Putting Books In Boxes: The Genre Wars

[CBRetriever]

some Vampires are pure fantasy like those in Dhampir by Barb Hendee as the setting is, in the words of the author "a high fantasy world" and not on this planet

[[deleted user]]

I remember reading a cartoon book a long, long time ago which delved on a vampire hunting down the Human occupants of a spaceship in deep space. Logically, it would qualify as science-fiction because of the spaceship setting, but it could also be said to be a sort of modern fantasy story, right?

[Trike]

Beige wrote: "Trike, I have to politely disagree with that approach to classifications. An approach to organization purely based on setting and not style, would not have served me well when helping customers fin..."

But we’re not talking about recommendations, we’re talking about genre classification.

An apple, a lobster, and a mushroom can all be red on the outside and white on the inside, but if you’re asking about what to eat, that classification isn’t applicable.

Lies of Locke Lamora IS an Urban Fantasy. It might not be the *style* of UF a person is looking for, but that doesn’t change the fact. If they like the Newford stories, I would point them to Sookie Stackhouse, even though the former is stereotypical UF and the latter isn’t.

If someone absolutely loves Grimdark Fantasy like The Blade Itself and wants to try out Science Fiction, I’d point them to Warhammer 40k, or Altered Carbon, or Armor. None of those books share a genre classification, but they’re all similar in tone and style.

Edit: For the record, that’s Gothic Space Fantasy, Hardboiled Detective Science Fiction and Military Sci-Fi, respectively.

[Trike]

Michel wrote: "I remember reading a cartoon book a long, long time ago which delved on a vampire hunting down the Human occupants of a spaceship in deep space. Logically, it would qualify as science-fiction because of the spaceship setting, but it could also be said to be a sort of modern fantasy story, right?"

For me, intent trumps milieu. If it is impossible, it is Fantasy. If it is speculative and possible (even if highly unlikely or improbable), it is Science Fiction.

What I’m about to say causes people to lose their minds, so I want to be clear that I am not talking about *quality* but simply putting something in the appropriate category based on the above criteria.

That disclaimer noted, Star Trek is Fantasy. I know, I know. Don’t @ me. I’ve been dealing with the fallout of that idea for 30 years. But it doesn’t change the fact that, at the time it was written, Star Trek included things which were obviously and clearly scientifically impossible. Spock is the easiest example. He is a completely impossible creation by natural law.

However, he is a brilliant character for exploring the duality of human nature, as personified in an alien/human hybrid. As allegory he is genius; as a plausible entity, not so much.

So if you have vampires running around a spaceship — which actually happens in (view spoiler)[David Weber’s Out of the Dark; it’s literally Dracula versus space aliens (hide spoiler)] — then it’s Fantasy first, everything else second. I’m pretty sure I go into more detail earlier in this thread.

[Trike]

CBRetriever wrote: "some Vampires are pure fantasy like those in Dhampir by Barb Hendee as the setting is, in the words of the author "a high fantasy world" and not on this planet"

There are lots of Secondary World stories which have vampires. The Witcher is one. The Elder Scrolls is another. Oh, and Warhammer, of course.

The Ravenloft setting for Dungeons & Dragons is all about vampires. Vampire of the Mists is like a sub-genre Powerball jackpot: Secondary World Urban Fantasy Horror. The main character is an vampire elf. (And if you go for that sort of thing there are somewhere between 10 and a gazillion more books in that setting.)

[Eva]

Trike wrote: "Almost no one uses High Fantasy or Low Fantasy any more. It was a brief thing back in the late 60s/early 70s, so people who were around then sometimes still use them, but they’re definitely out of fashion.

It’s kind of like when you hear someone who grew up in the 80s use “gnarly” or “radical”. Those words had their day, but that day is done."

I wasn't around in those years but am still very familiar with these categories. They're also still used very often among pen and paper roleplayers for categorizing campaign settings or systems, by the way, and D&D/roleplaying is *the* hobby among teenagers right now (Overwatch was yesterday).

[Mary]

Science Fiction has included FTL from the first days when it was known to be impossible.

