SF and fantasy don't even actually really work this way The distinction between these two genres is just the superficial chrome, what it looks like - "psionic powers" aren't actually less impossible than "magic" in any sense, they just look and feel different
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Replying to @arthur_affect
I almost feel like we need a word for setting genre vs. narrative genre. Like, Blade Runner is a thriller that happens to be science fiction. Lord of the Rings is adventure/war that happens to be fantasy. Dune is epic tragedy that happens to be science fiction.
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @arthur_affect
But there *are* differences and times when the material genre becomes particularly relevant; for instance, Arrival is a family drama about grief but leaving out the aliens would be a misleading description
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Replying to @BootlegGirl @arthur_affect
Most literary fiction is just in genres that aren’t marketable anymore on their own. When’s the last time you read a robinsonade?
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Replying to @Cybren @BootlegGirl
It bears pointing out that tons of literary fiction is technically science fiction or fantasy, it's just that because it's "literary" the art snobs don't treat it as such and the genre nerds don't want to claim it either
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Frankenstein, a literary classic and one of the most well-known horror stories, is also considered the first modern science fiction novel. Go back far enough and these genre boundaries, INCLUDING sf, fantasy, and horror, are either blurry or simply nonexistent.
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In the old days the stereotypical "science fiction B-movie" was a "monster movie", which is really, really inarguably a kind of horror movie In fact if you just say "monster movie" today it's impossible to really sort the ones that we think of as "the horror genre" vs "sci-fi"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ToccoTrevor and
The Invisible Man is one of the "classic Hammer Horror monsters" but he's also, like, absolutely an archetypal "science fiction" story The most recent remake is as "hard SF" as it's possible to get (dropping the magic potion conceit for a creepily plausible "active camo suit")
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ToccoTrevor and
I mean come on the intentionally retro Rocky Horror Picture Show has "horror" in its own title but its introductory theme song is titled "Science Fiction Double Feature"
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ToccoTrevor and
Anyway the attempt to build a hard barrier between "science fiction" and "horror" came from within the SF community, a lot of whom were really ideological and snobbish This was a whole theme of Joseph Campbell's deliberate push to change the genre during his career at Astounding
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*John Campbell, not Joseph Campbell, my apologies Two completely different people whose careers arguably were at direct odds with each other Although both annoying
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Replying to @arthur_affect @ToccoTrevor and
This makes more sense as I used to be a monmyth fanboy but I didn't remember him working on Astounding. But my memory's also shot to shit, so I just made the one ring joke
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