Sci-Fi/Fantasy
I believe that the dichotomy between Science Fiction and Fantasy doesn't really exist. I do, however believe that there is a dicotomy based on story structure. I call them World and Realistic Sci-Fi and Fantasy. What's the difference?
World Sci-fi involves building universe from the ground up. It doesn't piggyback off of any concrete concepts except maybe historical and scientific fact and uses that to create its own internal logic which all the characters follow.
Often this is used to explore some kind of philosophical or social concept that is difficult to apply to the real world. Since we all know the "rules" of the real world, it is sometimes convenient to make new rules or break those rules for the purpose of either world building or allegory, which makes grafting that world onto our reality impractical and experience breaking, so they create a new one. Some examples include Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Avatar, the other Avatar, Fallout, Skyrim, and The Lord of The Rings.
Lying parallel yet opposite is Realistic Sci-fi where a scientific or fantastical concept is grafted onto the world as we know it. These stories can eventually evolve into their own universe (Twilight is a good example of this), but from the outset the setting is our world with a couple drastic tweaks.
Where World Sci-fi is a good engine for allegory, Realistic Sci-fi has nothing about it that inherently differentiates it from other types of fiction. You can take a Realistic Sci-Fi premise and drop it into historical fiction or Greek mythology or World Sci-fi Fantasy or just modern fiction without the fantastic elements and still have it play the same. That said, the merit of these works isn't in their hidden meaning, but in the characters and the story they tell. Some prominent examples include Time Between Us, Transformers, Back to the Future, Scott Pilgrim to some extent, and basically everything written by Stephenie Meyer.
I'm telling you this as an explanation for why on my site a lot of radically different works are lumped together under the same name. I fully understand that there is a dichotomy at play (and I'd probably reorganize the site to represent that, but I can't be bothered to do it) and you have now been informed as to what exactly that dichotomy is.
12/26/2015
World Sci-fi involves building universe from the ground up. It doesn't piggyback off of any concrete concepts except maybe historical and scientific fact and uses that to create its own internal logic which all the characters follow.
Often this is used to explore some kind of philosophical or social concept that is difficult to apply to the real world. Since we all know the "rules" of the real world, it is sometimes convenient to make new rules or break those rules for the purpose of either world building or allegory, which makes grafting that world onto our reality impractical and experience breaking, so they create a new one. Some examples include Star Wars, The Hunger Games, Avatar, the other Avatar, Fallout, Skyrim, and The Lord of The Rings.
Lying parallel yet opposite is Realistic Sci-fi where a scientific or fantastical concept is grafted onto the world as we know it. These stories can eventually evolve into their own universe (Twilight is a good example of this), but from the outset the setting is our world with a couple drastic tweaks.
Where World Sci-fi is a good engine for allegory, Realistic Sci-fi has nothing about it that inherently differentiates it from other types of fiction. You can take a Realistic Sci-Fi premise and drop it into historical fiction or Greek mythology or World Sci-fi Fantasy or just modern fiction without the fantastic elements and still have it play the same. That said, the merit of these works isn't in their hidden meaning, but in the characters and the story they tell. Some prominent examples include Time Between Us, Transformers, Back to the Future, Scott Pilgrim to some extent, and basically everything written by Stephenie Meyer.
I'm telling you this as an explanation for why on my site a lot of radically different works are lumped together under the same name. I fully understand that there is a dichotomy at play (and I'd probably reorganize the site to represent that, but I can't be bothered to do it) and you have now been informed as to what exactly that dichotomy is.
12/26/2015