What is the difference between science fiction and fantasy in films. What is the difference between fantasy and science fiction

» S. Lukyanenko - all these sensational series, beautifully filmed and attracted many fans, undoubtedly belong to the designated genre.

At the same time, the closest relative of fantasy - science fiction - has significantly lost its positions in the 21st century. What is the secret of such popularity of fantasy? How is fantasy different from science fiction? Let's try to figure it out point by point.

Similarities and differences between fantasy and science fiction are summarized in the table

Confrontation between the forces of good and evil

For science fiction either such a confrontation is not typical, or it is expressed less unambiguously. At the end, the reader most often finds himself with an unanswered question: who is right and what was the best way to do it.

Fantasy provides an unequivocal answer to moral questions and this, apparently, captivates in our age of constant change and uncertainty. It's like good fairy tale, helps the reader to navigate the moral choice and remember simple but important truths.

special world

The world of fantasy is always a world of pure fantasy, for good reason, because the word itself hints at it. The flight of the author's imagination is practically unlimited: different historical eras and their unexpected combinations (pistols and blasters from the inhabitants of the Middle Ages), mythical and fairy tale characters acting on the pages of the book (dragons, orcs, knights round table), magic and supernatural phenomena in everyday life.

What is the difference between fantasy and science fiction

The world of science fiction is always more homogeneous, sustained in a single style and populated by author's characters, without introducing a global culture in the form of Baba Yaga or genies. Of course, every rule has exceptions, it is enough to recall some of the novels of the Strugatsky brothers, the same "".

Everything in science fiction is subject to rational explanation. Even the most daring assumptions are justified scientifically, and often with the involvement of new theories, recent real discoveries. So this genre helps to comprehend scientific developments to draw conclusions about their future.

The main distinguishing feature of fantasy

It is not surprising that in our age of scientific explanation of everything and complete rationality in life, it is no longer science fiction that comes to the fore, but fantasy. Too much science has already become boring in everything, for relaxation a person needs to dream freely, without substantiating his fantasies and not trusting the lyrics with mathematics.

It's beautiful distinguishing feature fantasy, the main highlight that attracts many fans to the genre. The future writer should keep this in mind and not bring unnecessary explanations from an alien scientific field. In general, you should not try to explain everything to the reader, leave room for his imagination.

Hero development

Fantasy is related to the fairy tale by the way the main characters develop throughout all the ups and downs and adventures that fall to their lot. Just as Ivanushka the Fool becomes Ivan Tsarevich at the end of the tale, so the fantasy hero very often changes dramatically for the better.

The reader rejoices, empathizing with the changes of the hero, perhaps even experiencing own dreams about changing yourself and your life. Let him feel it through your book! Let difficulties temper the heroes, and moral choice helps to become wiser, because this is what attracts many people to the fantasy genre.

How are science fiction heroes different from fantasy heroes?

Science fiction is much less likely to show the whole path of becoming a hero from beginning to end. Much more often, the characters are initially set and almost do not change over time, everything is focused on action or rational explanations.

"Between past and future..."

Science fiction strives forward, wants to predict the changes that will follow in society after the next discovery, or even completely anticipates the development of science. The brave mind of science fiction writers opens up new horizons for scientists, raises questions that require a scientific answer.

It is not for nothing that in his works he anticipated the discovery of a helicopter and a submarine, described a space rocket and interplanetary flights long before their technical development, and became the first to imagine the world of virtual reality.

What is the difference between fantasy and science fiction in literature

fantasy in literary plan it's not that far behind, no. The genre is simply directed in the opposite direction and does not seek to predict. For fantasy, it is more important not to find out what will happen to the world in ten or fifty years, but to find a foothold in our reality, to comprehend what is already happening.

No matter how the world around changes, a person’s life goes through certain stages, which in Ancient Egypt, what in modern Russia, and you need to live it, discovering not rockets with spacesuits, but hidden patterns and rules. Each person finds simple truths for himself, it is impossible to teach them, just as it is impossible to make someone wise. The fantasy writer only helps the reader ask such questions at all, but that's a lot.

