“Star Wars is fantasy, not science-fiction.” My father put this idea in my head at an early age, and there it stuck, a rather useless bit of opinion that served no purpose, being as I was outside of literary circles, and having little interest in stories except as a means to avoid homework.
But now, as I reinvent myself as a teller of stories, the distinction is at the heart of what I do. I wish to write stories, and so it behooves me to understand the stories that I am telling.
And my understanding is this: no matter what names you choose to call the genres, fantasy (or fairy tale, folk tale, or Fred) and sci-fi (or speculative fiction, or George) are yin and yang to each other. Not just that they are opposites, but in that each, even in its most rigid form, carries in itself a kernel of the other.
“Hard” science fiction is the literary equivalent of the science experiment. Take our culture as it is, and change one thing. Let the story run its course so that, like a bacteria in a petri dish, we are able to watch the profound changes that occur in our simulated culture due to that one introduced element.
Fantasy, in its most ancient self, that folktale told by word-of-mouth, is that small - tiny, even - collection of stories that defines our cultural values. These are the story tropes that we dress up in different clothes to tell again and again to our children, and they tell to theirs, and so on; and we think that we are telling these stories for the fun of them, but in reality they encapsulate values that are fundamental to our way of life.
Neither can exist without some hint of the other.
Take, for instance, the Giver, by Lois Lowry. It is science fiction. The changed element is that all of society’s memories of pain and suffering have been taken away from the masses and handed to one person to keep. The resulting society is orderly, content, and utopian. And, it is also revealed, the society has a dark underbelly of murder, committed with smiles behind closed doors, in order to maintain the society’s harmony.
But that is mere setting. Beneath the exploration of the fictional world, there is the traditional coming-of-age tale, complete with a chosen child, a wise, magical mentor, and the rescue of an innocent baby. Without these underlying fantasy tropes there would be no plot. There would be no reason to read The Giver. The perfectly balanced utopia would churn on in its creepy suburban dullness forever.
On the other side of the coin is Iron Hearted Violet, by Kelly Barnhill. In this classic-style fairy tale, we have all the expected players: a princess, a stable-boy, a king, a mentor, and a dragon. But why would we stagger through the same story yet again? Because of the science-fiction twist of adding a change, and watching how that change causes the expected story to meander in new ways. In this case, it is a change to the roles of the characters. The princess, not the stable-boy, is the primary agent of change. She seeks out adventure, and unleashes a terrible evil. She moves into a role precariously close to antagonist, and emerges as a bold warrior and a worthy queen. Instead of being the warrior, the boy is the compassionate supporter, and ultimately a leader - but not through aggression. Instead of being a strong and wise leader, the king is a distracted scholar who sinks into sentimental uselessness. The mentor is a fool who becomes a mere encumbrance.
And the dragon: far from being the evil-to-be-defeated of stories past, he is by stages grouchy, fearful, pathetic and conquered, motherly, and fiercely loving, willing to fling himself to his doom to save his beloved.
These new twists on our culture’s ancient stories are of such vital importance to us because our culture is changing rapidly around us. We no longer want to hand our children stories about passive princesses and macho stable-boys, because we do not see our children as being passive girls and macho boys. And it is the kernel of science-fiction within the fairy-tale that lets us reboot the ancient tales with our current values, so that we can see in story form how these values play out.
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