Random question

[author_by_night]

What differs adult fantasy from children's/YA fantasy? Or is there a difference?

I just told a friend that I don't consider Lord of the Rings a series for children, but I think The Hobbit is. (ETA: I worded the rest of that paragraph poorly, so I've edited it.)

Also, what exactly is the difference between sci fi/fantasy/action and adventure? For instance, with shows like Buffy and Supernatural, I keep hearing different genres being assigned. Some say fantasy, some say sci fi (which to me usually implies spaceships or something else that is  science based), some say it's just action.

I'd just like to hear your thoughts.

Comments

[drakyndra.livejournal.com]

Well, technically speaking, The Hobbit isn't a prequel, as it was written first and LotR came later on. And IIRC, it was designed to be a fairy-tale style children's story, whereas LotR was designed to be more of an epic quest (with lots of world-building).

And I'm not sure how you could call Buffy or Supernatural sci-fi, as I agree that implies something to do with science or technology; I'd call both fantasy since they involve the supernatural (duh) and some measure of magic or mysticism. They do both have strong action/adventure tendencies, though.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

Well, technically speaking, The Hobbit isn't a prequel, as it was written first and LotR came later on.

Yeah, I worded that badly.

And IIRC, it was designed to be a fairy-tale style children's story, whereas LotR was designed to be more of an epic quest (with lots of world-building).

Ahh, that makes sense. Because yeah, I could get into The Hobbit, whereas I couldn't get into LOTR, but at the same time, LOTR at least felt mature - The Hobbit was a good book, but felt less mature to me. (I was fifteen when I read it.)

[aggiebell90]

I think the lines blur, so it's hard to say, really.

Re: adult vs child/YA fantasy... I don't even know how to say what I'm trying to say. *snort*

I think, maybe, part of kid/YA lit is that the characters (especially the protagonists) are generally younger (or, maybe, not human or humanoid), so it's easier for a ten-year old, say, or a teenager, to relate to the characters. And I think it tends to, not dumb down, exactly, but maybe gloss over hard subjects. Like... like Harry being kept in a cupboard for ten years, or Ginny, with the diary.. You and I know that if they'd been real kids, they'd have been seriously damaged by that. If HP had been an adult series, I bet JKR would've touched on that damage more than she did, you know? But a kid isn't necessarily going to think about that when they're reading unless it's put out there in front of them. I think literature tends to be more open about things like that as the audience for the stories gets older (like how we saw HP get progressively darker).

I can't comment on The Hobbit vs LOTR because I haven't read them. (Don't shoot me! I could never get into either of them, and I tried multiple times. I just got bogged down in the words and couldn't ever find the story he was trying to tell.)

I do think it's possible for a prequel to be less mature, especially if it's the author's intent. So, like, if Tolkein meant The Hobbit to be an introduction to his world, so that when kids got older and started to read LOTR, they'd have a bit of background to work with, then sure, it absolutely can be less mature. (I have no idea if that was his intent, but it's a possibility).

I think, genre-wise, the lines tend to blur. I think sci fi can be fantasy and/or action/adventure, just like I think fantasy can be action/adventure and have some sci fi elements in it. I tend to see straight sci fi as more science or technology based, be it spaceships or mutant dinosaurs a la Jurassic Park--to me sci fi tends to focus on the science aspect of it.

Oooh, actually. This just came to me. I think sci fi seems to have some sort of basis in the "real world", in things that, while they may not be possible now, could conceivably be possible in the future. Like, I can see how it might be possible for us to live in space someday, and I can see how it might be possible to clone dinosaurs someday (not that it would be advisable, but that it might be possible).

Fantasy, to me, is more of a "this is a strange world with strange beings and it's not real and never can be real." I think. Maybe. Because where do you put the sci fi with the strange aliens, if strange beings are fantasy? Like I said, the lines blur.

I'd probably call Buffy and Supernatural either fantasy or, more likely, paranormal, rather than sci fi. And yes, they're action, too, but they're more than just action, because there's that...erm...supernatural, not really real aspect. Although I've never even seen a single episode of Supernatural, so me saying that is based on things I've seen around my flist and not out of any knowledge at all.

Straight action/adventure, to me, focuses on the action, and it's all based on things that could happen, right now (or, perhaps, have already happened in the past). I think action/adventure blends really, really well with fantasy and sci fi and paranormal fiction, though.

Did any of that make any sense at all??? These were really hard questions for me to answer, and I'm sort of just rambling off the things that pop into my head. And sorry for the tl;dr-ness of this comment. Like I said, I was rambling.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

I think literature tends to be more open about things like that as the audience for the stories gets older (like how we saw HP get progressively darker).

