I'm not sure I have a beef...

[viktor_haag]

... but I'm getting a bit tired of Hollywood categorizing yet another "paranormal" themed product as "science fiction". I mean, it's certainly fiction, but where the heck is the science?

Bah!

Comments

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

If you change the abbreviation SF so it also includes "Speculative Fiction", would that help?

This isn't unique to Hollywood. The recent Charles Stross book I read, "The Family Trade" can found on the Fantasy shelves of Chapters, and not the SF one. While there is the fantastical element of the secret of the Family, everything else cannot be considered fantasy in the strictest sense (unless, of course, you frame SF as a subset of Fantasy).

::B::

[madmanofprague.livejournal.com]

Which, to be honest, is necessary whenever you start thinking too hard about the 'how much science do you need to be science fiction' question.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

To me the two are distinctly different genres and have not all that much to do with the trappings of setting in the books. To me, Science-Fiction is inherently questioning, warning, and constantly poses the questions "What if this happened", or "Kept happening", or "Did not happen", and so is "forward looking" and essentially optimistic. Fantasy, on the other hand is inherently nostalgic, reactionary, and conservative, and is thus "backward looking" even when it's set in the future (like much of Wolfe), and is quite often essentially pessimistic.

For me, this means that Horror and "tales of the Weird" are more fantasy than science fiction because of their reactionary, conservative nature.