The Discourse of Fantasy

[Elemental_Elf]

Isn't the sudden meteoric rise of Zombies due in no small part to the fact that we have, culturally, humanized almost every other common bad guy race to the point where they are all just tortured souls who don't really want to kill but are lead to do so by their cursed nature and humanity's racism?

[LordVreeg]

Undead are the last safe thing to kill without feeling bad.
*BRAINS*

[Steerpike]

Much more of a Compatibilist.  

Fair enough.  I'm a compatabilist when it comes to political liberty or non-metaphyisical free-will, and I agree with the compatabilists that, in a certain sense, "free will" isn't coherently defined.  I think that's because it's a kind of impossible idea.  So, basically, I understand and respect the compatabilist position, and really I think it's just determinism seen from a different angle.  The people I don't understand at all are the metaphysical libertarians, the ones that want some kind of "agent" - either something spooky and dualist and separate from the physical or that somehow appeal to randomness as providing room for free will.

The greater reasons for this removal from reality as opposed to trying to grapple with scientifically produced possible futures frightens me anthropologically.

Ooh now we're getting contentious!  You might be interested to know (if you don't already) that this is exactly the position of renowned literary critic Frederic Jameson, who considers fantasy a kind of inherently reactionary and escapist genre, a pablum for the masses, while science fiction deals with "reality."

I tend to disagree pretty strongly.  I think fantasy has the ability to present us with a defamiliarized version of reality that can make us question and examine our cultural assumptions (sometimes, again, without always realizing it), and I think the imaginative process underlying fantasy is kind of intrinsically liberating.  All cultural activities have a ludic element, an element of play, and fantasy exemplifies this tendency, while simultaneously allowing us a way to explore our own unease with reality and society, with its problems and power structures.  A Song of Ice and Fire, for example, can be read as a critique of patriarchal power while grappling with moral issues that resist reduction into binary terms (the books are certainly not about Good vs. Evil).  The books refuse to sanitize things like the horrors of war and can be pretty sceptical about things like codes of honour and chivalry, so in a sense they're doggedly anti-escapist, confronting the reader again and again with atrocity, pain, suffering, death.

I mean, sometimes fantasy is just kind of escapist drek, although even then I'd argue it inadvertently expresses other important things and serves useful functions beyond just escapism.

This isn't to say that the only value in fantasy is the extent to which it is "about" something other than itself.  Aesthetic objects can have value simply as aesthetic objects.

And so much of Tolkien's magic was tied into items, Staffs, rods, swords, rings... Making a game out of it was going to be, um....hard.

Yeah, would have been seriously messy.

Isn't the sudden meteoric rise of Zombies due in no small part to the fact that we have, culturally, humanized almost every other common bad guy race to the point where they are all just tortured souls who don't really want to kill but are lead to do so by their cursed nature and humanity's racism?

Not a bad theory, that!

[LordVreeg]

Ooh now we're getting contentious!  You might be interested to know (if you don't already) that this is exactly the position of renowned literary critic Frederic Jameson, who considers fantasy a kind of inherently reactionary and escapist genre, a pablum for the masses, while science fiction deals with "reality."

I tend to disagree pretty strongly.  I think fantasy has the ability to present us with a defamiliarized version of reality that can make us question and examine our culutral assumptions (sometimes, again, without always realizing it), and I think the imaginative process underlying fantasy is kind of intrinsically liberating.  All cultural activities have a ludic element, an element of play, and fantasy exemplifies this tendency, while simultaneously allowing us a way to explore our own unease with reality and society, with its problems and power structures.  A Song of Ice and Fire, for example, can be read as a critique of patriarchal power while grappling with moral issues that resist reduction into binary terms (the books are certainly not about Good vs. Evil).  I mean, sometimes it is just kind of escapist drek, although even then I'd argue it inadvertantly expresses other important things and serves useful functions beyond just escapism.

This isn't to say that the only value in fantasy is the extent to which it is "about" something other than itself.  Aesthetic objects can have value simply as aesthetic objects.

No, you miss my real issues.

I have no issue as to the power and possibility of Fantasy.  I have an issue with the decline of Science Fiction, and our cultural relationship with Science.
Again, let's use Tolkien, or, more correctly, Peter S. Beagle's preamble, when he talks about part of the attraction of LotR being ties to the change in the term 'progress' losing it's level of holiness, and the term 'escape' becoming less comically obscene.  Please note that we speak of both here, as did Beagle.