Social innovation

The fantasy world, like no other, is inhabited by many different races. Almost no book is complete without such a division, no matter who it will be in each case - beautiful elves and rude orcs, or vampires and mere mortals. The starting point for the development of the plot in fantasy is the conflict between them, the tension intensifies, causing wars, upheavals in the fantasy world.

It is easy to see parallels with real life where it is so difficult to find peace and easy coexistence, not only between nations, but even between generations of the same family. The fantasy writer sets himself the difficult task of somehow resolving this eternal conflict in his work. To do this, he uses all the forces of the genre: the characters come to grips with their enemies, develop themselves and see changes in opponents, interact with each other and find allies, reveal traitors. And, finally, they defeat enemies or reconcile with them.

The difference between fantasy and science fiction in terms of philosophical ideas

Science fiction can also be strong in thinking about society, just remember stories about androids and people. But these are always more abstract philosophical questions, while problems specific person allows you to metaphorically experience the struggle of magicians or vampires in a simple and colorful world fantasy. There is definitely a psychological background, and a psychotherapeutic effect of reading.

Historical approach

No genre attracts young people to the study of history as much as fantasy. Authors of pure historical novel never achieved such popularity, and even more so did not inspire their fans to go out into the field with a forged sword, as at Tolkienist rallies.

The difference between fantasy as a genre that popularizes history

Due to its high popularity, fantasy makes the world in which the characters operate popular, interesting to study. It is no secret that fantasy writers are very fond of the Middle Ages and their romance with beautiful knights, magic that organically fits into the lifestyle and proximity to the animal world and nature. Although there are practically no times left and real-life countries in which fantasy adventures would not take place.

One can only rejoice when the passion for books develops into good knowledge cultures of other countries, education of the reader. Fantasy, like no other genre, helps to be sincerely interested in and love history.

Dreams become new reality

The most important thing in fantasy is a swift, unlimited flight of fancy. The writer's fiction helps the reader to start fantasizing on their own, to invent own worlds and their rules. Fantasy has a truly healing effect for the soul, because it allows you to a short time completely distracted from worldly adversity and everyday life. At the same time, it does not lead to the world of fruitless dreams, because fantasy is one of the genres most associated with morality and morality. It is almost impossible to name books of this genre in which evil would win and be justified. There is no cynicism in fantasy, exaggeration of the gloomy sides of life, hopelessness.

Neither science fiction nor realistic novel can not be compared with fantasy in kindness and humanity. One can only hope that it is not in vain that this light genre has become popular, that it is really capable of changing something in readers and life itself for the better.

All children love fairy tales. And older children even more so. Only their fairy tales are scarier, but more interesting. Here you won’t be surprised by the Frog Princess, and cunning writers have come up with a genre that helps to escape from reality into fairy world quite "adult" scale. Fantasy world. This genre is perhaps one of the oldest genres of literature, because ancient greek myths and the legends also belong to fantasy genre. In addition, fiction is very diverse, including many varieties, including science fiction and fantasy. The similarity of names and the fact that in the nineteenth-twentieth century science fiction gained immense popularity led to the fact that when we talk about science fiction, we mean science fiction, and fantasy in general separate genre do not highlight. Let's try to draw a line between two genres of science fiction: science fiction and fantasy.

Definition

There are a huge number of definitions of both science fiction and fantasy. Let's dwell on the most common.

Verbatim Science fiction translated as "scientific fiction". It can be defined as a variety fantasy literature and art, which is based on scientific assumption, supplemented by the imagination of the author. These fantasies can develop not only on the basis of technological realities, but also historical, cultural, spatio-temporal, etc. Science fiction isn't just about wizardry and magic.

A frame from the sci-fi film "Professor Dowell's Head"

But fantasy fills this gap. And at the heart of this genre lies the free flight of fantasy, not limited by scientific boundaries. Fantasy is a kind of science fiction, which is based on the flight of imagination of the author who is not limited by the framework. scientific progress or regression. The fantasy world develops thanks to mystical elements, as well as magic and sorcery. Translated from English as fantasy.

