The Critics’ Corner

Science Fiction vs. Fantasy

by Bill Bowler

Graham Storrs’ essay clearly lays out a provocative argument based — perhaps deliberately — on a false dichotomy: that science fiction is actually or potentially “real” while fantasy is “completely made up,” “utterly fictional,” and “bear[s] no relation to the real world whatsoever.” The author offers, by way of example, science fiction’s faster-than-light travel as an “extrapolation of what we already know” versus fantasy’s “worlds of [...] dreaming gods [...] worlds [that] do not and never could exist.”

I think what the author misses is that all fiction is by its nature “utterly fictional,” even so-called Realism. The “completely made up” with “no relation to the real world” criticism was leveled at War and Peace by Tolstoy’s critics.

The most important point overlooked by the author, perhaps, is the level of symbolism that resonates in science fiction and fantasy. Is not the world of Greek mythology immediately recognizable as the real thing?