Science fiction and fantasy

Seeing as this is my first blog post EVER, I suppose there should be some kind of celebration. Maybe some awards. Cutting the red ribbon? Some champagne?

Naaaaaaaaah.

WARNING: BERLIN WALL OF TEXT

Science Fiction is a literary genre in which a writer or creator of some kind exploits his or her imagination and knowledge of science and technology to speculate about various “what-if” scenarios. It is also used to explore how a human might react in these environments, how the psyche could hold up and what-not. There are some similarities between science fiction authors. These are usually because A)one or more authors were inspired by another author, and have copied their writing style and/or plots or B)sometimes science fiction evolves in an epoch-like way, with events influencing their plots and themes. An example of this would be the Golden Age of Science fiction. Also, similarities may be found within certain sub-genres of science fiction. Science fiction for children and young adults is different in that it uses less mature themes and language, and that it has to be far easier to follow so younger audiences can understand it.  As for the creators of science fiction, authors such as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne are considered to be, while Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels is considered the first true science fiction novel. Various science fiction classics include H. G. Wells’ War of the Worlds, Isaac Asimov’s Foundation, Jules Verne’s 20,000 leagues under the sea, and Frank Herbert’s Dune.

Fantasy, however, is a subgenre of speculative fiction (Along with Horror and Science Fiction) that uses magic as and/or other various supernatural elements, and almost all fantasy works take place in medieval-like mythoi.  Fantasy is distinguished from science fiction in that it steers clear of scientific themes. Oftentimes, fantasy stories (primarily high fantasy/dark fantasy) are set in constructed worlds, a habit that started with J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic The Lord of the Rings. A constructed world is a world that the author builds from the ground up, complete with made-up lands, races of creatures, languages, words, etc. Anyways, many “constructed worlds” take cues from the Lord of The Rings, by including creatures like Dwarves, Elves, and orcs. Aside from that, there are many influences from medieval times and medieval mythology (primarily found in the west). Once you add in the escapism of many writers longing for adventure and dragons and elfish babes midget chicks lol, and an ungodly amount of purple prose capable of killing someone due to dye poisoning, you get a genre that’s stale and going nowhere. And with this crap selling *cough* inheritance* cough*, fantasy is circling the drain. Yes, kids, the future is bright for Fantasy! Bright like a star (before it supernovas)!

This somewhat is similar to what’s happening to sci-fi. Ever since Neal Stephenson’s Snow Crash, there really haven’t been any books in sci-fi that have done anything new. They haven’t introduced any “radical” concepts like the Metaverse or even the program Earth (Hint: Google Earth is not an original concept) that were in Snow Crash. Snow Crash was published in 1992. That’s a 17-year gap. There haven’t been concepts like drop pods, power armor, cell phones, and the like introduced in a while.

Speculative Fiction is the umbrella genre that contains both Fantasy and Science Fiction so that they don’t break out and begin fraternizing with the other genres of literature.  Speculative Fiction was originally coined by Robert A. Heinlein. You will be seeing me use that term often, so remember it. Or something.

Now that we cleared that up, you should have some guidance for other stuff that I post. Have a nice day!