Poll: Fantasy or Scifi?
- Thread starter Sack of Cheese
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Honestly, I can Enjoy Both. The settings are equally interesting and even share lots of common traits. Its all about the characters anyway.
Hell, Its even logical that the two things can exist in the same universe (Though...that thinking lies a little too close to really bad crossover Fanfic)
i definitely enjoy fantasy (been playing the hell out of Witcher 2 recently) but i definitely prefer Sci-Fi.
it just tends to be much more original. Fantasy almost always involves medieval weaponry, magic, and the usual variety of races and creatures (orcs, elves, dwarves, goblins, trolls, ogres, golems, dragons, etc. etc. etc.)
Sci-Fi works, on the other hand, usually involve a vastly different experience each time.
it just allows for more creativity, i suppose.
it just tends to be much more original. Fantasy almost always involves medieval weaponry, magic, and the usual variety of races and creatures (orcs, elves, dwarves, goblins, trolls, ogres, golems, dragons, etc. etc. etc.)
Sci-Fi works, on the other hand, usually involve a vastly different experience each time.
it just allows for more creativity, i suppose.
Always fantasy for me, even my sci-fi I prefer fantasy (Star Wars etc). Sci-fi is fine and I love the clever things it does with society, but I love the feeling of wonder that's at fantasies core. I'm a fairly logical person, I don't need the nitty gritty of life in my escapism, I want to feel awe. I think fantasy is a lot more emotional than sci-fi
I'm with you. There are 2 series of books by Simon.R Green that have both and it works really well. They both share the same universe and magic is as common as alien tech and super science. That being said I have never read a pure Scifi book that I have enjoyed as much as pure fantasy/ urben fantasy. So I guess I am both but fantasy over Scifi when forced to pick one or the other.Zhukov said:
To me SciFi and Fantasy are really the same genre.
Where fantasy has magic scifi has SCIENCE!
Where fantasy has elves, dwarves, goblins etc. scifi has aliens.
Where fantasy has lands of desert, archipelagos, vast forests etc, scifi has planets that are usually entirley made up of one of those terrain types.
beyond that both genres usually deal with the same kinds of human interactions. Almost every scifi and fantasy story comes from 'Lets take this idea from everyday life/history but make it in:
-SPACE
-PRETEND ENGLAND
Sure that is an over simplification but I think it would be applicable to most stories in both genres.
(Oh, I like both
)
Where fantasy has magic scifi has SCIENCE!
Where fantasy has elves, dwarves, goblins etc. scifi has aliens.
Where fantasy has lands of desert, archipelagos, vast forests etc, scifi has planets that are usually entirley made up of one of those terrain types.
beyond that both genres usually deal with the same kinds of human interactions. Almost every scifi and fantasy story comes from 'Lets take this idea from everyday life/history but make it in:
-SPACE
-PRETEND ENGLAND
Sure that is an over simplification but I think it would be applicable to most stories in both genres.
(Oh, I like both
)
I prefer fantasy (and I write it, so I'd better). The main reason being that sci-fi gets bogged down in the realistic extension of our reality, which I personally find pointless. It's not a textbook from the future, it's fiction. Explaining the mechanics of their futuristic world and how modern Earth would develop into it doesn't do a lot for the narrative in my opinion. I think fantasy gives the author a lot more creative power over the setting. And, on a much more mundane level, I honestly just like magic, swords, castles, fantastical races, and what have you and sci-fi doesn't usually have that, so... not my kind of thing. It can be done well, of course, and really I don't think any genre is inherently bad, but I do prefer fantasy.
I like both, not really taking a preference of one over the other. I'd really like to see more Sci-Fantasy though like Star Wars. Sure, it takes place in a fantastic Galaxy which utilizes technology that makes intergalactic travel quick and efficient but it was still ultimately about a magical space knight defeating an evil space warlock and the evil space-black-knight at the floating castle (that can destroy planets with it's super death laser). I'd like more of that.
