Why have Hard SciFi, Space Opera and Science Fantasy?

[Atgxtg]

I am not sure whether "romance" has exactly the same meaning in our languages, but as it is

used over here, Poe's "The Fall of the House of Usher" could come very close to a "fantasy hor-

ror romance".

The problem is the meaning of the term "romance" like many other terms has changed over the years. Orginally it refered to a type of fiction about heroic characters in fantastic adventures.

Hence the reason why early SciFi/SciFan was reffered to as Scientific Romances.

Today, however, most people define Romance fiction as love stories.

So depending on which definitions you are using the term "fantasy horror romance" could be redundant. Romanaces, according tot hier orginal meaning, are fantasy.

Part of the problem with lumping Space Opera and Scientific Fantasy in with Science Fiction is that many Space Opera and Science Fantasy sotires have no "Science" to them at all. To be SciFi, Some science must be a crucial elemt to the story.

Much of what passes for SciFi today is other forms of fiction (social commentary, allegory, morality tales) given a futuristic element as a veneer, the term SciFi has become clouded.

[rust]

The problem is the meaning of the term "romance" like many other terms has changed over the years.

It is equally confusing over here.

In German "Roman" simply means "novel", which implies that every novel is a kind of romance.

This leads to the typical "German English" with sentences like "She went to bed with a criminal

roman" ("Kriminalroman" = "detective story").

Then we had our "Romantik", a literature movement that emphasized strong emotions and had

a fantastic streak that led to the "Schwarze Romantik" with novels that are somewhat similar to

what Poe or Byron wrote.

A famous example is "Die Elixiere des Teufels" by E.T.A. Hoffmann, which is the kind of "fantas-

tic horror romance" I was thinking of:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_Elixiere_des_Teufels

However, the word "Romanze" is hardly ever used in literature, it means a "love affair", usually

in a slightly derogatory sense, and "Romantisch" (= "romantic") can be a beautiful rural scene-

ry, a candle light dinner or a love poem.

[Atgxtg]

With the exception of the roman/novel connotation, it is much the same over here.

"Romantic" literature, music, etc. used to have the same sort of meaning as your "Romantik" stuff. Only now most uses of "Romance" are of the love affair variety.

If you were to drop the phase "Scientific Romance" in a conversation, most Americans would probably think you were taking about computer dating or some such.

[seneschal]

So, using original meanings, "scientific horror romance" = The Demon Seed?

[Lord Shag]

Ok been away from the computer at work sorry for the delay in replying. This an enjoyable debate. Ok simon you first.

1. I'm sure genres are imagined by the consumer. Yes. All that you say is very true which I have no problem with. And to go back to the original question in the thread heading we have them for this reason. This is in fact their whole reason for existence. Genres are usually the by-product of commerce, which in it self is no problem at all, writers and publishers need to make a dollar so go for it.

2. Are all these supposed genres just catch-phrases thrown out willy nilly by marketing people? Yeah pretty much. If you go back to Nick’s original post in this thread his opinion is spot-on about nomenclature creating unique value. Some authors may try to differentiate what they write as a genre for reasons other than cash though.

3. How do 'serious analysts' categorize things, and if their way is better why hasn't the market caught on? Well the answer to this is that serious analysts don’t get caught up with categorization that much. Why? Because it’s a pretty shallow way to analyze lit. Consumers and fanboys get caught up with it. They do this for a variety of reasons and in extreme examples (like star wars v Star trek) it can be a form of self-identity or brand fetish. Look, I love the free market and all its tools for coaxing cash out its target market but its tools are not necessarily what I would use to understand texts better. The argument that I have promoted here is probably not going down well with some because the idea that you can divide Lit into these neat little categories is very strongly a part of most reader’s conception of how we should understand literature.

4. If there are no genre conventions… Well the conventions you perceive Simon are the ones the marketing machine want you to perceive. Most serious writers would be insulted by the notion of a set of conventions imposed upon their work. If the issue of conventions arise its usually because an editor or publisher is getting pissed because the text is going to be difficult to market and will appeal to the “conventions” in an attempt to persuade an author to modify the text. I’ll give you an example of the closest thing to a genre convention. If you write to Mills & Boone they will send their “formula” for budding authors, which guide what you can and cannot do. Now these guidelines are things like, if you’re going to write sweet romance than no penetrative sex scenes or the protagonist sticking their tongue down the heroine’s throat. Now you can of course do that if you are writing in the raunchy romance stuff they publish. But as you can see it’s just publishers using a marketing standard to better target their product.

5. If horror is about characterization and romance is about plot and fantasy is about setting, then what is a novel that has all three? This is a bit of bigger discussion which I will launch upon a little later as other people are entering the discussion with the same issue.

Edited March 24, 2010 by Lord Shag

[Lord Shag]

Sorry rust i didn't get back to your post.

