Janani Sivakumar: "A Leap of Faith"

A Leap of Faith

By

Janani Sivakumar

In the geek community, one elephant in the room is the divide between fantasy and science fiction. Many have taken on the divide, attempting to define, clarify, and even eradicate it. I find that the fundamental difference between fantasy and science fiction lies in how each genre treats its readers.

Fantasy is like the card game Mao. The reader is not allowed to ask questions and challenge assumptions; if they do, they will not be given useful answers. Not asking questions and figuring out answers without any hand-holding from the narrator is encouraged.

Sometimes this is along with the character a la Robin McKinley’s The Blue Sword or Neil Gaiman’s Neverwhere, other times it is just the reader who is new to the world. In Neverwhere, the protagonist Richard, who is living a normal life, enters into the world of London Below. Neither Richard nor the reader has any knowledge of the new world. Both Richard and the reader must navigate the new world with very little assistance from its insiders. At first, Richard asks a lot of questions and raises a lot of objections. During the first half of the book, “What?” is likely the word that comes from Richard’s mouth the most often.

Fantasy is about learning to not ask questions and observe instead, trusting that the questions will resolve themselves. It takes more than a leap of imagination to successfully read fantasy – it takes a leap of faith.

Science fiction, as daunting as its name might make it seem, is a friendlier beast. While many of the same fantastical events that occur in fantasy also happen in science fiction, the latter genre allows readers the luxury of an explanation, and a rational one at that. In science fiction, the reader can expect a reason for every significant occurrence. Even if the explanation is not compatible with current science, it has a rational basis. For example, in Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, the narrator provides the reader a comprehensive overview of the world and its history in the second chapter. While some of the events that led up to the current situation are not probable, they are still explained in rational terms.

Fantasy assumes you’re in on the joke, whereas science fiction assumes the converse. Fantasy says “You’re on your own” while science fiction says “let me show you.”

The reason why this distinction stands can be traced to both consumers and publishers of speculative fiction.

Buying a book and spending time reading it is both a monetary and temporal gamble. The risk of reading a book is highest when the potential reader knows nothing about it, and decreases the more they know. Thus, people are likely to buy and read a book if they feel they know something about its contents.

The classifications of “fantasy” and “science fiction” are convenient ways to provide readers with a sense of security. When Nancy Pelosi said “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it” in reference to the Affordable Care Act (better known as “Obamacare”), many were outraged. People wanted to know how their tax dollars would be spent. In the same way, people want to know how their money and time will be spent before they buy or start reading it. Thus, publishers classify books into one category or the other when marketing books to consumers.

In acknowledging that distinctions between fantasy and science fiction exist, we must consider whether these distinctions are helpful or detrimental to the two genres. From the speculative fiction community’s experience with the Gernsback ghetto, it seems that strict classification in the marketing of fantasy and science fiction is ultimately detrimental to the genres. This type of classification will arguably undermine the legitimacy of fantasy in the eyes of science fiction readers, and do the opposite for science fiction in the eyes of fantasy readers.

In order to break down the barriers and make the distinctions irrelevant, we need to take a leap of faith and start reading books wouldn’t normally read because of the genre on the spine. Like John Oliver trusted the American public to share our embarrassing photos, I trust you to expand your reading horizons. We’re all in it together.