closed. The quote from Nabokov above is misleading as regards his own contrast of fantasy and reality, but it’ll serve as a pointer to the first two. In the empty definition, fantasy is just imagination, story as extended fancy; all fiction is fantasy. This is not a terribly useful definition though, not when we use the term fantastic to mean that which is strange, bizarre in form or appearance. Where we say something is fantastic we mean that it is unrealistic, based on or existing only in extravagant fancy. It is an oddity, a quirk of impossibility. We may even mean that it is wondrously so, that the quirk is to be marvelled at, an exercise in the marvellous, a numina .
Since not all fantastic fiction is marvellous in this sense, an open definition seems more apt: here, for now, what we mean by fantasy is simply fiction which uses the incredible , which departs from “what is commonly called reality.” It entails, to repeat,
a rupture in reality,
a quirk in narrative created,
an impossibility conjured, breach of
• known science,
• known history,
• the laws of nature,
• even the strictures of logic itself,
a strange yellowy-blue (or reddish-green) colour to the cake on your plate at this drunken wedding reception in the SF Café, where everything is kicking off, a colour that simply cannot be, yellow and blue being bound in an opponent process in your brain, the sensation of each inhibited whenever the other is stimulated. To make a text fantasy, in this definition, is as simple as to drop the word yellowy-blue into a sentence.
This open definition slides towards closure though, as the bounds of reality mark out a limit of fancy’s extravagance between based on and existing only in , where the unrealistic fractures for many into the improbable and the impossible. The nature of the fantastic, some will insist, is that it transgresses the laws of nature, is impossible, magical in the sense of metaphysical. We can play with known science and known history in our thought-experiments, but this is not the same thing.
The notion of the marvellous closes the definition further, specifying a di stinctly positive tinge to our incredulity, not just awe but a wonder that implies desire, magical in the sense of delightful. While many of those in the SF Café shrug this off, drinking Kafka as their coffee, taking their fantasy bitter and black (exercises in the monstrous rather than the marvellous, the quirk in use a monstrum rather than a numina), there are those for whom the definition is and must be closed to fantasia further :
—There is no such fantasy, they say. Whether they revere it or revile it, they acknowledge only Fantasy , that Genre where the conventions of metaphysical agency and wondrous wish-fulfilment are essential, the conventional template with all its stereotypes of secondary worlds and heroic quests.
All too often there’s a scent of abjection when it’s a Science Fiction loyalist asserting a closed definition of fantasy, a sense that by defining these generic elements as Fantasy it is easier to banish them from Science Fiction . Because it’s not like science fiction was ever…you know… born from the frickin’ pulps.
—Fuck that shit, I say to this. Don’t be pissing on my Flash Gordon roots, mothe rfucker. Or on my metaphysical maestro, PKD.
There is a neatness to the pairing of Fantasy and Horror as literatures of desire and fear, of numina and monstrum. And the notion that science fiction deals with hypothetical improbabilities (playing with known science and known history) while fantasy deals with metaphysical impossibilities (flouting the laws of nature or the strictures of logic) is one you’ll hear from many corners of the SF Café. But it’s not so easy as that; it never is with a genre (versus a Genre ) with an aesthetic idiom (versus a conventional template).
No, many works in the openly-defined aesthetic idiom of fantasy have zero interest in wish-fulfilment or the
Since not all fantastic fiction is marvellous in this sense, an open definition seems more apt: here, for now, what we mean by fantasy is simply fiction which uses the incredible , which departs from “what is commonly called reality.” It entails, to repeat,
a rupture in reality,
a quirk in narrative created,
an impossibility conjured, breach of
• known science,
• known history,
• the laws of nature,
• even the strictures of logic itself,
a strange yellowy-blue (or reddish-green) colour to the cake on your plate at this drunken wedding reception in the SF Café, where everything is kicking off, a colour that simply cannot be, yellow and blue being bound in an opponent process in your brain, the sensation of each inhibited whenever the other is stimulated. To make a text fantasy, in this definition, is as simple as to drop the word yellowy-blue into a sentence.
This open definition slides towards closure though, as the bounds of reality mark out a limit of fancy’s extravagance between based on and existing only in , where the unrealistic fractures for many into the improbable and the impossible. The nature of the fantastic, some will insist, is that it transgresses the laws of nature, is impossible, magical in the sense of metaphysical. We can play with known science and known history in our thought-experiments, but this is not the same thing.
The notion of the marvellous closes the definition further, specifying a di stinctly positive tinge to our incredulity, not just awe but a wonder that implies desire, magical in the sense of delightful. While many of those in the SF Café shrug this off, drinking Kafka as their coffee, taking their fantasy bitter and black (exercises in the monstrous rather than the marvellous, the quirk in use a monstrum rather than a numina), there are those for whom the definition is and must be closed to fantasia further :
—There is no such fantasy, they say. Whether they revere it or revile it, they acknowledge only Fantasy , that Genre where the conventions of metaphysical agency and wondrous wish-fulfilment are essential, the conventional template with all its stereotypes of secondary worlds and heroic quests.
All too often there’s a scent of abjection when it’s a Science Fiction loyalist asserting a closed definition of fantasy, a sense that by defining these generic elements as Fantasy it is easier to banish them from Science Fiction . Because it’s not like science fiction was ever…you know… born from the frickin’ pulps.
—Fuck that shit, I say to this. Don’t be pissing on my Flash Gordon roots, mothe rfucker. Or on my metaphysical maestro, PKD.
There is a neatness to the pairing of Fantasy and Horror as literatures of desire and fear, of numina and monstrum. And the notion that science fiction deals with hypothetical improbabilities (playing with known science and known history) while fantasy deals with metaphysical impossibilities (flouting the laws of nature or the strictures of logic) is one you’ll hear from many corners of the SF Café. But it’s not so easy as that; it never is with a genre (versus a Genre ) with an aesthetic idiom (versus a conventional template).
No, many works in the openly-defined aesthetic idiom of fantasy have zero interest in wish-fulfilment or the
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