On Tue, 3 Feb 1998 09:34:47 EST "O.b. Leo" <[log in to unmask]> writes:
>In my humble opinion, Frankenstein belongs to the Horror more than the
>SF
>genre, though it does employ futuristic techonology. Would anyone
>care to
>help me draw the line? Or am I completely wrong. It's been a long
>time since
>I've read either Frankenstein or 20,000 Leagues.
>
>Thanks,
>She who lurks...
Not I. The "line" among "genres" is, with very limited exceptions, evil.
That's EVIL, EVIL, EVIL! The difficulty is that drawing the "line"
assumes that a given work must be A, but not anything except A.
Examples:
1984 (is this science fiction? no--utopian/dystopian fiction is a
"separate genre" with its own traditions and characteristics)
Brave New World (ditto)
The Handmaid's Tale (ditto, but this is also Menippean)
And yet I would count these as science fiction, too. Don't let the
marketing elves (a fantasy convention <g>--or maybe they're orcs?) tell
you what a book is. Only the book itself can do that, and at the
boundaries reasonable people will differ (whereas unreasonable people
will differ even in the core).
Here's another example:
Is fantasy part of science fiction, or is science fiction part of
fantasy? Which is the "pure" form? Does it matter? And this is before
we start talking about horror, "supernatural" or otherwise.
And, last but not least, does it matter whether _Frankenstein_ is horror,
fantasy, or science fiction? I think not. What matters is that it's
good literature (much better than, IMHO, Cooper, Melville, or Hawthorne)
and that it has inspired development by other writers. Whether it comes
from the utopian/dystopian branch of quasirealistic literature, or some
other branch, it's still part of the tree. And ultimately, what matters
is its quality, not its genre.
John Savage
You must not suppose, because I am a man of letters,
that I never tried to earn an honest living. --G.B. Shaw
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