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The artificial barriers erected between Science Fiction and Fantasy have been collapsing
for a decade or two now. Indeed, most book stores gave up trying to determine the difference
long ago. The boundary was always a little blurry, of course, and almost always open to
discussion. The main reason for this is the common origin (or shared history) of the Pulp genre.
Both Fantasy and Science Fiction became popularized in American Pulp magazines in the first half
of the Twentieth Century. (You have no idea how much I feel like a Real Science Fiction Writer
after penning that last phrase!) Many of the Pulp writers sold to several of the magazines at
once. For those of us who collect the writings of specific authors, this made things especially
hard.
"Do I collect such-and-such an author's Fantasy/Detective/Wierd Tales stories too, even
though I do not usually read them? They're well-written, but . . ."
There is also another, more logical, reason which made it difficult to draw a hard
boundary. If Science Fiction's big question has always been "What if . . ."
then Alternate Universes have long been a favorite mechanism for exploring the answer. Most
of the magical and non-historical writing conventions used in Fantasy could be explained by
simply implying or assuming that the action all took place in some alternate universe.
Bob Heinlein's tale "Elsewhen" from 1941 comes to mind as one of those stories
which could never be classified. In the story, Professor Arthur Frost (and thus the author)
describes time as a three-dimensional landscape over which we roam. The characters in the story
are then set free to choose for themselves what paths they wish to take (using a method assumed
to be scientific). Most of the paths that the characters choose create for them little tales of
Fantasy. This story is usually anthologized in a volumn named Assignment in Eternity. My
personal copy dating from the '60s or '70s contains a blurb on the back cover describing the
contents as "prophetic stories of the future," and bills the author as
"the dean of Science Fiction."
Recently, several authors have been deliberately confusing the issue by writing on themes
that cross the old boundaries invented in the Pulp era. Glen Cook's "Garrett,
P.I." series of books deliberately crosses the boundary between Fantasy and Detective fiction.
J. Gregory Keyes' series titled "The Age of Unreason" utilizes the Alternate Universe
literary convention of SF as the basis for something that the book's publishers are calling
"Historical Fantasy." And what is one to make of Kim Stanley Robinson's excellent
collection of Fantastic Adventure fiction titled Escape from Kathmandu?
Enter Philip Pullman. Mr. Pullman, of couse, writes about Alternate
Universes in his Fantasy series "His Dark Materials." The series is
composed of three novels The Golden Compass, The Subtle Knife,
and The Amber Spyglass. I had to buy the last in hard cover because I
could not wait for the conclusion. This is an unusually strong reaction from me -
especially for an author I hardly knew a year ago.
If you watch CNN or read their website, you might have seen a notice recently
(Jan. 23, 2002) announcing that Philip Pullman's The Amber Spyglass had won
the Book of the Year award in the annual Whitbread Book Awards. These awards have
been around about thiry years, and in all that time no "children's book"
or "fantasy novel" has won the award -- until now.
Mr. Pullman is quoted as saying that he's grateful for J.K. Rowling and her
Harry Potter books. "I've been flying under the flak that she's created.
People don't burn my books like they're burning poor old Harry," Pullman
is quoted by CNN as saying. I've got news, Mr. Pullman! These books will probably
be discussed and burned and pored over and discussed some more for many years to
come. There is no escaping the fact that you have written a true classic.
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