Emergence

Again, many people think that science fiction appeared only at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But this is not true. As it was written above, myths and legends belong to fiction. different peoples. Fantastic literature developed both during the Renaissance (utopian works) and throughout the Middle Ages (romantic fiction). But science fiction, as a genre, just appeared thanks to the scientific and technological progress of the nineteenth century. The pioneers of the genre were Jules Verne, in the USSR - A. Tolstoy, A. Belyaev.

But the founding father of fantasy is JRR Tolkien with his famous Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again). Then the idea of ​​good (and not so) gnomes, elves and goblins was picked up by other writers. But the peak of fantasy popularity came in the nineties of the twentieth century. To this day, fantasy is the most popular view fiction that has supplanted science fiction.

Some works stand, as it were, at the junction of these genres, for example, the work of Ursula Le Guin. Her works are sometimes classified as fantasy, sometimes as science fiction. This is exactly the case when one genre smoothly flows into another.

Subgenres

There are not very many science fiction subgenres. We will simply list the main typical representatives of this subgenre: technological fiction (R. Heinlein), cyber fiction (A. Clark), sociological (Orwell). Each of these subgenres experienced a peak in popularity during a particular decade of the twentieth century. But in the past few decades, science fiction literature has been supplanted by the fantasy genre in all its manifestations.

There are a lot of fantasy genres. Moreover, with the development of the Internet and computer games, this genre won another niche for itself. The most common subgenres are magical, mystical and scientific.

Also, fantasy is closely intertwined with other literary genres, giving rise to a fantastic detective story or a fantastic action movie.

Findings site

1. Science fiction is based on scientific facts, the basis of fantasy is magic.
2. Science fiction literally translates as scientific fiction, and fantasy as fantasy.
3. The foundation for the birth of both genres was science fiction. Science fiction appeared at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and developed rapidly throughout the twentieth century. Fantasy appeared in the middle of the century.
4. Science fiction is going through better times, and fantasy, on the contrary, develops, giving rise to more and more new genres.

Science fiction and fantasy are two genres in literature, cinema, fine arts having similar features. The main similarity is that the authors of science fiction and fantasy works deliberately do not strive for the plausibility of the narrative. The action can take place in an alternate reality, and the characters can be fantasy creatures. However, science fiction and fantasy differ in that they have different: stylistics, typical characters, the main conflict. In addition, the authors different approaches to the description and explanation to the reader of the laws of alternative reality.

Origins and development of fiction

It should be noted that the origins of literature and other forms of art, which describe unusual events and characters that do not exist in the real world, of course, are in folklore. IN folk myths, legends and fairy tales, we see the first examples of fantastic assumptions. The heroes of these folklore works often have inhuman strength, live longer than ordinary people, or can affect objects and living beings with the help of magic. In addition, the heroes of legends and fairy tales themselves often turn out to be mythical creatures themselves.

Interest in literature, which used folklore motifs, has always been. These were both purely entertainment works and cautionary tales.

In the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, humanity was at the stage of technological and scientific upsurge. Scientists, inventors, engineers and designers have done a lot significant discoveries and inventions: steam engine and internal combustion engine, telegraph, telephone, atomic structure, automobiles, aircraft, etc.

People were interested in what the world of the future would be like, how the development of technology would affect the lives of their descendants. Public interest in everything scientific has generated new genre literature - science fiction. The first works of this direction appeared already in the second half of the 19th century. One of the fathers of this genre is Jules Verne. The key feature of fantastic works is that some significant technical innovation or a hitherto unknown law of nature is introduced into the narrative.

Initially, when society was optimistic about technical progress, the action took place in a utopian technologically advanced world. We see such enthusiasm in the works of Jules Verne and HG Wells. Since the beginning of the 20th century, ideas have appeared that the development of technology leads to the fact that people become soulless and become like machines themselves. These sentiments are reflected in the dystopian genre. These works most often depict the world of the future, in which science and technology have invaded absolutely all spheres of human life.

