books

Science fiction vs. fantasy

Ask any writer or fan to define science fiction (or fantasy) — and lord knows, people have asked — you’ll get a lot of contradictory and only sometimes helpful answers. Here are just some that have been sitting around in my saved links for awhile:

“Science fiction writers don’t admit magic, they don’t admit UFOs even, but they accept as given these two magical properties [time travel and travel that exceeds the speed of light, so that, in a sense, even their science fiction is built on fantasy.” Robert J. Sawyer

“Magic gets to break the laws of nature. Science doesn’t. And that goes for science-fiction, too: It might do things that aren’t currently possible, but as soon as it starts breaking the laws of physics it has stepped out of science and into fantasy.” – Mary Robinette Kowal

“The failure mode of science fiction is NOT ‘fantasy,’ it is ‘bad science fiction.'” – John Scalzi

“…the term ‘science fiction’ is a misnomer, that trying to get two enthusiasts to agree on a definition of it leads only to bloody knuckles; that better labels have been devised (Heinlein’s suggestion, ‘speculative fiction,’ is the best, I think), but that we’re stuck with this one; and that it will do us no particular harm if we remember that, like ‘The Saturday Evening Post,’ it means what we point to when we say it.” – Damon Knight

“What can not be defined are genres. You can’t define poetry, the novel, tragedy, pornography, comics… and you cannot define academic criticism either. Now, you can describe all of them in perfectly useful ways. You can describe them so people can recognize them. So that particular provisional job that you have to do can get done. You just can not specify their necessary and sufficient conditions. So there are no root examples, no borderline cases. With different descriptions, different borderlines come into being. I think the genre or at least genre criticism, might take a major step forward if it simply threw out the term ‘definition.’ The term ‘description,’ would do perfectly well. The point is, if someone asks you, ‘How would you “describe” science fiction,’ the proper answer is: ‘For what particular purpose do you want this description?’ This is not the mood in which the question ‘How do you define sf?’ gets asked.” – Samuel R. Delaney

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Meanwhile, Gerry Canavan is co-editing a Special Issue on SF, Fantasy, and Myth for Duke University Press, at least partly on where these definitions overlap and/or contradict one another.

As I’ve noted before, I usually find strict definitions of fantasy and science fiction (or any genre) pretty limiting. I think I most like what Delaney says above.

Saturday leftovers

  • Michael Schaub on being an English major:

    I remember being an English major at a Big 12 school in the mid-’90s. This was an agriculture- and engineering-heavy school where liberal arts departments were isolated in a building that permanently smelled like paint thinner. Whenever I’d tell people I was an English major, they’d look incredulous and say “What are you going to do with that? Teach?” Like in the same tone you’d say, “What are you going to do with that? Trade blowjobs for meth?” Good times!

    I was an English major at a pretty agriculture- and engineering-heavy school myself, so I know the feeling. Even my undergraduate advisor told me, “You know, you really can’t get a job with this degree.” (My advisor within the English department was a lot more encouraging, but I met with him all of once, the day I declared, and he left Penn State around the time I graduated. So take from that what you will.)

  • Are you now, or have you ever been, a Lovecraftian horror? [via]
  • Will we be telling our grandchildren (or even our children) about this thing we used to call “fish”? [via]

    While the climate crisis gathers front-page attention on a regular basis, people–even those who profess great environmental consciousness–continue to eat fish as if it were a sustainable practice. But eating a tuna roll at a sushi restaurant should be considered no more environmentally benign than driving a Hummer or harpooning a manatee. In the past 50 years, we have reduced the populations of large commercial fish, such as bluefin tuna, cod, and other favorites, by a staggering 90 percent. One study, published in the prestigious journal Science, forecast that, by 2048, all commercial fish stocks will have “collapsed,” meaning that they will be generating 10 percent or less of their peak catches. Whether or not that particular year, or even decade, is correct, one thing is clear: Fish are in dire peril, and, if they are, then so are we.

  • Sorry I missed this around Halloween (and by dint of not living in Chicago), but I think a zombie-preparedness fitness class is a terrific idea!
  • Has xkcd been watching the Penn State Monty Python Society’s Mall Climb?
  • Ken Jennings takes the logic of Pixar’s Cars maybe a little too far.
  • Speaking of Pixar, this Pixar opening parody is pretty great. [via]
  • Imagine if the producers of FlashForward had gone with Robert J. Sawyer’s original concept and made the Large Hadron Collider responsible for everything that happens? Imagine how laughable the show might seem then. [via]
  • I’ve never been remotely tempted to buy a bootleg DVD, despite an abundance of them on the streets of Manhattan. Still, their cover art can be pretty delightfully bizarre. [via]
  • NBC sued over font usage. Really.
  • Well, Coldplay does kind of put me to sleep anyway… [via]
  • According to a recent survey:

    Almost half of British consumers have lied to their friends about seeing a classic film to avoid the embarrassment of admitting ignorance of great movies.

    I’m reminded — as it seems I often am, often enough that I should probably get around to reading the book — of the literary parlor game described here, where everybody one-ups each other with all the books they haven’t read. (The “winner is an American professor who, in a rousing display of one-downmanship, finally announces that he’s never read Hamlet.”)

