Who Cares: They’re Books!
By
Nikki Mastrud
There
are many different ways that one can attempt to define the difference between
science fiction and fantasy. It may be the style in which the story is written,
or the types of characters present. Perhaps it has to do with the dichotomy of
good or evil, or if it takes place in a castle or on a spaceship. Many authors
have tried to set a definition for the distinction before, and it is likely
that many more will try in years to come. I believe that it matters much less
what textbooks or theory pieces may cite as the distinction, and it is much
more important what an individual intrinsically understands as separating
science fiction from fantasy.
At
this point, I will deviate slightly from the topic at hand, although I promise
there is a connection. Say, at a very young age, you are walking the streets of
your neighborhood eating a tomato. And every single person that passes you
informs you that what you hold in your hand is indeed a vegetable. You know
consider the tomato a vegetable. Several years later, as you go through a
cookbook, you discover that by technical definitions, the tomato is in fact a
fruit. Although this fact has now been presented to you, it doesn’t change your
opinion of the tomato. And why should it? The tomato is still a tomato. You
will not put it in a fruit salad. You can and will still count ketchup as a
vegetable. Nothing has changed about the tomato itself.
Now,
how on earth does a tomato relate to the classification of speculative fiction?
Simple. It does not matter how someone somewhere classifies your favorite book,
it only matters how you perceive it. For many people, this has to do with basic
plot elements that have been ingrained as being associated with science fiction
or fantasy based on mainstream representation. It has dragons and castles? It’s
fantasy. It has robots? It’s science fiction. Harry Potter? Fantasy. Ender’s
Game? Science fiction. And if you discover a wonderful book filled with
far-off places, daring sword fights, and a prince in disguise, that someone has
defined as science fiction , but you associate it with the fantasy genre, then
its fantasy classification is the only one that counts. For other people, the
distinction might be more personalized. Maybe the time period in which the
story is set matters most to you in finding a distinction.
However,
despite all of the above discussion about how best to define fantasy from
science fiction, it is my belief that classifying books in this way makes very
little sense in the first place. There are books that easily fit into two or
more categories, and to force them into a box would be impossible, but
moreover, it doesn’t matter at all! Why take the time to fit a label onto a
book, when that time could just as well be spent reading it? There is no point
in going to battle over what type of fiction something is, which you could just
as easily go to the Battle of Five Armies.
If it’s a good book, who cares what section the local bookstore is going
to shelve it in, so long as it can be easily found. For many readers, the point of reading
fiction, especially speculative fiction, is to get lost in another world that
is different from our own. To the avid reader, it doesn’t, and shouldn’t,
matter what category the amazing book they are reading falls in. It’s a book! And
at the end of the day, that is all that truly matters.
(http://weheartit.com/tag/doctor%20who/2013/01/08)
Nikki:
ReplyDeleteHmm. Looks like I couldn't get your animated .gif to behave in that post. Sorry for that technical failure...
Of course, in a sense, genre classification DOES matter to readers, insofar as it might help guide to this search algorithm or that on Amazon, or to this shelf or that in a bookstore or library. Once you've read a book, you have a kind of power over it, and can classify it however you want in your own mind. But prior to that, you need to find it, and that's where other people's sense of what is a vegetable or a fruit can interfere with -- or assist with -- you making a pleasant discovery for your own bookshelf. I think, as with your tomato analogy, it's the reader's experience over time that overrides whatever actual labels may exist. But prior to getting experience, there's only the label to guide you. A tomato fruit salad sounds perfectly vile to me, but if someone's only exposure to a tomato was being given one in a basket of other fruits, who's to say that they wouldn't decide to make a fruit salad with it? What isn't quite clear to me here is if classification NEVER matters, then, or it is ceases to matter after the impression has been formed -- and that's what needs to be clearly stated.
Best,
TT