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<\/a><\/div>\nThere are two main genres of division I hear frequently. The first separates fantasy from scifi on primarily aesthetic<\/em> grounds. Both involve fantastical settings, but one tends to be all blinking lights and brushed chrome, while the other is all thatch and dragons. This probably isn\u2019t the definition we want to embrace, but I do want to give it credit as the standard surface criteria. If you\u2019re flipping channels, or browsing book covers, these atmospheric clues give pretty good positive predictive value. And, to their credit, these categories fit good and bad examples of the genre. (I\u2019ve seen plenty of attempts to narrow the definition so that lousy work won\u2019t fit, even when it\u2019s clear it\u2019s part of the tradition).<\/p>\n The distinction that comes back a little closer to what Steve Davidson was talking about in his original post<\/a>. Science fiction protagonists are more likely to be free of supernatural constraints. They\u2019re not as likely to be destined<\/em> for anything; they rise by their own merits. Of course, if you really stick to this kind of definition, Luke Skywalker, Jake Sully, and many others quickly get written off as fantasy protagonists in scifi drag.<\/p>\n But both genres can only flourish in a relatively narrow band of the \u201cself-made man \u2013 pawn of the gods\u201d spectrum. Take inscrutable powers and magics too far<\/a>, and you just end up with a mess, in either genre. Characters\u2019 choices aren\u2019t meaningful if their world is so chaotic and poorly explained that we can\u2019t estimate the consequences of their actions. And even without an in-book destiny, protagonists in any genre can end up out of step with normal causality due to what Noah Berlatsky calls<\/a> \u201ca direct line to God\u201d \u2013 the author pulling them into situations where individual choices have an impact completely out of proportion with the agency of non-fictional people.<\/p>\n Ultimately, I\u2019m less interested in the difference between science fiction and fantasy and more intrigued by the boundary between those fictional worlds and our own. William Gibson pointed out, \u201cThe future is here; it\u2019s just unevenly distributed,\u201d reminding those of us privileged enough to live in developed countries of the enormous technological power at our command. But despite our quasi-lightsabers<\/a> and HIV-doped cancer-killing T-cells<\/a> (cf. xkcd\u2019s reaction<\/a>), I\u2019d say we come perilously close to living in a fantasy.<\/p>\n We are surrounded by powerful artifacts that can only be placated by an arcane priesthood of technicians (and our awe\/dread of them was well predicted by Asimov\u2019s Foundation<\/em><\/a>). Apple and others have taken Clarke\u2019s Third Law (\u201cAny sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.\u201d) as a divine design commandment. They provide machines that appear seamless and actively frustrate any attempt to see how they tick<\/a>. This is a hobby-horse of mine (it showed up in two of my favorite papers in college<\/a>), so I won\u2019t beat you all over the head with it. I\u2019m just wondering why we tend to turn up our nose at the ineffable magic aesthetic in fiction but embrace it in life.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/4.bp.blogspot.com\/-ucEafQU0B7s\/Tm-QYDcpQdI\/AAAAAAAABlo\/_opwmfMaYto\/s320\/apple-ipad-3.jpg\")
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