People of the future in dystopian works daily enjoy the benefits of civilization, but widespread automation leads to the loss human values: kindness, love, compassion. The institution of family and marriage is a thing of the past. At the same time, a person is considered not as a person, but as a cog in a single state mechanism. Therefore, one line of behavior, one ideology is imposed on the people of the future. Dissent is persecuted and suppressed. main motive dystopian works - the tragedy of a thinking and feeling person who opposes a soulless society.

Great public interest in the 20th century was attracted by space exploration. Therefore, works of the fantastic genre, in which flights on spaceships, the search for alien intelligence and the exploration of other planets, received great development. Initially, the authors tried to reflect the uniqueness of our world through comparison with other planets, they tried to suggest what kind of contact with the inhabitants of other planets would be. But in the future, these works began to be more entertaining in nature, and the genre was called "space opera".

The emergence of the fantasy genre

Contemporary genre fantasy began to take shape in the early 20th century. The work of John Ronald Reuel Tolkien had a huge influence on the formation of its basic laws and traditions. Interest in fantasy works arose against the backdrop of some reader fatigue from the endemic materialism that has reigned in prose since the mid-19th century.

People are tired of the overly rational world of the future. The answer to this was the genre of literature, in which there were folklore motifs, mythical creatures, adventure and magic.

Action in fantasy works most often takes place in a hypothetical world resembling Medieval Europe. In it, along with the laws of nature, the laws of magic operate.

Often this world is inhabited by magical creatures: elves, orcs, gnomes, trolls, etc. It is believed that chivalric novels that describe the era of the reign of King Arthur had a strong influence on this appearance of fantasy works.

Therefore, books of this genre often resemble historical adventure novels. The difference is only in the presence of an element of magic. Moreover, magic for the inhabitants of a fantasy world is a common occurrence that does not go beyond the norm.

This distinguishes fantasy literature from fairy tales, although some folklore stories the authors try to interpret their people in their own way. As a result, many fantasy works have a national flavor.

The difference in the description of the laws of the world order

IN fantastic works the plot often takes place in a world that is very far from the real one. However, more often than not, the author explains to the reader why the world has become exactly the way it is, which served as the starting point for the changes that have occurred. Usually, dramatic changes are associated with the invention of some revolutionary technology or the discovery of a hitherto unknown law of nature.

Often, writers in their works take not the present, but the past as a starting point and try to show what the world would look like if a technology other than reality came to the fore.

An example is the works of the subgenre "steampunk" ("steampunk"), where the authors depict a world in which production technology turned out to be dominant steam engines rather than internal combustion engines. In any case, the author of a science fiction work gives the reader scientific explanation arrangement of the world.

But writers working in the fantasy genre only describe alternate reality where the action takes place. However, there is no apparent connection with the real world not tracked. The laws of the universe are given to the reader as a given and are not explained in any way. At the same time, the existence of magic and intelligent races other than human is also the norm of the world described by the writer.

good and evil

In fantasy works, in one way or another, there is a struggle between light and dark forces. At the same time, the plot often begins with an incident that awakens the destructive forces of evil and forces the main characters to look for a way to save the world from destruction.

Either way, evil in fantasy classics is a person or mystical creature, which, with the help of magic, seeks to destroy or enslave all life. Many authors seek to move away from this tradition.

For example, in the works of Andrzej Sapkowski, strictly speaking, there are neither positive nor bad guys. And the global confrontation between "good" and "evil" is a military conflict between two political alliances, and not a battle between the forces of light and darkness. But, in any case, in fantasy works, the confrontation between the two forces is clearly visible.

In modern science fiction works, it often happens that one hero or a group of heroes opposes the whole society. Characters one way or another can fight with totalitarian state or a mega-corporation that controls society. Often this struggle looks futile and useless.

For example, in dystopian works main character, as a rule, dies or is forced to obey established order. It can also be said that the conflict in fiction is not between good and evil, but between imposed norms and the hero's desire for freedom. Heroes struggle to be "not like everyone else."

Mixing genres

Despite the differences between the genres of science fiction and fantasy, many authors try to combine the features of both in their works.

