Sci-Fi versus Fantasy

[Martok]

I think I'd have to resort to GAH!! again, even on that rephrasing, Lemur. Trash is trash whichever old hat it's wearing .

I agree with this sentiment on principle, but in reality it's somewhat more lop-sided for me. I tend to be a more forgiving of bad/mediocre fantasy than bad/mediocre sci-fi. As doc_bean pointed out, fantasy as the natural advantage in this regard, as it already assumes you're setting aside your disbelief.

That said, I can certainly name authors in both genres that I don't care for. Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars Trilogy was so bad I didn't even make it halfway through the first book, and I simply don't understand how people can rave on about George R.R. Martin's A Song of Fire & Ice series when I had to force myself to read the first two books (out of a misplaced sense of obligation).

And of course, I'll never forgive Greg Bear for almost destroying Asimov's beloved Foundation series by writing Foundation's Fear (which was the first book of the "Second" Foundation Trilogy) -- it's one of the most ludicrously convoluted novels I've ever read. I thank the gods that Gregory Benford and David Brin were able to salvage something from the wreckage of that....

[The Wizard]

When I look at my personal library, I see tons of fantasy books: Raymond E. Feist, Weis & Hickman, Robert Jordan, Robin Hobb, Katharine Kerr, J.R.R. Tolkien, ...

So it should be obvious.

But then, I see Frank Herberts' Dune Saga. Only 6 books.

Gah!

Yup, I am obliged to vote "Gah!", because there isn't a "Fantasy and Frank Herbert" option...

I feel your pain. I glance at the bookshelves containing my latest purchases and I see George R. R. Martin, R. Scott Bakker, Steven Erikson, Stephen R. Donaldson, Robert E. Howard, Weis & Hickman, and even Tolkien and Jordan (I stopped after WoT's second book, however, and LotR took me three years to complete; I'm never going through that again)... but Dune is also very good.

I also hear that GRRM's old scifi books are as great as his A Song of Ice and Fire (kudos to Ser Clegane for getting me hooked on that baby), and I wouldn't mind checking out Starship Troopers, either.

GAH!

And then, of course, there's the awesome power of GAH! to consider. So... I voted GAH!

[Papewaio]

Is there a difference between sci-fi and fantasy?

To paraphrase a famous arthor...When technology becomes advanced enough it is indistinguishable to magic'.

And lets look at a common theme of alot of the stories:

Young (farm/poor) boy who is adopted (quite commonly by a close relative) or whose father dies very soon in the piece.
Frodo ... Lord of the Rings
Skywalker... Star Wars
Rand al'Thor... Wheel of Time
Joshua Calvert... Night's Dawn Triology

Who inherits an item of power or a really good sword, or has special powers
Frodo... The One ring.
Skywalker... Lightsaber
Rand al'Thor... Heron marked blade
Joshua Calvert... space ship + 'lucky' gene

And quite a lot of other similar themes.

[Lemur]

From an interview I conducted years ago:

Q: What is the difference between science fiction and fantasy?

GW: Plausibility, really. Science fiction is what you can make people believe; fantasy is what people have to suspend disbelief for. Many physicists believe that there will never be a faster-than-light drive -- it's impossible. But you can make people believe in one, since they don't know much physics. If you talk about somebody genetically engineering unicorns, it's probably fantasy, because people don't believe in it. But it's so close that you can almost touch it; we're almost at the point where we can make a unicorn.

So it's all a matter of plausibility. Do people think, "The future might be like this?" If so, it's science fiction. If they think, "This could never happen," that's fantasy.

Q: Magic realism?

GW: Magic realism is fantasy written by people who speak Spanish.

Q: Horror?

GW: Horror is all over the map. It's one of those umbrella things, where you can write any type of material with "horrific" elements, call it horror and sell it as horror. Read the complete works of Stephen King, and you'll find fantasy written as horror, science fiction written as horror, horror written as horror, autobiography written as horror, and so forth.

[The Wizard]

Young (farm/poor) boy who is adopted (quite commonly by a close relative) or whose father dies very soon in the piece.

And here is encapsulated into one single sentence the very characteristic which makes so very many "high fantasy" and "space opera" series fail so incredibly hard. Frodo? Skywalker? Rand? Screw them all. I'll take the ruthless, bloody, hard world of a Ned Stark, a Drusas Achamian or a Whiskeyjack any day of the week over that trash.

