Harry Potter: Fantasy or Sci-Fi?

[Ebony AKA AngieJ]

No: HPFGUIDX 13940

I've decided to not even pretend to lurk--although I'm on webview, 
I'm back to checking the site daily again.  :)

Might as well try to start a new thread...

This idea came out of a recent offlist discussion (waves at Jim 
Ferer) and from some lay research on the SF subgenre.

Is Harry Potter really a fantasy series?

It's not high fantasy--this milieu is not Middle-Earth, and Harry's 
not the Heir of Shannara.  :-)

It's not urban fantasy--or is it?  Haven't read much in that 
subcategory, I'll admit... anyone familiar with it?

It's not dark fantasy--dark fantasies are Gothic reads like Anne 
Rice's *Vampire Chronicles* and Stephen King's *The Dark Tower* 
series.

And--much to my surprise--it's not even traditional fantasy.

>From what I understand, in traditional fantasy, there is no objective 
Outside.  (The postmodernist thinkers would love 'em.)  No distincion 
is made between the tangible and the psyche. The characters 
themselves may also be representational in nature, such as 
allegorical figures or archetypes.  What occurs in the mind can just 
as easily occur physically, because there is no real difference 
between the two.  (Just like "there is no spoon"... big-ups to all 
the Matrix fans out there.  <g>)

This is what one of my speculative fiction writing references has to 
say re: the use of magic in traditional fantasy:

"The Western version of magic, which goes back centuries, is founded 
on the notion that the whole world exists within the soul of each of 
us.  A magician is simply someone who has the force of will to change 
the part of his or her consciousness that corresponds to an outside 
part of the world.  Changing any given internal object automatically 
assumes that the external, "real" one will be changed with real, 
physical results.  Or, as the sorcerers say, "As above, so below."  

"Most of what passes for fantasy these days is just SF in disguise.  
Adventures told in worlds where the physical laws are different, 
allowing "magic" in one form or another.  But there is still a 
physical world in these stories, and it is still more "real" than 
what goes on in the minds of the characters.  So these tales... are 
still rationalist, materalist fiction--science fiction.

"A lot of "fantasy" stories use what we call the utility theory of 
magic.  In the utility theory, magic is a kind of natural force, like 
magnetic fields, and magicians perform magic by tapping into this 
force.  It's like plugging into a wall socket.  Because this is a 
purely materialist conception (even if the magician shapes the result 
with his mind), we tend to think of these stories as a form of SF, 
rather than truly fantastic."

Perhaps I was the only one intrigued by this reasoning.  But Jim, who 
knows a whole lot more about speculative fiction than I do, quoted 
Arthur C. Clarke on this... something along the lines of extremely 
advanced technologies being indistinguishable from magic.  

And then today while learning about the Carnavon/Carter dig of 
Tutankhmen's tomb, my students and I stumbled upon the subject of 
magic and superstition.  (Of course, some smart-alec fifth grader 
inspired this tangent by mentioning the Curse.)  I took an instant 
poll--do you believe in magic and superstition in real life?  In this 
particular class, all of the students said "no" save one.  As we 
moved on, his tablemates asked him why.

"Because... magic *is* science," he said, as if this was the most 
obvious thing in the world.

Well... is it?

Is Harry Potter a fantasy series... or sci-fi?  Or something else 
altogether?

--Ebony AKA AngieJ