For example, there is such a subgenre as techno-fantasy, in which both technologies and magical arts exist and develop on an equal footing (the novel by N. Perumov and S. Lukyanenko "No Time for Dragons").

And the "science fantasy" subgenre is an offshoot of science fiction that features mythological motifs(for example, the novels of the Strugatsky brothers "Monday begins on Saturday" and "The Tale of the Troika").

Despite the canons of the genre, some fantasy novels are set in modern times. At the same time, magic and technologies familiar to us like television, cellular communications or the Internet successfully coexist (S. Lukyanenko's novels from the "Patrols" cycle).

All children love fairy tales. And older children even more so. Only their fairy tales are scarier, but more interesting. Here you won’t be surprised by the Frog Princess, and cunning writers have come up with a genre that helps to escape from reality into a fairy-tale world of a completely “adult” scale. Fantasy world. This genre is perhaps one of the oldest genres of literature, because ancient Greek myths and legends also belong to the fantastic genre. In addition, fiction is very diverse, including many varieties, including science fiction and fantasy. The similarity of names and the fact that science fiction gained immense popularity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries led to the fact that when we talk about science fiction, we mean science fiction, and fantasy is generally not singled out as a separate genre. Let's try to draw a line between two genres of science fiction: science fiction and fantasy.

Definition

There are a huge number of definitions of both science fiction and fantasy. Let's dwell on the most common.
Verbatim Science fiction translated as "scientific fiction". It can be defined as a kind of fantastic literature and art, which is based on a scientific assumption, supplemented by the imagination of the author. These fantasies can develop not only on the basis of technological realities, but also historical, cultural, spatio-temporal, etc. Science fiction isn't just about wizardry and magic.
But fantasy fills this gap. And at the heart of this genre lies the free flight of fantasy, not limited by scientific boundaries. Fantasy is a kind of science fiction, which is based on the flight of the author's imagination, not limited by the framework of scientific progress or regression. The fantasy world develops thanks to mystical elements, as well as magic and sorcery. Translated from English as fantasy.

Emergence

Again, many people think that science fiction appeared only at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. But this is not true. As it was written above, myths and legends of different peoples belong to fantasy. Fantastic literature developed both during the Renaissance (utopian works) and throughout the Middle Ages (romantic fiction). But science fiction, as a genre, just appeared thanks to the scientific and technological progress of the nineteenth century. The pioneers of the genre were Jules Verne, in the USSR - A. Tolstoy, A. Belyaev.
But the founding father of fantasy is JRR Tolkien with his famous Bilbo Baggins (The Hobbit, or There and Back Again). Then the idea of ​​good (and not so) gnomes, elves and goblins was picked up by other writers. But the peak of fantasy popularity came in the nineties of the twentieth century. And to this day, fantasy is the most popular type of fiction, having supplanted science fiction.
Some works stand, as it were, at the junction of these genres, for example, the work of Ursula Le Guin. Her works are sometimes classified as fantasy, sometimes as science fiction. This is exactly the case when one genre smoothly flows into another.

Subgenres

There are not very many science fiction subgenres. We will simply list the main and typical representatives of this subgenre: technological fiction (R. Heinlein), cyber fiction (A. Clark), sociological (Orwell). Each of these subgenres experienced a peak in popularity during a particular decade of the twentieth century. But in the past few decades, science fiction literature has been supplanted by the fantasy genre in all its manifestations.
There are a lot of fantasy genres. Moreover, with the development of the Internet and computer games, this genre has won another niche for itself. The most common subgenres are magical, mystical and scientific.
Also, fantasy is closely intertwined with other literary genres, giving rise to a fantastic detective story or a fantastic action movie.

TheDifference.ru found the following differences between science fiction and fantasy:

Science fiction is based on scientific facts; fantasy is based on magic.
Science fiction literally translates as scientific fiction, and fantasy as fantasy.
The foundation for the birth of both genres was science fiction. Science fiction appeared at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and developed rapidly throughout the twentieth century. Fantasy appeared in the middle of the century.
Science fiction is now going through hard times, and fantasy, on the contrary, is developing, giving rise to more and more new genres.