I worry about our devolvement into the have and have not of technology, where a small group of technomancers understand enough about our society's tools and mechanized base and 99% of the population is ignorant as to how and what is happening.  I see the reduction of science fiction tied to a cultural negativity about science that stems from ignorance and the fear of ignorance.  A larger, "I feel stupid for not knowing so I will just hit buttons on my cell phone while not knowing what makes it work". 
Science fiction, at it's best, celebrates progress through science, but I fear that there is a cultural subconscious push-back. 

[Steerpike]

That's a very interesting answer!

Science fiction, at it's best, celebrates progress through science, but I fear that there is a cultural subconscious push-back. 

How do you feel about cyberpunk and other dystopian science fiction - Brave New World, Oryx and Crake, The Hunger Games, A Canticle for Leibowtiz, etc?  These works are pretty ambivalent about science.

[Humabout]

I've got to agree with Lord Vreeg on this one.  Science Fiction greats all take logical extentions of science into futuristic (or alternate present-day settings, based on different developments), but they all, at their heart, revel in science, scientific method, and a celebration of advancement.  Cyberpunk and dystopian stories, like Brave New World, focus on the human condition and how things go wrong because of change.  They express and revel in a fear of change, rather than what could be.  While some of them do serve as warnings, I still find there to be a fundamental difference between Robert Heinlein's Revolt in 2100 and Orwell's 1984.  Even Dune and Helstrom's Hive, as dark as they are, revolve around scientific method and extrapolations from science rather than how fundamentally messed up society/humanity is.

[Steerpike]

Dune is an interesting example because I feel it's only a hairsbreadth from science fantasy.  Prana bindu and the weirding way, the Voice, sexual imprinting, simulfow and genetic memories, precognition - these aren't really science at all, they're magic dressed up in pseudo-scientific garb.

Perhaps one of the reasons I'm less pessemistic about science fiction is that I tend to see generic distinctions as being pretty fluid.

[Seraph]

Here is where I think I can actually contribute to this topic.  I wonder if maybe the drift away from sci-fi and towards fantasy has something to do with our feeling of alienation from our own world.  With the internet, real face-to-face human interaction is being replaced by computer screens.  While this leads to a trend to broadcast our thoughts, we are essentially moving in the direction of the self-centeredness and being very inside ourselves.  Fantasy is a means of getting away from a world that looks increasingly pessimistic.  Technology seems to be making us less human, and we aren't as excited by the possibilities the future holds in ways we used to be in the 60s.  The world today does not look the way we imagined it would in the 50s & 60s.  In some ways we are MORE advanced but in a lot of ways we are "behind schedule."  We have no moon colonies, and no mass space travel.  We've only recently started exploring Mars in any detail, and there is no clear picture of when we will be able to send PEOPLE there.   

In addition, though, the world is so divided, and American culture has become very loudly and prominently divided on every issue: Republicans vs. Democrats, Christians vs. Muslim, America vs. "Terror" (as ridiculous as it is to try and fight an emotion), and debates over racism, sexism, ableism, over transgender issues, over "pro-life" vs. "pro-choice," as well as "class warfare," religious and secular debates, gun control, and so forth.  Nowadays EVERYONE has an issue that they are passionate about, and want to fight for, or want to tell people they fight for.

Fantasy allows people the means to create a world, that you have shaped the way you want.  You can paint a picture of your personal utopia, or use it to critique the positions of your opponents, or both.  It can be a way of escaping, that by creating a new world, still allows for discourse on the subjects people are passionate about.  It allows us to see something we like or don't like, and can cheer on, or jeer at in an exciting and entertaining context, that allows us to romanticize the heroes who are not the politicians we have become so jaded with.

I think it is felling of stagnation, and a disdain for the present, combined with a lack of cultural lack of true optimism for the future that has driven us more towards escapist fantasy, and away from science fiction.

[LordVreeg]

Dune is an interesting example because I feel it's only a hairsbreadth from science fantasy.  Prana bindu and the weirding way, the Voice, sexual imprinting, simulfow and genetic memories, precognition - these aren't really science at all, they're magic dressed up in pseudo-scientific garb.

Perhaps one of the reasons I'm less pessemistic about science fiction is that I tend to see generic distinctions as being pretty fluid.

So is star wars, so is Lord of Light, so are many of them.  Hell, Shanarra is actually a future earth.

the only thing that makes dune feel this way is a certain fearless blending and in many places (as with Lord of Light) a science so far advanced it seems like magic.  I still see it on the shelf as Science Fiction, and that is the point I am making.
Perception.

