by Jason Block

Aug. 24, 2009

At some point just about every dedicated SFF fan  has gotten into one of those endless debates – is a certain book SF? Or is it really Fantasy? Hard or Soft? Regardless of how we categorize the tales we read, the reality is that it it can be difficult to tell the two genres apart.  Sometimes it’s easy, anything technological will go with SF, anything magical with Fantasy. The main tropes and symbols found in one genre don’t often show up in another.  But there’s a more fundamental way to look at the issue, at which point genre distinctions become irrelevant.

Historically speaking, novels evolved from epic fantasies – the epic romances of knights, magical beasts and chivalry that were popular in the late medieval period. Even now it’s difficult to find a novel in which there is not some element exaggerated to the point of unreality – whether it’s the Romance genre, lately so easily blended with fantasy and horror elements like sorcerers and werewolves,  or Science Fiction, which has always had elements which assumed so much about our technological progress that it is nothing short of fantasy. Hyperspace? FTL drives? What are those common tropes if not entirely fantastic, violating every known law of physics? How much of brand new SF is a kind of technological wish fulfillment, performing the same function as Fantasy, except the heroes have different gear?

In the context of the long history of books and novels, maybe the apple hasn’t fallen too far from the tree – maybe all our favorite genres are Fantasy at the core, like the first Romances of half a millennium ago.  Some of them have science in them to different degrees. Some of them focus on exaggerated and fantastic relationships between outlandish characters. Some still have swords and dragons. Isn’t a cop story or a mystery a kind of mythology about heroes seeking some kind of justice?

It seems like all these genres are blending together an awful lot lately – maybe because they are all fundamentally the same thing. If by ‘Fantasy’ we can mean anything which takes place in a state of radical difference or unreality, something that takes place in a setting either completely bizzarre or in which there is something fantastic or highly unlikely, it really is difficult to find any novel that couldn’t be called ‘Fantasy’.

Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s not that genre distinctions are completely bad – I like to know which part of the bookstore to start in as much as the next person, but do we have to view genres as more than the arbitrary signposts that they are?  When we walk into a bookstore, what would happen to the way we think about genre if the SF/Fantasy section just had ‘Fantasy’ written above it, or had ‘Fantasy’ written first with the words ‘Science’ and ‘Fiction’ following? And isn’t Science Fiction also ‘Fiction and Literature’?

What would happen if the ‘sci-fi’ books were mixed in with the rest?  How long would there be such a thing as ‘science fiction’ at all, and how long would it be before more and more mainstream books had science fiction elements in them?

There are already Romances that are Mysteries, and mysteries set on other planets. There are Thrillers set in magical dark ages, and spy novels featuring romance and ancient, inhuman mystery. As fans then, maybe we shouldn’t pay so much attention to the minutiae of genre distinctions, maybe we should just share good stories with one another.

by Jason Block

Aug. 1, 2009

To try and understand what’s happening in the fantasy genre we love, here and now, we have to first look at it’s history. We can divide the recent history of the Fantasy genre into three distinct periods. These divisions are arbitrary and aren’t meant to exclude many of the fine books that don’t fit in to the main thrust of the individual eras, they just reflect a general trend.  At the same time, they don’t really indicate revolutionary change,  and certainly can’t be construed as organized ‘movements’.

The ‘Sword and Sorcery’ era, from the late 50’s through late 70’s:

This era started with the Gnome Press reprints of Conan and petered out by the mid eighties. The stories were most often about individual heroes or antiheroes in an alternate world, a parallel world, or a completely fantastic setting. Conan set the mold by showing an individual overcoming a series of obstacles. The readership was dominated by men and boys, who enjoyed predominantly linear quests.

The ‘Epic Fantasy’ era, from the late 70’s through late 90’s:

Starting with the publication of ‘Sword of Shannara’ and continuing to the present day,  gradually diminishing in importance, the Fantasy of this era was typified by the Tolkienesque plot of a group of heroes on a quest to save the world. At the same time  this standard plot was reinforced by the first wave of group role-playing games. The importance of ‘world-building’, the creation of believable, distinct fantasy worlds, increased and became a goal in and of itself. Concurrently, the importance of twentieth century literary character increased, and dialogue became less stylized. Most cross-media projects failed or found only a small market, and fantasy remained mostly a literary and gaming phenomena.

Meanwhile, women and young girls slowly came to be the larger share of the fantasy reading demographic (and the reading demographic altogether). Over time the content of the Fantasy genre changed to reflect this, to encompass female protagonists exploring interior, emotional challenges that in the 1970’s were largely ignored. The linear ‘quest’ style of S&S took refuge in video games, a market dominated by males.

The ‘Crossover’ era, from the late 90’s and continuing into the 21st century:

Beginning with the publication of ‘Harry Potter’ and the television airing of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, there has been a return of focus to the individual character within a fantasy world that has a series of adventures, however that individual is often a child or a female. The fantasy world is often grounded in a ‘magicalized’ version of our own world, and this takes precedence over Tolkienesque world-building. A lot of the emphasis is again focusing on the individual and his/her relationship to a mythological, or mythologized world. Media tie-ins have risen in importance and books often take their inspiration from television and film as well as influencing those media.

The current market, according to the Publishers Weekly and Locus bestseller lists, is dominated by crossovers as well as a few remnants of the 80’s style Epic Fantasy market. There is a continuing crossover in the YA and Children’s category, more so than ever before. Due to continuing trends away from realism towards ‘magical realism’ and ‘postmodernism’ in the academic fiction genre, there is a growing acceptance of SFF in academic circles and no small crossover between SFF and ‘literary fiction’ as well. Females continue to be the consumers mainly targeted by publishers, and there is a tremendous crossover between ‘romance’ and fantasy.

Driven by a publisher’s marketing ambition to have bigger ‘hits’, or the desire of writers to break down old barriers, a lot of the genre distinctions from decades past are fading away, as different ‘types’ of stories combine. One of the most prevalent memes from the last decade has been about elements of the fantasy world seamlessly and unsurprisingly residing in our own world. In a very real way, that’s exactly what’s happening to the genres, as they continue to blend together, creating new and exciting offspring.

Then and now:

The history of the genre is reflected in the covers of the books themselves, in the 60’s and 70’s the standard on potboilers was to have the bloodied male hero hovering over a dominated woman, now the potboiler standard is usually a secretive, lone heroine seen from behind.