Why are sci-fi and fantasy often lumped into one section in bookstores?

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ThatGuy

Member
From what I know, they are two distinct genres of fiction.
@fenchurchthesane: Sci-fi CAN be about things that could happen in real life. Jules Verne's sci-fi novels from the 1800s speculated on the idea of humans reaching the moon and in the 1960s we ended up getting there for real.
@Melriken: But if people from the medieval ages were somehow introduced to the technologies we take for granted today, they might legitimately believe it to be magic.
 
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fenchurchthesane

New member
They're both about things that couldn't happen in real life ("speculative fiction"). And sometimes the line blurs, like between wizards and people with paranormal powers. You can get the same concept but with the powers explained either by science or magic. Or when Orson Scott Card is talking about a future with certain pieces of technology but no one knows how they work and it turns out it's this mystical force.
 
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fenchurchthesane

New member
They're both about things that couldn't happen in real life ("speculative fiction"). And sometimes the line blurs, like between wizards and people with paranormal powers. You can get the same concept but with the powers explained either by science or magic. Or when Orson Scott Card is talking about a future with certain pieces of technology but no one knows how they work and it turns out it's this mystical force.
 
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Deckard

Member
It's an effect colloquially known as the 'speculative fiction ghetto'. It probably doesn't help that a lot of writers who write one genre write the other, but...maybe because they tend to interest a similar audience. I know my Discworld books are right next to my Hitchhikers Guide series on my shelf.
 
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Convoluted

New member
There's a line there, but it can get blurred. Most of the time it's really distinct, but I know a few books that could be considered both.

And I don't really know what your bookstores are like, but the ones near me basically have two fiction sections. Sci-fi and fantasy, and then everything else. Oh, wait. I think they have a half-shelf set aside for westerns. But romance, historical fiction, mysteries, whatever... it's all lumped together.

So if they divide up sci-fi and fantasy, they'd would have to divide up the rest of the books, too. That would be a mess, since not all books are straightforwardly one category or another, and what do you do when something is in multiple categories?
 
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