An Endless Topic: Science Fiction Versus Fantasy
Is there a difference between science fiction and fantasy? Is the difference real? Is it arbitrary? Does it matter these days, even assuming it ever did?
My theory is that genres are defined and ultimately enforced by the book-buying audience, despite the theorizing of editors and commentators and gatekeepers.
Myself, I am a fan and even a partisan of the Pulp Magazine approach to writing, which is to emphasize action, color, spectacle, a sense of wonder and magic, and the heights and sorrows of the human passion. The human condition contains both the wonders of science and awe at the supernatural, and Pulp tales did not slight one for the sake of the other.
Such an approach stands in contradistinction to the somewhat drier and less dramatic aerospace stories or future history or robot tales popularized by John W. Campbell Jr., which were distinctly humanist, naturalist, and secular in tone.
Fantasy stories, he did not buy at all. Any fantasy elements in the tale, such as firebreathing dragons, had to be hidden under a figleaf of naturalism. He, more than any other single editor, promoted and enforced the distinction between between science fiction and fantasy.
But it was the fans who held the ultimate veto; and they did not use it. Instead Analog was elevated to preeminence. This was in large part to Campbell’s editorial policy of insisting on the distinction between Science Fiction versus Fantasy, a distinction which the Pulp Approach (of which, I say again, I am a fan) gloriously dismisses as arbitrary.
Fan I might be, but I do not think the distinction is arbitrary.
In brief, the difference between SF and Fantasy is this. If the story is one where the scientist says, “there is a rational explanation for this!” and he is right, and the ghost turns out to be Mr. McGreedy, the owner of the haunted museum in a rubber mask, then it is a mainstream story. If the ghost was a Man from Mars in his glowing space gear, stalking the moors by moonlight as he repairs his crashed space saucer, then it is science fiction.
If the scientists is wrong, and the ghost carries him away screaming into the air, or an elf turns him into a toadstool, then it is a fantasy story.
If there is a rational explanation, but the explanation is that the glowing apparition thought to be a ghost is actually an extra-terrestrial demon-god has wakened from his long slumber and risen to the surface of the sea, then this is a pulp story, probably penned by H.P. Lovecraft, and, in that case, the last surviving witness goes insane, and would have been better off if it had been a ghost or an elf. They seem positively friendly by comparison.
Campbell’s idea was to emphasize stories containing sound engineering speculation, after the fashion of Jules Verne, as an ironclad submarine or a moonshot, and avoid stories where the futuristic machinery is merely stage machinery meant to bring the protagonist to the setting, as a time machine or a moon-traveling sphere of antigravity alloy.
Despite the certain obviously inadequacy of the terms, Verne type tales were dubbed “Hard” and Wells type tales were dubbed “Soft.”
Stories are commonplace which cannot neatly fit into genre categories of subcategories. The New Sun books by Gene Wolfe are the most obvious examples, where whether a thing is magic or superscience is a matter of considerable ambiguity.
But the genres bounds are crossed more often than held, so much so that even to speak of them is a doubtful prospect. Even the most famous writers following Campbell’s themes wrote speculations unmoored from anything remotely scientific: Asimov pens tales of time travelers or mindreading robots or psionic mathematicians; Heinlein pens tales of a magical Man from Mars actually being an angel complete with wings and halo, or posits a magician’s trade union being corrupted by gangsters from hell; or Arthur C. Clarke peoples his city at the end of time with mind-reading immortals. Star Wars has the Force and Star Trek has the Mind Meld, and if these things are not magic, neither is the genii in a brass bottle.
Nonetheless, despite how porous the border is, and how foggy the line of distinction, I submit there was a difference between science fiction and fantasy, because the audience of that day said so; and there would be now, if it said so again.
In those day, after Weird Tales had folded, but before the time of Tolkien in paperback, fantasy works were marginalized, or shelved with children’s books. A fan of Conan-style tales had only an oasis or two in a vast desert of spaceships and robot stories.
To what degree this dryness was due to one editor and his influence is open to debate. However, from the turn of the century onward mainstream magazines and the whole of the cultural elite rejected mystical, magical, and wondrous tales in the name of socialism and social progress. Then as now, everything ‘Woke’ turns to dung.
To seek out the matter of older fine arts, such as the Northern Gods of Wager’s Ring, the spirits of Dickens’ Christmas Carol, or the witches or ghosts from a Shakespeare’s tragedy, in those days, one sought them in pulp magazines or in the nursery, where the scornful sneers of the elite had exiled them.
What is not open to debate is how John W. Campbell Jr and his Big Three authors — Robert Heinlein in particular — were in a literary ghetto, and rightly jealous of the slick magazines favored by the elite. Heinlein boasted fulsomely when he finally broke into the slicks. That one of A.E. van Vogt’s novels was the first science fiction book published in hardback in American after the paper rationing of the war years was ended was a point of pride.