[Beige]

Trike wrote: "But we’re not talking about recommendations, we’re talking about genre classification...."

Yes, but my point remains the same. In a bookstore, the classification needs to as "intuitive" to customers as possible and that is (usually) based on the style of the writing first and the content second. In Canada, the books are classified as I described.

I acknowledge that this isn't a perfect system. You end up getting Margaret Atwood in Fiction in this model. As the genres are read more widely and authors continue to blur the lines, I wonder if this will eventually change.

[Mary]

And of course in a book store it can only be in one place. (It helps sell the books if they all together.)

[Trike]

Mary wrote: "Science Fiction has included FTL from the first days when it was known to be impossible."

Except it’s not. There are a couple ways to achieve it. Almost certainly not as portrayed in most SF, but the math says it’s possible.

[Mary]

That it might be possible by different means does not make the SF using impossible ones less impossible.

[Trike]

Beige wrote: "Trike wrote: "But we’re not talking about recommendations, we’re talking about genre classification...."

Yes, but my point remains the same. In a bookstore, the classification needs to as "intuiti..."

Sure, but that’s apples to oranges. This isn’t a bookstore and we aren’t offering recs by using genre classification. In fact, I would suggest it’s literally impossible to use genre as a guide to discover entertainment.

Even within super-specific subgenres you can have tremendous variation. Contemporary Police Procedural with the qualifier of “set in Los Angeles” gets you Dragnet, The Shield, The Rookie, Police Woman, Angie Tribeca, Columbo, SWAT, Alien Nation and Lucifer. That encompasses gritty drama, melodrama, comedy, satire, science fiction and fantasy.

Even going more niche doesn’t help: Secondary World Police Procedural Urban Fantasy gets you Guards! Guards! (Comedy), Low Town (grimdark), The City & the City (whatever that is), and Titanshade (noir).

[Trike]

Mary wrote: "That it might be possible by different means does not make the SF using impossible ones less impossible."

Of course. Hence Star Trek = Fantasy.

But I’m easy. Physics says it can happen and there are a good half-dozen theoretical methods for it. Some of the real ones are exactly like their SFnal counterparts. Until it’s disproven, I say let it in.

[Carrie]

Gothic Space Fantasy?? I have never heard of this, but I want to know more.

[Mary]

Trike wrote: "Mary wrote: "That it might be possible by different means does not make the SF using impossible ones less impossible."

Of course. Hence Star Trek = Fantasy.

But I’m easy. Physics says it can happ..."

You contradict yourself. You let it in, then Star Trek is Science Fiction.

[CBRetriever]

to me Space and/or Spaceships = SciFi
ditto for dystopian futures of the earth

[Mary]

That's my rule, too.

“If there’s a zeppelin, it’s alternate history. If there’s a rocketship, it’s science fiction. If there are swords and/or horses, it’s fantasy. A book with swords and horses in it can be turned into science fiction by adding a rocketship to the mix. If a book has a rocketship in it, the only thing that can turn it back into fantasy is the Holy Grail" -- Debra Doyle

[Trike]

Mary wrote: "You contradict yourself. You let it in, then Star Trek is Science Fiction."

Scroll up to my Spock comment. Star Trek doesn’t violate just one element of natural law, it violates all of them. Just because it has spaceships and computers doesn’t make it SF.

Individual episodes are clearly Science Fiction — the one debating whether Data is property or his own being comes to mind — but like the Marvel universe, the overall franchise is Fantasy.

[Trike]

CBRetriever wrote: "to me Space and/or Spaceships = SciFi
ditto for dystopian futures of the earth"

That’s the kind of reliance on props and setting that doesn’t really work once you delve below the surface of a genre.

That’s like saying, “If it has a horse in it, it’s a Western.” Which means Lord of the Rings, Dragonslayer, Mulan, Firefly and Star Trek V: The Final Frontier are Westerns. Clearly there’s something more to that genre than just horses.

Same thing for spaceships or dystopias. Plenty of Fantasy stories and Historical Fiction have those elements too.

