My Book of Jalan is set within the StarCluster 2 universe - StarCluster 3 doesn't have an explicit setting -  and there are explicit links to the SF aspect, though one could also play it completely as a type of fantasy. I list it as a SF game though. The reason? I'm crap with fantasy. the only way I could get any handle on it at all was to treat it as SF.

-clash

See "Time Abyss" in The Encyclopedia of Fantasy, ed. John Clute & John Grant. New York: St. Martin's Griffin: 1999. (pp 946-47)

I'm a little rusty as I've not read a lot of fantasy in a while so bear with me. But here is how I see it.  

A lot of modern fantasy from the likes of David Gemmell, David Eddings of George R R Martin have no interest explaining where their fictional worlds fit in relation to our real world. These fictional are worlds might be populated with humans, feature a mix of Earth fauna and flora and some characters might even common have English names like "Robert", but crucially they are not Earth. They are not even an alternate version of Earth. They are just  spaces for stories to happen outside of any continuity beyond the author's own.

A lot of older fantasy did try to relate the fictional world to the real world. They would either set the adventures in a mythical past like Hyboria or Tolkien's Middle Earth (I think), have Earth characters cross over into an alternate reality (Narnia, Thomas Covenant) or set the fantasy world on a distant planet technically somewhere in our universe, possibly someplace humans have colonised like Dragonriders of Pern.

What's the appeal? I guess if your fictional world is going to be draw a lot on things which exist (or existed) in the real world, at least you have an explanation for it.  But it now seems like an unnecessary overhead as I think most people are happy enough to just accept the genre conventions without over-thinking things.

How about Gramarye, world of Christopher Stasheff's The Warlock In Spite of Himself (1969)? It was colonized by devotees of Creative Anachronism, because Role-Play Gamers had not yet been invented. Eventually, the new Galactic polity sent an agent to make the medieval world safe for (what else?) Democracy.

Quote from: flyingmice;462307My Book of Jalan is set within the StarCluster 2 universe - StarCluster 3 doesn't have an explicit setting -  and there are explicit links to the SF aspect, though one could also play it completely as a type of fantasy. I list it as a SF game though. The reason? I'm crap with fantasy. the only way I could get any handle on it at all was to treat it as SF.

-clash

Well, the first thing is that Fantasy is about symbolism and Science Fiction is about speculation.  Something I've been trying to manage in a magic system for a couple of years now.  With magic you don't ask "What is the volume and mean temperature of a fireball?" you ask "What does fire symbolize and what does it do in that context?"

Incidentally I got a spam with your name on it the other day.  The name's unique and specific enough that I can't help but think you've been hacked somewhere.

Quote from: Soylent GreenBut it now seems like an unnecessary overhead as I think most people are happy enough to just accept the genre conventions without over-thinking things.

So, 4000 pages of the Wheel of Time with all its background details -- including that the time between occurrences of one of the Seven Ages is enough to wipe out all records of the last one -- is not "over-thinking things", but using a planet-girdling subway system as a vehicle for a travelogue (in M.A. R. Barker's Flamesong) is?

Detailing a descent through the Circles of Hell guided by Virgil is fine and dandy, but when Tumithak of the Corridors finds his way through subterranean passages to the surface and confronts alien conquerors it is somehow improper that he is a man of Earth and they are from another planet?

The history of Dark Sun or Talislanta or Eberron or New Crobuzon is legitimate, but not that of Jorune or the Dying Earth, Krishna or Tschai? The cosmology of Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms or Planescape or Glorantha, but not that of Tekumel or Urth?

What an unnecessary overhead of a double standard!

Quote from: David Johansen;462318Well, the first thing is that Fantasy is about symbolism and Science Fiction is about speculation.  Something I've been trying to manage in a magic system for a couple of years now.  With magic you don't ask "What is the volume and mean temperature of a fireball?" you ask "What does fire symbolize and what does it do in that context?"

Perhaps. I obviously don't understand fantasy, so I couldn't say yea or nay, David. fantasy used to make sense to me, but it's gone now. Totally burned out. I have great trouble even reading it anymore.

QuoteIncidentally I got a spam with your name on it the other day.  The name's unique and specific enough that I can't help but think you've been hacked somewhere.

Oh, my yahoo account was hacked. As far as I can see it is fixed now. Sorry about that!

-clash

I am happy to forget (as Eddison himself quickly seems to) that Mercury is the supposed stage upon which play out the events of The Worm Ouroboros (and yet Lessingham's appearance in the beginning seems to resonate a little with the Mezentian trilogy).

William Hope Hodgson's choice of narrator in The Night Land is an anachronism that can make it a bit hard to get into the main story. That the latter is set in the distant future of our world, however, seems to me quite appropriate.

I really like the proto-earth concept of Exalted. The idea that the world is still being created from magic and that's why things are so crazy...

I also love the super far future earth, like from the Panzer Dragoon games, where human society is based around reclaiming ancient, magic-like technology, but runaway biotech has filled the world up with fantasy creatures.

It's all good by me man.

The only time I don't like it is when the author is trying to drive home some idea about politics like, "what if all the survivors were christian or communist or democratic or scientists or whatever."

