I like both, but I've always leaned toward science fiction myself. I have an easier time finding deep and thought-provoking stories in the science fiction genre, and I tend to prefer its more emphasis on exploring what its possibilities mean and using them to examine ourselves.
Book of the New Sun baybeeeee! Really anything by Gene Wolfe is great.
Weird as it is, I like when science fiction turns into fantasy. The Phantasy Star series consistently does that, for example. Same with Star Ocean to some extent.
I think sci fi asks more interesting questions, and opens up more assumptions about society being questioned as norms in how it develops its world building. fantasy can do that, but 9/10 is just Tolkien shit again BUT THIS TIME WITH X new CRAZY idea for their politics/magic system/bad guys, that actually are not all that new
Not sure. Sometimes sci-fi gets a little too freaky for my small brain and I’m often too lazy to seek out more unique fantasy stuff when the medieval European/LotR clones bore me.
Though similar to what steve said, I like when media blurs the line between the two. Anyone remember Bionicle? That twist towards the end was neat.
Ooh, urban fantasy is usually fun.
Bionicle fuckin rocks. Also, Lego basically opening up the ip for fan projects is good.
I remember Bionicle but I never really got into it. What was the twist?
Assuming you remember some stuff about the premise:
Wacky scientists built a planet sized robot to explore space as their planet blew up from a war
over oil.It’s revealed the little villager dudes are essentially maintenance nanobots for said robot. They forgot their purpose after first becoming self aware and later the Big Bad introducing a virus that ended up crashing the robot as it was returning to fix the homeworld. An island grew over the robot’s face and the survivors from its brain city did an anprim and settled the surface.
The story suddenly flips from saving and waking up the villagers’ god (who shares his name with both the island and the giant robot, wink wink) to fixing the robot and learning how to carry out its final mission.
It was really fun looking back at all the hints the story crew sprinkled throughout Bionicle’s 10 year run. Stuff like these bug dudes coming out of nowhere to wipe out the island and its villages - a poorly timed malfunction meant to clear the bot’s face for take off. The climax taking place somewhere that means “great heart” in the lore and where they basically do a little open heart surgery and shock him back to life. It only became obvious to most people like the moment it happened, which made the payoff super satisfying.
I've been scratching my itch for fantasy with Chinese cultivation novels, it's like a refresh of the genre with a different mythological basis. And cultivation is fun, its like rpg levels but without the weird quasi rpg world of Japanese stuff.
I never got past that scene, but from what I understand he’s called the “unbeliever” because he doesn’t believe the world he’s in is real. Over time he comes to understand that it is and regrets his actions as monstrous. I think you could readily argue the point that it still wasn’t appropriate (I mean, I could never read them because of that scene) but the authorial intent, however garbled, wasn’t really to fetishize or glorify.
Fantasy. With sci-fi my brain either reflexively starts poking holes in all of the fake science stuff, or immediately zones out because someone decided to publish a physics textbook with a couple plot elements that start in chapter 15
Wtf I've always found the opposite. Maybe I haven't read enough or I'm biased. The first time I ever heard of a gay person was through a cyberpunk novel
Idk I played a lot of DnD as a woman before realizing I was actually a woman the whole time.
Got any good recs?
I love both equally. There's honestly not a ton of difference between the two. Pretty much all sci-fi/fantasy can be boiled down to one of two things:
- Spectacle. "Ooooh, cool magic!" or "Ooooooh, cool robots!" I don't mean this in a derogatory sense, just in the sense that the purpose is mostly exploring this fantastical world that's different from reality. Your Star Wars' and Lord of the Rings' and such largely fall under here.
- Allegorical. "We wanted to make a story about how segregation bad, but it's 1970s America so we can't do that, so instead we made up an alien planet where blue-skinned people get treated like shit by red-skinned people while our cast explains why this is stupid." A lens to view the real world with a degree of separation to make a point. Your Star Treks' and Dunes' and, as much as Tolkien hates me for saying this, also your Lord of the Rings' fit here.
There's a lot of overlap between the two categories, but the combination of both is really the heart and soul of both genres.
