In Which Your Obedient Serpent Has His Suspicions Confirmed

[athelind]

Charles Stross reinforces my gut feeling that my Unpublished Magnum Opus is really Science Fiction, despite having all the surface trappings of Swords & Sorcery:

Loosely speaking, if Science Fiction is often a literature of disruption (in which change is, if not good, at least embraced), Fantasy is frequently a literature of consolation: a warm feather-bed of social conservativism disguised as nostalgic escapism, a longing for feudal certainties.

There's a recurrent strain of Noble Savagery in there that I may have to stamp out, though.

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Comments

[toob.livejournal.com]

Without reading the rest of the article (I know! (EDIT: And then I sort of did anyway)), I have to strongly disagree with this claim. Science Fiction is often STAUNCHLY conservative, in its dystopia attempting to reinforce the notion that the current human condition is the only one of value, and any change from that condition yields unhappiness. This is, of course, not always the case, but it is frequent. To lose anything of what makes us us right now will change us in a negative way, will create dystopia -- or at its even more conservative, it cautions against the direction of current society. If we want to survive, and be happy, we must stop this thing that we're doing now. So science fiction ends up having this love-hate relationship with technology: we cannot stop adoring that which we believe will destroy us. Our end is sparkly. But I think the primary difference between science fiction and fantasy is the level of focus. Science fiction focuses on society at large; although most sf has a main character on a journey through this society, the point is really how there is n difference in the world, and look at how n has changed everything! Science fiction films with a wide-angle lens.

Fantasy -- good fantasy -- might in SOME instances use more familiar worlds, but where science fiction traces the journey of a society or people, fantasy is more individual and personal. The stuff I've read is far from nostalgic escapism: good fantasy exists to create a character that resonates intensely with the reader and then threaten that reader's sense of self via that resonance. In other words, fantasy exists to disrupt our own fantasies: it shows us what we think we want in ourselves and then TWISTS.

If you want to take the word "fantasy" at its most literal, then Tom Clancy books or the Master and Commander series are more truly fantasy, because they drive Mary Sue characters through a wish fulfillment world in which they become more and more powerful and respected and save the day.

But good fantasy does not do this. Fantasy writers understand the corrupting nature of wish fulfillment; they are out to show us that there is very little worse for us than getting what we want.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

Nah, not only conservative, but downright reactionary.

[cpxbrex.livejournal.com]

But . . . not really true. Most sci-fi, including Stross's, isn't really very much about change, with its endless parade of monarchies and republics, and the magic having elaborate but specious technobabble jargon. It is my feeling that, as a whole, sci-fi is as conservative as fantasy.