[doc_bean]

And here is encapsulated into one single sentence the very characteristic which makes so very many "high fantasy" and "space opera" series fail so incredibly hard. Frodo? Skywalker? Rand? Screw them all. I'll take the ruthless, bloody, hard world of a Ned Stark, a Drusas Achamian or a Whiskeyjack any day of the week over that trash.

I'll have to agree with you here, what Pape described is usually a "quest" novel, an ordinary character has to fulfill a special mission and turns into a hero. There are so many cliches in this genre that it's often painful to read/watch.

BTW A song of Fire and Ice isn't totally innocent, it has Jon Snow (the boy of mysterious descent) and Rickon (The young kid with mysterious powers), a voyage to a mysterious place (Beyond the wall), an heir in exile with a mysterious 'birth right'/power (Daenarsys sp? and the dragons), a warrior race (those mongols, whatever they're really called) and a lot of other 'high' fantasy conventions. It odes also offer a whole lot more than that, of course.
I'm not the biggest fan of the series, still somewhere in the third book, I loved the first one, but the story starts feeling a bit dragged out imo.

[Artificer]

BTW A song of Fire and Ice isn't totally innocent, it has Jon Snow (the boy of mysterious descent) and Rickon (The young kid with mysterious powers), a voyage to a mysterious place (Beyond the wall), an heir in exile with a mysterious 'birth right'/power (Daenarsys sp? and the dragons), a warrior race (those mongols, whatever they're really called) and a lot of other 'high' fantasy conventions. It odes also offer a whole lot more than that, of course.
I'm not the biggest fan of the series, still somewhere in the third book, I loved the first one, but the story starts feeling a bit dragged out imo.

When I found out about the Song of Ice and Fire series I decided to pick up the first book and see whether or not the rest were worth my time. Martin's text doesn't have the poetic quality that say, a Neil Gaiman story possesses, and the setting setting comes off as a little drab and unimaginative, BUT, I find myself drawn to Martin's characters moreso than nearly any other fictional cast.

As I read I began to care about Ned and Catelyn Stark, Tyrion Lannister and heck, even Jamie at times. I knew that I had to keep reading. And so I did. I finished about a book a week and am now left wanting more.

Hurry up Mr. Martin!

[The Wizard]

I'll have to disagree with you here. You see, Jon Snow never started off innocent; he was a bastard at court to begin with, hated by Catelyn and weighed down by the fact that he wasn't as full a child of his father's as, say, a Robb or a Bran (Bran's the kid with the powers of vision btw).

And that's really the key to what sets ASoIaF apart from, say, a Tolkien, a WoT, or even a Sword of Truth, and other such trash (yes, Tolkien's a killer making worlds, but breathing life into them? Don't bother): the fact that the world is far from innocent. You're a lowly woodsman's son caught in the wrong time in the wrong place? No, you don't rise to the opportunity and end up a king or messiah (the latter word being a bit too heavy for such cheese 'n' cheddar galores); you get cut down and die in a pool of your own piss and blood.

The series begins with a little view on the true, implacable, inhuman evil that threatens the world, true, but throughout it all you see is the evil and depradations that humans visit upon each other. No great hero facing off evil (which in a normal series like WoT would be far more human than the author would have you believe; see Shai'tan), black and white, yada yada etc, but a huge grey area into which everybody is chucked with no second thought about them.

And then, of course, there's this (about Ned Stark and Tywin Lannister; it spoils some stuff from book 1 and 3 so beware)...

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

An Eddard Stark would've, perhaps after some tragedy (sometimes none at all), emerged victorious in King's Landing and become the savior of the realm, and probably the world, too. That is -- if ASoIaF was a normal series. Instead, he gets betrayed (by his own daughter, no less) and executed and dies just as hard as the decidedly more evil Tywin Lannister does three books later.

I wouldn't call the Dothraki the world's prime warrior race, either. They aren't as hopelessly 1337 as some others I could think of (Rohan, dudes protecting Aes Sedai anyone?).

All in all, ASoIaF takes the good and cuts out the bad from most fantasy. The events you're made witness of, and the plots you're invited to unravel before they are revealed, go far above anything your average kiddo reading a Dragonlance or a Sword of Truth could ever fathom. Could've done with a little more fanaticism and religion for my tastes, but hey; it's good enough as it is for me. If only GRRM could write a bit faster...

