are mingled in the same bookstore section. So he asked Robert J. Sawyer.
Thought 1: Has Edelstein noticed that "fiction" and "literature" are also in the same bookstore section? What about "mysteries" and "thrillers"? Does he have any plans for these areas? (How about "travel" and "leisure"?)
Thought 2: Sawyer is awfully polite to random people who ask him odd questions.
Thought 3: I'll go along with Edelstein's plan if he can solidly categorize the full list of borderline cases from rec.arts.sf.written and -- this is the tough part -- get everyone else to agree on them.
Just a few examples:
- Anne McCaffrey's Pern (dragons in a series that started in John W. Campbell's Analog, home of the hardest of hard SF)
- Marion Zimmer Bradley's "Darkover" series (lots of psi powers on an alien planet)
- Walter Jon Williams's Metropolitan (geomancy treated with hard SF rigor, in a far-future industralized urban setting)
This isn't just a question about books of the past -- I hear that Justina Robson's upcoming novel has a near-future apocalypse in its backstory that brought elvish creatures to Earth. It is clear that Hal Clement is off on one side of the spectrum and David Eddings on the other, but a lot of writers do things in the squishy middle a lot of the time. Trying to consistently separate them out would be a big headache, and the main result would be that most SFF readers would have to check both sections to make sure they didn't miss anything.
Comments
Yes, Robert J. Sawyer is a very nice guy! But, to the point of this post. I get somewhat miffed by genres being lumped together, but there is no way to avoid it. I make the claim that Star Wars if fantasy (there's nothing scientific about it!), and I know a lot of people would disagree with that. So, I learned to give up and accept it.
Posted by: Shaun Farrell | February 14, 2007 09:43 PM
Robert Sawyer is using the Bradbury argument, which is essentially that science fiction is stuff that could possibly happen and fantasy is about that which could never possibly happen. But, Ray Bradbury used that argument to say that even his Martian Chronicles was fantasy and that the only science fiction he wrote was Fahrenheit 451.
What this means for Edelstein is that he thinks that Sawyer is supporting his position without really thinking about that half of that science fiction genre that he loves so much would end up in the geek section of fantasy.
Peter F. Hamilton's Night's Dawn Trilogy? Fantasy. John Scalzi and Old Man's War? Fantasy. Karen Traviss? Fantasy. Dan Simmons and the Hyperion Cantos? Yep. Fantasy.
What would that squishy SF shelf look like? Well, I know Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 would be on it, if it wasn't filed in Fiction / Literature. But his Martian Chronicles and Something Wicked This Way Comes? Both in fantasy, away from that most famous book of the master.
Most of what we call science fiction would never make it past the fantasy shelves because once we introduce aliens or something that we cannot produce from today's technology or see that it could exist from today's technology...fantasy.
Posted by: Joe Sherry | February 15, 2007 07:35 AM