New Jeff Interview on Podcast

[Student of Trinity]

Originally Posted By: SEED SPROUTETH MALATEXT

I have to strongly disagree with this theory. I think it is sometimes true, and I'll even wager to say more than 50% of the time, but not much more, especially not when you are talking about really original and lively books.

Well, this could easily be so. It's a general hazard to find a pattern that works much of the time, and get excited prematurely that it's really a general rule.

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Middle-Earth and Narnia, I would argue, are picture perfect definitions of worlds where what is possible is predefined. Tolkien's extensive development of his world, with its deep internal consistency, and his writings on this subject and on sub-creation make this explicit. Indeed one never gets the sense in Tolkien that the many coincidences in the books are a matter of random chance, but rather that things follow a certain pattern and arrangement ...

This is where I am perhaps not being clear about a subtle point, but one that I'm thinking may have been important in the real world worldview shift around the Scientific Revolution. Things may very well be largely deterministic, though somehow not entirely, regardless of whether they are ruled by science or by magic. The question is whether the rules are about character and character choices, or whether they are about totally unrelated things.

Scientific laws are not about human beings, at all; nothing like 'courage' or 'wisdom' appears in the index of the book of physics. A magical world may be just as tightly constrained in the end, but the constraints will be directly about the character and choices of humanesque beings. So when you look at the level of a scientific story where character and decision turn the plot, a lot of important constraints are already there, having already been fixed by laws that have nothing whatever to do with character or choice. In a magical story, the level of character and decision is where the important constraints first begin.

At the end of the day, after everyone's character has been developed and played out, and after the prior choices of earlier characters have had their consequences, a magical story may be just as tightly constrained as a scientific one. Even if character may not precisely be fate, it can fill in well in a pinch. My issue is where the constraints come from, and whether or not they are prior to characters.

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The difference is just that the patterns concern what must inevitably happen with the system dynamics of the cosmos, from the gods down to the hobbits, rather than what must inevitably happen with the system dynamics of the cosmos, from the unified theories and galaxies down to electricity and robots.

Precisely. My point is that gods and hobbits are characters, galaxies and electricity are not. Robots, I admit, could go either way.

[Lilith]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

Precisely. My point is that gods and hobbits are characters, galaxies and electricity are not. Robots, I admit, could go either way.

Now here's a thought: which, if any, of Asimov's robot stories would have to be substantially different if the robots were homunculi created by alchemy and bound by magical geasa to follow the Three Laws?

[Randomizer]

L. Sprague deCamp and Fletcher Pratt's Harold de Shea series of novellas, The Compleat Enchanter and The Wall of Serpents could be taken as either fantasy or science fiction since they start with the premesis that all mythological worlds exist and you can transfer yourself into them by determining the logical formulae that underly that world (science). This meant that the characters could go into another world and do magic (fantasy). Magic still followed laws just like science.

 

The blurring of science fiction and fantasy stories is distinguishing how things are done.

[Lilith]

i think if we're going to be honest about the difference between each genre it's that fantasy appeals to people who like dragons more than spaceships and sci-fi appeals to people who are the other way around

[Student of Trinity]

Originally Posted By: SEED SPROUTETH MALATEXT

Except that magic can have hardwired rules that rule things out... and science fiction settings are equally capable of implying that there are no hardwired rules and anything is possible. It really seems to me that this idea that magic can do anything, but science can't, is coming from your own associations with the two and not at all from the actual literature we're talking about.

Well, the whole point of what I'm doing here is to identify a distinction that has nothing to do with wands versus rayguns as such. So, yes, what I'm trying to define as sci-fi might in principle work fine with wizards and unicorns, and what I'm calling fantasy could have warp fields and wormholes. In effect what I'm saying is that for literary purposes, my distinction is the significant one, for which the traditional labels of sci-fi and fantasy are imperfect proxies. I'm proposing that my distinction is what produces two substantially different kinds of story. It may then be merely a strong correlation coming from real world history, that makes most spaceship stuff run to one kind, and most dragon stuff run to the other.