Myself, I am old enough to remember hearing Hal Clement nickpicking an astronomy error in a widely read mainstream novel: The glee of finding a science flaw in elite book was clear.
The novel was one I myself never read, since it was a book everyone was assigned to read in school. Nowadays, science fiction is assigned in school, which I take to be a wicked plot to deter the youth from reading science fiction.
In his later years, the John W Campbell Jr became fascinating by parapsychological powers. One can trace the change in the type of stories he asked to see most clear in the example of the difference between Isaac Asimov’s early “Foundation” stories, where the psychohistorians were statistical mathematicians, and the later, where the psychohistorians were psychic.
As an aside, I note with the famous quote GK Chesterton never made, that if a man stops believing in God, he will believe in anything. Allow me to suggest that Campbell’s interest in parapsychology and Dianetics and other such crackpottery was his instinctive hunger for the supernatural, thwarted of its natural outlet, manifesting in a perverse form.
For parapsychology, while it might smell and act and quack like magic, is not magic. It is a natural phenomenon discoverable by empirical study, a law of nature like gravity or magnetism, and as open to investigation. It is, hence, a form of dealing with the spirit world robbed of all spirit. It becomes a tool, like electricity or atomic power, without moral significance. Parapsychology is neither holy like a miracle nor unholy like necromancy.
The mere existence of the DRAGONRIDERS OF PERN, by itself, shows that, at the time it was written and with the audience of that time, there was indeed a distinction between science fiction and fantasy.
Namely, calling fire-breathing alien lizard organism on another world “dragons” and decking the lost colony with all the panoply of the Middle Ages was necessary to sell the story.
The selfsame story, if set in Elfland, and staffed by magical dragons, would not have sold to the editor of Analog in 1967: and please give the editor credit for knowing his audience and their tastes.
Now, the audience these days, after a generation raised on Star Wars and awash in Japanese anime which scoffs at the protocols of 1950s SF&F, probably does not give a hoot about the old distinction. The glorious days of Pulp Weird Tales are upon us again.
But, again, regardless of the glory of Pulp, and regardless of the desire to abolish the distinction between natural and supernatural fiction, there is a difference in mood and flavor between the two.
Fantasy is nostalgic and magical and traditional: Catholic, so to speak. Science Fiction is futuristic, and the only miracles are miracles of technology. The mood is iconoclastic, from the Age of Reason, and smacks of Deism: Protestant, so to speak.
If one encounters a superscience indistinguishable from magic, it is always from a future more futuristic, or a race more advanced, than the protagonist. It never comes from Eden nor from the Age of Saturn.
That is, in other words, in a story where the science is regarded as magic by an awestruck onlooker, it is still depicted a naturalistic. There is still a rational explanation, even if it is hidden from the protagonist.
The difference between a flaming sword versus a light-saber is one of mood only, or the difference between an energy being versus angel, an Apache versus a Green Martian, or between a Stargate to Nu Phoenicis versus a Wardrobe Door to Narnia. These props act much the same either in science fictional or fantastic backgrounds.
But there is a difference. For example, once difference between the the nameless Time Traveler of H.G. Wells and Ebenezer Scrooge, is that Scrooge can change the future he sees. The mood in a science fiction setting tends to be naturalistic; in a fantasy setting, moralistic, in that the fantastic elements have a moral value.
But that difference of mood is what defines the genre, just as a comedic mood is needed for comedies and a horrific mood is need for horror, a romantic mood for romances, and so on. You cannot write a western without the setting and props of the Old West.
Likewise, one can set a tale in a setting where the rules of alchemy or occultism or theosophy reign supreme, just as once can tell a detective story even in a fantasy or science fictional setting, provided one plays fair with the protocols of the genre.
Miracles and inexplicable events can intrude into even the hardest of hard SF backgrounds, provided this is done in the same way and with the same mood as miracles and wonders happen in real life.
But if the wizard Merlin shows up in a time machine story, complete with magic powers of teleportation and hypnosis, the rest of the story must be coherent with the protocols thus established, lest the reader lose his suspension of disbelief.
Readers these days are most generous when it comes to the boundaries of genres, and will not drop a book merely because the starship captain, a long lost son of Arthur, has the magic sword Excalibur at one hip and his trusty blaster at the other when he delves beneath the Pyramids of Mars to confront the ghost-kings of Phobos.
Myself, I was raised on the spaceships and magic swords of the Thundercats, and saw ghosts banished by means of electro-psionic superscience by the Ghostbusters, and it caused no wobble of my suspension of disbelief. Mingling magic and superscience is a trick as old as HP Lovecraft or William Hope Hodgson, and few are the readers who turn up their noses as such offerings.
