Blog Bar Fight Sat Night
December 3, 2011
The fantasy genre has really been taking the media world by storm. Everything’s fantasy nowadays, people can’t get enough of it. Cite: George R. R. Martin’s blockbuster books and TV serial, Grimm TV show, Conan and other movies, plus a crap-ton of books in fantasy this year. I’m guessing this is a post-traumatic stress reaction to the success of Twilight and Harry Potter industries.
What do you guys think of this? Is Sci-Fi dead? Do you care? What was the last decent SF TV show? Have you read any recent SF books?–can you count more than ten published in the last year? Am I totally in left field?
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We see a lot of folks arriving here with the search terms to find illegal pirated free downloads. If you are here for that reason, piss off. 
i think this brings up another old argument by extension – how are SF and fantasy defined, and what are the barriers?
i have always been hazy on these boundaries, for the most part. right now, i’m reading Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonflight, because i had never read her before and the resulting outcry when she died (that i read by several people whose opinion i’ve come to respect)…i’m not *quite* through with this, but i can clearly define it *for me* as fantasy.
i have heard it said that Mieville’s Embassytown is his first “SF” book. okay, but who makes that call?
is there some shared element of (don’t throw drinks at me, please? *hopeful look*) of “boldly going” etc, etc.. between f and sf?
The last SF movie I really liked was the latest Star Trek. And yeah, when it comes to books I have been anticipating this year – well…. Fantasy wins out – Rothfuss, J. Carey, J. Butcher, etc.
But I can’t say SF is dead, because it is intrinsically entwined with our future.
Last decent sci-fi show? That’s easy; Fringe. Hopefully it survives yet another season and Fox cancels that silly dinosaur show instead.
As for what makes it science fiction? It seems the line – at least in novels – is getting blurred more and more. I generally have three categories now: epic fantasy, hard sci-fi, and everything else gets tossed in speculative fiction.
yea, Juliet McKenna’s question earlier today kinda pointed at that direction, and I know the romance book industry has been dying with these crossover science-fiction/romance books that they just don’t know where to shelve in the stores.
I think you’re right (and I’ll keep my drink, thanks!) that it’s kind of morphing into something not so easily distinguishable, there’s not a big thick line down the center of the room like the Yearly Dance in 6th grade: boys with their SF over there and girls with their F over there.
Who Fears Death was a good example of Both-i-ness: the story is driven by fantastical, not possible in our realm of physics/space/time events, but takes place in a future with technology that hasn’t happened yet .
M3 cites Anathem by Neil Gaiman as a most excellent science fiction novel he read recently.
Neal Stephenson, but, yeah, that was 2008. And to make everyone’s point here, Dunc just tells me that he’d put it in “fantasy…no, wait, science fiction.. no wait, quantum mechanics… I need another drink.”
I hope SF is not dead, but I’m still recovering from the cancellation of Eureka, sniff
Dollhouse too is gone, but I’m sure Whedon is working on something new. Is Fringe still on? Some of the CSI/NCIS episodes border on science fiction.
M3 points out that SF is NOT dead. It has just gone amateur. Check out these: Non-Newtonian Fluids, and ferrofluid sculptures.
**a bright shaft of light shines down on DarkCargo and her eyes roll back in her head, she starts speaking in prophecies** “I SEEE SPACE SHIPS BUILT WITH THIS CRAP”
Scifi isn’t dead. Fantasy happens to be trendy right now, and the boundaries between scifi and fantasy are blurring. and you know what? I’m totally OK with that. I’d hate to be a bookstore these days, trying to shelve this stuff. Where do you put an alt history story about a time traveling bounty hunter who is also a vampire?
and there were plenty of SF books published last year. Just hit up Pyr or or Angry Robot, or any other publisher that specializes in Science Fiction.
but TV? can’t help you there, as I mostly just watch Firefly reruns.
I picked WinterSong by Colin Harvey. See what you do to me? I’m two down for today’s Giveaway vs Buying Recommendations game. I broke even yesterday.
http://angryrobotbooks.com/books/
Neat! They have a subscription service for their e-book catalog!
Jumping into this late, so I may be a touch repetitious. If so, please forgive.
To me, speculative fiction is a range of literary forms comparable to the electromagnetic spectrum, with one form blending into the next, from the hardest of hard science fiction on one end to the airiest fantasy on the other.As you proceed from the sf end toward the fantasy that gradual blending produces a band of something called science fantasy in the middle.
The relative popularity of the various forms has always varied with time, with first sf and then fantasy holding sway for a few years at a time, then back again, with neither side ever dying away. We’re clearly trending to the fantasy end of the spectrum now, but in a few years it will swing back, toward sf again, for a while.
What does seem to be different now is the broadening of that science fantasy band at the middle. There are so many interesting crossovers being explored that we’re getting color blends never seen before, an explosion of creativity that I for one find very hopeful for our genre. Rather than dying out, the genre seems to be evolving into something not so straitjacketed into definitions, but rather open to all kinds of new thinking. And thinking never hurts.
Of course, the traditional dividing line is that sf is based in scientific concepts that were either proven or plausibly theorized *at the time of writing.* Fantasy, while expected to provide its own internal logic, is not so constrained.
The Pern novels are an excellent case in point. They have strong elements that seem the stuff of fantasy — dragons, etc — but it is, in fact, science fiction. The dragons were bred from smaller dragon-like creatures (genetic modification) by the original human settlers on the planet for the purpose of fighting the tread. The thread were spores (biology) of a life form native to another planet in the same star system (astronomy) that were capable of traveling through space to Pern when the two planets’ orbits brought them near enough together.
Boy that was pedantic. Sorry, guys.
Good stuff! I like the “widening band in the middle of the spectra” concept. And some of the really old SF most certainly reads like a fantasy nowadays!