by Jason Block

At some point or other 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.

August 24, 2009 7:56 pm

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by Jason Block

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 reprints of Conan and petered out by the mid eighties. The stories were most often 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 Shannarra’ and continuing to the present day,  then 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,  as this standard plot was reinforced by the contemporary 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 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:

Starting with the publication of ‘Harry Potter’ and the television airing of ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’, there is 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.

August 1, 2009 2:01 pm

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by Hugh Fox

1.

“I don’t want him to die, I really love the guy, but….”

“Love the guy? You’re not gay.”

“You can love someone without being gay.”

“OK, but he’s got liver cancer and….”

Sitting on the hill-terrace overlooking the ocean that’s maybe a tenth of a mile away beyond the forest. It was best this way. So the waves never got to you even in stormy weather.

“I feel so guilty feeling the way I do about you. At the same time it’s the most, I almost said ‘spiritual,’ part of my life. It’s where Korans and Torahs and New Testaments and the Hindu sacred books ought to be…you in the center of my altar.”

“And you in the center of mine.”

“But what about the flesh, desires, my orchiectomy. I’m post-meno — accent on the MEN! — pausal just like you.”

“We’re like two angels , all wings and haloes.”

“All ghosts, you mean.”

2.

“Dogs do their thing, birds, rats, but they don’t build churches.”

“Neither do I, but….,” he gets up, windy, the sea, something coming in across the pacific, “It’s so hard to explain. I don’t want to die. There’s a thousand things I want to hang on for. I walk around in Old Town and I’m in love with the river, the older, I almost said ancient buildings, old restaurants and art galleries and candle stores. I don’t know, I was raised to believe in God the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. You know, the creator, the whole schmear, God was everywhere, every time we went out into the country, up to the moutains, even in downtown everywhere, and then slowly it drifted away, I was a buddhist for a while and then that drifted away too, and then I met you and all my…waddaya call it, transcendentalism got involved with you. You became life after death, the garden of Eden, a cathedral to walk into and find a medieval altar in. Baruch atta Adonai, Elohainu Melech haolam…..”

“Stick to the Latin, I can get that. I’m still in the fifteenth century.”

“The fiftieth century B.C., Holy Art Thou God, God forever King-Queen of the universe…everything forever sacred.”

“We’re like two books on theology on the same shelf next to

3.

each other.”

“I don’t really want him to die and I don’t really want to leave Solange. If there could just be two of us, you married to him and her married to me, and then …”

“There are our other selves living eternally in never-ever-land, Eden-Anaku, our walrus-selves, super-egos, I don’t know what to call them, not Mister/Mz Everyday but our Afterdeaths, our Never-Die-Selves. That’s what we’ve been from the first, not flesh and seduction but our super-selves….do I ever really ‘leave’ you?”

“Do I ever ‘leave’ you?”

“You’re like my Dream-Me…”

“And you mine.”

“Anything else else comes in, canes, walkers, wheelchairs, deaths of any ‘others,’ and we’re still ONE…even our own deaths…”

Sun almost down now, but it never went down inside them, the moon never vanished, they didn’t ever have to touch but just sit there now, let what else happened happen, the little sylph girl and Mr. Keyboard their ghost-angel, neo-real selves expanded out into the Eternal everything-to-yet-come NOW.

November 8, 2010 11:38 am

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by R.J. Astruc

They camp near the place Deek killed the vagrant. XVI finds an old tarpaulin amongst the urban detritus that litters the building site, and strings it up using a coil of cabling and the struts of an old airship. It won’t keep out the wind but it’ll keep out the rain, and also maybe hide them from the security scanners that patrol the skies. Not bad, XVI thinks. Not bad for a shelter made out of the shit that other people don’t want.
 
When the shelter is up she crawls underneath it and curls her thin body against Deek’s flabby warmth. He still smells like blood and sweat and dead-things.

“This ain’t gonna be for long, boi,” she says. “Jus’ til things die down.”

Deek nods and touches his heavy fists against his forehead. XVI doesn’t shudder. But maybe, she thinks, maybe I should.

Sometimes she looks at him and sees a weapon.

. . . .

In the darkness of that first night she touches his soft belly, his wide hips. Touches him with love. Remembering that without him she wouldn’t have the money: ninety five credits from the suit’s wallet, and another sixteen from the vagrant.

Remembering that without him she’d never have been able to elude the psychics working on the compound’s outer gates, or the scanners that monitor the gates of the undercity.

