Week Three

How is science fiction different from fantasy, according to Le Guin?

The majority of “science fictions pretend that the future is the present or the past” Le Guin (2005). Seeing that the future is unpredictable, or in this case is a blank page, our imaginations can write whatever we like on it. Science fiction allows us to extend our imaginations beyond what we know on the basis of available data from present trends; whereas fantasy is more straight-forward in terms of the time frame of the events. The reader is left to figure out when certain accounts occur (century, year, etc). Le Guin (2005) states “its contract with the reader is a different one. There is no agreement to pretend that its story happened, might have happened, or might ever happen.”

Science Fiction aims to meet conventional expectations of how people act and try to dodge implications made by the reader for unlikely events by plausibly discussing them. These expectations are also met by fantasy characters. However, “characters in fantasy may not be human, or may relate to nonhuman beings in unexpected ways” Le Guin (2005). Therefore, fantasy characters are not worthy to be classed as plausible; rather, it is the “coherence of the story, and its consistent self-reliance” that is classes as plausible. Le Guin (2005).

How does Attebery (1980) define fantasy? Find at least five definitions.

Lining up a bunch of books on a shelf is how Attebery defines fantasy. He goes on to state that the types of books that would be present on this shelf - all in which relate to fantasy!

The following are some definitions on fantasy found within the text...

• W. R. Irwin classes fantasy as any narrative that presents itself as impossible, he states “whatever the material, extravagant or seemingly commonplace, a narrative is a fantasy if it presents the persuasive establishment and development of an impossibility, an arbitrary construct of the mind with all the control of logic and rhetoric”. Attebery (1980).

• “Any narrative which includes as a significant part of its make-up some violation of what the author clearly believes to be natural law – this is fantasy”

• “Fantasy...presupposes a view of exterior reality which it goes on to contradict”.

• Fantasy is “founded upon the hard recognition that things are so in the world as it appears under the sun; on a recognition of fact but not a slavery to it” – J. R. Tolkien

• Fantasy has the ability to make readers believe that the existence of beings (from flying horses to dragon-like characters) and magical objects (such as “rings, hats, or catles possessing wills”, etc) which are classed as impossibilities, “and fantasy treats these impossibilities without hesitation, without doubt, without any attempt to reconcile them with our intellectual understanding of the workings of the world or to make us believe that such things could under any circumstance come true.” Attebery (1980).

Reference List

Guin, L. (2005). Ursula K. Le Guin: Plausibility Revisited. Wha Hoppen and What Didin’t. Retrieved from http://www.ursulakleguin.com/PlausibilityRevisited.html

Attebery, B. (1980). Locating Fantasy Tradition. In The Fantasy Tradition in American Literature: From Irving to Le Guinn (pp. 2-9). Bloomington: Indiana U P, 1980.