Gyp, you’re mistaken — faster-than-light travel is just as impossible as vampires. There is no scientific evidence to suggest that either are possible, except as metaphors. I’d love to be wrong about that — I’d love to get on a spaceship and arrive one week later on a distant planet — but it’s just plain impossible.

Stories like Star Wars and Andre Norton’s Witch World fall into this category for me.

But no matter how many subgenres or mixing and matching that I can categorize, I tend to view both as part of one large genre.

Science fiction actually has a pretty lousy record of prediction culturally - think of how thoroughly feminism (and the Pill, and the sexual revolution as meaningful to female sexual choice, forex) was not envisioned back in the Golden Age.

One might argue that vampires DO exist - metaphorically, and in that way, truthfully. Whether genetic engineering could create bloodsucking humans who need human blood to survive is another issue, of course, but I would argue that sf & f like all narrative are ultimately about the human condition, and insofar as they illuminate the human condition, or entertain us, they are successful - regardless of the mechanisms they use to tell the tale.

That’s just me, though.

Well, I’m no author, but I would venture to say that it’s because science fiction appeals to science fact and suspends disbelief by telling half-truths. Also, a lot of good science fiction has actually predicted technologies that actually came about (such as the cell phone). Fantasy suspends disbelief by appealing to spirits or magic or some supernatural cause, and really there’s no way that our society will acquire these things as it develops and matures.

Esentially, it boils down to the fact that vampires will NEVER exist. Faster-than-light drives, however, might actually happen.

I have not had a book flip genres on me.

This is tangential, but that comment caused me to raise an eyebrow. “My book hasn’t flipped genres,” I said to myself. “It’s just gone from fantasy to soft science fiction.”

Then I realized that I’m operating from a set of assumptions that are distinct minority. I consider fantasy and science fiction to be one big genre, and don’t see a great wall between them.

Vampires and faster-than-light drives are both impossible–so why do we classify one kind of story as “science fiction” and another as “fantasy.”

Finding I have nothing particularly intelligent to add at the moment.

If I find that I have a strong revelation of this kind, I go back, and I fix the beginning until I am happy. Like Carol, I find that too much changes in that process, and if the changes are major in nature, it’s better to have them on screen (and not to have to rewrite a large chunk when I think I’m finished.)

With my current project, I soldiered on, because while things were shifting, there were several shifts in several directions - I very much explore-as-I-write, and will shortly arrive in revision-land…

Every book is different. Do whatever feels right.

I find that I can’t go forward until I go back and work this into the prior text, because a revelation of this kind has tentacles that can touch other characters and events along the way, and I don’t really know how until I write it into the story.

I am with Kate…this is no flaw or problem. This is a story taking on life. Enjoy!

Carol