EDIT: In fact, come to think of it, I'd say that the conventions that you mentioned and ASoIaF adheres to are very, very old, indeed, going back to the times when shamans and tribal wise men told the stories of old around the fire. Every story's been told before, after all. And that's exactly why those particular clichés work so well; they connect to something very old in our minds. Not to mention GRRM's particular skill at retelling a tale

[doc_bean]

I'll have to disagree with you here. You see, Jon Snow never started off innocent; he was a bastard at court to begin with, hated by Catelyn and weighed down by the fact that he wasn't as full a child of his father's as, say, a Robb or a Bran (Bran's the kid with the powers of vision btw).

He was the ugly stepdaughter, an old cliche, he's also (at least at first) one the most one dimensional characters around. Probably the only character made to be likeable from the start.
I still feel like GM is combining two stories, one is a rather simplistic 'quest' story, the other is an intricate political story, which is the meat of most of the books i've read. The problem it creates is similar to something LOTR suffers from: in the end the efforts of nations/people/kings/whoever will matter very little and the fate is decided by a few lone heroes. Though GM might have a few surprises up his sleeve yet.

And that's really the key to what sets ASoIaF apart from, say, a Tolkien, a WoT, or even a Sword of Truth,

I hope you're not implying that SoT is the best of those series, because, while I don't really care about any of them much (LOTR is saved by having the grace to end it after three books, and thus saying a little more focused) the first book of SoT might just be the worst book i've ever read. I gave up trying to enjoy the book for what it was halfway through (or earlier) and finished it for a laugh. It's extremely badly paced, is incredibly inconsistent in it's own mythology, has a forced happy ending the makes no sense (the kids...), employs *several* deus ex machinas and has laughable characterisation. I'm still wondering how Goodkind ever got that published...

And then, of course, there's this (about Ned Stark and Tywin Lannister; it spoils some stuff from book 1 and 3 so beware)...

Hah, I've read worse spoilers, but I hadn't gotten to that point in book 3 yet. Ned Stark is one of the least likable characters IMO. Yes, he's a traditional good guy, but he's also stubborn and acts dumb just to save his honour.


I don't hold these 'chilches' against it though. My problem with the series is the slow pacing, and the Catelyn, Sansa (and a few others) chapters, my breaks from the series always tend to happen before those


Another series which I do love, Dune, starts off with a book that closely follows the traditional hero story, the main character is even called a Messiah at some point. But the little details, the way the story is told, and not-everything -turns-out alright attitude elevate it far above most books of the 'genre'. It *is* an old story, but it takes a good writer to turn it into something worth reading.

[The Wizard]

As said, not a whole lot is turning out right for the initial characters; or would you argue with me that everything is going fine for House Stark (gauging where you're at, I'd tell you that it gets worse)? None of the main characters has, in any way, been spared anything. All of them have been physically, if not emotionally, mauled multiple times, and if I know GRRM's style it'll only get worse.

I hope you're not implying that SoT is the best of those series

Don't worry. I'm not. One of the greatest wastes of trees in human memory if you ask me. Moral celery, bouncing spaghetti and lemmings of discord, indeed.

[Papewaio]

Song of Fire and Ice has all the standard fare:

Spoiler Alert, click show to read: 

The whole Stark family is pretty much orphaned pretty quick. If you started reading from the second book it would be the same situation as most other fantasies, young orphans with special powers, abilities, insight, honour, position on a quest to restore the right person to the throne. The heroes are from a relatively honourable & farming nobility. There father dies pretty quickly in the piece. There are elements of magic and prophecy. The primary difference is that the books make the greatest evil, humans... much like the Aliens movies... most fantasy books make evil an elemental form... even then there are more mystical evil elements being introduced into the series.

So IMDHO Song of Fire and Ice sets a normal pastoral scene of relatively nice nobles (much like Frodo is in the shire) who have external events thrust on them (the Lancasters) while they the Starks have magical connections (the wolves and abilities) that may or may not help them in the long run. The major difference is the body count and more explicit evil nature of the humans in it. I think it is not all that grey, there are some pretty definitive good and evil players in it. It is the grey ones that add texture to this piece, such as Ser Clegane and the Dwarf.

So the series is a cliche, just a better written one.

PS sorry for all name spelling mistakes, as I don't have the titles in front of me.

[Conqueror]

Pape, I think you should use some spoiler tags on your message. That information might be a little too much for those who haven't read the first book through.