Even Epic Fantasy like The Sword of Shannara take place in our future, as Shea and Will encounter rusted pickup trucks and fallen skyscrapers while battling evil magic critters.

[Trike]

Mary wrote: "That's my rule, too.

“If there’s a zeppelin, it’s alternate history. If there’s a rocketship, it’s science fiction. If there are swords and/or horses, it’s fantasy. A book with swords and horses i..."

See, this is my point.

ONE element that is a Fantasy element turns a story into a Fantasy. Cross out “Holy Grail” and write in “magic wand” or “elf” or “ghost.” That single element makes it Fantasy.

A perfect example is Hamlet. That story is straightforward politics and court intrigue with a dash of teen angst thrown in, but the ghost of Hamlet’s father at the beginning is the single element needed to turn it into a Fantasy.

If Hamlet were the only one to see the ghost, then it could be plausibly seen as a teenager’s overactive imagination and categorized as Fiction. But multiple characters see the ghost, which means it’s a supernatural occurrence in that world. Therefore Fantasy.

The Hunt for Red October is a straightforward Cold War thriller, but the titular submarine, Red October, is a Science Fictional vehicle. It did not exist when the book was written; Clancy was extrapolating from a paper on propulsion theory he saw once. That’s the only SFnal element in the book, but it’s enough.

[CBRetriever]

horse and western don't compute, but horse and a specific time period = Western

we'll have to agree to disagree as I'm going with the Merriam_Webster definition: fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component

It doesn't say that the imagined science has to be based on reality. If I'm going to be restricted to SciFi or Fantasy, Star Trek and Star Wars fits into my concept of SciFi.

[Trike]

CBRetriever wrote: "horse and western don't compute, but horse and a specific time period = Western..."

Exactly. Now you’re coming around to my point of view.

A Western requires a specific milieu and certain elements. The concept of “American frontier” and “United States expansionism”. An era: roughly between 1803 and 1900. A location: west of Ohio, east of the Rocky Mountains, from northern Mexico to southern Canada. Other elements such as conflict with Native Americans, establishment of law, self-reliance, and so on, are often present but not required.

Within the Western genre there are subgenres such as the Horse Opera, the Contemporary Western, the Comedy Western, and the Epic Western, among others. In movies we have the Spaghetti Western, which has nothing to do with genre elements, instead focusing on who made it and where.

Once you go down the rabbit hole, it gets complicated quickly.

That’s why it’s too simplistic to state things like “spaceships = sci-fi”, because spaceships can appear in Fantasy, regular Fiction, and Historical Fiction. You need more than just that single thing to make it part of the genre.

[Beth]

Allison wrote: "Speaking of YA (agreed, I hate it as a genre classification. Still accepting ideas for names for books like the Maas and Tahir series)"

This was part of the discourse a discussion of YA in the "What Are You Reading in 2020" thread. I'm not a librarian, but it seems like you can just tack on whatever genre the book might be if it were marketed to adults and stick YA in front of it, and that's fine? i.e. "Young Adult Fantasy."

Where it gets murky for me is when the author says their book is an adult novel, the publisher markets it as an adult novel, and GR reviewers feel like it should be YA anyway and have there's a little battle in the tags between "Adult" or "Young Adult." Schwab's Shades of Magic series is an obvious example of this. When I know the author's intention, I go with that and don't put YA in my own tags for it.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

I think I mean I feel like there's room for a subgenre. Graceling, Ember in Ashes, and Sarah Maas books for example share enough characteristics that I want to call them something. But it's not YA as I don't think it makes sense to market those books just to teens. I think it's *safe* for teens, largely, but it's not like Tamora Pierce books or Garth Nix books which are actively intended for people younger than the age of majority, and whose stories focus on people of that age growing up.

And, as I think you mentioned, it doesn't really help me, an adult, to classify things by age group, though I can appreciate why it's helpful for folks who are sort of blindly searching, or who are monitoring what their children read a bit more closely.

[Beth]

I think I see what you're getting at, there, although I've read none of the authors you list. Books that are more explicit about some topics like sexuality?