That having been said, I'm not sure magic really can be made as hardwired as sci-fi science, simply because sci-fi implicitly takes real world science as the default value for whatever the author doesn't change, but no author, not even Tolkien, has remotely enough time to construct an alternative body of rules as vast as science. And I think it must be really hard to make actual science the default if you're also putting in significant magic, because I bet that the basic conflict between sub-character rules, and rules that begin at character level, will crop up insidiously, in all kinds of unexpected little details, unless you float your whole story above the level of sub-character constraints, and thus go fantasy.

In a sci-fi story it can be a minor plot event that the lights go out, because somebody pulled a plug somewhere, without this having to be an important event that calls for character definition ('the master of darkness has this power'), and yet also without seeming like an arbitrary authorial decree (the villains get away in chapter 2 because somebody throws a darkness spell — whew, glad I thought of that). In fantasy you can push the envelope a certain amount, and maybe establish by around chapter 4 that darkness spells are about as common as power cords. But if you go too far, your story goes bad one way or another.

So my prediction is that there's a tendency in fantasy to have substantially fewer meaningless but consequential plot events — things like the lights going out — than in sci-fi. And that this makes for a substantially different texture to the story.

[Randomizer]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

That having been said, I'm not sure magic really can be made as hardwired as sci-fi science, simply because sci-fi implicitly takes real world science as the default value for whatever the author doesn't change, but no author, not even Tolkien, has remotely enough time to construct an alternative body of rules as vast as science. And I think it must be really hard to make actual science the default if you're also putting in significant magic, because I bet that the basic conflict between sub-character rules, and rules that begin at character level, will crop up insidiously, in all kinds of unexpected little details, unless you float your whole story above the level of sub-character constraints, and thus go fantasy.

This goes back to the L. Sprague deCamp and Fletcher Pratt novellas in that they defined a series of magical laws equivalent to scientific laws. Magic could only work in certain ways and each parallel universe would have differences in how magic worked to correspond to the mythos.

However you are right in that almost all fantasy authors are sloppy in their writing. Very few are willing to make a detailed analyis of how magic should work. So whenever they need to do something, they can because it's magic. Pratt was into naval wargaming so understandably he included rules since he was used to that type of framework for an adventure.

[Alorael at Large]

There are settings in which magic is a black box that can only accomplish a small number of things.

 

There are settings in which duct tape, paper clips, and ingenuity can enable faster than light travel and universal translators.

 

—Alorael, who just has a slightly different expectation for the level of techno- or thaumo-babble.

[Student of Trinity]

Insofar as you can really make a story with tightly sandboxed magic, or omnicompetent duct tape, then yeah, I'm calling the magic science and the duct tape magic.

 

I'm not sure there are are many stories of either kind out there to be written, that don't really fit my scheme after all. If your only magic is a box with narrow function, then just why would anyone, even other than me, call your story fantasy? The one-rule-changing technology is a staple of science fiction. If duct tape and paper clips can really do anything, well ... how? What kind of explanation can you give, that doesn't amount to magic? If you never say how, just have it somehow happen, then what kind of sci fi is this?

 

Obviously an author can write any kind of story, and declare that it's one genre or another. I can write a tearjerker romance and try to pass it off as a thriller, by pasting a few stock elements on like decals. I don't see this as an important point in the theory of genre.

 

Still, maybe there are a few viable stories out there that manage to carry enough trappings to genuinely seem like sci-fi or fantasy, while according to my theory they should be in the opposite camp. Fine; not even the most obviously meaningful genre distinctions are totally immune to bending. You can write a Western Spy Romance. You just can't write many good ones.

[Synergy]

You all broke my GeekDebate™ meter with this one.

 

-S-

[Student of Trinity]

Was it a fantasy item, or sci-fi?

[Synergy]

Same difference.

 

Both are products of the imagination with imagined technologies, one archaic, one futuristic.

 

Mine was a science-fiction fantasy.

 

-S-

[Lilith]

SoT: would you argue that time-travel stories that present an internally-consistent model of how time travel works are sci-fi, while those that don't are fantasy?