Exactly, and I do think the books touch on those subjects a little more as the series goes on, but never fully. I feel as though JKR hints more than tells, and leaves her older readers to decide for themselves.

I just got bogged down in the words and couldn't ever find the story he was trying to tell.

Me too. I made it just to the middle of The Two Towers before giving up. I couldn't even care about Frodo, which wasn't good considering we were supposed to be rooting for him.

So, like, if Tolkein meant The Hobbit to be an introduction to his world, so that when kids got older and started to read LOTR, they'd have a bit of background to work with, then sure, it absolutely can be less mature.

That's true, and when I think about it, in all fantasy series I've gotten into, things started out being lighter. Buffy went from being a show for Sabrina the Teenage Witch graduates to being intense and dark, even within that first season and much more so later on, and Harry Potter went from being a book series I'd have second graders reading to a book series I'd have freshmen in high school reading. In both cases, the audience was growing up, and both series also grew up.


Did any of that make any sense at all??? These were really hard questions for me to answer, and I'm sort of just rambling off the things that pop into my head. And sorry for the tl;dr-ness of this comment. Like I said, I was rambling.

You're not rambling at all - I think all of your points are very valid. :)

[scionofgrace.livejournal.com]

Ooo, question for the ages!

To begin with, The Hobbit was intended for children, as Tolkien wrote it to entertain his own kids. It was only afterwards that he realized that it fit into his Middle-Earth mythos, which is straight-up high fantasy and very "grown-up".

I kind of wonder if the difference between "children's" and "adult" literature has to do with how important it is for the audience to have had certain life experiences. Little kids might not get a YA book because it assumes that they've experienced the hormonal side of life. Adolescents don't quite connect with books that assume they've experienced adult life and its perspectives. But adults can read "down" because they remember what it was like to be a kid, and may get more out of the story now thanks to perspective.

As for sci-fi and fantasy, I don't think it's clear cut, but I generally assume that sci-fi is based on what is possible in our own world through the advancement of technology, while fantasy adds in things that are not. Which is how you can get "science fantasy" like Star Wars: part future science, part supernatural powers.

But that's just me. :-)

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

To begin with, The Hobbit was intended for children, as Tolkien wrote it to entertain his own kids. It was only afterwards that he realized that it fit into his Middle-Earth mythos, which is straight-up high fantasy and very "grown-up".The Hobbit for his kids, but hadn't realized the rest. :)

Which is how you can get "science fantasy" like Star Wars: part future science, part supernatural powers.

Huh, never thought about it like that, but you're right. Star Wars makes it clear before the start of every movie that it is not a "future space age" story - it's a galaxy far, far away.

[jncar.livejournal.com]

I think others have addressed the Hobbit/LOTR pretty well.

As for YA vs. adult, YA generally has teenage protaganists, childrens has "tween" protaganists. Also, as someone else said, children's never gets as dark or explicit as adult, and only the most "edgy" YA gets as dark and explicit as adult.

As for Buffy and Supernatural, they most definitely fit in the fantasy subgenre of "Urban Fantasy." In the publishing industry (which I'm more familiar with than film/TV) there is a fine line between urban fantasy and what is known as "paranormal romance." Both tend to have contemporary settings with paranormal/fantastical underworlds, but in urban fantasy, worldbuilding and some sort of adventure plot tend to take center stage, while in paranormal romance the romance is the main plot with anything else being secondary. Urban fantasy tends to be an action-packed genre, and any show/book/film with lots of action can be called action/adventure whether it is realistic, fantasy, or scifi. Action/adventure is sort of a catch-all category.

As for fantasy vs. scifi, from what I understand the lines between the two genres have become increasingly blurred over the decades. A good definition that I heard recently is that scifi is "The world as is might possibly be but isn't," and fantasy is "The world as is could never be." So where do you fit things like Star Wars or Stargate which have pretenses of technology more advanced than our own, but also full of thoroughly fantastical ideas like "the force" or symbiotic near-magical worm creatures that take over human bodies? They straddle the genres too much to be clearly labeled.

Which leads me to my favorite ever definition, which comes from author Orson Scott Card. He spoke primarily of books, but it could apply to film/TV as well. He said, (paraphrasing) science fiction has something metallic and futuristic on the cover, while fantasy has trees on the cover.

I love that definition.

[author-by-night.livejournal.com]

A good definition that I heard recently is that scifi is "The world as is might possibly be but isn't," and fantasy is "The world as is could never be."

