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Although I’ve occasionally enjoyed reading a
book or two in the fantasy genre, I much prefer
Science Fiction. So, when I’m looking for a new
book to read, the odds are I’m searching for the
latter. Why then, when I search bookstore
shelves or do an Amazon search, the two are
combined? I’m sure there are many other readers
out there who prefer one to the other and, like
me, find the clumping of the two frustrating.
How can anyone confuse one for the other? With
a few exceptions, rarely are Science Fiction and
Fantasy anything alike. Fantasy usually delves
into things like magic, and mythical monsters or
creatures. Science Fiction usually delves into
science and technology that may or may not exist
at some future date. The only correlation I can
see is the element of existence. Neither magic
nor speculated technologies exist. This one
extremely thin thread is too flimsy to forever
bond the two together. After all, Fantasy has
unique rules of follow, often tied to mythology
and folklore. Science Fiction usually has a
different set of rules to follow, tied to
science and technological theories of today,
extrapolated into a logical progression of
future applications. An advanced particle beam
weapon would be as out of place in a Fantasy
novel as a wizard is in Science Fiction.
Oh, I can hear the objections already. Star
Wars had Jedi knights performing magic through
the force. Star Trek had omnipotent beings like
the Q doing like-wise. Arthur C. Clarke wrote
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.” And Larry Niven
delved into Fantasy on a few occasions, blending
Fantasy and Science Fiction in a very humorous
series about a time traveler sent to what he
thinks is his world’s murky past to recover
animals lost to extinction. In actuality, the
time machine sent him to the past in an
alternate dimension where dragons and unicorns
really existed. And let’s not forget Anne
McCaffrey’s Dragon Riders of Pern novels. Even
though the stories are of people with primitive
technology living in a world with Dragons, the
set up to the whole series is that the
characters are descendents of space travelers
who colonized the planet Pern. They genetically
engineered local flying lizards from two foot
long creatures to full sized, flying dragons,
then lost their technology.
I’m sure there are quite a few other examples
of novels or other media combining the two
genres. But there are a huge number of books
that cross between two or more genres. Books
like the Da Vinci Code mixed Suspense, Religion
and a Mystery. Janet Evanovich mixed Comedy,
Suspense and Romance in her Stephanie Plum
series. Even I like to mix Mystery into my
Science Fiction.
Sure, the lines can be very blurry. But my
novels are first and foremost Science Fiction. I
would be annoyed if Amazon classified Terraforming
Teardrop as a Mystery. It is first and
foremost, Science Fiction. When people want to
find it, they would look for it under Science
Fiction. When you or I want to find Science
Fiction books in general, we don’t want to weed
through entry after entry of Fantasy. Fantasy
fans will most likely feel the same way, not
wanting to weed through Science Fiction. In the
end, I feel the laziness of the bookstores in
not separating the two a huge disservice to both
writers and readers alike.
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