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Charles Stross reinforces my gut feeling that my Unpublished Magnum Opus is really Science Fiction, despite having all the surface trappings of Swords & Sorcery: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

[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.