19th May 2018 - Why do people keep merging sci-fi and fantas

Today's topic - 19th May 2018

Submitted by Mushrooms

Why do people keep merging sci-fi and fantasy as one genre in book stores? What about both genres is so similar that it mandates lumping them together?

acg - Yesterday at 11:44 PM
The presence and necessity of world building seems the most obvious connection. Though of course genre is a nebulous concept at best, does a sci-fi noir belong in SFF or crime fiction? Fantasy romance in SFF or Romance?  (Is this answer illegally short? I know "it's nebulous" is KIND OF a cop out answer but it's really difficult to avoid bringing that up in relation to genre because it really is.)(edited)Xenken - Yesterday at 11:45 PM
Escapism. Both genres are primarily attempts to take us out of our current reality and into a different one, rather than working inside of it. They do so in different ways but they can blur together to the point where it's nearly semantics. Magic is only sufficiently advanced technology, after all.acg - Yesterday at 11:52 PM
Psychics are a good example of a more-or-less magical concept that appear in sci-fi all the time (largely thanks to the influence of PKD and others of the same era) though there are others too (plenty of robots function more like homunculi in never requiring power of any kind). With the exception of the extremes of each genre (that is, very hard science fiction and very historical fantasy) the differences between the two are mostly just in the presentation...it is kind of the past, or kind of the future?

Prosthetic Consciousness - Today at 12:09 AM
I could go into extensive detail about the differences of these two genres, and I will, but I think I'll answer the question properly first.

First let's establish the two. Science Fiction is a speculative work of fiction that incorporates scientific themes as a core point. Fantasy is more a traditionalist form of storytelling dating back to the oldest recovered piece of writing ever, The Epic of Gilgamesh.

Now I'm going to totally subvert your expectations.

The answer is sales and marketing.
Books need to sell. Writing and binding and pushing a book out into the physical world is not even remotely cheap. Even a smaller novel written by someone with a small name and expecting to sell maybe a few thousand copies total is going to need to market his book in some fashion, and if a publisher wants a return, they'll find ways. Reviewers are more obvious and nuanced, they can definitely tell the difference. Most people publishing a book in this genre won't expect the book to sell well as a result of a review alone. Remember that even the biggest current fantasy books, A Song of Ice and Fire, barely sold until the TV show became a thing, and that book got nothing but high grades. Next comes showcases. Paying a physical store to promote the book is a risky roll of the dice. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't, and you can be replaced at any point by another, bigger book doing the same thing.

Impulse buys, though. Those can get a book to pick up like you wouldn't believe.
Say you've got a book from a no-name author who wrote a genuinely good book fantasy book and could bring you a lot of sales. That's a lot of hurdles to cross. First you need to get the book cut down and readable, as no first draft sells. Then you need to get it bound and published, which is easy, you're a publisher you literally do this for a living. It's going to cost a lot of money, though, and without a big name to carry this new book, you need to guarantee at least enough to make back the money you spend. Title, Cover, Pricetag, Placing. Sell it for ten dollars, maybe 15 if it's especially big, get a catchy or interesting title, bring in an artist to do up an eye catching cover, and you put that fucker in the same section as Twilight, Star Wars Novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, Horus Heresy, Ready Player One, Immortal Engines, Snowblind, Kingkiller, The Giver and Locke Lamora. Because now you've found an audience, and that's 'people familiar with reading.' The goal at this point is to get the people who've read those other novels to see yours and think it might be a good fit. The term for this is 'walk by branding' and movies do it, too. This means they spend the least amount of money possible to get the most branding they possibly can out of a brand new name to see if there's a place for them in the market. Hope that answers your question, this assortment is probably a mess.

Old Senile Mushrooms - Today at 3:06 AM
@Prosthetic Consciousness there's one problem though: Fans of one genre are not likely to be fans of the other. I avoid sci-fi like the plague most of the time (exceptions being star trek or other philanthropic sci-fi) so sticking a book next to a bunch of others someone like me doesn't like just makes it harder to find what we do like.

