I came across an interesting essay at Locus Online by Gabe Chouinard that made a interesting point about science fantasy being the next wave of Science Fiction and Fantasy (or just good ol' all-inclusive Speculative Fiction, my label-of-choice) literature.

This is interesting. He makes some good points in the article, but what really interested me was that he says that the majority of younger SF writers working today grew up not on just SF (like the previous generation of writers, the baby boomers), but both SF and fantasy.

That's definitely the case with me. "Star Wars" is often brought up when defining the term science fantasy, and that was pretty much one of the two definining moments for me as a speculative fiction writer, along with reading The Hobbit in the 5th grade for a class project. The genres start to overlap and bleed together in interesting ways, and that's pretty damn cool.

So I was curious, and a bit energized by the author's rant, so I did some Googling.

Here's a definition of "science fantasy" -- Fiction that treats scientific elements in a "fantastic" manner, or vice versa (it's a catchall for borderline cases) (from Pegasus Nest).

There's also a somewhat flawed, somewhat superficial article at suite101.com. And another interview with Ian Irvine I haven't read yet, but looks interesting...

All this noodling on my part (a nice procrastination effort, I must say) also nicely coincided with a post by reviewer Rich Horton, summing up the year at Strange Horizons in which he coins the term soft slipstream -- fantasy or near future SF (typically urbanish fantasy) with a mainstream flavor, conservative in telling, conservative in setting, with much interest in solid prose and good characterization. Sound maybe like science fantasy, folks?

Hmmm... Maybe I'm part of a Movement. Heh.

I liked what gonzo SF writer Charlie Stross had, among other things, to say in response to the Chouinard article: "Most importantly, there are two reasons why our current cultural shift might seem to demand fantasy. One is consumer-centred; the hypothesis that our entire culture is teetering on a knife edge of incipient future shock suggests as a corollary that readers want to escape into an experience that reaffirms their sense of permanence -- like most genre fantasy, which rarely questions or overturns the initially established order. (SF is a literature of revolution, and potentially disturbing to a readership who want reassurance.) But there's another hypothesis that needs to be addressed -- the possibility that the pace of change is currently so fast that predicting even the near future has become problematic for the majority of writers, and the producers are therefore shirking the hard task of doing so and retreating into fantasy (which, after all, sells solidly and is easier to extrude)."

Fantasy as high-calorie comfort food, SF as a spicy mix of the hottest Indian/Mexican/Jamaican/Chinese/name another culture food, sure to upset your stomach later... Makes sense to me!

All of these different articles have got me thinking, of course, of my near-future SF novel, The Wannoshay Cycle. I'd just emailed my friend Mark if he'd look at the ending of the novel to see if the SF elements got overwhelmed by what I felt was an overt fantasy element. At first I was worried about my ending (basically, the mother ship of the alien ship is "regrown" using the energy of a dying alien Elder, with no real explanation of the science that allows this to happen). So I guess the novel's firmly in the science fantasy camp. Whew.

So I'm continuing my research into this sub-genre, even though I think that in the final analysis, all these labels are just sort of silly, a time-sink, something for critics and bookshelvers to use to help categorize and lump work together. But damn -- China Mieville, Roger Zelazny, Michael Swanwick, Gene Wolfe... that's nice company!

What do you folks think? Know of any good online articles? Can you recommend some good science fantasy? (I've got the two Mieville novels, the Amber novels by Zelazny, and the first Gene Wolfe book.)

What else? Any stories you could point my way? I'll start a list. Later!