Although I might not have said it in those words, you're right, as an adult (and one who has no concrete knowledge of dev psych, for that matter, nor had their own child/ren to see the development of over the course of 18 years, etc), there's not much point to my attempting to question the author and/or marketing teams as to what any given book's appropriate audience is. Occasionally I'll think "this skews younger/older than I expected," but it's all part of the discovery of where the book is coming from.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Ah, I think I did a bad job communicating. I meant that *for genre-related determinations*, age group doesn't do much for me. Sometimes I want something more mature in style or content and then age might play a factor, but not in helping me determine what sort of book I want to read (ex. heroic fantasy, dark fantasy, urban fantasy) just the tone I might expect (or perhaps some content I can be fairly certain I'll avoid).

[Eva]

Aren't the Tamora Pierce and Garth Nix books Middle Grade instead of YA? I think maybe that's the difference. On Amazon, Pierce's and Nix's books are marked "Grade 7-9" (Middle Grade), whereas Throne of Glass, Ember in the Ashes etc. are "Grade 9-12" (YA).

Due to Pierce and Nix's books coming out before these categories were invented, people often mistakenly put them in YA, but they're not really.

I do understand where you're coming from in terms of genre. But don't people differentiate further usually (e.g. YA contemporary, YA fantasy, YA sci fi)?

And it is very odd as a classification, you're right - especially considering that so many adults read it, one need only check Booktube channels on youtube.

They're also discussing adding another genre, New Adult, for books that are YA but have explicit, graphic violent and sexual content, lol.

So, obviously the term has come to mean more than "for teens". Perhaps they're talking about writing style, which (in fantasy) is usually fast-paced, a bit flowery, frequent use of hyperbolic language when describing emotions ("his words froze the blood in her veins"), and focused on achieving a strong identification of the reader with the protagonist(s) - as opposed to maintaining some critical distance to the characters.

[Allison, Fairy Mod-mother]

Idk what they are, but I can tell you where they were in the stores I bought them, and how old a smol human would have to be for me to feel comfortable giving them those books lol

But that's my/our point! It's pretty arbitrary and definitely not genre-related, which is how it's so often used. Agreed with your assessment of the style! Eagerly seeking words for that kind of story.

[Michele]

"smol human" lol

[Michele]

Eva wrote: "So, obviously the term has come to mean more than "for teens". Perhaps they're talking about writing style, "

I think that's it exactly. In YA the writing is usually less complicated, and the story only has one plot/conflict, as opposed to adult novels which are denser, more complex, and multi-faceted.

I've never seen the point of "middle grade" as a designator, though. That seems an unnecessarily slim slice-and-dice of the audience. I think of 7-12 all as YA.

[Beth]

As a change of pace from "what is YA," here's a short transcript of answers to "What Makes Epic Fantasy 'Epic'?" from a handful of pro fantasy authors. There's also a video which I'll check out at home, if I remember.

https://www.tor.com/2020/07/23/what-m...

Kuang's answer was interesting to me, that modern fantasy has plenty of scope for big stories about people who are on the margins--or are the downtrodden--of their own societies.

[Camilla]

I'm not here to defend the YA box - I mean, I wasn't even aware of the term until a couple of years back, when I started to read more English books (I'm from Norway). Since then I have read a couple of books labeled as YA, though, and I have realised that they often have something in common -other than the protag's age. And it's a bit hard to put my finger on. But I'll try:

Both YA and NA books seem to have this theme of Coming of age/ finding a place in this world. This is often connected to issues like mental health, prejudices and injustice. To be honest, I think that “finding my place in the world” is an interesting theme for readers of all ages, and I suspect that’s one of the reason these books are so popular with all kinds of readers.

There’s something special about the YA and NA voice, too. It’s a bit hard for me to define, but the voice often makes the text easy to connect to and it gives the books a very character-driven feel to them. The characters are often complex and diverse. With this weight on the character(s) and their development, the plot often gets simpler. In some cases, the word building can be complex enough, though.

My impression is that the pace is often medium to fast in YA books. The language is sometimes simple, but I don’t believe it’s “written down” (I might be wrong - I'm not a Native English speaker). I’ve read some great prose in YA books.