1. The academic discussion is lively, but has only minimal impact on the book market, the few exceptions being academics who are also respected critics. Academics don’t care about the book market.

2. The "serious analysts" have failed to agree on any comprehensive system of literature categories / genres, mainly because the authors do not follow any easily recognized and described pattern. Yes thats exactly what I've been saying. Serious analysts are not interested in classifying or categorization Lit. Fans are though. Serious analysts may be interested in why people perceive a genre to be a genre but would probably chuckle in condescension at the fans insistence that this is this and so on.

3. Quite the contrary, many authors intentionally try to write something fresh and original that does not fit into any established category, forcing the "serious analysts" to return to the drawing board and attempt to come up with a new system of genres. They don’t care about the categories.

[dragonewt]

If I run a "sci-fi" game session and ask people to play in it (or recommend a book), what type of language or expression do we use to communicate the type of game play and focus?

How do people know if the game session with be of the type of sci-fi they expect?

[TrippyHippy]

You can subcategorise as much as you want to, but I regard sci-fi as a subcategory of fantasy anyway - just one with more modern or futuristic tropes. The extent that science is 'hard' or not is really a matter of individual style, and how far detached from reality the fantasy is. If somebody does a historical fantasy that roots itself very firmly in the real world then I'd view that view that as being 'hard' in the same way that a futuristic genre might strictly stick to real world physics.

Various subgenres are over stated in their differences anyway - Cyberpunk tropes have been used in Space Opera for years now. So have Mecha and a multitude of other things too. Sometimes it's useful to categorise, and sometimes it isn't. Marketing makes good use of it, and sometimes it's nice to establish certain themes (like Fate vs Determinism in Time Travel stories, for example). For the record, I'd subdivide Fantasy and Sci Fi into these groups:

High Fantasy - an entirely made up setting (like Middle Earth, Glorantha, etc)

Low Fantasy - a setting more or less based upon a real world historical setting, with fantastic elements (eg Mythic Europe, Legendary Britain)

Modern Fantasy - a setting more or less based on the world today, but with fantastic or frequently occultish elements (Harry Potter, Nephilim, Call of Cthulhu, Dracula)

Time Travel - including alternate realities and dimension hopping (Dr. Who, The Terminator, Back to the Future, Moorecock's Multiverse in completeness)

Dystopian Sci-Fi - Usually, but not always, near-future settings, involving dark satirical commentary on the world around us (Paranoia, Cyberpunk, 1984, Brave New World, Dawn of the Dead, Mad Max)

Space Opera - Usually up-beat space faring adventures with varying degrees of detail, and a kitchen sink approach to including ideas from any source (Star Wars, Star Trek, Dune, Firefly).

Edited March 24, 2010 by TrippyHippy
adding stuff

[rust]

If I run a "sci-fi" game session and ask people to play in it (or recommend a book), what type of language or expression do we use to communicate the type of game play and focus?

How do people know if the game session with be of the type of sci-fi they expect?

There are probably many ways to handle this. My way is to give a short description of the story

or setting and to mention what it does or does not include, for example whether there are fas-

ter than light drives, antigravity, human-like aliens ("furries"), psionic powers, and so on.

[dragonewt]

There are probably many ways to handle this. My way is to give a short description of the story

or setting and to mention what it does or does not include, for example whether there are fas-

ter than light drives, antigravity, human-like aliens ("furries"), psionic powers, and so on.

How do I express a common (possibly known by others) combination of elements using only one or two words (point of reference)?

[rust]

3. Quite the contrary, many authors intentionally try to write something fresh and original that does not fit into any established category, forcing the "serious analysts" to return to the drawing board and attempt to come up with a new system of genres. They don’t care about the categories.

Yes and no. The academic mainstream seems quite uninterested, but there are academics who

take part in the "genre game", although mostly for somewhat surprising reasons and along ra-

ther different lines than our discussion.

An example is a debate about "militaristic / fascist" versus "progressive" science fiction that did

start with arguments about Heinlein's "Starship Troopers", went on for quite a while and was

the base for quite a number of thesis papers. Other examples would be the debates about "de-

mocratic" versus "authoritarian" science fiction or "feminist" science fiction.

So some academics also tend to categorize by content, but their categories follow very much

different patterns or "conflict lines".

[rust]

How do I express a common (possibly known by others) combination of elements using only one or two words (point of reference)?

This is only possible if you and the other person(s) have agreed upon exactly the same terminology,

and then it does not matter much whether you use an agreed upon genre name ("hard sf") or any

other word ("brrblmuth") to get the idea across.

