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Path: utzoo!kcarroll
From: kcarroll@utzoo.UUCP (Kieran A. Carroll)
Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers
Subject: Re: Sf or fantasy -- who cares??
Message-ID: <3820@utzoo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 3-May-84 15:54:25 EDT
Article-I.D.: utzoo.3820
Posted: Thu May  3 15:54:25 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 3-May-84 15:54:25 EDT
References: <7581@decwrl.UUCP>
Organization: U of Toronto Zoology
Lines: 24

*

   I beg your pardon, but it's not true that "until fantasy recently became
a marketable product, people tended to lump SF and fantasy together into
one category." SF was what John Campbell printed in Astounding, 
while fantasy was what he published in Unknown.
   Seriously, picky people have been trying to distinguish between
SF and fantasy for quite a few years now, at least since the 1940's.
By the '60's, the state of the controversy was that (a) an easy-going
subset of sf fandom, including Judith Merrill, had decided that "sf"
meant "speculative fabulation", or whatever; (b) another subset had
decided that "even if I can't define it, I >know< what sf is, and
it ain't fantasy!"
   As for myself, I don't really care; I'm willing to accept Campbell's
definitions, although I can't really decide where "The Incompleat
Enchanter" et seq lies.
   A common attitude seems to be "I like science fiction, and I
like this book; therefore, this book is science fiction"; or,
"...and I don't like this book, so it isn't science fiction."
The arguments on the net so far seem to have a distinct flavor
of this attitude.

-Kieran A. Carroll
...decvax!utzoo!kcarroll