Leon Wang: "Pragmatic, Reader-centric Perspective on Genre Distinction"

Pragmatic, Reader-centric Perspective on Genre Distinction

By

Ziang (Leon) Wang

While both speculates, SF stories consider the possibilities of reality and depend on natural or social science for the existence of their key constructs (themes, conflict, setting, characters, etc…), but fantasy stories are not bound to an anthropocentric approach, or scientific ideas.

Take Brian Aldiss’s short story “Super-Toys Last All Summer” for example. Set in a world where beings with artificial intelligence are mass produced to serve the privileged quarter of the world, the story explores the concept of what is a “real human being.” In this example, the characters, super-toy David and robotic bear Teddy, cannot exist without extrapolation of the current state of robotic technology.

While often challenged in soft SF stories (like the above – which did not rigorously focus on the science), the dependency on scientific concepts is more apparent in hard SF. Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations” details the short conversation between a girl, who snuck on a hyperspace-transcending craft to visit her brother, and the craft’s pilot, who has must choose the good of the majority due to pressures for pragmatism. Through this story, Godwin extrapolates forward the current state of space travel and illustrates a possibility of mathematics’ cruel precision. Without the advancements in space technology, the key interaction between the two characters would not be possible because they would never have been subjected to the dilemma they faced.

Even Isaac Asimov’s short story “Reason,” whose science content contains large quantities of phlebotinum (i.e. positronic brain and zeta potential), relies on the concept of exponential growth of storage and capacities of AI and possible advancements to existing space-colonizing capacities. Again, the story again cannot exist without the scientific content.

With fantasy stories, there are many examples of the independency from science and diversion from a human-centric approach. In the low fantasy novel Neverwhere, Neil Gaiman takes readers on an adventure that proposes the improbable scenario that there exists a world below London, where the forgotten go and magic is everywhere. The reason for people’s disappearance through the cracks from London Above is never explained in detail in the book and certainly does not pertain to any scientific concepts.

Moreover, King of Elfland’s Daughter’s demonstrates that a fantasy story does not need science for its main concept nor an emphasis on humans. Lord Dunsany’s novel entails multiple perspectives off a period in which citizens demanded a magical ruler and subsequently regretted their decision. Once again, the explanation of the improbable phenomenon, of Elfland retreating from Earth, is explained away by some mysterious power rather than music. In addition, this book is an interesting case because the author really adheres in part to the ideas of anti-anthropocentrism by spending a lot of time on the actions and thoughts of a witch, a half-human/half-Elvan prince, an Elvan princess, and many animals of Elfland.

Hold on a moment before you bury me alive with counterexamples and different interpretations of instances I’ve brought up here! After brainstorming for distinctions that differentiate science fiction from fantasy, I have decided that whatever distinctions is used to differentiate between SF and Fantasy does not really matter to the big picture. No characteristic can consistently distinguish between the two genres. Not only is it impossible to account for every single piece of speculative literature, genre evolution, as seen in development of high and low fantasy, produces more and more nuances and exceptions to these rules.

So why should we even try to distinguish between the two genres? The answer is undoubtedly yes. Despite the natural imperfection of distinctions, genre distinction is still necessary from a reader’s perspective. Using genre, subgenre, and trope labels, we as readers can easily get to the texts that we want to read. Just as I can browse Netflix’s genres to discover other political drama while Scandal is on winter break, I can use these labels to narrow down my reading list to things I want. Although the process of distinguishing SF from fantasy is inherently imperfect, it nonetheless serves as a basis upon which to make sense of the relationship of one book to the general body of literature.