[Lord Shag]

Well rust you sort of concede that at the very most only a minority of academia are interested in the genre issue and I'm afraid your example to support that of the Heinlein debate is quite flawed, since it had nothing do with genre but was part of a broader debate about theme and ideology. The only relevance to genre this debate has is that you used the term "science fiction" as a organizing concept. Now the academics who in engaged in that debate did a similar thing but simply citing genre or using it as a organizing concept in the context of a much wider discussion about ideology does not imply that they suddenly had an arousal of interest in genre discussions or endorsed it as a subject of suitable analysis.

[rust]

Well rust you sort of concede that at the very most only a minority of academia are interested in the genre issue and I'm afraid your example to support that of the Heinlein debate is quite flawed, since it had nothing do with genre but was part of a broader debate about theme and ideology.

I think it was a "genre debate", because the people involved in it attempted to categorize scien-

ce fiction into distinct genres (e.g. "Imperialist SF" versus "Progressive SF" and thelike). These

genres were based upon ideological / political considerations, not on those of scientific accura-

cy (like "Hard SF" and "Soft SF"), but in my view they still were attempts to define genres.

However, this was of course more or less a fringe debate, and it only became somewhat well

known over here because it was the only theoretical debate about science fiction at this time at

all. Science Fiction otherwise was still considered as "bad literature", and established academic

figures would have seriously endangered their careers by writing about it.

[Rurik]

How do I express a common (possibly known by others) combination of elements using only one or two words (point of reference)?

This is only possible if you and the other person(s) have agreed upon exactly the same terminology,

and then it does not matter much whether you use an agreed upon genre name ("hard sf") or any

other word ("brrblmuth") to get the idea across.

But that is the point behind these labels, that there is a certain shared understanding about what they mean, so that a lot of information is passed between two people who may have never even met before with one or two words.

The fact that these labels are useless for academic discussions may be true (or may not be - but that is a whole other discussion), but that does mean that these labels are not useful at all.

If I am looking for a sicence fiction setting that is based on real scientific principles as we understand them today applied to a future setting that of course is completely made up but at least the author tries to make his imagined future a feasable possible eventuality, and someone describes something to me as Science Fantasy, I know it is NOT what I am looking for.

[Lord Shag]

Well Simon this response is kind of in regards to some of the questions you had and some things you were confused about. Ok here goes. Generally in terms of literary analysis we are concerned with the main story elements. These are theme, plot, characterization and setting. The last three are essential and the first is the province of more highbrow writers though a good theme can unify the other three elements nicely in any story. Mood is not essential and nor is tone. Both however are important skills for a writer to acquire since mood is one the main ways in which you convey emotion. Tone is a nebulous concept subject to much tedious debate, which we need not pursue here.

You indicated some confusion with the term mood and mentioned it in relation to setting. Can you write a story without mood? Yes you can but you can't write one without one of the essential story elements. Setting is a holistic concept and when you talk about the mood of the setting you are not really talking about the mood that a writer understands it to be. When someone says to me what type of mood does the story have I am thinking of the emotional elements crafted into the individual scenes which has nothing to do with setting or plot for that matter.

You also mentioned that “If horror is about characterization and romance is about plot and fantasy is about setting, then what is a novel that has all three?” That question is kinda answered by the above. Now it is true that all stories combine the elements together but what connects some stories together is their emphasis on one of the elements. Story elements don’t produce genres, fanboys and publishers do. What allows people to conceive that these genres exist is that some stories have a resemblance through the same use of story element.

[Lord Shag]

I think it was a "genre debate", because the people involved in it attempted to categorize science fiction into distinct genres

No thats not my recollection of it. It was observed that science fiction was splitting down certain ideological lines. They were not sitting around trying to invent new labels.

[Lord Shag]

Ok now this is a follow-up to some other responses that have been made here by other people.

1. Despite all the forgoing, I think the distinctions are useful to gamers in that they tell us what to expect. Yeah but gaming, ain’t literature. That’s another debate, which we can do next week.

2. Thalaba's graph, above, illustrates the differences perfectly. Genre labels aren't perfect ... but gamers (and others) can get annoyed when they buy "science fiction" that's simply fantasy with "quantum" pasted on. See 1.

3. If there are no genre conventions, then how do we know when a story about murder is a 'mystery', a 'horror', or just a story that has a murder in it? Marketing, marketing & marketing

4. Horror' is considered a genre by the marketplace, as is 'mystery' - neither of which is defined by setting. What makes 'horror' and 'mystery' what they are? I suggested the word 'mood' as an important aspect, but if that's not the right word, what is it? See above

5. The problem is the meaning of the term "romance" like many other terms has changed over the years. Originally it referred to a type of fiction about heroic characters in fantastic adventures. The fact that this has happened is further evidence that this thing called genre is ephemeral, superficial; and shallow. You guys keep on mentioning that genres shift and change and they are unfixed and that analysts can’t agree on them. There is good reason for this; they have little rigorous basis.

[Lord Shag]

BTW, horror isn't merely about characterization, but about mood.

