They're spoken of in the same breath because aside from the fact that they're both explicitly not Realist or mimetic, they've got a lot of kinship. They just often express ideas in different images and tropes, but they're inherently speculative and their stories are based in the world building what if.
And because they're "Make Believe" instead of "Serious Real" and got ghettoized in the pulps for a while while Realist fiction was king, they still get maligned as "juvenile" and "not serious writing" because people are unimaginative idiots who think fairy tales are for babies.
Edited to add: Le Guin and Atwood are quoted here as agreeing that, "the key distinction between fantasy and science fiction was one of possibility: fantasy could never happen, while science fiction could." http://io9.com/5650396/margaret-atwood-and-ursula-k-le-guin-debate-science-fiction-vs-realism That's also a kind of facile distinction, though, because some stuff dealt with in science fiction is just as likely to not be possible as stuff that would fall in the fantasy magic category.
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sarken
(no subject)
Date: 2012-07-02 12:34 am (UTC)And because they're "Make Believe" instead of "Serious Real" and got ghettoized in the pulps for a while while Realist fiction was king, they still get maligned as "juvenile" and "not serious writing" because people are unimaginative idiots who think fairy tales are for babies.
Edited to add: Le Guin and Atwood are quoted here as agreeing that, "the key distinction between fantasy and science fiction was one of possibility: fantasy could never happen, while science fiction could." http://io9.com/5650396/margaret-atwood-and-ursula-k-le-guin-debate-science-fiction-vs-realism That's also a kind of facile distinction, though, because some stuff dealt with in science fiction is just as likely to not be possible as stuff that would fall in the fantasy magic category.