GENRE

At the last stop-over into the realms of Sci-Fi we thought about the difference between science fact and science fiction. We – I, really, considered that science fiction, no matter how it is sub-classified by the various genre police departments, is fantasy.

You can argue that, if you wish.  You can say that fantasy is dragons and fair maidens being bound up and ravished by evil-doers.

You might say that fantasy is a series of vampire stories or a tale of the relationship between lycanthropes and vampires – if there were to be one.

Science fiction, on the other hand, is deep space and powerful spaceships thrusting out into the new frontier and limitless adventure.

Anne McCaffrey, bless her imaginative late soul, wrote a fantasy story about dragons.  These were the chronicles of the Dragon Riders of Pern in various stages.

I say ‘various stages’ because Anne McCaffrey did a very clever thing. The story started very simply. It told a tale of the dragon riders and how they came to get their dragons and why they needed them against the ‘Thread’.

With each subsequent book we learnt more about life on the planet ‘Pern’. The social ordefr came into sharper focus so that, eventually, we knew what they were doing and why.  Except for the Southern Continent.

The south was always a mysterious zone but, even that, eventually bubbled to the surface so that the story of their (humans) arrival on Pern became clear. It also became clear how the different Weyrs and Dragonholds came into being.

It also became clear that Ann McCaffrey was actually writing Science Fiction.

How clever. How magnificent.

So you see how the lines become blurred?

Fantasy is anything that doesn’t currently exist being imagined and turned into reality on the page.

Maybe we can imagine that things that once existed return to plague us in the way of ‘Jurassic Park’. Would that be fantasy or sci-fi?

I remember some time ago having a (written, of course) discussion with another author called Janie Bill about ‘genre’ and how I hate the stereotyping it promotes.

She was, of course, quite right in her assertion that it helps people find the subject matter in a book that they are looking for and enjoy on a regular basis.

I still don’t have to like it.

I like to think of my novel as being sci-fi even ‘though there are no spaceships – well, very few, in it. My publisher says it is more fantasy.  I countered with, “It’s a who-dunnit!”

That got a laugh! Rats.

But it is, in reality, a sci-fi, fantasy, sexy, who-done-it that is violent and adventurous with a dash of humour. What more could anybody want?