I really want to reply to this one but i'm too tired...........

[rust]

No thats not my recollection of it.

We may well mean different debates, the one I was thinking of may well have been a "local"

one that happened here in Germany only.

The most prominent contributors probably were Alpers, Fuchs and Hahn:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hans_Joachim_Alpers

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ronald_M._Hahn

The leading academic among them was Werner Fuchs, who is not mentioned in the English

Wikipedia.

[Atgxtg]

If I run a "sci-fi" game session and ask people to play in it (or recommend a book), what type of language or expression do we use to communicate the type of game play and focus?

How do people know if the game session with be of the type of sci-fi they expect?

Much the same way you would deal with a fantasy or modern game. You describe some details of the campaign to the players and see if they are interested.

Keep in mind that SciFi isn't a genre calssifed by setting, either. You can run a SciFi adventure in modern day, or even a historical setting. For example, imagine if the Romans had traded with the Chinese and discovered gunpower.

[Thalaba]

OK - just for the record: My name isn't Simon, it's Chris. I was thanking Simon (the OP) for starting the discussion, but I can see how that got mis-read.

By the way, I thought we were always talking more about gaming than literature, which is why I'm not sure if what literary pundits are relevant here. It's also why I don't like the idea of genre being classified by having more or less emphasis on characterization or plot. So I still think that Genre is really classified by Setting, as per my graph, or mood (as per the Horror 'genre') or a combination of the two 'gritty fantasy' vs. 'heroic fantasy' or 'Cthulhu' vs. 'Pulp Cthulhu'.

Keep in mind that SciFi isn't a genre calssifed by setting, either. You can run a SciFi adventure in modern day, or even a historical setting. For example, imagine if the Romans had traded with the Chinese and discovered gunpower.

In your example, (which few people would recognize as sci-fi by the way, though that's beside the point) you are still establishing the genre by defining the setting. You are establishing the rules of the game world: just like ancient Rome, but with gunpowder. That's setting.

But that is the point behind these labels, that there is a certain shared understanding about what they mean, so that a lot of information is passed between two people who may have never even met before with one or two words.

The fact that these labels are useless for academic discussions may be true (or may not be - but that is a whole other discussion), but that does mean that these labels are not useful at all.

If I am looking for a sicence fiction setting that is based on real scientific principles as we understand them today applied to a future setting that of course is completely made up but at least the author tries to make his imagined future a feasable possible eventuality, and someone describes something to me as Science Fantasy, I know it is NOT what I am looking for.

After all this discussion, this echoes my thoughts on the matter, too. I can see now why there is a lot of confusion over genre (because genres are created haphazardly by industry people, and the academics who would normally classify things deny that they exist).

[Atgxtg]

(which few people would recognize as sci-fi by the way, though that's beside the point)

It is besides the point. Something is correct regardless of how the majority interpret it. Most people would claim that 2 + 3 x 5 = 25, and most people are wrong. What most people would recognize as SciFi, isn't (most "sci-fi" films and TV shows are, at best, only part time SciFi).

In your example, you are still establishing the genre by defining the setting. You are establishing the rules of the game world: just like ancient Rome, but with gunpowder. That's setting.

All campaigns/stories have a setting. That does not define the genre. Looking back at my "cure for cancer" idea ealrier, that would be set in modern day. The setting isn't defining the genre. SciFi stories can occur in any setting, provided that the story allows for the existence of science.

After all this discussion, this echoes my thoughts on the matter, too. I can see now why there is a lot of confusion over genre (because genres are created haphazardly by industry people, and the academics who would normally classify things deny that they exist).

The reason for the confusion is because most people don't know the terms used to define/classify a genre. They see spaceships and say "sci-fi". They see someone running around with a sword and say "fantasy". Many terms, such as Horror and Terror are used interchangeably when they actually have different meanings.

[Shaira]

Hi guys,

*is it safe to come back in this thread yet?*

Simon - just dropping by to agree with everyone else who's advising you to ignore the whole genre thing when you're writing. If you've got a cool idea for a game book that's going to be fun to play, go ahead and write it. Don't even *think* about genres - that's for the marketing guys later, or for if you need to punt your book to someone in a soundbite "It's a far future dying earth technofantasy setting... it's a far future transhuman hyper-advanced cyberfusion space opera... oh god just read it, pleeeeease?"

I'd be very interested to hear what you've got in mind. Go on - what's it about?

Cheers,

Sarah

[rust]

The reason for the confusion is because most people don't know the terms used to define/classify a genre. They see spaceships and say "sci-fi". They see someone running around with a sword and say "fantasy". Many terms, such as Horror and Terror are used interchangeably when they actually have different meanings.

I think this article could be quite interesting, it attempts to define the borders between the va-

rious science fiction sub-genres:

http://www.kheper.net/topics/scifi/grading.html