These are some of the things I enjoy when reading YA, but I suspect these things have nothing to do with the definition of what YA books are (books with protagonists aged between 12-18 years or so). Still, this category helps me find books I might like. It’s just that I’d often prefer to read books with older characters, to be honest.

[Hereford]

At the risk of appearing to be on an ego trip, what follows is how I sorted my library. Using Book Collector software, I once spent a month getting this together.

Adventure - Novels such as Clavell’s Tai Pan fit this category even though there are sequels. I lost interest after Shogun.
Adventure Series - e.g., Barry Eisler’s Rain series
Arizona – It’s my home so anything dealing with home
Art – Art history and individual artist collections
Astronomy – Text Books and selected related topics
Biography - I’m not a big fan of biography but I do have a dozen or so
Business – My degree is BA and I spent some time reviewing books for Berrett-Koehler Publishers, Inc
China – I studied Mandarin which led to studying China
Comedy – e.g., Scott Adams Dilbert series although that series really ought to be under Business
Comics– e.g., Bill Amend’s Foxtrot series
Consciousness – A whole lot guesses on what it is
Current Events – e.g., Thomas Friedman
Education – e.g., Jerry Pournelle’s California Sixth Grade Reader, Plato’s Dialogues, and other attempts to describe what it should look like
Entertainment – eg., Kinn & Piazza’s The 101 Greatest Films of All Time
Fantasy - Fantasy One Offs such China Melvielle’s Perdido Street Station
Fantasy Series – e.g., Card’s Seventh Son series
Fiction – Books not fitting into other categories such as Alexie, Anaya, Brooks, et al
First Americans – e.g. Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee, Death Walk at Acoma, Navajo Folk Tales, et al
Geography – Textbooks such as Graham Bateman’s Dictionary of Human Geography
Geology – Emphasis on Southwestern geology
Gifts From Sue – My co-author’s gifts to me ranging from mysteries to histories
Health – e.g., The Merck Manual. DSM V, Wilderness Survival
History – British - e.g., Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories and other more serious takes
History – USA – High School Textbooks as well as Things My Teacher Never Told Me, et al
History – World – Text Books
House Maintenance – How to fix things
Ireland – History, travel, and tales
Literature – Text books, analyses such as James Wood’s How Fiction Works , et al
Logic – Analyses such as Raymond M. Smullyan’s What Is the Name of This Book?
Mathematics – histories, conundrums, and puzzles
Military - I’m retired Army; son and grandsons are USMA grades so anything and everything
Music – e.g. Richard Fawkes The History of Classical Music
Mystery - Detective stories e,g,,
Mystery Series – e.g., Keigo Higashino’s The Devotion of Suspect X
Mythology – Compilations from around the world
Nature – Mostly studies of the Sonoran Desert
Philosophy – e.g., Alain de Botton’s The Consolations of Philosophy
Physics – e.g., John Barrow, John L. Casti, John Gribbin, et al
Physiology – e.g., Natalie Angier’s Woman
Poetry – General compilations as well individual books of my favorites
Reference – e.g., collection of dictionaries, encyclopedias, et al
Religion – e.g., Karen Armstrong’s The History of God
Romance – my wife’s collections
Science–General - Lots of Asimov and Bryson and others
Science Fiction – One Offs such Heinlein’s A Stranger in a Strange Land
Science Fiction Series – e.g. Bretthauer’s Families War and Wylie’s Kinsella’s Universe
Shakespeare – Plays, Sonnets, and Life and times histories
Sociology - Textbooks

When I got my first Kindle, the list shortened to:
Facts in Five
Fantasy
Science
Thrillers

[CBRetriever]

I'm more into Authors and categories and some are in multiple categories: an Andre Norton book could be in Andre Norton and Baen (source) and 3_Read_Sci-Fi_Fantasy.

