My Toys Are Cooler Than Your Toys, Redux
Kate Elliott February 2nd, 2007
I think we can accept as a given that there are poorly thought through and poorly written science fiction and fantasy novels out there, even published ones. We might not entirely agree on which are which, but that’s a different question.
Invariably, married as I am to an anthropologist, I find comments like this (by Rob Sawyer) amusing for the way in which they ignore (and might well suggest ignorance of) not just the deep structures embedded in (thoughtful) fantasy but also the ways in which fantasy can examine history, historical structures, sociology, and anthropology, as well as the shifts in technology seen as cultures change.
And, really, SF has always had a lot more in common with mystery than with fantasy. Both SF and mystery prize rational thinking and deduction, and require the reader to pick up clues about what’s really going on as they read the story. Fantasy and SF, on the other hand, are diametrically opposed: one is reasoned, careful extrapolation of things that really could happen; the other, by definition, deals with things that never could happen.