The main difference is whether you explain all you unexplainable shit by going "SCIENCE!" or "MAGIC!" Of course any good story usually isn't about said science or magic and simply uses them as a means to move plot elements in the real story so I find it pointless to pick a favorite.
I don't favor one over the other. If they're done well, they're both awesome. That's pretty true of most genres, actually.
That's not actually true. Classical science fiction is always based in real science, or at least conceivable science. The best of classical science fiction is about examining how possible scientific advancements might affect our culture. That tends to be what separates science fiction from fantasy.Twilight_guy said:
I love both, but I'm getting a little tired of fantasy. The whole concept of good races and evil races just seems more and more racist the more I read. That may be why I love the Drizzt Do'Urden books by R.A. Salvatore. The main character is a dark elf and it raised some interesting questions about the relationship between orcs and the so called "goodly races".
Science Fiction is better simply because it has a much greater variety in terms off the stories it tells. Fantasy almost always seems to j St be either a big sweeping multi-volume epic which is essentially just LotR or an anti-LotR or else it's just the adventures of some ubermensch in a magical world.
Now within these two structures there is a lot of variety I'll admit, they're all ubermensch but Conan, Elric, Seberin and Kvothe are all different but with only a handful of exceptions I can think of (Gormenghast, Perdido Street Station, and such) fantasy is constrained by these tropes.
Science Fiction on the other hand has a huge variety in the stories of tells, it has equivalents to the above plots on things like Dune and John Carter but it also has so many other stories like say Star Maker, Neuromancer, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Childhood's End, Blood Music and Slaughterhouse 5.
Sci-Fi just tells more stories.
Now within these two structures there is a lot of variety I'll admit, they're all ubermensch but Conan, Elric, Seberin and Kvothe are all different but with only a handful of exceptions I can think of (Gormenghast, Perdido Street Station, and such) fantasy is constrained by these tropes.
Science Fiction on the other hand has a huge variety in the stories of tells, it has equivalents to the above plots on things like Dune and John Carter but it also has so many other stories like say Star Maker, Neuromancer, I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream, The Fifth Head of Cerberus, Childhood's End, Blood Music and Slaughterhouse 5.
Sci-Fi just tells more stories.
They're pretty much the same thing.
-First off, the so-called 'technology' in science fiction is rarely based on any real science, it's pretty much magic already anyway.
-Second, both genres require a "straight man", someone who's either a foreigner, or simply so out of touch that everything needs to be explained to them, otherwise the author has no excuse to weave in exposition, even if it's not obvious, if you aren't completely lost, it's there.
-Third, kingdoms and planets are pretty much the same thing, just with a different look, in fact right off the top of my head, I can name 3 fantasy works(Chronicals of Spellborn, Allods online, and Lusternia where people use magic spaceships to travel between different worlds, making two conventions that were already more or less the same thing somehow even more similar.
Really the only reason why people think they're two different things is because the science fiction works that are actually both original and good become more well known than their fantasy equivalants, while the many, many uninspired, mediocre works remain obscure, giving the impression that science fiction is more creative or progressive or whatever.
-First off, the so-called 'technology' in science fiction is rarely based on any real science, it's pretty much magic already anyway.
-Second, both genres require a "straight man", someone who's either a foreigner, or simply so out of touch that everything needs to be explained to them, otherwise the author has no excuse to weave in exposition, even if it's not obvious, if you aren't completely lost, it's there.
-Third, kingdoms and planets are pretty much the same thing, just with a different look, in fact right off the top of my head, I can name 3 fantasy works(Chronicals of Spellborn, Allods online, and Lusternia where people use magic spaceships to travel between different worlds, making two conventions that were already more or less the same thing somehow even more similar.
Really the only reason why people think they're two different things is because the science fiction works that are actually both original and good become more well known than their fantasy equivalants, while the many, many uninspired, mediocre works remain obscure, giving the impression that science fiction is more creative or progressive or whatever.