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My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

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Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#151

Post by AlwaysRock »

ck425 wrote: post #101
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I never find it helpful when people say they aren't that different from each other. Sure there may be some similarities if you want to take an analytical view of the genres, but there's an awful lot of people who like one but not the other.

The problem is once you look at the definitions it's actually quite hard to exactly define what's Fantasy vs Sci-fi. It's more a venn diagram, than strictly separate genres and everyone has their own definition of which is which. So when someone likes one but not the other, it's hard to discuss books because what one person considers sci-fi, another may consider fantasy pretending to be sci-fi, thus the complaints of…

It isn't that hard until they start to blur. Elves and goblins and magic, fantasy. Space, spaceships, technology, and aliens, sci-fi.

You could argue a lot of semantics but the majority of fantasy and sci fi books are not blending the two.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#152

Post by TiredOfLife »

JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98
bondarchuk wrote: post #12

I read sci-fi but not fantasy, why do people insist on lumping these together?

> I read sci-fi but not fantasy I used to be the same. Ask yourself why. Harumi Marukami and Han Kang count as fantasy. (I’d argue so does Ian Banks.) Read Tolkien with a hard eye towards rules, meanwhile, and you find a universe that is largely consistent in the Unseen over the Seen, which pretty neatly maps to invisible physics guiding visible phenomena.

I have not read Iain Banks books, but Iain M. Banks wrote Scifi

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#153

Post by PleasureBot »

sherr wrote: post #146
noir_lord wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Missing Iain M Banks is a weird omission indeed - perhaps they couldn't get the reprint rights.

Iain M Banks is science-fiction rather than fantasy, so I would not expect him in a "Fantasy Masterworks" series. The two genres have some over-lap but are distinct.

I believe the list encompasses both genres. The very first entry in the list "Book of the New Sun" is a sci-fi series.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#154

Post by JumpCrisscross »

TiredOfLife wrote: post #152
JumpCrisscross wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I read sci-fi but not fantasy I used to be the same. Ask yourself why. Harumi Marukami and Han Kang count as fantasy. (I’d argue so does Ian Banks.) Read Tolkien with a hard eye towards rules, meanwhile, and you find a universe that is largely consistent in the Unseen over the Seen, which pretty neatly maps to invisible physics guiding visible phenomena.

I have not read Iain Banks books, but Iain M. Banks wrote Scifi

> but Iain M. Banks wrote Scifi

Why? Because there’s technology somewhere? Why doesn’t magical realism through a cell phone, for example, count?

The line between sci-if and fantasy is often arbitrary, with a lot of it coming down to readers’ self-perceived identities than anything having to do with the text. What counts as tech or magic, moreover, comes down to priors and perspective. (Harry Potter and Star Trek are on similar levels of technobabble, for instance.)

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#155

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

vidarh wrote: post #148
MattPalmer1086 wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The majority are really not that hard to categorise. In the UK at least, fantasy and sci fi occupy the same shelving. Takes me ages pulling books out of the shelf, and immediately rejecting because they are fantasy. The majority of the books are fantasy, not sci fi. Fantasy seems to have a much bigger audience in the UK anyway.

I'm in the UK. We must frequent different places, because I've never had that problem.

Well, it's a reasonably big place. It would be surprising if we did frequent the same places!

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#156

Post by MattPalmer1086 »

d4rkp4ttern wrote: post #134

A couple books I'd put in this category: 1. Roadside Picnic, by the Strugatsky brothers, loose basis of Tarkovsky's Stalker movie. 2. XX by Rian Hughes -- hugely under-rated book. Starts with a signal from outer space and goes quite far, and also has a book-within-a-book. Nearly 1000 pages but found it very engaging. Currently trying to read Stanlislaw Lem's His Master's Voice which has a similar theme of a possible…

I absolutely love Lem, and I just read Roadside Picnic this year.

I had not heard of XX before - will have to check it out, thanks.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#157

Post by sherr »

triMichael wrote: post #60
bondarchuk wrote: post #12

I read sci-fi but not fantasy, why do people insist on lumping these together?

They really aren't all that different from each other. One is imaginary things that might one day be possible, and the other is imaginary things that won't ever be possible. And even then, that can swap between the genres. Scifi often contains FTL tech, which from what we know is almost certainly impossible so it's actually more like fantastical magic. Meanwhile, fantasy can have hard rules for its magic, in which ca…

I agree to an extent but they are usefully kept somewhat separate. The introduction to the great "Encyclopedia of Fantasy" put this well. Re: Fantasy :

"Its roots go much deeper into history, and its concerns are more archetypal" [1]

There can be a lot of cross-over of course. Right now, "fantasy" (perhaps of the "romantic" variety) seems to be a juggernaut and is taking over.

[1]https://sf-encyclopedia.com/fe/introduction

(edit: spelling)

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#158

Post by auntienomen »

vidarh wrote: post #118
noir_lord wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps but if adding it to the list costs them little then to do a print run I don't get why they wouldn't and just have two printings concurrently, if they did say Consider Phlebas with the first edition cover I'd pick up a second copy just for that cover. Though I'm carefully not going to look on AbeBooks to see what the first editions currently go for since I don't need to spend that kind of money (want to yes, n…

What annoys me with SF Masterworks is that they changed the style (and checking now, it seems they might have changed it again from last time I bought any). I don't see any point in continue buying the series as opposed to individual versions if they're not going to stick to a cohesive style anyway. I might just finish buying the original numbered style (up to number 74 or something) But anyway, they've "only" publis…

I think there are 2 different series. The "SF Masterworks" seeme to be fans-liked-it, while the "Fantasy Masterworks" is editor favorites.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#159

Post by auntienomen »

PleasureBot wrote: post #153
sherr wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Iain M Banks is science-fiction rather than fantasy, so I would not expect him in a "Fantasy Masterworks" series. The two genres have some over-lap but are distinct.

I believe the list encompasses both genres. The very first entry in the list "Book of the New Sun" is a sci-fi series.

Agree. In fact, I said the list included both genres in my original comment.

Re: My favorite cult sci-fi and fantasy books you may not have heard of before

#160

Post by krapp »

AlwaysRock wrote: post #150
krapp wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To be fair, that's a subjective difference in opinion, not an objective difference in type. Many people like "hard" sci-fi but not "soft" sci-fi, but that doesn't make them fundamentally distinct genres. By the numbers, Star Wars is far more grounded as science fiction that Star Trek, but people will insist the former is at best merely "science fantasy." It's really all just vibes.

> By the numbers, Star Wars is far more grounded as science fiction that Star Trek, but people will insist the former is at best merely "science fantasy." It's really all just vibes. The best rage bait I've seen in years.

Search your heart, you know it to be true.
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