    For the record, of the “top ten classic films people most lie about seeing,” I’ve seen all but one of them. Can you guess which one I haven’t seen? [via]

  • I often find it a little ridiculous what parts of the internet they do and don’t block in my office: blogger.com, but not www.blogger.com; twitpic.com, but not Twitter itself. We have a YouTube channel, for instance — I’d link to it, but there’s nothing there right now — except I can’t visit it at work, even when I’m working with our UK team to upload video to it. Glad I’m not the only person who thinks these policies are a little outdated:

    As I’ve said a whole bunch of times, the “competition” for those of us in traditional media industries—book publishing, broadcasting, newspapers and magazines—is no longer other book publishers, broadcasters, or newspapers and magazines. Instead, our “competition” is now the plain fact that, even if you stipulate that 99.9% of the for-free internet is worthless nonsense, the remaining 0.1% is large enough to absorb anyone’s attention full-time for the rest of their life. For anyone with an internet connection, running out of interesting things to read is completely a thing of the past.

  • This is probably the subtlest Rickrolling I’ve ever seen. [via]
  • And finally, Birds on the Wires [via:

    Birds on the Wires from Jarbas Agnelli on Vimeo.

Thursday cornucopia

  • Mark Evanier on the origin of the phrase “top banana.” I’m not entirely sure if this is true, but it’s a lot more convincing than some of the other origin stories I’ve seen.
  • The most environmentally friendly city in the United States? Surprisingly, it might be New York City. [via]
  • I wonder if that means we’ll be able to avoid post-apocalyptic scenes like these [via]
  • Maybe we can at least stop getting letters like these. Although I do particularly like the 1911 letter to Mayor Jay Gaynor about “the disgraceful acts that take place daily in Bryant Park.” Imagine if the letter writer had ever seen it during Fashion Week!
  • Speaking of letters, and more particularly, Letters of Note, I particularly liked Kurt Vonnegut’s letter home after surviving being a POW and the bombing of Dresden. Makes me want to re-read Slaughterhouse-Five.
  • Continuing a theme: Navy was ordered to listen for Martians in 1924.
  • Sure, an “iTunes for magazines” sounds like an intriguing idea — maybe — but what does it even mean? [via]
  • Often find yourself bemoaning the lack of originality in Hollywood and endless parade of remakes, sequels and prequels? It’s much worse than you think. [via]
  • Speaking, sort of, of such, should Stephen King write a sequel to The Shining? Well, if it’s a good sequel, why not? [via]
  • Meanwhile, King is delaying the e-book release of his new novel, Under the Dome. (I’ve heard some good things, but I am waiting for the e-book.) Allegedly, it’s “in hopes of helping independent bookstores and the national bookstore chains sell the hardcover edition.” Which actually, on King’s part I don’t really doubt, although I’m sure his publisher is eyeing its own bottom line more closely. The exercise will probably have no effect at all, given the price war being waged between Wal-Mart, Amazon, and Target (among others), except to annoy those of us who want a copy but don’t want to cart around a 1,000+-page hardcover.

    It makes me wonder, though, what things would be like if one could purchase e-books from independent bookstores. Maybe it’s time to start looking into IndieBound more closely…

  • For now, I guess I’ll just have to settle for reading King’s new poem in the November issue of Playboy. (That link, to The Guardian, is SFW. The link to the poem itself? Not so much. Then again, it doesn’t seem to be working anymore, so if you want to read “The Bone Church,” you may have purchase the issue or wait until it’s reprinted elsewhere. [via]
  • Also potentially a little NSFW: this Graffiti Control on the Death Star cartoon. I found it amusing, though. [via]
  • Of course, if I wanted to avoid the price war altogether, I could go with free books only. Like Gregory Maguire’s new novel. He and his publisher are giving away 2,500 copies of the book, provided you agree to make a small donation “to a local charity, someone who needs it, or a stranger on the street.” I don’t have any particular interest in the book itself — I liked but didn’t love Wicked, the only Maguire book I’ve ever read — but it’s an interesting idea. Although that seems like a big print run for a small publisher to just be giving away. [via]
  • I’ve heard reasonably good things about the book that started this Jane Austen mashup craze, and my sister and her husband even recently bought me a copy. But now there’s a third? Mansfield Park and Mummies? I don’t think I’ve ever been more glad that Jane Austen only wrote six novels.

    Though, there’s already a Pride and Prejudice and Zombies sequel planned. [via]

  • And finally, speaking of Jane Austen… Mitchell & Webb’s “Posh Dancing” [via]

Tuesday various

  • Plagiarism Software Finds a New Shakespeare Play. Well, maybe. Unless we can dig up Zombie Shakespeare, I think it’s still just conjecture. [via]
  • Speaking of zombies, however, I’m not so sure I agree with The Guardian‘s contention that:

    No zombie is ever going to be a pinup on some young girl’s wall. Just as Pattinson and all the Darcy-alikes will never find space on any teenage boy’s bedroom walls – every inch will be plastered with revolting posters of zombies. There are no levels of Freudian undertone to zombies. Like boys, they’re not subtle. There’s nothing sexual about them, and nothing sexy either. It’s all about splatter and gore and entrails and our own fear and fascination with just how messy and vile and extraordinary our bodies are.

    Which seems to be making all sorts of gender-based assumptions on some pretty shaky and limited evidence. I’d also suggest that the so-called subtlety of broody vampires like Edward Cullen is actually a pretty thin veneer over a shallow pond. [via]

  • Dr. Scott’s Case Studies of Comic Book Medicine. More here. [via]

  • Two new ways of looking at things: the US highway system as a subway map [via] and the Beatles’ “Hey Jude” as a flowchart.

  • And finally, speaking of the Beatles, what if the band never broke up? [via]