There's this, and there's also I think "exploratory": what happens if you take the human condition and knock out a couple of things? Things like Left hand of darkness, and a bunch, though not all alternate history is this
If we're buying this binary, I'd say more in (2). The movie's big focus is on the process stuff surrounding discovery and engineering, and almost all the protagonists' trouble comes from their irresponsible and reckless misuse of a new technology (as well as interpersonal conflict), rather than because of anything intrinsic to the technology itself. I think you can read it as a kind of argument for technology being "neutral," and the moral valence of tools coming from the reactive attitudes and use-behaviors of intentional agents.
That's a good callout. And as the maker of this very spur-of-the-moment binary, I'd agree that speculative fiction built around how people would react to $shiny_new_tech_or_magic falls under the broad category of allegory. I suppose I should rename that category something along the lines of "lens we view the real world through" instead.
I like both but I find better stories generally in Sci-Fi. It's great when a series has bits of both, like Final Fantasy, which changes hands from Sci-Fi stories to fantasy from game to game.
I like both but I tend towards fantasy simply cause i have lower standards for it. Mediocre fantasy can still be fun, mediocre sci-fi is just painful.
both good
people who like scifi but not fantasy can't be trusted, they're in it for the wrong reasons
that was a very broad over generalisation and i didn't really mean it but -
both types of speculative fiction are best when they bring you to a better understanding of humanity, there are lots of hard sci-fi fans who won't read fantasy because the mechanism that makes the world of the story different to ours isn't rational or logical, they're more interested in the science part of things than the possibilities for fiction it opens up.
the mechanism shouldn't matter if it brings about something interesting. was thinking about it wrt jordan peele's us - had and seen a bunch of conversations where people were marking it down because the underground society doesn't make sense like 'how would they feed them? how did they get there?' sort of stuff. but why does the world of the story have to follow the logic of the real world? what are you afraid of?
Oh yeah definitely. Those types are often super critical of the "wrong" kind of sci-fi too.
"An endlessly moving post-apocalyptic train doesn't make sense!" Fuck you, trains are cool and Snowpiercer is a good movie
I think this varies wildly on the type of scifi you're reading like le Guin and PKD often gave very little consideration to the particular scientific details. My favorite scifi novel is Shikasta by Doris Lessing, which admittedly blurs the lines between scifi and fantasy, but it doesn't bother explaining how the future tech works, because it's not important. The novel focuses instead on the impact and how the terraforming and bio-engineering is used, not the particular mechanisms.
defo. I love sci-fi and the best stuff isn't sciencey for science sake. but can't see a le guin fan being that type of sci-fi only dweeb - would miss out on her many beautiful fantasy novels for one.
shikasta sounds good I'll have to put it on the list. fucking love not knowing how things work. that's the best type of story - a world that feels fully realised but you have vey little idea what's going on.
I tend to love the first novel in a series and then get progressively less involved as the oblique and mysterious stuff gets clarified.
Shikasta is incredibly good because it feels like you're reading something intended for a completely different audience who would understand all the technical and religious stuff going on, but you're just a modern human so you have to piece together what's happening based on your own understanding. The novel is from the perspective of a highly advanced alien culture who have their own religion and values and etc, but none of that is explained explicitly. It's assumed you know all that already.
Like the aliens view obsessive individuality and greed as a kind of degenerative disease resulting from flawed biology. Being disconnected from a kind of universal harmony.
It's rad. Read it.
yeah having a reason is good. being cool, or novel, or an interesting metaphor for something are all good reasons. like brainbeam says, uncritical support for the eternal capitalism hell engine film
My beef with the "sci-fi only! No fantasy" people I've known and met IRL is they are often preoccupied with a power fantasy of sorts. The ones I knew didn't care about story or themes as much as "wow killer invincible weapon how many gigatons can it do" technical details. It put me off from trying some sci-fi series entirely.
often preoccupied with a power fantasy of sorts
Funny enough, I actually gravitate toward sci-fi for the opposite reason. Ordinary, working-class protagonists like Redrick Schuhart and Ellen Ripley always resonated more with me than any chosen hero with a special magic sword ever did.
Oh, I love those stories too. I mean the kind of stories that "fantasy sucks" absolutists that I met were into, that were more about how awesome the weapon technology was than anything character related.
I've been split down the middle for a while now I can lean either way right now