1_2020 --> for contest on this board
1_Reference
1_Short Stories --> for contest on this board
2_In Progress
3_Read
3_Read_Sci-Fi_Fantasy
4_Non-Fiction
5_Autobiography-Biography
6_French and Other Languages
7_Unfinished
Andre Norton
Baen -->Source of book
Box
Bradley
Brett
Brunetti
Brust
Cadfael
Cara Black
Cast
Cherryh
De Lint
Deitz
Delphi -->Source of book
Du Pre
Durgin
Erikson
Gamache
Goodkind
Grafton
Haydon
Heyer
Hobb
Humble -->Source of book
Jance
Kellerman
Kellerman
Krueger
Maggody
Mallory
Modesitt
Montalbano
Moon
Muller
Muller
Nesbo
Old -->Rereads
Other Sources -->Source of book
Plum
Roberson
Russia PDFs, Docs, etc for Russia trip
Samples_New -->Samples from Amazon
Sayers
Sayers
Shugak
StoryBundle -->Source of book
Tor -->Source of book
Trips -->PDFs, Docs, etc for trips I've made
Weeks
Whitney
Williams

[Anna]

I think what you're describing is Shelving (or other forms of categorizing your books), but this thread is about (sub)genres.

[CBRetriever]

true, you know I tend to go off tangent in threads... Unfortunately I open a bunch of threads at one time and don't go to the top to check what the tread topic is sometimes.

To get back on topic, I'm not in favor of too many subcategories as it makes it difficult to browse books on Amazon, Baen, etc. The only ones I really want are SciFi, Fantasy and Romance (both SciFi and Fantasy combined)

[Anna]

No problem, just making sure everyone knows we have that thread, too! :)

[Brian]

(As requested, transferred to this thread)
I've heard it defined this way:
If it takes place in a real, or possibly real place - e.g. Mars
Get there using tech that is real or plausible, e.g., a spaceship
They survive/breathe/have to deal with gravity - then it's Science Fiction.
If the place doesn't or can't exist, they get there by some implausible or impossible means, and the basic rules of physics don't apply - e.g. Magic. Then that's fantasy.
Perhaps this is a little simplistic, but it's not a bad guide

[Mary]

The problem with that definition is that it means that any spaceship with FTL travel is fantasy, and any dragon is science fiction. (You think dragons are implausible or impossible? Why? What science precludes them?)

[CJ]

I simply fall back on my life-long experience of reading SFF and think about what those novels try to accomplish beyond genre conventions (I'm a kind of "f*** genre conventions" kind of reader anyways and hate it when other readers demand a book to conform to a checklist of subjective, nitpicky conventions).

SF to me is a genre that uses science, tech and knowledge (including extrapolating possible, futuristic or even improbable science, tech and knowledge from past and present day) to create settings and narratives to explore human existence beyond what we experience in our mundane lives. This is why SF novels that venture into very philosophical areas are still SF in my book because it's all about seeking to know something, which is the heart of science (literally the meaning of the word "science").

Fantasy does a parallel task but anchors its settings and narratives more purely in imagination and draws primarily from human culture rather than science or tech.

For example, a lot of SF has aliens that are highly improbable to exist in any real way, yet are still rooted in human science and knowledge about the needed conditions for life and intelligence. Meanwhile, fairies that come a mythical fairy realm to steal children and replace them with changelings represent something about human culture (our anxieties, fears and rationalizations and so forth) rather than being representative of any knowledge that we as a species have accumulated for the purpose of understanding our world, existence and experience in a scientific way.

Or to take Mary's examples above: the concept of FTL travel is fantastical but the fictional concept of it still requires us to know something about physics and the vastness of space to understand it. But the idea of dragons doesn't necessarily require us to know anything about biology, zoology or herpetology--the concept of dragons existed in folklore and storytelling long before those areas of science and only needed an audience's imagination and maybe some general experience of the world and human culture--like how animals move or that fire exists--to comprehend.

