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Fiction, Fantasy and Sci-Fi

#72: Sept. - Oct. 2009 (Fiction)
WildCityWoman
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Fiction, Fantasy and Sci-Fi

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Gaiman speaks of this in his intro . . . what do you think the difference between fantasy and fiction is?

In his opinion 'fantasy is fiction'. I agree with that; to my way of thinking if you have 'made up' a story, you have written fiction and fantasy at the same time.

If you really want to bring it together in a very tight nutshell, you might consider that 'fantasy' has to be fiction flavoured (or favoured) with the supernatural.

You might say fiction has to have some 'unlikely' event or situation written into it.

Were I to write of today's breakfast at The Grille (a place in west Toronto), I would write that we turned left from the parking lot, headed east along the Queensway, hung a left at Parkside, a right at the lights and on to Indian Road where we headed north to our apartment building.

Had I added something to that, such as 'I opened the window and my arm was taken off by a passing truck', that would be fiction.

Had that actually happened it would be an 'account'.

Had I invented an interesting alien creature who descended on us from nowhere and removed our radio antennae, then it would be fantasy.

Had I mentioned that the alien had used the overhead cameras on the light poles to assist in such theft, it would be sci fi.

That's the way I see it.

But what about you?

(I think this topic needs a thread on its own, which is why I have created this one)
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poettess
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When I think of Fantasy, traditionally I think of dragons and elves...fiction that has no element of technology to it, but more of magic and a historic flavor. Of course science fiction could even fall in the realm of fantasy if one fantasizes of such things, using the strict definition of the word... but as the genre's are divided now, it would seem that a fantasy book you read will have something to do with magic and fantastic environments that cannot be rationalized by science, but exist in their own right and must be accepted at whatever face value the author has given us.
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Actually, the words in my copy of the book are, "Fantasy -- and all fiction is fantasy of one kind or another -- is a mirror."

Rather than saying fantasy is fiction, what I get from his statement is that fiction is fantasy. It's not that fantasy is a subset of fiction, but rather that any writing that doesn't tell a story of a historic event is fantastic -- based on imagination, fantasy.

And that those stories carry a mirror for us in which we can see ourselves and our world, sometimes with a clarity we don't get in real life.
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