Fantasy is reactionary and SF is progressive?

[Datepalm]

Now, obviously every rule in something like this has more exceptions than you can shake a hammer and sickle at, but in looking at general trends fantasy is deliberately set in psuedo historical settings and often cheefully takes on all of their -isms, with varying abilites of justifying this to the reader. SF, otoh, is all about the future and the way things change.

IMO the unifying quality, such as it is, of SF and fantasy is the authors ability to freely worldbuild and shape the setting to the storys ends. In Sf however, this is usually a very deliberate creation to some specific issue or question. If the author thinks cloning is bad, they'll create a world where cloning is indeed bad. Fantasy however is rarely that instructional and emphasizes a more or less well realized, 'realistic' world and the reader actually has more room to come to their own decisions about how things should work.

We can, for example, quite legitimately wish Dany or Rand to lose becuase we thing they would make completely unfit rulers, but we can't really root for cloning in an anti-cloning book, can we?

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

DP,

You need to read "The Long Price Quartet" by Daniel Abraham. You may be suprised. In Scott Bakker's we aren't sure who to root for as we simply don't know everyone's ultimate motivation for their actions. Additionally, with regard to SF it depends upon how big the world or universe the author is trying to create. The smaller the story and setting the more specific the theme and the purpose of the story. However, the larger the setting and scope the more difficult it is for the author to convey a specific theme.

As you said there are more exceptions than you can shake a stick at. Therefore, I don't believe you can legitimately argue the rule you are attempting to create. It reminds me a lot of the genius who accused GRRM of being politically conservative because he writes Fantasy and Fantasy is politically conservative by definition.

[Horza]

Neither is reactionary or progressive.

Good sci-fi explores the human condition as it responds to technological change, positive or negative. I don't think sci-fi tends to portray technology as bad, I think it can sometimes make the mistake of writing just about the technology and not the people who deal with it. In other words, the best sci-fi not only predicts the car, but traffic jams.

Fantasy does similar but it explores mythic and allohistorical conditions and can be just as instructional and allegorical as SF *cough*Goodkind*cough*. Neither is neccessarily bad, but good fantasy in my mind keeps that as a backdrop to the human drama. In contrast to SF, fantasy's messaging is usually in regard to themes of individual struggle and development, where it gets preachy is in it's characterisation and morality - it's hard to root for Sauron/Generic Dark Lord #9012.

[MinDonner]

One of the problems with getting progressive elements into fantasy is the nature of a whole load of fantasy tropes, particularly the pervasive idea that in order for something to be fantasy, it ought to be "a bit like the past, but with magic". Of course I can think of half a dozen exceptions right away, but that's the basic template, and I think it's very hard for us to disassociate modern social progression from modern technological advancements, which would then drag most stories out of fantasy and into SF anyway. In fact, could we even have a progressive society with only medieval tech?

Obviously, a lot of this is just authorial laziness; it's just easier to recycle the tropes of King and Peasants than to put any thought into your political system, especially if your book's main focus is just on werewolves or whatnot. In SF, originality of setting is one of the key factors (IMO), so there's more pressure for the author to think about it a bit harder where fantasy authors can just buy their ready-made worldbuilding kit from Games Workshop.

[Lummel]

Datepalm,

Which idea interests you more, reactionary fantasy vs progressive SF or prescriptive SF vs openended fantasy?

I'm not realy sure how useful the division between science fiction and fantasy is any more, I feel a little uncomfortable with a book featuring faster than light travel being described as scientific. The only difference seems to be whether the author ascribes the motive force for being able to do paranormal things to science or magic.

It was all alot simpler in the good old days when fantasy featured a bare chested hero with a big sword and a princess with a magic amulet while science fiction was something written by HG Wells or Jules Verne.

[Paxter]

Well, there is some support for this point from at least one contemporary fantasy author. Bakker seems to believe that fantasy is, at least to some extent, reactionary in that it transports readers back to a time prior to the age of enlightenment and the rise of science (link to article). He argues that fantasy readers "crave of examples" of a historical world where people were certain that life had meaning: "Fantasy is the celebration of what we no longer are: individuals certain of our meaningfulness in a meaningful world."

Not sure if this is what you are really getting at though Datepalm and I may have misinterpreted you :dunno:. You seemed to have emphasised the instructional nature of SF in your opening post rather than the progressive nature of its themes.

[Happy Ent]

With Bakker, the concern of the original poster is addressed directly in book 4.

We see Kellhus actually rule his empire, and does so by bringing completely modern routines to it. His regime implements enormous changes in administration and bureaucracy, he actively takes steps against corruption and nepotism — it’s all there. He is actually a progressive and marvellously competent ruler, and it’s not an aspect of his character that the author pulls out of his hat.