I like that, although you're right, it does make things like Star Wars problematic. And even Firefly, for instance - the implication that River's psychic (and was before the alliance) adds a fantasy element, and there's flaws in the worldbuilding itself that, IMO, make the show a little less "could be" as well. I'm not sure I buy that humanity would set itself back that far, although there are possible explanations. (Did you ever finish watching Dollhouse? Without getting into any spoilers, it really felt like a setup for Firefly to me.)

ETA: Nevermind the Dollhouse part - I already wrote an entry about that and you replied. *Facepalm* Sorry!

[crystalnova.livejournal.com]

My idea of what separates scifi and fantasy is the tone of the book towards whatever new technologies/mystical creatures/etc. there are. By that I mean that a scifi book will explain its' aliens and lasers and whatnot as advances that have been made in science, discoveries of other sentient lifeforms as achieved by humans (accidentally or not), and so on. Fantasy explains that sort of stuff as just how it is, this is the world in which the character lives. It's more magical, requires more faith from the reader if they want to be drawn in. (Is it a laser beam as we know today with certain upgrades? Or is it magic we have learned to control?)

[sixth-light.livejournal.com]

The best distinction I've heard between sf and f is that sci-fi is about what people can do, and fantasy is about what people can be. Both use non-real contexts to highlight aspects of humanity, but they do it in slightly different ways. One is about explaining how; the other is about explaining why.

The technology v. magic thing is not a useful distinction, IMO - Eric Flint's 1632 series and S M Stirling's Emberverse don't use a bit of tech above late-twentieth-century, and in most cases well below, and both start with seemingly "magical events" - yet both are pretty firmly sci-fi. Supernatural is all about action-adventure and lots of guns, but it's totally fantasy, albeit urban fantasy, which as pointed out above is sort of its own beast.

Of course, there is massive overlap - c.f. Anne McCaffrey's Pern series or Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover, both of which are firmly in the realm of science fantasy. Or the Vorkosigan saga, which is set on a until-very-recently medieval-era planet, and is much more about the psychology of the heroes, but is 100% sci-fi, and more importantly, space opera (which is sort of the description for the epic version of sci-fi, and/or the we-don't-have-an-explanation-for-this-technology-but-we-promise-it's-not-magic sci-fi, epitomised best by David Weber's Empire from the Ashes trilogy.)

[ahigheroctave.livejournal.com]

It's funny, because I kind of think of SPN as sci fi/action but Buffy as more fantasy/drama. I don't know why. Maybe because Supernatural all comes down to Sam and Dean, two people fighting crime. And Buffy is more of a pre-destination thing where she was meant to be the slayer. And the whole witchcraft aspect of it. Not to mention the soul-having thing, that definitely sets it apart from different shows with vampires.

I think children's fantasy is more for the morals, or the happy endings, just like most children's literatue. They are still learning, so I define children's literature more as something that teaches them a lesson whether it be something simple like "it's bad to steal" or more complex like Charlotte's Web that teaches them about friendship and death.

Whereas, adult fantasy is more things you wish you were able to be, and tends to have more centers in love and struggle.

[baranduyn.livejournal.com]

I don't know. :D

A lot of my favorite books are categorized as for children or young adults. I prefer them because the best hit the big issues...good vs evil and what that is...as opposed to who is boffing whom which I don't care about unless I'm one of those boffing.

LOTR I would think would be YA because of the war and violence and that, but in America today because there are no poo words or boffing of any kind it's child safe.

Apparently blowing people up, okay, making new people, not so much.

I got nothin' except some tasty black grapes.

[chocolatepot.livejournal.com]

I would say that children's fantasy involves negligible amounts of maturation by the main characters, YA fantasy involves the main characters accepting their impending adulthood, and adult fantasy involves the main characters coming to a truer understanding of the world. And that fantasy = magic, magic realism = fantasy that literary fiction types like but don't want to call fantasy because they think fantasy is immature, supernatural = technically fantasy but the only magic stuff is magic species like vampires and werewolves, science fiction = magic stuff happens but it's because of science, action and adventure = there is no magic and science is at the level we know it to be, except maybe for some gadgets and a Macguffin. I also generally think of speculative fiction as science fiction or fantasy that involves some kind of what-if-people-discovered-something scenario, but I think that's just me.

So I would say that Buffy and Supernatural are both supernatural fiction. LotR is difficult for me to categorize because I don't particularly like it, but afaik it's more about Frodo and Sam's understanding of the world than them growing up in a YA way; the Hobbit would be children's because Bilbo becomes stronger but doesn't (iirc) change in character that much.