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The old argument
Feb. 16th, 2008 09:23 amHal Duncan posts on his continuing development of his critical structure of strange fiction, and within it, he starts to address something that I have always felt but have never really been able to articulate.
When it comes down to discussions of what is SF and what is fantasy, I have tended to a fairly simplistic view, that fantasy has magic and SF doesn't. They may be both the same story, an adventure yarn, a philosophical journey. They may be set in the same place, post-history, pre-history or some alternate world with different rules. But there is something that makes a story, for me, a fantasy or a science fiction story, and that is its attitude to the strange things that it is presenting. (And there's a third category, extruded fantasy product, that I'll rant about some more further down)
Hal makes the distinction between artifice and anomaly and - here's where I may be misreading him grievously - I interpret this as the distinction between something that could happen in the terms of the world, and something that could not, but does. Technology vs. Magic. If something is magic, it is something that should not be possible, even if it is something that many people do routinely. If we are in a magical world, it is one in which effect might not depend on cause but on something else, whether it be intention or justice or balance or chaos.
This is why, when Gully Foyle disappears from one place and reappears in another, it is a physical technique, learnable and practiced by everyone in the terms of the story world (i.e. artifice) and therefore SF, and when Harry Potter does the same, it is because he is not a normal person, mundane rules do not apply to him (i.e. anomaly) and it is magic.
It is also why when Silence Leigh pilots her spaceship by the music of the spheres, and by alchemical symbolism, it is to me a fantasy world but when Constantine unleashes plasm fire to fuel his revolution, the special effects are treated as engineering (there are meters and batteries for his 'magical' substance) and so it is a SFnal world to me no matter what the author might want to claim.
That last point is the reason I dislike many stories that are marketed as fantasy, because even though they may have spells and monsters and swords and gods in them, I don't consider them to have any magic. The spells are based on roleplaying-game or wargame rules; they are special effects. The magicians who use them are not anomalous in any way, they are just another character class. The author might even go out of their way to present their carefully regularised 'magic system'.
Many how-to-write books claim that you have to have some system to the magic that you write, because 'if anything goes, then there can't be a story'. I have two reactions to that sentiment. The first is: Bollocks. If you turn it into engineering then you take away the magic. This is the fallacy that the extruded-fantasy magic-system writers are toiling under. My second reaction is: Bollocks. If anything can go, there are perfectly valid stories to be written about why it doesn't or what happens when it does.
The real point of the assertion that I've just misquoted above is that yes, there ought to be structure in the story, but I say that it doesn't have to be putting a points cost on the special effects. There are mythical structures, romantic structures, ironic structures, all of which are suitable for magical stories. Roger Rabbit could only escape from the cuffs when it was funny - there's a structure for you.
I've rambled a bit, but I think that my point is, if it's engineering, it's not magic even though they might be 'indistinguishable'. And allied to that, if you're going to write strange fiction, please for the gods' sake put some effort into making it strange.
When it comes down to discussions of what is SF and what is fantasy, I have tended to a fairly simplistic view, that fantasy has magic and SF doesn't. They may be both the same story, an adventure yarn, a philosophical journey. They may be set in the same place, post-history, pre-history or some alternate world with different rules. But there is something that makes a story, for me, a fantasy or a science fiction story, and that is its attitude to the strange things that it is presenting. (And there's a third category, extruded fantasy product, that I'll rant about some more further down)
Hal makes the distinction between artifice and anomaly and - here's where I may be misreading him grievously - I interpret this as the distinction between something that could happen in the terms of the world, and something that could not, but does. Technology vs. Magic. If something is magic, it is something that should not be possible, even if it is something that many people do routinely. If we are in a magical world, it is one in which effect might not depend on cause but on something else, whether it be intention or justice or balance or chaos.
This is why, when Gully Foyle disappears from one place and reappears in another, it is a physical technique, learnable and practiced by everyone in the terms of the story world (i.e. artifice) and therefore SF, and when Harry Potter does the same, it is because he is not a normal person, mundane rules do not apply to him (i.e. anomaly) and it is magic.
It is also why when Silence Leigh pilots her spaceship by the music of the spheres, and by alchemical symbolism, it is to me a fantasy world but when Constantine unleashes plasm fire to fuel his revolution, the special effects are treated as engineering (there are meters and batteries for his 'magical' substance) and so it is a SFnal world to me no matter what the author might want to claim.
That last point is the reason I dislike many stories that are marketed as fantasy, because even though they may have spells and monsters and swords and gods in them, I don't consider them to have any magic. The spells are based on roleplaying-game or wargame rules; they are special effects. The magicians who use them are not anomalous in any way, they are just another character class. The author might even go out of their way to present their carefully regularised 'magic system'.
Many how-to-write books claim that you have to have some system to the magic that you write, because 'if anything goes, then there can't be a story'. I have two reactions to that sentiment. The first is: Bollocks. If you turn it into engineering then you take away the magic. This is the fallacy that the extruded-fantasy magic-system writers are toiling under. My second reaction is: Bollocks. If anything can go, there are perfectly valid stories to be written about why it doesn't or what happens when it does.
The real point of the assertion that I've just misquoted above is that yes, there ought to be structure in the story, but I say that it doesn't have to be putting a points cost on the special effects. There are mythical structures, romantic structures, ironic structures, all of which are suitable for magical stories. Roger Rabbit could only escape from the cuffs when it was funny - there's a structure for you.
I've rambled a bit, but I think that my point is, if it's engineering, it's not magic even though they might be 'indistinguishable'. And allied to that, if you're going to write strange fiction, please for the gods' sake put some effort into making it strange.
