I'd say the specifics, at least beyond something like "this story involves elements of the world that operate according to rules that are not the generally-accepted natural laws of earth", are going to depend heavily on subgenre. If you pick up a book where the main character is a magic detective investigating vampire crimes in Fantasy New York, readers are going to feel they've been promised something different from if they pick up a book about a humble farm boy being chosen by the magic sword to fight the Evil Overlord, and that's different from ASoIaF, and that's different from Conan the Barbarian. I think the only universal way to break the promise (the way you can with happy endings in romance) would be to tell a story where there were either no non-Earthlike elements or they were completely irrelevant.
I think it's interesting, because on a gut level I think I tend to assume that "sci fi" and "fantasy" as broader genres promise a kind of worldbuilding more than anything else--I don't know if that holds for everyone, but I do think that's part of why the scifi/fantasy divide gets increasingly arbitrary as we delve into the arenas of space elves or genetically engineered dragons. Because, like: This could, with the right worldbuilding, still very much be scifi. This premise alone makes a perfect Black Mirror episode with the right trappings. Which isn't to say that subgenres don't have slightly different promises--the difference between romantic fantasy and fantasy romance being one of the more confusing ones--but for me, scifi and fantasy promise The World Is Different (Somehow), like LadyNighteyes said. edit: Also, in context (I wish the article they were responding to hadn't been pulled down) I agree with the premise, with the caveat that 'romance' and 'romantic tragedy' and 'drama' are all three slightly different promises to make. Like, here's something I think about a lot: why is it that 'urban fantasy' so often quietly implies an underlying 'mystery novel/crime procedural' aspect?
i think fantasy does promise a certain structure, though. at the very least, a supernatural conflict and a heroic resolution, even if the hero doesn't win.
*wobbles hand* I can think of at least a few politically-oriented fantasies where the main conflict is something like "who will inherit the throne," and the supernatural parts of the conflict are secondary to the political. Hell, I've seen otherworld fantasy with no "supernatural" elements at all, just a world that isn't ours (some of CJ Cherryh's, for instance). Or, like, glancing at my bookshelf, Going Postal is a book steeped in fantasy up to the eyebrows, but the central conflict is about a con man competing with the vulture capitalist CEO of a corrupt corporation, and practically the only supernatural element in the ways they go at each other is the fact that the CEO's hired thug is a banshee. "Heroic resolution" is closer to a promise, I think, but even that can be on the low-key side sometimes.
I think that would fall more towards high fantasy, which is also a subgenre super complicated to define
i guess i should say, the conflict involves some supernatural elements somewhere. for instance, in 'going postal', the threats to von lipwig's life involve a banshee and a sentient pile of undelivered mail. that's a supernatural conflict imo. books that are just non-supernatural stories in an imaginary world aren't delivering on the promise of the genre, imo.
Huh. Now I'm thinking: if a story took place in a Kingdom With No Counterpart In History on A Planet And/Or World That Is Not Earth featuring the trappings of medieval fantasy but without the magical aspects in any shape or form, is that... fantasy, at that point? Like, I'd be inclined to call it 'fantasy' based on the aesthetic, but it's certainly not a an alternate history novel or historical fiction. Is it historical fiction? I've always thought that historical fiction needed to have a direct connection to actual... history...... but come to think of it, it might not. If the aesthetic of history is there even without direct reference it might... count.......?
It tends to be considered a sort of fantasy from what I've heard. I've heard at least like one subgenre name for it that I can't quite...remember right now. Christ. There is a word for it though! And it's like a subgenre! gods i hope someone else knows the word because i swear to fuck i heard it
This was not that, because it wasn't set on Earth. The one I was thinking of is set in a fictional world vaguely inspired by ancient China.
Speculative fiction? Granted I think ime I’ve only seen that used an umbrella over scifi and fantasy (bc, you know, space elves and suchlike), but I can’t think of another genre that could cover “realistic fiction set in a totally different universe”.
None of these are the term I heard. It was specifically something in the vein of like high fantasy and low fantasy. Termed like that. Ends with fantasy.
Doing some googling around the concept--it's possible that heroic fantasy could fit that (there's nothing in the genre that requires magic, despite the overlap/origination with sword & sorcery as a subgenre) but from what I can find, "historical fantasy" demands Real World history be referenced in some way and "medieval fantasy" comes with the assumption of magic in the package, so hell if I know.
A thread to function both as a derail thread from the "that one really weird thing on your mind that is making you laugh your ass off" thread and potentially as a space to nail down the specific subgenre of something. Trying to figure out how to class that thing you're working on? Just desperately trying to figure out if this is "solarpunk", "utopian fiction", or "science fantasy"? Yeah, that goes here too. The article that kicked everything off. edit: haha, everything is moved now so this looks a bit silly :P ah, well
Hey, speaking of: poking around on wikipedia, the fact that some people class Harry Potter as "low fantasy" just really goes to show how little subgenre definitions can have in common across multiple usages; I wouldn't have ever classed it that way (though I don't think it fits 'high fantasy' either) but I can at least see the argument for it.
I’ve seen low vs high as our world vs different world. By that HP makes sense as low. But it’s not a terribly obvious connection that “low” would mean that.
That's a definition I was seeing on wikipedia, while other variations I've seen have been more along the lines of "is the magic Everywhere and Powerful, or is it Very Rare and Not Godlike" which makes intuitive sense to me, given the way 'high fantasy' is used for a lot of variations of Elves And Wizards And Spells Everywhere Oh My--but the definition of 'different world' changes that a bit. But also, like, calling Harry Potter low magic genuinely just sounds like a shitpost.
I think that's different people using the same term in different ways- the impression I got is that low/high fantasy originally got coined for the our world/other world division, but because it's a completely bizarre and unintuitive term for that, a lot of people heard "high fantasy" to describe epic fantasy and assumed that fantasy that didn't fit into the epic mold would be "low fantasy," because that makes way more sense than it referring to fantasy set on Earth. Personally, I think that in practice the best way to describe Harry Potter isn't with either of those terms, by either definition, because it falls well outside the set of tropes people think of when you say "high fantasy" or "low fantasy." It's not a story about epic struggles and journeys for the fate of the world (high), and it's not a story about people who were going about their ordinary real-world lives suddenly having to contend with magic intruding on them (classical low), and it's not a story about people going about their non-earthshaking business within a fantasy world without having to contend with enormous powers (intuitive low). It's a story about kids at a magic school growing up and learning about the world. So I'd just call it "YA fantasy" and ignore the high/low distinction as not relevant, because both definitions of the split are intended to talk about very different sorts of story.
