My Life In Fandom: Jeffro Johnson On SF-As-Fantasy Derivative

Last night on Twitter, Jeffro Johnson answered a question about how to explain Science Fiction is a subset of Fantasy. I reproduce the text below in its entirely; the Twitter thread starts with the question here.

Set the wayback machine for the early twentieth century. H. P. Lovecraft whose face was emblazoned upon the World FANTASY Award got his start by writing Dunsany pastiche. But his work would appear in not just Weird Tales but also the pages of Astounding SCIENCE FICTION.

Lovecraft today is hailed by luminaries like Stephen King as being the progenitor of the horror genre, but a look back in his era reveals that back then things were not so cut and dried. Well into the 70s the boundaries between fantasy, sf, and horror were quite ill-defined.

Now, what you've been told is that the golden age of science fiction began sometime in the 1940s, guided by the editorial hand of one John Campbell and exemplified by such authors as Asimov, Heinlein, and Clarke. Most people that get prickly about defining sf take this as gospel.

SF of course existed before 1940 and it was insanely popular. Burroughs's Mars stories inspired an entire generation of science fiction authors, scientists, and engineers. E. E. "Doc" Smith went beyond the formula for planetary romance and hurtled into full on space opera.

Now... you might pick up these books and thumb through them, and if you've been trained to respond like a whole raft of critics and editors have primed you to, you'll dismiss these works as puerile, worthless entertainment fit only for twelve-year-olds. Yadda yadda yadda.

Like Hari Seldon's dead hand, we have here a cultural revolution reaching out and gripping peoples minds. It is very very important to these people to separate the real science fiction from the bad stuff which includes not just the pulps, but also things like Star Wars.

Meanwhile... librarians and bookstore owners quietly go on shelving it in one big section called FantasyAndScienceFiction. Guys like Harlan Ellision might get huffy about that and beg to be mixed in with the "real" literature. Or get fancy and insist it's speculative fiction.

Now no one wants a genre war. It really is a tedious thing to hash out. And this one can get uglier than most. And your friend is a nice girl and should be spared being exposed to the sort of flame wars that happen whenever this subject comes up.

But I will argue that the aggressiveness of the "science fiction is NOT fantasy" (and also "that science fiction over there is NOT GOOD because it's pure fantasy) stems from a very specific cultural pulse that is not fun, not nice, and not all that honest.

There was a time when a war was declared on fantasy as being BAD FOR YOU. It was not consistent with progressive ideology in and had to go. You can see J. R. R. Tolkien react to this zeitgeist in the intro to LotR and also in On Fairy Stories. Serious business!

A consequence of this was that for a while, if people wanted to sell fantasy novels at all... they had to get packaged up as science fiction novels in order to make the sale! This period is best exemplified by works like The Fallible Fiend, Three Hearts & Three Lions, etc.

We don't live under that regime anymore. The generations-spanning influence of Burroughs, the incredible popularity of Tolkien's works, and the tremendous explosion of Star Wars in the late seventies pretty well settle who was correct about reality and human nature.

Fantasy was artificially suppressed for a time. But there eventually came one heck of a market correction! It is past time we laid to rest the pretensions that dark era was predicated on.

And only out here, in NewPub, will you find that spirit of old not only celebrated but wholly embraced as we make new stuff to carry on those fantastic adventures into our present age and into a future yet to come. Reavers of the Void is my work in that spirit, and there's not only more of that coming from me but plenty more of that from others also- and it's all available at Amazon.