Science Fiction (SF) is a fictional story or stories which depend upon speculation about the unknown -- at the time of writing -- in science, any field of science, but which do not, ideally, contradict anything actually known. Fantasy is a ficitional story or stories which depend upon the laws of nature differing from what they are known to be.

We all know what a story is: it is a narrative, in this sense, having an introduction, a series of crises culminating in a climax, and a denouement, or conclusion.

The story could be about cavemen and still be science fiction, thus the "any field of science" criterion. If anything actually known is contradicted, then the story becomes Fantasy.

In both "F&SF", the story must depend upon the speculation or changed law(s); take them away and the story cannot be told. This is a requirement for calling a story Fantasy or Science Fiction, otherwise we might have something such as "Magic Realism", in which the Fantasy is a supporting element only, or alternatively a general fiction story with an SF element.

Aside: Some have suggested that Science Fiction be renamed "Speculative Fiction", which might be fine as a replacement name. However, I think that the discipline provided by the term "Science" should be retained, if only to keep the definition clear.

In practice, much SF does or seems to contradict what is known. It is still charitably graced with the term, especially if its key point does not contradict what is known, and presents us with a new and fascinating area of inquiry.

Aside: "What is actually known" is, moreover, a slippery concept. It refers strictly to the results of controlled experiments. Thus a story that depends upon relativisitic phenomena not occurring with macroscopic objects in the same way that it does with microscopic objects might be true SF, as experiments (or at least all possible experiments) haven't been done with macroscopic objects. A few noteable experiments, familiar to educated people, (such as the famous orbit of Mercury observation) support relativity, but I have heard of an experiment whose results would seem to require substantially modifying the basis of the theory: killing it, to put it unkindly, although I believe the insights it provides would still make up a good deal of the replacement theory and that Einstein certainly contributed one whopping leap forward in science. The more experimental evidence backs up a scientific belief, the more it becomes Fantasy to contradict it.

Thus there is a spectrum of literature sliding from SF to Fantasy, the more that what is known is contradicted. On the SF end, we start with "pure" or "hard" SF that strictly contradicts nothing known.

Aside: scientific researchers could be thought of as doing the hardest SF possible, since they make hypotheses in the area in which things have not yet been tried. However, they are not concerned as such with making their speculations the linchpin of narratives, of course.

Perhaps there should be a clear dividing line or litmus test of whether the idea that the story actually depends upon does or does not contradict what is known. Superficial aspects of a story, such as "feel", or whether or not it has elves and dwarves in it, should not be considered. Some writers, such as Poul Anderson, are masters at writing SF with the "feel" of Fantasy. Anne McCaffery is good at it, too. A lot of so-called SF, such as "Star Trek", or any story featuring FTL (Faster Than Light) travel could really be considered Fantasy. The story may depend upon more than one idea, of which some may be fantasy and some may be science, in which case classification becomes more difficult, perhaps impossible, if the dependence by, or importance to the story of the fantasy point and the science point are equal. Due to progress in science, there is thus SF which can only be considered as such on the basis of grandfathering: it may have been SF when it was written, but is strictly so no longer. This can legitimately be kept as part of the definition.

So what is the common element of Fantasy and Science Fiction? What is the class definition of F&SF from which the two genres later diverge? It must be in the idea of speculation upon which the story depends: "suppose the world works in a certain way other than that in our experience". In Fantasy, this supposition contradicts what is known in our experience; in SF, this supposition is restricted to hitherto unexplored areas beyond the reach of our current experience. Thus the definition of "F&SF" would read: "A story or stories which depend for their telling on the supposition that their setting obeys laws of nature other than those in our experience". Literally, way-out stories.

F&SF is further classified as "fiction", which is thus "A story or stories about events that have not actually occurred".

Another category of fiction is "Historical Fiction", which is "A story or stories which contain speculation about past events". Note that there is not actual dependence upon the speculation in order to be able to tell the story in this genre; the speculation rounds out the story and helps to tell it. It has to be called fiction because it uses this speculation, and so it cannot quite be relied upon as an authoritative source; it does contain events, for example, spoken sentences, that may not have actually occurred.

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Updated July 25, 2005
Posted Nov 17, 2003