iconography of magic, scoff at the strictures of Fantasy . Meanwhile, delightful wonder abounds within Science Fiction , a direct inheritance of Gernsback’s “ charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.” (My italics.) Even the blithe assertion that science fiction deals with science while fantasy deals with magic is called into question by a glance at the shelves, where we see Herbert’s Dune labelled as Science Fiction and Peake’s Titus Groan labelled as Fantasy . Isn’t the former chock full of magic—priests and prophecies, monsters and messiahs, a drug that lets you warp reality, gives you visions of the future. And what is the most fantastical (metaphysical? marvellous?) idea in the latter? What wondrous magic does it contain?
A really big house.
That Tasty Tang of Boot Polish
The glib differentiations don’t hold up to scrutiny. If we contrast the extremes of Hard SF and Epic Fantasy , obviously there’s a polarity between these two aged maiden aunts of the family, these grandes dames who think everything revolves around them; but to try and apply this science/magic divide as a basis for taxonomy across the board is futile. Science fiction long since assimilated the notion that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (much to its benefit), while fantasy long since assimilated the notion that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology (much to my boredom). Writers on this side of the schismed family or that write the stories they want to, quite often treating the two as entirely interchangeable.
Even the Science Fiction of a Campbellian closed definition is deeply complexified by sense-of-wonder and futureshock so that the most rigourous futurology can be at once marvellous and/or monstrous. Which is to say that the work itself may be, functionally speaking, by any argument, both science fiction and fantasy, or both science fiction and horror, or all three. Ray Bradbury’s entire oeuvre exemplifies the crumbling of Science Fiction into the open interplay of science fiction, fantasy and horror. With stories like “The Veldt,” for example, one is forced to ask: Is this science fiction, fantasy, horror…or all of the above?
And do we actually give a shit, given that it’s a fucking immense story?
(The correct answer, by the way: No. )
The buffet at this clan gathering is a crawling chaos of pilfered tropes and techniques, shared plot structures and character types. Cowboys in space or knights fighting dragons! Dragons in space or cowboys fighting knights! The Shit Sandwiches munched down on both sides of the family have more in common than they have to distinguish them, heroic wank-fests filled with O bjects of Power, Grand Devices of technological magics, every FTL drive a mass-produced metaphysical causation engine, every wormhole a Clutean portal. Where the affective dynamics of Modern Pulp is what matters, the reality is one of a mandatory story template, with the other conventional elements that make for templates of individual Genres largely interchangeable.
The Shinola Cola passed out on both sides has much in common too—using those Grand Devices as metaphors rather than simply MacGuffins, extrapola ting that Big Idea, working through the ramifications of the quirk as conceit, crafting innovative narratives where there’s thematic import in the impact on worldscape and plot, drawing 3D characters who interact with that worldscape and with each other on a deeper level than the Boy Hero’s Never-Ending Journey. If the glamour of incredibility can be seductive, if the formulae of plot offer easy options, and if these lead to different levels of aesthetic and ethical engagement, the difference is not between Science Fiction and Fantasy but between genre and Genre .
You get different flavours of ice cream in your Shinola Cola Floats, but it’s that tasty tang of boot polish that makes them all so
A really big house.
That Tasty Tang of Boot Polish
The glib differentiations don’t hold up to scrutiny. If we contrast the extremes of Hard SF and Epic Fantasy , obviously there’s a polarity between these two aged maiden aunts of the family, these grandes dames who think everything revolves around them; but to try and apply this science/magic divide as a basis for taxonomy across the board is futile. Science fiction long since assimilated the notion that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic (much to its benefit), while fantasy long since assimilated the notion that any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology (much to my boredom). Writers on this side of the schismed family or that write the stories they want to, quite often treating the two as entirely interchangeable.
Even the Science Fiction of a Campbellian closed definition is deeply complexified by sense-of-wonder and futureshock so that the most rigourous futurology can be at once marvellous and/or monstrous. Which is to say that the work itself may be, functionally speaking, by any argument, both science fiction and fantasy, or both science fiction and horror, or all three. Ray Bradbury’s entire oeuvre exemplifies the crumbling of Science Fiction into the open interplay of science fiction, fantasy and horror. With stories like “The Veldt,” for example, one is forced to ask: Is this science fiction, fantasy, horror…or all of the above?
And do we actually give a shit, given that it’s a fucking immense story?
(The correct answer, by the way: No. )
The buffet at this clan gathering is a crawling chaos of pilfered tropes and techniques, shared plot structures and character types. Cowboys in space or knights fighting dragons! Dragons in space or cowboys fighting knights! The Shit Sandwiches munched down on both sides of the family have more in common than they have to distinguish them, heroic wank-fests filled with O bjects of Power, Grand Devices of technological magics, every FTL drive a mass-produced metaphysical causation engine, every wormhole a Clutean portal. Where the affective dynamics of Modern Pulp is what matters, the reality is one of a mandatory story template, with the other conventional elements that make for templates of individual Genres largely interchangeable.
The Shinola Cola passed out on both sides has much in common too—using those Grand Devices as metaphors rather than simply MacGuffins, extrapola ting that Big Idea, working through the ramifications of the quirk as conceit, crafting innovative narratives where there’s thematic import in the impact on worldscape and plot, drawing 3D characters who interact with that worldscape and with each other on a deeper level than the Boy Hero’s Never-Ending Journey. If the glamour of incredibility can be seductive, if the formulae of plot offer easy options, and if these lead to different levels of aesthetic and ethical engagement, the difference is not between Science Fiction and Fantasy but between genre and Genre .
You get different flavours of ice cream in your Shinola Cola Floats, but it’s that tasty tang of boot polish that makes them all so
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