Science is becoming one of the great Have and Have nots, like knowledge, health and money.  I feel that people either feel very positively about it, or are vaguely ashamed.  And this has been part of the attitudinal change about progress.  Anyone else do a lot of reading about the Robber Barons, and their place in American history?  Are the heroes or villains?  did they spur on and fund invention and the moden age?  Or did they do so, but to the detriment of most of the population?  And we are going through a similar time now, and I think this is part of the cultural puzzle.  Certainly I won't claim it is all of it, culture is large and can contain many critical flaws....

[Steerpike]

You can paint a picture of your personal utopia, or use it to critique the positions of your opponents, or both.

This is a very interesting point, as historically - at least in the twentieth-century - most "utopian" fiction has been science fiction, at least to my knowledge.  Perhaps an increased pessimism towards technology in general, and a critique of the idea of "progress," have mitigated this.  I'm curious though - could you give an example of a utopian fantasy novel written in the last hundred years?  I'm not saying it doesn't exist, I just can't really think of any.

I feel that people either feel very positively about it, or are vaguely ashamed.

I think I probably feel both at once.  I'm pretty optimistic about the sorts of things technology could do for us, and there are certainly many ways that technology is a very, very, very good thing - saving lives, spreading prosperity, positively impacting culture, etc.  But enthusiasm has to be tempered with an understanding of the real consequences our use of technology has and is wreaking - from environmental damage (not just greenhouse gas emission but the vast amount of electronic waste now accumulating as everyone scraps their phones, laptops, desktops, printers etc every few years) to the use of exploitative labour in computer manufacturing to the digital violation of privacy on the part of governments against their own people.

[Lmns Crn]

Science fiction, at it's best, celebrates progress through science, but I fear that there is a cultural subconscious push-back. 

How do you feel about cyberpunk and other dystopian science fiction - Brave New World, Oryx and Crake, The Hunger Games, A Canticle for Leibowtiz, etc?  These works are pretty ambivalent about science.

I feel the key ingredient is that classically, Science Fiction aims to take one or more bits of scientific progress or technology (real or hypothetical) and extrapolate its effects on a society. Then you get to explore the implications of a thing. I feel like most of the concepts that feel-- to me-- like Sci-Fi can be summed up in terms of a what-if scenario that the story then explores: what if robots demanded rights? what if we found a cure for old age? what if we discovered life on mars?

The key thing that creates the distinction in my mind is often that sci-fi feels like the camera is focused on society while fantasy feels like the camera is focused on one or a few key individuals.

[Weave]

The key thing that creates the distinction in my mind is often that sci-fi feels like the camera is focused on society while fantasy feels like the camera is focused on one or a few key individuals.

By that logic, all my purported fantasy settings are actually sci-fi. Interesting - I've never thought of it that way, though I guess I never made a direct distinction between them in the first place.

[Seraph]

The key thing that creates the distinction in my mind is often that sci-fi feels like the camera is focused on society while fantasy feels like the camera is focused on one or a few key individuals.

By that logic, all my purported fantasy settings are actually sci-fi. Interesting - I've never thought of it that way, though I guess I never made a direct distinction between them in the first place.

Yeah I'm not sure that is a satisfying way to distinguish them.

Tangent: Star Wars is often considered "Science Fantasy."  How would you guys say Science Fantasy is distinguished from Science Fiction?

[LD]

>>Science Fiction greats all take logical extentions of science into futuristic (or alternate present-day settings, based on different developments), but they all, at their heart, revel in science, scientific method, and a celebration of advancement.

Which Science Fiction greats? At least, which greats since the 1990s? Most modern Sci-Fi I've read is pretty negative or dystopian at worst, or at best it focuses on the human condition... in a usually negative fashion that creates a dread of advancement.

Chris Bunch, who wrote military sci-fi wrote entertaining pieces that were generally positive... but at the series' core, it was about the collapse of galactic governance, a launch into the dark ages, so at its heart- it was concerning, not enlightening. The books were good, but they had an undertone of disappointment and loss because you know that the series' heroes are damned and have to make the best they can with what very little they have.

It's difficult though, to make a sci-fi tale that is unabashedly positive towards science without creating a tacky Edisonaide. I've written a number of sci-fi shorts, and the better shorts are the dystopian or at least disturbing ones. (note: none of either type have managed to be published, but I have received a few good rejection letters with notes for improvement :)).

Note: after a bit more reflection and reformulating, I hope to respond in a succinct (non-rambling) way to Steerpike and Lord Vreeg.

[Elemental_Elf]

Good Sci-Fi asks questions and makes the audience think.

Trash Sci-Fi is mindless (but enjoyable) entertainment.

Positive or negative doesn't really matter, so long as it is thought provoking.