Quote from: flyingmice;462324Perhaps. I obviously don't understand fantasy, so I couldn't say yea or nay, David. fantasy used to make sense to me, but it's gone now. Totally burned out. I have great trouble even reading it anymore.
-clash

I can still read Patricia McKillop and Lawrence Watt Evans but have a terrible time with any Dragon Lance or Warhammer stuff.

I wonder sometimes when I look at fantasy whether the problem is trying to put a fresh coat of paint on elves or whether the real problem is the stories people try to tell.

The introduction of the first volume of Kurt Buisek's Astro City where he talks about telling other stories with the superhero genre was very eye openning for me.  The idea being that most superhero stories are stories of adolescent fantasies.  Busiek expands the story's scope while using the same language of super heroes and battles the form has always used.  We start with the story of a man who works from dawn to dusk and is only free to be happy when he lays down to sleep.  From there there's the story of a sheltered little girl running away from her family so she can learn to play hopscotch.  A woman who crosses into another world and decides to go home when she sees it for what it is.  A brash young man makes a fool of himself.  A father in a dangerous job faces his fears for his child's future.  A convict tries to go straight against all odds.  An old man facing retirement drags a friend into a bad situation while trying to prove they're not too old.

Publishers mainly want fantasy trilogies about little guys going on a quest to face down an ultimate evil with the guidance of a kindly wizard.  There's authors who offer more.

Thinking over it some more...
Adding in a link to Earth actually does explain humans being there a little better when the world is genuinely and completely unlike our own. In Raymond Feist's world of Kelewan for instance (related to Tekumel ?), all the creatures worked off a 6-legged design, so humans clearly don't fit in. In a more generic fantasy cosmos where plants and animals are clearly Earthlike with deer and oak trees and whatever, there's less reason to have any link to Earth.

Others probably know more about it but supposedly Kelewan is a direct and deliberate rip off of Tekumel that has caused a fair bit of bad blood between the authors.

Quote from: Phillip;462320So, 4000 pages of the Wheel of Time with all its background details -- including that the time between occurrences of one of the Seven Ages is enough to wipe out all records of the last one -- is not "over-thinking things", but using a planet-girdling subway system as a vehicle for a travelogue (in M.A. R. Barker's Flamesong) is?

Detailing a descent through the Circles of Hell guided by Virgil is fine and dandy, but when Tumithak of the Corridors finds his way through subterranean passages to the surface and confronts alien conquerors it is somehow improper that he is a man of Earth and they are from another planet?

The history of Dark Sun or Talislanta or Eberron or New Crobuzon is legitimate, but not that of Jorune or the Dying Earth, Krishna or Tschai? The cosmology of Dragonlance or Forgotten Realms or Planescape or Glorantha, but not that of Tekumel or Urth?

What an unnecessary overhead of a double standard!

Sorry, other than Dante (which I did at school) I've not read any of the other works you mention so I can't comment on the specifics. My point was not about trying to make a value judgement saying that one approach is better than the other. I was just suggesting that in was the fashion in older fantasy to explain to the reader where the fantasy world exists in relation to the real world, more recent fantasy does not.  

The overthinking  comment was related to the fact that just just because, say, Game of Thrones has human character called John or Robert does not mean that in the distant past Earthmen somehow made contact with that world. They are just names the author felt worked within the context.

With very specific cultural reference like "House Atreides" from Dune,  the author is signalling that there probably is a link between the real world and the fantasy world.

Quote from: Soylent GreenI was just suggesting that in was the fashion in older fantasy to explain to the reader where the fantasy world exists in relation to the real world, more recent fantasy does not.

I think you may be using too small a sample for such a claim to be really meaningful. Confirmation bias can accomplish marvelous things!

I do not think that really was all you were suggesting, but I will take you at your word to the extent of leaving it at that.

A detail is often included in a story because it is in some way part of the story. Symbolism, plot, philosophical argument, internal consistency, atmosphere, evocation of other stories -- there are many aspects that a story teller weaves together, even if some are not consciously considered but "just feel right".

Darkover, for example, is what it is because Bradley originally considered interaction between the Darkovans and the Terrans central to her stories. For some time she resisted the appeals of fans for stories set in the ages before recontact.

Quote from: David Johansen;462333I wonder sometimes when I look at fantasy whether the problem is trying to put a fresh coat of paint on elves or whether the real problem is the stories people try to tell.

... Publishers mainly want fantasy trilogies about little guys going on a quest to face down an ultimate evil with the guidance of a kindly wizard.  There's authors who offer more.

I think John Clute nailed it with his distinction of Fantasy from "genre fantasy", the latter indicating the not-really-Fantasy stuff that predominates.

"Slick fantasy" is I think in that context the term for your "Astro City" kind of story. It used to feature a lot in magazines with slick (i.e., not 'pulp') paper. Ray Bradbury is widely regarded as the grand master.

As Fantasy is related to Myth, there is the sort of repetition and recycling that folks such as Sir James Frazer, Carl Jung, Robert Graves and Joseph Campbell have pointed out.

There is a difference, though, between work that a writer brings up from his or her own archetypal depths of the Ocean of Story, informed by real engagement with stories that truly moved him or her, and work that merely imitates some superficial elements of one or another real Fantasy. The latter process has become very incestuous and recursive.