But when they do turn up their nose, I cannot blame them: as a matter of logic, introducing supernaturalism into a story returns it from the clockwork naturalistic world of the Enlightenment, where most science fiction takes place, into the larger world of the supernatural, where real life takes place.
In real life, seeing a miracle would cause wonder, awe and fear. One might doubt one’s senses. But in a tale, if you doubt your senses, you might doubt the book, and break the suspension of disbelief.
Let writers keep in mind that the suspension of disbelief is a courtesy which the reader extends to your imaginary world on faith, like buying a car on credit. If you do not pay back the payments when due by the end of the story, he is not just disappointed, he is cheated.
If the magical element is brought into the quotidian world in a fashion that does not evoke awe and wonder, then it becomes comical, or satirical.
The clearest example of this is found in Harry Potter, where magical broomsticks are merely used in aerial rugby, or magic trains are found by jumping through a solid wall, or magic letters are carried by currier owls. It is remarkably lighthearted and childlike, like having household appliances powered by elf-power rather than electrical power.
An opposite example is found in Indiana Jones films, where opening a sacred box, or drinking from the wrong sacred cup, is an act of blasphemy, inviting immediate and horrifying vengeance from the unseen world. It is most explicitly not like opening a box of radioactive material or a quaffing a cup of snake-venom, even if those things are also lethal.
For one thing, more screaming is involved. Lots more.
For another, you might go to heaven if you die of radiation poisoning. But a Nazi desecrating the Ark of the Covenant sacred to the God of Abraham? Not a chance.
To mingle the science fiction and fantasy requires mingling the natural and the unnatural, which always involves a risk of breaking the spell of suspension of disbelief.
As I said, I believe the audience is more generous with extending their suspension of disbelief now than in times past, but there are limits, and the fundamental difference between fiction from a natural worldview and fiction from a supernatural worldview strains that generosity.
And, yes, there are some in the audience who still have an allergic reaction to fantasy elements in science fiction stories. They just don’t like magic swords.
I hope they will expand their reading tastes and swell my coffers, but I do not think such an audience is in the wrong, nor do I think them insignificant in number.
I have written books playing with the difference between various paradigms of the universe, or books which started in one genre and ended in another. But then again, I am sometimes bold, and take risks.
The readers have the last word.
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POSTSCRIPT: Let it be emphasized that supernatural stories can embrace and tell natural stories, but natural stories cannot tell supernatural stories. This is because one is real and the other is not.
Real stories, ancient stories, myths and tall tales, and all the fundamental stories where the deep things of the ocean of dream live and move and have their being — think of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar or Hamlet, or Wagner’s Ring, or Dante’s Divine Comedy — are fundamentally supernatural, and embrace and explain the natural and give it meaning.
The Elite of Europe after the Great War poisoned their art, eschewing Christianity for Socialism, and producing rubbish.
American magazines, mesmerized by the glamor of Europe, followed suit, and banished all good story telling to the pulps. It was a ghetto.
Campbell, in order to break out of that ghetto, made much ado about adopting the core teaching of Socialism, namely, Humanism, also called, Secularism, also called, Atheism, and trying to glorify science (which is a darling of socialists then and now) and so win fantastic fiction back into their good graces.
He was successful! In my lifetime, fantasy stories, including scientific fantasies, went from a ghetto literature known to a lifeboat few, to a commonplace mainstream, and superhero movies became the norm, and Harry Potter was on everyone’s lips.
Campbell was jealous of the slicks, and wanted to leave the ghetto, and make science fiction respectable to the socialist elite by embracing the realism which was the watchword of their theory of proper writing — in this case, realism in science, that is, scientific accuracy.
He did this, as they did, by narrowing the field to exclude awe and wonder, miracle and magic, and embracing humanist cynicism. (For a perfect example of such cynicism, see Isaac Asimov’s ‘Nightfall’, suggested and perhaps partly written by Campbell, where the sight of stars once each thousand years elevates no man to heavenly wonder, but instead drives them mad.)
And the socialist elite, lo and behold, ceased to sneer and mock science fiction. This was long after Star Wars, roughly about the year 2000, if memory serves, that we heard the last of the sneers and scoffs ventured against science fiction and fantasy for being science fiction and fantasy.
So we little ghetto people with our fantastic and futuristic fiction and our sense of wonder were once more allowed into elite society with the socialists and secularists. By 2010’s, not a single critic, to my knowledge, belittled Game of Thrones due to its genre.
And the Socialists took their horrible, horrible revenge by marring and maligning all these things by subversion, turning all works once beloved of SF fans to woke dung. See THE LAST JEDI for details.
I hope the readers have the last word, and will revolt against the evils visited upon us.
About John C Wright
John C. Wright is a practicing philosopher, a retired attorney, newspaperman, and newspaper editor, and a published author of science fiction. Once a Houyhnhnm, he was expelled from the august ranks of purely rational beings when he fell in love; but retains an honorary title.