And we even witness reaction against Kellhus’s new policies. The pre-modern society is represented by the cult of Yatwer, which provided the spiritual underpinning of a heavily stratified society – for those who haven’t read these books, Yatwer is the goddess of slaves and servants and her cult provides meaning to those millions who find themselves in a downtrodden position, surely an enormously stabilising pillar of society. The morality of inequality cult takes gestalt (quite literally, if the metaphysics are to be believed) in a goddess and her followers, who rise up against the changes that Kellhus and his cabal have wrought. Kellhus is progress, and Yatwer is reaction.

It’s all there, quite seriously, and well built into a framework that also is very conscious of fantasy’s tropes. Bakker is the genre’s new hope.

[Datepalm]

It's all there, quite seriously, and well built into a framework that also is very conscious of fantasy's tropes. Bakker is the genre's new hope.

In a galaxy far far away, perhaps?

Maybe the use of the terms progressive and reactionary aren't very accurate here, but I think fantasy, with its greater focus on character is more humanist. (and thats the last thing I would accuse the one Bakker book i've read of being, and in that sense it dosen't surprise me that these more SFnal story types eventually get pulled out in the series.)

I do actully think the structure of fantasy is quite reactionary, in that the active party is usually the bad guy and the heroes aim for the status quo, and are just usually overall less ambitious, but the best fantasy manages to describe a situation inside of a repressive setting thats still respectful of its characters and their existence as complicated people, which SF does...less.

I am overwhelmed by the idea that people think I have coherent argument. I was mostly musing out loud on a boring friday.

[Galactus]

I think an interesting in-between for this is Mieville's Iron Council. Which is both intensely and completely progressive (displaying a failed social revolution) and at the same time reactionary (it is a very clear *past* form of social revolution, a kind of socialist nostalgia for the good old days when industrialists wore top-hats and monocles)

[Happy Ent]

Another progressive story is told in His Dark Materials, where Lyra’s father represents modernity and struggles against the oppressive old regime. (Like in Bakker’s books, modernists seem to be not very nice people, though they fight the good fight.)

[Happy Ent]

a kind of socialist nostalgia for the good old days when industrialists wore top-hats and monocles

… and grafted steampunk appendages onto the bodies of the underclass.

[Datepalm]

… and grafted steampunk appendages onto the bodies of the underclass.

A capitalist dream. reducing the labouring class into literally nothing more than tools.

[Paxter]

I think an interesting in-between for this is Mieville's Iron Council. Which is both intensely and completely progressive (displaying a failed social revolution) and at the same time reactionary (it is a very clear *past* form of social revolution, a kind of socialist nostalgia for the good old days when industrialists wore top-hats and monocles)

There is a parallel there with Bakker, seeing as Kellhus' revolution appears to be progressive (as HE outlines above), whereas Bakker's world is inherently reactionary (entering Earwa takes us back to a time when damnation and redemption were real and people were certain that their lives had meaning).

[Ser_not_appearing_yet]

I can't stand bad Sci-fi. I don't like bad fantasy much either, but it can be good for a laugh. However bad scifi (ie: the ones which get bogged down in meaningless technological jargon) is just too damn boring for me to read. The idea that fantasy is reactionary and SF progressive is a very simplistic one, but while it may once have been true (compare Tolkein to early Science fiction writers) the idea doesn't really matter. Good fantasy and good SF discuss human themes, whether the setting is pre-enlightenment doesn't matter.

If you like it, you like it.

[Stalker]

Now, obviously every rule in something like this has more exceptions than you can shake a hammer and sickle at, but in looking at general trends fantasy is deliberately set in psuedo historical settings and often cheefully takes on all of their -isms, with varying abilites of justifying this to the reader. SF, otoh, is all about the future and the way things change.

What sort of Marxist are you? Of course the ideologues of a setting cannot be independent of the structure of the means of production.

IMO the unifying quality, such as it is, of SF and fantasy is the authors ability to freely worldbuild and shape the setting to the storys ends. In Sf however, this is usually a very deliberate creation to some specific issue or question. If the author thinks cloning is bad, they'll create a world where cloning is indeed bad. Fantasy however is rarely that instructional and emphasizes a more or less well realized, 'realistic' world and the reader actually has more room to come to their own decisions about how things should work.

We can, for example, quite legitimately wish Dany or Rand to lose becuase we thing they would make completely unfit rulers, but we can't really root for cloning in an anti-cloning book, can we?

While the origin of SF is indeed in examining the ramifications of specific change, and the author should be expected to be biased (if not, why even bother reading?), not all SF is like that. Once SF became established, it has often been used just as a setting for other sorts of stories. As such, those stories need not be any different from the same sort of stories placed in another setting. This would be true for fantasy too, although that has a different origin. Also of note is that not SF has a 'far future, free world building' setting, but often takes place in a modified version of the real world, just as most fiction.

[Datepalm]

What sort of Marxist are you? Of course the ideologues of a setting cannot be independent of the structure of the means of production.

