Fantasy, Science Fiction, Or What?

     Yesterday, David L. Burkhead addressed one of the most contentious subjects in speculative fiction: whether there is any clear distinction between science fiction and fantasy, or whether those terms are largely a matter of opinion:

     Some folk have given long, involved definitions about when something is Science Fiction and when it’s Fantasy. Me? I like one similar to Orson Scott Card’s from one of his writing books. Science Fiction has rivets and engineers. Fantasy has trees and elves.

     It’s a good piece, if you’re interested in such arguments (which I am). As I write tales that have been called by either term and was feeling intellectually frisky, I decided to take it up with him. We’ll never come to any conclusions, but the discussion itself is the sort that stretches the mind, even a rigidified old boulder like mine. And just a few minutes ago, it occurred to me that the border between F and SF, even if one can argue cogently for its existence, moves with time and technology.

     For example, David, who believes the terms to be expressions of opinion rather than objective meaning, noted this:

     Psychic powers on one hand and the genius who understands things that are impenetrable to other are both well establish SF tropes, as is the alien who can do things that humans cannot.

     Psi powers, which I’ve employed myself in a tale that’s generally regarded as science fiction, are an interesting case. At this time, they’re definitely fantastic; the brain, being a direct-current organ, cannot muster the power required to transmit a perceptible signal beyond the confines of the skull. But we’re learning how to interface the brain with devices of all kinds. It might well be the case that someday, an implantable device will make “telepathy” possible. It might not resemble “traditional” telepathy. Indeed, it might be confined to the transmission of Morse code. But head-to-head communications of a sort that resembles telepathy would then be a matter of technology rather than fancy.

     Consider also the case of “elves.” Now, Tolkien’s elves – potentially immortal beings with magical powers – might be a stretch, but as we get more capable with genetic engineering, beings that physically resemble the “traditional” elf might enter the realm of possibility. A great deal would be required, including the ability to create a very unusual zygote that would survive full-term gestation. Nevertheless, the possibility is difficult to dismiss.

     If we venture a century or so into the past, we can find cases of the dividing line having moved since then. Consider Jules Verne’s early tale From the Earth to the Moon and H. G. Wells’s The First Men in the Moon. Both were deemed fantasies when they appeared. There was no technology capable of propelling living human beings to the moon; Wells’s “Cavorite” and Verne’s giant cannon capable of propelling a vessel to the moon were plainly fantastic. The same is true for Edward Weston’s solar-radiation-powered interplanetary vessel in C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy.

     But technological development since then has allowed men to reach the moon, albeit at great expense, with great difficulty, and at great danger. The line has moved to make interplanetary travel scientifically plausible. Whether it will move further, such that casual travel among the planets – say, for a weekend jaunt by a couple weary of “city life” – no one can say at this time. As for interstellar travel, let’s just say I don’t expect to see it in my lifetime, and I doubt you will either.

     When the late Poul Anderson, a highly accomplished writer of both fantasy and science fiction, addressed this subject some forty years ago, he took a position similar to mine here, except that he omitted to consider the possibility of technological developments unimagined at that time. Anderson was regarded as the foremost practitioner of “hard” science fiction – another fuzzy term – before the ascendancy of Larry Niven. His novel Tau Zero, which was shortlisted for the Hugo Award (and lost, albeit narrowly, to Niven’s Ringworld) was a valiant attempt to write a completely plausible tale of an interstellar journey gone really badly wrong. (I shan’t spoil it for you if you haven’t read it.) He came very close...painfully close. But he had to postulate zero-loss recycling to do it, a blatant violation of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. So even the greats have to fudge a little. (Ask Alastair Reynolds about his “Conjoiner drives” someday.)

     As I said, conclusions are difficult to reach, and could well change with time. But it does keep the brain from petrifying completely. Meanwhile, I’ve got this fantasy novel on the anvil that’s been giving me absolute fits. As a former physicist I have a really hard time with anything involving magic, so I’ve been toying with the idea that the utility of sorcery is merely a matter of very small changes to a couple of fundamental physical constants that divide our “real” universe from the one where my tale is set. Eventually, of course, we learn how to alter those constants within a defined region, and...oh, never mind.

     (Cross-posted at my fiction-promotion site.)