A last example of this is vampires. I have been doing a bit of research into vampires as a fixture in literature and what I have found is that vampires really belong to the genres of fantasy and fantasy-related horror, because their power as a literary figure is rooted in the human cultures from which that folklore evolved, particularly Christianized cultures. When people try to make them "scientific" by coming up with scientific-like explanations of the folklore, like why they are repelled by crucifixes or why sunlight burns them, the emotional and psychological power of the vampire breaks down because that's not what they were ever intended to be. Vampires were meant to be imagined representations of fears rooted deep in human culture where those fears are assumed passively and often unexplored, and not something that is rooted in the clarity of a scientific understanding of the world. (If you want to see a successful SF twist on vampires, however, I highly recommend I am Legend, because Matheson got what I am talking about here.)

[Mary]

There is the description of SF that it attempts the suspension of disbelief by appeal to the authority of science. So, yeah, the physics gobbledygook is what does it.

[Mary]

Theoretically impossible is really impossible. The theory that precludes it has been put to the test and won.

True, wormholes might do it -- or wyrmholes. Perhaps dragons are the secret.

[Brian]

I guess it's the slight difference between nearly impossible and really impossible that is the place where good Sci-Fi lives.
A film like Starwars with the Jedi using force, which appears to be magic, blurs the differences. I don't think of it as a line but rather as a shading.

[SFFBC, Ancillary Mod]

Reminder that we're in the Members' Chat folder, where we discuss as readers.

[Brian]

Thank you for the reminder; I'm still new here.
*Post edited.

[Brian]

Good morning,
Isaac Asimov is one of my favourite authors and a prolific Sci-Fi writer.
In the later Foundation stories, he refers to something like Gaia, a planetary consciousness - given such a thing is highly implausible, would that make the Foundation novels fantasy?

[[deleted user]]

Brian wrote: "Good morning,
Isaac Asimov is one of my favourite authors and a prolific Sci-Fi writer.
In the later Foundation stories, he refers to something like Gaia, a planetary consciousness - given such a..."

No! That planetary consciousness could come from something unusual but still natural, like thinking plants which meld their thoughts and emotions, either by interlinked roots or via telepathy. You also could have, if you are talking about an ocean planet, a planetary-wide thinking entity formed by billions and trillions of marine organisms, like brain cells linked together by neurones. I would thus classify Asimov's book as SF.

[Brian]

Thanks, Michel.
I was inclined to agree but wanted to put the idea out there. Asimov doesn't go into detail as to how the Gaia system worked in the novels, but I recall they used the mountains for long-term storage, so that would imply the whole planetary ecosystem was involved.
No spoilers, but it's crucial to the end of the series. Galaxia, yes or no?
The foundation series is an example of complex 'world-building'.

[Jabotikaba]

Mary wrote: "The problem with that definition is that it means that any spaceship with FTL travel is fantasy, and any dragon is science fiction. (You think dragons are implausible or impossible? Why? What scien..."

I don't think it's a good idea to use spaceships and dragons and other... er... accessories to tell the difference between fantasy and sci-fi, and here's why.
There are the WinterLands books by Barbara Hambly, which are fantasy. But the dragon slayer John Aversin is also a self-taught scientist, and he repeatedly discusses the dragons he fights in scientific terms. These books also mention that dragons can fly between the stars, and that they came to the fictional world of Winterlands from outer space.
There are also the sci-fi Pern books by Anne McCaffrey. No offence to her fans, but I found this series so boring that I barely finished the first book and kept coming back to it. Well, there are dragons too, but the action takes place on another planet inhabited by earthlings, and these books belong to the sci-fi genre.
Great, so what's the difference between Winterlands and Pern? They are both books about space dragons.
I think the difference is the connection to reality. The fictional world of Winterlands has no connection to reality. You can't say whether John Aversin, Jenny and Morkeleb and all the others have lived in the past or will live in the future. Nor can you say exactly where they have lived, are living or will live. They certainly don't live on Earth or Mars or any other planet. The reader and the writer don't even try to relate the characters to reality and realise that it's all just fantasy, which is why the genre is called what it is.
As for the terminology, it's not that important. For example, the ability to read minds can be called both magic and telepathy, depending on what book you're reading, and a dragon can be both a magical creature and an alien animal. It's just a matter of relating it to reality.

[Mary]

The problem with that theory is urban fantasy. If I tell you a story takes place in Boston on March 13 1996, that doesn't make it not fantasy