I actually disagree. A book can very much be in support or in disagreement with its own setting. Bas Lag is obviously horridly capitalist and exploitationalist, which dosent mean the author for a moment supports it or calls on the readers to. (They again, its a beautifully made thing, so its hard to actually want it destroyed, and of course the revolution of IC does fail.) while in support you have things like Arthur C. Clarkes imagined futures travelogues (Empire Earth, 3001. He writes a good disagreed-with setting too though - the City and the Stars, Childhoods End) or Heinleins Stranger in a Stange Land where everything is built up so as to make his philosophy make sense.

I think a book works on another level than that though - If were in a fantasy land and shown a bunch of downtrodden peasants, we can assume the author realises his psuedo fuedalism isn't that great for everyone, but even then not all works are going to be giving a message of why we should care about the peasants.

ASOIAF actually does this much better with sexism than with class, IMO. Totally sexists society, riled against much, but what really works is the complexity and scope and sympatheticness of the female characters that keep it from being a sexist book despite being about a lovingly detailed sexist society.

My favorite book in this regard is Connie Willis Doomsday Book (Which is SF, of course, so I concede right now that its not a useful dichotomy) which I think is the one book i've ever read that made me understands the past as being filled with real people, and feel for the tragedy of their death and the bitterness of their lives.

[Red Sun]

I think that most Fantasy is reactionary, because of the repeated tropes and/or the static situation of the setting, and very often the setting comes with Victorian perceptions of the good old times when everything was easier and less complex, or it comes as pure escapism that simply serves the maintain the mental status quo. However, I think that Fantasy can be either an interesting mirror to our society (in the tradition of Swift) or the "human condition" and it can also challenge the reader.

So ASOIAF is in many ways reactionary, because it follows certain traditions of Fantasy, mostly the frozen setting (several 1000 years with similary life conditions) and all characters (except Davos ) are nobles. However, it serves in many ways as a mirror of the human condition and it doesn't reflect the nostalgia for the "good old days".

On the other side, the PON series is more of a challenge, and I have to give Bakker credit for trying to portray real changes in society, even though I have too many problems with his style and approach to the story telling to really love those books.

[Shryke]

What the hell does "reactionary" and "progressive" even mean in this instance?

[kcf]

First, I agree with Shryke's sentiment above - without specific definitions of what reactionary and progressive mean, it's hard to have a discussion.

But I think the gist of it is the sort of 'liberal' vs. 'conservative', 'reactive' vs. 'proactive', 'looking backward' vs. 'looking forward'. These are all different but related sort issues.

In terms of fantasy, and epic fantasy in particular, it all comes back to Tolkien. Tolkien dominated the hearts and minds of fantasy authors, fans, and publishers for decades. And LotR was clearly a fantasy that looked backward - a view of better, simpler times and the loss of those. Much of fantasy since has followed suite. Even going as far as often presenting mideval and fuedal societies as the way to go - it's always some deposed king of sorts and we need to ether get him back of get a new person destined to be king. Viewing todays prevailing 'western' thoughts toward government, that's a very curious ideal that's often presented in fantasy.

I honestly think that most of the more mediocre type of fantasy authors don't give this sort of thing much thought. They need a world lacking modern technology to use contrast with their magic and they look to what's been done before.

I think the better fantasy authors think on these things a lot. You see the urban fantasy (not the new stuff with angry chicks vs. vampires/werewolves, etc) but old school urban fantasy that really uses the supernatural to make us think of the enviroment around us. And within the last 10 years or so (though others did it before, they were just rare), it's become pretty popular to take some of these 'backward looking' fantasy tropes and begin with a concept opposite of them. What about a world where a feudal kingdom is bad and we need to move beyond it? What about a world where the dark lord already one and has ruled for 1000 years? What about a hero who doesn't want to save the world? What if there is no redemption in revenge?

And then it gets much more complicated from their. As mentioned above, Mieville is a prime example of an author who plays with these sorts of elements very well. Heck, I was just reading today's Big Idea over at John Scalzi's blog where Stephen Deas talks about some to the background stuff about The Adamantine Palace - he's dealing with the issues of today under the guise of a nasty dragons and the usual bad-ass humans. Think of the thematic elements that Erikson has been increasingly dealing with in the Malazan world. Hell even the new urban fantasy is confronting fears that people have today - it's not some evil empire waiting to destroy all that scares us anymore, but the lone thing in the dark (read terrorist) that can get us anywhere an anytime that scares the shit out of people. Then compare these things with the fantasy of Brent Weeks.

It really is all about the author, their skill and what they want to say. Fantasy offers and incredible amount of flexiblity for an author to play with and there are examples loads of examples of authors on all sides of these things.

And great discussion by the way (though I'm sure I'll tire of it as it really gets going - I can't stand long threads)

[Serious Callers Only]

We can, for example, quite legitimately wish Dany or Rand to lose becuase we thing they would make completely unfit rulers, but we can't really root for cloning in an anti-cloning book, can we?

Ofcourse i can. I think that Cyteen is saner than the Earth.