Also, magic and science are not even remotely the same thing! :rage:

Raine - Today at 4:08 AM
I personally believe they're bunched together because both genres build worlds way different than our own. While they can get pretty close to the real world, they're still very explicitly distinct, whereas other genres don't necessarily do this. I don't think they should be that way, they're different genres and that's pretty much all they share in my opinion.

Also, I agree, magic and science are different. Magic that can be explained with real life logic is not magic; science that can't be explained with... science (be it in-universe science or real science) it's not science.

GirlRoss(DoF) - Today at 5:39 AM
Magic and science are certainly not the same thing, but their manifestations within science-fiction and fantasy absolutely are--an assemblage of principles and ideas that make sense of all of the most fantastical things about the worlds they form the building blocks of. Look at the sheer artistry of Alar, Sigildry and other magics in Name Of The Wind & A Wise Man's Fear. Practicioners of magic in that universe are no less fascinated, delighted and challenged by using and understanding magic than people who are working in real-world fields like space exploration or bee keeping or quantum computers. And science in sci-fi is applied to explore the sheer wonder of the possibilities outside of our reach, but within the realm of our understanding like faster than light travel, xenobiology and transhumanism. What divides them is simply that magic is the science of universes that can not exist. Science is the magic of our universe--as easily used to replicate Damascan steel as it is to perform percision maneuvers amongst the moons of Jupiter with a remote satellite. Science fiction plays with those same possibilities, whether shaping our world with Desks(Ender's Game) and hand-held communicators(Star Trek), questioning our world and ourselves with monsters we're fully capable of making in the fullness of time (Frankenstein) or technologies bound to remake us (artificial intelligence), or speculating about how far our forces of society and culture might take us (Dune, The Culture Novels).
This is why their interlinkage in book stores is so natural. Science fiction can posit the same questions looking forward as magic can looking back. And the worlds they explain are equally able to facilitate escape and critical thought about the life we live today.

Also props to @Prosthetic Consciousness for the very real practical side of the answer.(edited)

Xenken - Today at 6:29 AM
Practical it may be, but it's not specific enough. For me, at least.
Let's say I take the response as true. (I'm not sure I do but it seems reasonable) Such that adding books get put together in genres for marketing's sake.

@Prosthetic Consciousness Why do sci-fi and fantasy, specifically, get put together? As opposed to any other 2 genres I could name.
Prosthetic Consciousness - Today at 9:07 AM

@Old Senile Mushrooms The technology in star trek is so unreal and advanced that it very well could be replaced with magic and the nature of the show wouldn't change in the slightest. The only real defining distinction we have, as people, between the two is singular examples like 'magic can't allow us to travel through space' and whatnot.

@Xenken Those two, specifically, get lumped together almost purely because they're the two largest genres of fiction. That and as I said above, a lot of times, the only real distinction is what it looks like. However, Science Fantasy is a relatively new genre for things like Star Wars that explain that better but if I actually got into absurd details into the specifics of these genres I'd be here all day.

Old Senile Mushrooms - Today at 9:44 AM
@Prosthetic Consciousness no the difference is in how a technology is used, not how it's described. Science is used through technical knowledge, magic is often utilized through emotion and 'the spirit' or something. Magic is also commonly associated with nature, and technology with man. Fantasy looks backwards, to mythology, and sci-fi looks forward to the future
the two are antithetical to each other, they appeal to two completely different kinds of escapism
Prosthetic Consciousness - Today at 9:47 AM

Those are actually incorrect assumptions, as they aren't 100% accurate, but as I said before, if I actually got into a thesis level essay about the similarities and differences of Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Science-Fantasy and Urban Fantasy I would be here all day. Probably several days. The better assumption to make would be that Fantasy deals with the moral question of action while Science Fiction often deals with the nature of humanity and the impact technology has on said moral question, without ever posing one. While not exactly the same thing, they are the same general theme presented in two different ways, and as such share a generous overlap of audiences.

