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The New York Times reports that Renowned fantasy writer Ursula K. Le Guin has died at age 88. From the article:
Ursula K. Le Guin, the immensely popular author who brought literary depth and a tough-minded feminist sensibility to science fiction and fantasy with books like "The Left Hand of Darkness" and the Earthsea series, died on Monday at her home in Portland, Ore. She was 88.
Her son, Theo Downes-Le Guin, confirmed the death. He did not specify a cause but said she had been in poor health for several months.
I'm not a fantasy fan (except for Prachett and Tolkien), but she will be missed none the less. I'm sure quite a few Soylents are fans of hers. Any author's loss is a loss to us all.
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I just wanna ride on my motorsickle.
And I don't want to die,
I just want to ride on my motorcy.
Cle.
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(Score: 3, Interesting) by letssee on Thursday January 25 2018, @10:46AM (8 children)
Both, mixed.
In a way, fantasy and sf are the same genre imho. SF purports to be 'realistic, in the future', but if you replace the 'future science' with 'magic' they are the same genre more or less.
Good fantasy has rules for the magic, too. Which makes Earthsea good fantasy btw.
Both genres give a writer the freedom to break free from the constraints of realism and to explore interesting ideas without bothering if they are even possible. I'd lump in 'magic realism' and surrealism in the same category. Though you can always split out the categories further if you want to of course :-)
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 25 2018, @12:13PM (4 children)
science fiction: no accepted scientific "truths" are contradicted by the in-story universe, but speculations are made about the unknown. In this sense, worm-holes are hyperspace stuff are still ok, but this may change.
fantasy: the in-story universe has its own set of laws. I like those fantasy universes that have a certain degree of self-consistency, but not all of them do.
For instance "Frankenstein" was sci-fi when written, but it is now fantasy.
Same with "To the Moon and Back" (although it's arguable whether or not scientists would have tolerated those ideas, especially since one of the characters in the story itself says that the bullet will melt and the humans won't survive).
(Score: 2) by Oakenshield on Thursday January 25 2018, @04:27PM (1 child)
I always thought Frankenstein was traditionally considered part of the horror genre.
(Score: 2) by darnkitten on Friday January 26 2018, @07:51PM
For what it's worth--according to Stephen King, horror is a sub-genre of fantasy.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Thursday January 25 2018, @05:11PM (1 child)
If a dude can teleport "because science" it's sci-fi. If a dude can teleport "because magic" it's fantasy.
no accepted scientific "truths" are contradicted by the in-story universe,
You think faster-than-light travel doesn't violate accepted scientific principles?
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday January 26 2018, @06:57PM
Wormholes and warped space are both theoretically possible. When Star Trek came out, self-opening doors, flip phones, flat screen displays, voice-activated computers with realistic images were all fantasy and are now all commonplace. A real hospital today looks more like science fiction than McCoy's sick bay.
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 2, Informative) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday January 25 2018, @12:26PM (2 children)
I would consider true science fiction writers to be people like Andy Weir (he admitted taking a few liberties with scientific fact in The Martian), Charles Sheffield (The Compleat McAndrew, among others), Jack McDevitt, Peter Watts, and Cory Doctorow. They tend to write stories with a setting like, "what would happen to society and human interaction if the following not-yet-proven-to-be-impossible technology was invented?".
The other side is futuristic space fantasy: Star Wars, Star Trek, writings by Frank Herbert, Peter Hamilton, David Drake, David Weber, and countless others. Space Opera.
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Friday January 26 2018, @07:04PM (1 child)
Andy Weir (he admitted taking a few liberties with scientific fact in The Martian)
Citation? The only scientific mistake I saw in the book was that a 200 mph wind on Mars wouldn't knock a rocket down, but that wasn't known until the book was already a couple of years old. The cover has astronauts (who are mostly scientists and engineers) praised its accuracy greatly, as did astrophysicist Neil DeGrasse Tyson about the movie (the movie had a glaring error; sound is very different at different pressures. In the airlock the alarm would rise in pitch and volume as it was pressurized).
mcgrewbooks.com mcgrew.info nooze.org
(Score: 1) by bobthecimmerian on Thursday February 01 2018, @12:13PM
Interview with Andy Weir, he starts to go into the inaccuracies at about the 13:45 mark: https://twit.tv/shows/triangulation/episodes/163 [twit.tv]