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3.
AOTW: Besides the obvious element of technological/scientific content, what else do you think separates the fantasy genre from science fiction?
Meredith Ann Pierce: Since I read both fantasy and science fiction avidly, it's very hard for me to separate them in my mind. Because I find them both so appealing, it's difficult for me to conceptualize how they differ. I do find the technology (science fiction) versus magic (fantasy) a useful distinction. I also think science fiction tends to take place in what readers conceive of as a remote future time, while fantasy frequently has the feel of history, legend, or myth (past time). Also, in general, science fiction seems much more topical to me, a speculation on futures that could spring up (perhaps sooner than we think) from the present moment, whereas fantasy strikes me as more timeless, addressing emotional truths that span the ages. But nothing's hard-and-fast in the writing game, because the genres overlap so. Actually, I think of these genres as a continuum, with horror (dark fantasy) at one end, merging into fantasy in the middle, which gradually trends into science fiction at the other. And the spectrum may not be a straight line, with horror very separate from science fiction. Some works of science fiction blend back into the horror genre, so the spectrum isn't a line, but a ring.
Tamora Pierce: A lot of science fiction seems written to instruct readers on the science and mechanics involved in the book as much as it tries to tell the story (this is not a problem with my favorite science fiction writers, by the way) --- too often the writer seems to attend to the science so much that s/he forgets the fiction aspect. In part this is because a lot of fantasy is historical, based on ground many readers have already encountered, so there's less need to explain common elements like armor, castles, kings, wizards, and so on. Many fantasy novels tend to avoid the perils of periodic infodumps, though you will find them from time to time.
That's about all I can think of, and it's not because of that Arthur Clarke technology-indistinguishable-from-magic thing, but because fantasy and science fiction both revolve around not just plain survival, but triumph, even if only for a very few at the end, and because both stretch the imagination in directions most imaginations otherwise won't get stretched. Both start from the basic 'what if' premise: it's just how we symbolize our possibilities that we differ.
Mark L. Williams: Hmmm...a greater willingness to let emotion drive the story? I'll have to ruminate on this...
Patrice Kindl: Well, of course, their relationship to the truth is different. Science Fiction could be literally true someday. Good fantasy is true right now, but only metaphorically. Otherwise, I think the boundaries are pretty hazy. A book like Archer's Goon by Diana Wynne Jones, for instance, is primarily a science fiction novel (all-powerful beings from outer space come to earth in a space ship and manipulate the lives of ordinary humans), but has many of the aspects of myth and fantasy.
Sherwood Smith: Most fantasy contains an element of hope, and or a moral statement, however deeply buried. You will find far less successful determinist or nihilist fantasy than SF in which it has almost become de rigueur.
Nanacy Springer: Science fiction is the literature of ideas, especially as regards future extrapolation, and it can be very cerebral. Fantasy tends to deal more with spiritual concepts: what is the nature of goodness and/or evil, where does the soul go after death, that sort of thing. I think of fantasy as modern mythology. That said, let me add that science fiction writers and fantasy writers have learned so much from each other over the past thirty years or so that you're likely to find spirituality in today's science fiction and science in today's fantasy. So maybe it's best to just lump both together as SF --- "speculative fiction" --- and get on with the real business of life, such as reading.
Carol Hughes: I think it's the journey into worlds which cannot actually be placed anywhere in our known universe. I mean that even though some science fiction stories will take place in some invented nebula, it is still a nebula and we know what that is. Fantasy worlds are closer to and farther away from home. They are of this world and not of it. And consequently they are very difficult to explain.
Nancy Farmer: It is unimportant to separate fantasy from science fiction.
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