Old Senile Mushrooms - Today at 9:49 AM
speaking as someone who likes the former though, they don't have a similar appeal and lumping them together completely disregards that. People only get into the other through gateways like star wars which rides the line, or through something like interstellar which has a really fantasy-like story under the cool theoretical shit

Prosthetic Consciousness - Today at 9:49 AM
Again, though, that is also not a good assumption to be making as Locke Lamora is basically Oceans Eleven but in renassaince fantasy italy expy with magic and assassination plots and Horus Heresy is a description of Self Fulfilling prophecy as just two examples of popular Fantasy/Sci-Fi books that don't actually have those as overall themes.

Old Senile Mushrooms - Today at 9:50 AM
there are exceptions to every rule in every walk of life but generally speaking, the two genres deal in different kinds of narrative themes and different kinds of escapism

Prosthetic Consciousness - Today at 9:51 AM
We can agree to disagree, but in order to accurately represent the overall question, I sought out a couple smaller authors I know to ask them why their kinds of books would get lumped together, and sought larger ones that may have already posed that question to their publishers for answers before typing up a response, so I am working with a tiny bit of industry knowledge behind me in this particular regard. Whether or not you totally agree isn't really the point, because publishers believe it works (and it apparently does) and as a result they do it.

I was just trying to accurately represent their actions in the way I understand it. I could be misunderstanding their goals or views, and that's entirely possible, I only posed a few short questions to a couple of people and put about two hours worth of research into a broad net in order to try and concisely answer the question. I'm open to being wrong, and I don't believe it'll stay like this forever, but this isn't my personal stance anyway.(edited)

Old Senile Mushrooms - Today at 9:59 AM
I guess that's the business perspective on it, but I was mostly curious about why this is still a problem in online stores where fighting for shelf space isn't a concern. Not every ebook store does it, but big ones like amazon still do. Considering a lot of authors self-publish and are also actually versed in the genre they're writing for, it's weird that it only manages to be a distinction in small niche places and has been for years.

It's also kind of strange that other genres don't get that treatment considering horror and crime novels can get pretty similar but I've always seen them distinguished.

Old Senile Mushrooms - Today at 10:00 AM
@Prosthetic Consciousness also if we didn't only get 24 hours I would totally love to hear your dissection of both genres, we could likely have a lot to talk about (now I regret not making the topic broader)(edited)
Prosthetic Consciousness - Today at 10:02 AM
I actually have an answer for that particular one.

Amazon does it because the authors/publishers still do it for marketing purposes, and Amazon actually allows you to tag your book as both genres at the same time. The only real reason for this is 'it's how we've always done it, so it's how we do it now.' I would look to the future to see exactly how it turns out in time.

chrys (jewel) - Today at 9:13 PM
Other people have kinda answered this already, and I like how Ethics answered it, but I want to add a few other possible answers to it.
First is that there might be a lot of genre overlap. It isn’t too uncommon to see it with fantasy and sci fi, but then again this happens with other genres, so this could just be a flimsy answer.
Second is audience overlap, as fantasy and sci fi are seen as “geeky” genres. But this might also be a flimsy answer, since you said yourself that you don’t like sci fi. And while I myself don’t dislike sci fi, I can have a very hard time figuring out what made up terms mean if they’re never explained in book, but I never have this problem in fantasy. And also I have no idea about anyone who casually reads both genres.
Third answer, and the most likely one: booksellers just don’t care. You say that like, horror and crime are never put together, and honestly I am not savvy enough in those genres to prove you wrong. But I know when it comes to the “young adult” genre.... it’s a mess. Twilight and the Hunger Games have nothing to do with each other; one’s a urban fantasy while the other is a future dystopian. And then you have these books with other books in realistic fiction settings, all because they’re young adult. And then there’s “classics”, which I’m not sure would be a genre, but are often sold together, and have this same problem.
Anyway that’s my 2 cents.