Also I had another thought? About the boundaries of fantasy and science fiction, I mean. Because generally, you can look at a fantasy and know exactly what you're going to be dealing with: it'll probably be a quasi-medieval swords-and-sorcery type world with fighters, rogues, and mages thrown in, and although the magery itself might have different flavors to it, most of it will probably all come from the same root. I know that world. It's familiar. And even if I pick up an author I've never heard of with a character I know nothing about, odds are at least something in that world, whether it be the magic, the setting, the way of speaking, or even just them traveling by horse--something will be familiar.
Whereas in science fiction, the only thing that stays the same, at least in my perception, is that the worlds are only limited by the author's imagination. Which sounds like an ad for a PBS show about being openminded, but really just makes me feel like I have to adjust to an entirely new world with every SF book I read. I mean, elves are pretty much the same throughout fantasy. Sure, you've got flavors of elves--viz. the Fae, Tolkien's elves, and the shoemaker's elves--but generally, you know what you're going to get. But aliens can be everything from cockroaches to sentient clouds with googly eyes; technology seems to advance and retreat as each author requires, and the sheer numbers of inhabitable worlds...it just all seems too big to wrap my head around, you know? A universe so large I don't know where to start, so instead I just go back to the familiar, comfortable worlds where everything is measured in coppers and heads of sheep. I know that world; I like that world. Space is too big.
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sarken
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Date: 2012-06-27 11:22 pm (UTC)Whereas in science fiction, the only thing that stays the same, at least in my perception, is that the worlds are only limited by the author's imagination. Which sounds like an ad for a PBS show about being openminded, but really just makes me feel like I have to adjust to an entirely new world with every SF book I read. I mean, elves are pretty much the same throughout fantasy. Sure, you've got flavors of elves--viz. the Fae, Tolkien's elves, and the shoemaker's elves--but generally, you know what you're going to get. But aliens can be everything from cockroaches to sentient clouds with googly eyes; technology seems to advance and retreat as each author requires, and the sheer numbers of inhabitable worlds...it just all seems too big to wrap my head around, you know? A universe so large I don't know where to start, so instead I just go back to the familiar, comfortable worlds where everything is measured in coppers and heads of sheep. I know that world; I like that world. Space is too big.