[Student of Trinity]

Naw, inconsistency is just dumbness in my book, though a good enough story can carry it. My issue is whether what is allowed or not in the time travel has directly to do with the characters, or is really fixed a priori and regardless of who is doing the time travelling. I can imagine a very sci-fi way to make internally consistent time travel, with elaborate rules about causal loops or parallel worlds, that apply to any travelling matter regardless of whether it's even conscious. I can also imagine a fantasy version that's just as internally consistent, where who can go when depends on their personal relationships to the situations — something where the time travel rules are less like Sokoban, and more like version control in Word.

[Lilith]

this leads to the conclusion that Iain M. Banks' Culture novels are basically fantasy because if you're a Mind you can p. much do whatever you want as long as other Minds don't stop you (this is in fact exactly why Excession falls a bit flat as a novel, we're not impressed by an entity that breaks the rules of the universe because it's seldom made clear what the rules are except for the sake of breaking them)

 

but i guess you wouldn't be the first to classify space opera as fantasy

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

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The difference is just that the patterns concern what must inevitably happen with the system dynamics of the cosmos, from the gods down to the hobbits, rather than what must inevitably happen with the system dynamics of the cosmos, from the unified theories and galaxies down to electricity and robots.

Precisely. My point is that gods and hobbits are characters, galaxies and electricity are not. Robots, I admit, could go either way.

The exact dividing line between galaxy and god, or between the Strong Force and Deep Magic, may be vague and hard to point out, but at least we can easily see the difference between a hobbit and a galaxy. So am I hearing you correctly: your argument is that fantasy is about departures from reality that receive their internal consistency through the actions of human or anthropomorphic characters, while science fiction is about departures form reality that receive their internal consistency through things that do not involve human or anthropomorphic characters?

[Alorael at Large]

This seems to put any sci-fi reliant on inexplicable technology left by ancient civilizations at risk of becoming fantasy, and that's something of a (not terribly hard) sci-fi staple.

 

It also puts all sci-fi with telepathy and telekinesis at risk. Maybe that's not a bad thing, although that really does weird things to, say, a particular novel in which replacing communications systems with telepaths reduces the mass of space vessels and therefore increases their maneuverability, throwing space combat into disarray.

 

—Alorael, who simply thinks the problem is using "fantasy" and "sci-fi" as labels. Maybe "hard" and "soft" would work better, except they're already taken for sci-fi. The largest issue he's running into is the fact that fantasy and sci-fi both have subgenre expectations and trappings, and taking something with all the trappings of one and defining it as the other is, well, weird. Most people are probably going to have an easier time swallowing the trappings themselves as the definitions. Sci-fi is in space and fantasy is in Dor-Medieval'apostrophae. With dragons.

[Lilith]

guys guys they're marketing terms aimed at nerds with slightly different tastes you really shouldn't expect to find any kind of logical consistency in them no matter how hard you look

 

also this is why spelljammer is the best d&d setting, you get to travel through space in a magic whale

 

did i say that already or was that another thread

[Ephesos]

Yeah, this and the other thread (also originally about Jeff's words) have grown increasingly similar. I keep getting them confused.

[Acky]

Hey Thuryl, are you purposely typing sarcastically so much to ensure that the joke is ruined and no one else will want to steal it?

[Slawbug]

Originally Posted By: Lilith

also this is why spelljammer is the best d&d setting, you get to travel through space in a magic whale

The money shot of this horribly unintentional camp is at about 1:52.

[Lilith]

unintentional camp is pretty much always the best camp

 

Originally Posted By: J.P Diddy

Hey Thuryl, are you purposely typing sarcastically so much to ensure that the joke is ruined and no one else will want to steal it?

 

no i'm typing like this by accident

[Slawbug]

just for you

[jlsgaladriel]

Originally Posted By: slarty

The money shot of this horribly unintentional camp is at about 1:52.

*koff*

Ah, you meant that literally.

[Alorael at Large]

Hey guys, what happened to deadpan that wasn't given away immediately to everyone but those too oblivious to notice obvious traits associated with deadpan humor? Is it passé now?