If you ask the first person you meet about this, then, most likely, he will answer that it is not important for him, the main thing is that the plot is interesting. If you ask this question to specialists of a narrow profile, then it will cause a huge amount of emotions and a debatable struggle for the right of this or that definition to be correct, and this question will generally be considered incorrect.

But for a wide range readers and viewers, science fiction and fantasy are fascinating literary genres in the spirit of an unusual, unrealistic, but surprisingly interesting idea. To figure out whether it is possible and necessary to compare them, let's start in order.

Fantasy - translated from Greek, means the art of imagination. The emergence of fantasy as a literary movement began in the 19th century with the growth scientific and technological progress and is associated with the names of Herbert Wells and Jules Verne. In Russia, the first science fiction writers were Alexander Veltman, Vladimir Odoevsky, Alexander Bestuzhev-Marlinsky, and later the world learned the names of the Strugatsky brothers, Ivan Efremov, Alexander Grin, Alexander Belyaev. A close connection with science separated science fiction from fiction and attracted people, one way or another connected with scientific knowledge: scientists, students, people of technical professions. That is, initially science fiction assumed precisely science fiction, trying to logically explain the basic ideas about a person, his world and the theoretical possibilities of his abilities in the future. That is, the main thing in this definition is the future.

Since the middle of the 20th century, the concept of "fantasy" has significantly expanded the scope of its definition. In the 1970s and 1980s, science fiction itself underwent a series of changes that brought it closer to the general literary stream, simplifying the scientific framework and previously defined rules. Gradually, under the familiar concept of "fantasy", the works of authors related to mysticism, "horror" (horror literature), fantasy (magic, magic fiction), etc. began to be understood. That is, fantasy literary direction, if it can be compared, it is with science fiction, and not with science fiction in general.

fantasy suggests free fantasy(apparently from this words happened) without any explanation. This is a kind of fantastic literature that allows for everything irrational, supernatural - sorcerers, Gods, wizards, etc.

Initially, fantasy assumes an unknown, unidentified and inaccessible past to our consciousness, in which all the usual laws of physics, mathematics, logic, etc. are violated. For example, magic that denies the laws of gravity, conservation of energy, any causal relationship. Although there are versions that magic is just the same very well thought out and calculated field of knowledge, but we must make a reservation that paranormal knowledge. In other words, fantasy is where the magic is, fantasy is where the physics is.

According to A. Sapkowski, fantasy is a genre or subgenre of science fiction, the founder of which is Howard, Lewis, Tolkien, Moorcock, Norton, Le Guin. He calls the main source of fantasy not fairy tale from our childhood (which is called folk epic), but the legends about King Arthur, which have very few analogues of this level. It was this archetype that became the prototype of most works of the fantasy genre, which is based on the opposition of Good and Evil, Progress and Destruction, and the Forces behind it. But also this salient feature fantasy, as a genre at the beginning of its development, is lost when compared with science fiction, because the struggle between light and dark is the basis of the literary concept of almost any work. As one of the critics noted, fantasy is what we guess from the very first lines of a book or the first minutes of a film, but we cannot explain and give an exact and specific definition.

There are dozens of genres in science fiction, from children's fantasy, magical realism, utopia and dystopia, "soft" science fiction to cyberpunk, space science fiction, techno-fantasy, apocalypse and post-apocalypse.

As you can see, fantasy is part of the fantasy world. But! IN early XXI centuries, these two concepts have merged, mixed and dissolved. If initially, science fiction is robots, starships, aliens, and fantasy is magicians, gnomes, swords and fairy-tale characters, then works where scientific discoveries committed by fantasy heroes and vice versa, where the entourage of one direction is superimposed on another and often the most competent critic is unable to determine where to attribute this or that film or literary creation.

This trend of synergy is characteristic of the entire scientific and non-scientific world. An era has come when a synthesis of knowledge is needed in all areas. The science recognizes paranormal activity and comments on biblical interpretations. Literary currents It's just a reflection of reality. The fusion of the concepts of scientific and non-scientific is dictated by an overabundance of information flows that merge with each other, creating new emotional sensations.