Deek might be her brother, but XVI isn’t sure. The tests have messed up her memory. He doesn’t look like her brother, though, with his wide plain face, his mouth like compressed and rubbery sausages.

He weeps in his sleep.

XVI doesn’t know if that’s good or bad. XVI doesn’t know if it means anything at all.

. . . .

Later the security scanners do a sweep. XVI, half-awake, sees the spotlight racing across the rubble toward their shelter… and then across the shelter itself and on.

No pause, she thinks. They won’t be coming back.

. . . .

The next day they walk. Deek’s eyes are glassyblank and she has to guide him through the undercity crowds, her hands directing his hips. The scanners pass above, and every time XVI hears their familiar whirr she goes stiff and silent. A reflex: she’s expecting the worst. But can the scanners really see them? she wonders. Or rather, see the absence of them, the great psychic black spot that is Deek and his fractured mind?

She buys Deek lunch in a su-su shop: two bowls of protein-rich soup. She’s read somewhere that’s what astronauts eat in space.

“What’d they do to you, baby?” she asks, holding his hand across the table. “Why’re you like this?”

Deek struggles. “They put a light in my head.”

He picks at the scar that circles his temples. He makes XVI think of the lab-dogs and lab-cats she once saw in the compound’s animal testing section. Mad little fuckers, all of them, mouth-frothing, biting their own feet. Artificially-engineered prions chewing tunnels through their brain meat. XVI remembers saying: They ought to be put out of their misery.

XVI notices that the woman on the table next to them has a nose bleed.

She says, pulling him to his feet, “You ‘member me, yeah, Deek? We grew up same place, you’n'me.”

“Same mom,” says Deek uncertainly. Then: “She sold us.”

“Ev’rybody got to eat, boi. Mebbe she figured the compound was a better bet than that shithole in Cheapside.”

. . . .

He vomits twice in the next hour. Once outside a railway station. The second time by the glass frontage of a posh cafe. People inside stare and point, horrified. Their expensive dinners?honeyed new-fruits, organic meat, imported protein?are left untouched, pushed aside.

“Baby, baby,” XVI says, riding the wave of Deek’s lurching shoulders. “Baby, it’s okay…”

But that’s a lie: nothing is okay, everything is wrong. She can feel the sickness in him building. She moves to kiss him but then Deek puts his fist through the cafe window and screams words that aren’t words at all… and then there’s a black spot in XVI’s memory… and then they’re running and XVI remembers blood, not where it came from or what happened to produce it, just the colour, livid and brilliant and terrible.

“Fifteen inches of snow in Klondike,” says Deek, panting beside her. “Closures on highways 4, 7 and 29. Rug up if you plan to go out.”

It takes XVI a few minutes to realise that he’s picking up satellite broadcasts.

“Oh Deek,” she says, almost fondly.

She’s already decided that she’s going to have to ditch him. He’s insane. He’s a liability.

He could get them both killed.

. . . .

She leaves him in west Cheapside. She finds him shelter: a filthy grey honeycomb of a derelict skyrise, its north-facing facade fallen to rubble, only the internal walls remaining like a little girl’s dollhouse. She tells him: wait, and he does, in the dust and dirt like a dog, a mad lab-dog.

. . . .

The next day XVI finds work. Slave labour wages, doing slave labour. She loses three fingernails on a threshing machine and cries out in pain each time. By the time the day’s done her knuckles feel warped and out of joint, and her eyes won’t focus right. She’s walking home before she realises she doesn’t have a home to walk to.

In a seedy undercity bar she gets drunk and listens to the localgods brag about theft and brutality. Thugs, all of them, skinny and tattooed and strung-out. The way they swagger makes XVI think of the ungainly movements of children’s puppets. They drink cheap beer and talk loudly about ‘big takes’ and ‘fuckin’ the man’ and ‘blowin’ brains’. They complain about security systems: the scanners and the psychics.

They talk about how they’d heard some scientist types were working on a psychic blocker. A psychic blocker for your mind. A way to get around the scanners forever. A way to live under the radar for real. But that’s probably science fiction, they tell each other.

Science fuckin’ fiction.

XVI checks her pockets.

She’s got forty-five credits left.

She thinks: Maybe out here I do need a weapon.

. . . .

Deek’s waiting for her when she comes back.

He’s dirty and lab-dog crazy, but he still smiles when she takes his hand.

September 13, 2010 5:17 pm

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