 

—Alorael, who had to mightily resist the urge to end that with a a closed pseudotag. He wouldn't want to give anything away. Free stuff is unAmerican, after all!

[Student of Trinity]

Originally Posted By: TUXEDO MASH EDGAR SLAAAASH

[Y]our argument is that fantasy is about departures from reality that receive their internal consistency through the actions of human or anthropomorphic characters, while science fiction is about departures form reality that receive their internal consistency through things that do not involve human or anthropomorphic characters.

Pretty much, though keep in mind that I mean 'character' in a literary sense, not any particular biological definition. Entities that may be supposed to be free-willed conscious beings within the story, but don't function in it dramatically as characters, can be as powerful as you like. And whether a god or a galaxy can in principle have a human-like mind might be a hard question, but whether either one fills the role of a character in a story is much easier.

I've only read a few Culture novels, but the only Mind I can recall that was even close to being a story character was this levitating iPad thing that could shoot knife missiles and fling force fields around. This was borderline, frankly, because Banks's 'field technology' appears to be, well, magic. And indeed, a lot of the sub-genre I think of as neo-opera comes close to the line if it doesn't go right over it into space fantasy. They've gone so far into Arthur C. Clarke territory that how anything works has become nearly irrelevant to the story, and this is what makes them feel so different from traditional sci-fi.

Whether the characters understand how things work is irrelevant to me; the question is whether anything about the characters, as characters, matters, to whether things work or not. So alien relic technology can be perfectly sci-fi even if none of the characters can explain it. Where it gets fantasy is if the alien relic can do anything whatever, as long as its wielder's heart is pure.

[Lilith]

yeah i didn't even bother to ask about, say, Star Wars because it really seems like you wouldn't have a leg to stand on in defining it as sci-fi, and wouldn't have much interest in defending such a definition anyway

[Student of Trinity]

Midi-chloridians appear to have been a misguided attempt to tape the sci-fi label back on. But there's nothing wrong with space fantasy. I just think it's a narrow territory; it's hard to do something new in it, with Star Wars already there. You can't distinguish yourself by having a universe in which the Force has totally different rules, because the Force seems to have no rules. You could have a similar space fantasy setting and simply tell a totally different story; but if your story is so different, I think that the Star Wars-like setting would just be an awkward encumbrance, and you'd start wanting to do something different there, too. Maybe this is just an argument from poverty of imagination, though, and in twenty years it will be obvious that space fantasy is a huge genre of its own. All I can say so far is that the initial signs for this aren't promising. I've read neo-opera books by several different authors, and even while I was reading them I was getting them confused with each other badly. It's all filed together in my mind now, under a logo in dark colors featuring a spaceship that doesn't fit on the page.

[Alorael at Large]

Originally Posted By: Student of Trinity

They've gone so far into Arthur C. Clarke territory that how anything works has become nearly irrelevant to the story, and this is what makes them feel so different from traditional sci-fi.

I think this is the core of the argument. (But first, I am amused the Clarke territory is fantasy, because Clarke himself wrote some fairly hard sci-fi. Although then, yes, there were monoliths and the Star Child and alien devils...)

At any rate, I think that's the point. Traditional sci-fi doesn't depend on characters. Pulp sci-fi often has characters who invent unique technology that nobody else has, effectively giving them magic powers. Banks's sci-fi handwaves technology and writes a story about characters, but yes, you could replace Minds with godlings and fields with magic and everything would still work fine.

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So alien relic technology can be perfectly sci-fi even if none of the characters can explain it. Where it gets fantasy is if the alien relic can do anything whatever, as long as its wielder's heart is pure.

And again, it can be a mind-reading device that only functions for people who meet an arbitrary definition of goodness that happens to match ours, and plenty of magical artifacts have a few functions and only those functions regardless of who's pushing the buttons or chanting the incantations.

—Alorael, who should probably stop arguing. This is, fortunately, something that everyone can happily disagree about without even having to vote for different politicians.