The simple and obvious solution is to give Fantasy its own section. *nods* - Edit 1
Before modification by Joel at 26/01/2011 02:17:45 AM
My most recent foray into a book store found me staring in mute stupefication at the incredibly oversized Sci-Fi / Fantasy section. It was so big, I wondered off back downstairs and purchased another Bill Bryson...
Back when I was sweating over whether the College Board would agre with me that TLotR was "a work of recognized literary merit" suitable for an AP English free response essay (they did, and gave me a perfect score) maybe lumping often completely unrelated Fantasy with SF made a kind of lazy sense, but it's as impractical now as it always was illogical. The almost overnight spectacular success of no less than THREE Fantasy feature film franchises has created a tremendous marketability that summoned every hack from Stephanie Meyer (whose movies also aren't doing badly) to worse; there's Goodkind TV series and an HBO movie about to premiere for Martin. Saying it's all "speculative fiction" is just an attempt to avoid the issue; isn't all fiction to some extent "speculative" by definition? You're imagining how imaginary characters will perform and relate to imaginary events; that sure sounds like speculation to me. Fantasy isn't SF and there's too much of it now to just shoehorn it in there even if weren't a disservice to both genres.</rant>
Glad for that, at least; it's often hard for me to keep track of where everyone is down there so I need these kinds of reassurances even from people 2000 miles from the events in question.
Are you safe in Victoria?
Back when I was sweating over whether the College Board would agre with me that TLotR was "a work of recognized literary merit" suitable for an AP English free response essay (they did, and gave me a perfect score) maybe lumping often completely unrelated Fantasy with SF made a kind of lazy sense, but it's as impractical now as it always was illogical. The almost overnight spectacular success of no less than THREE Fantasy feature film franchises has created a tremendous marketability that summoned every hack from Stephanie Meyer (whose movies also aren't doing badly) to worse; there's Goodkind TV series and an HBO movie about to premiere for Martin. Saying it's all "speculative fiction" is just an attempt to avoid the issue; isn't all fiction to some extent "speculative" by definition? You're imagining how imaginary characters will perform and relate to imaginary events; that sure sounds like speculation to me. Fantasy isn't SF and there's too much of it now to just shoehorn it in there even if weren't a disservice to both genres.</rant>
Yep, I'm in Melbourne and it has avoided most of it.
Glad for that, at least; it's often hard for me to keep track of where everyone is down there so I need these kinds of reassurances even from people 2000 miles from the events in question.