[HPforGrownups] Re: Harry Potter: Fantasy or Sci-Fi?

[Margaret Dean]

No: HPFGUIDX 13954

What a fascinating subject!

Just for the sake of discussion, here's a different set of
criteria.  I read an article once written about ELFQUEST, another
favorite series of mine (at least in its original incarnation),
which described EQ as having a fantasy setting but a
science-fiction worldview.  By this the author meant,
essentially, that EQ was more morally ambiguous than classic
fantasy.

In classic fantasy, good and evil are pretty well polarized.  The
=characters= may have elements of both (if they're going to be
interesting at all), but it's still fairly easy to distinguish
Good-with-a-capital-G from Evil-with-a-capital-E.

Science fiction, OTOH, more often deals with moral ambiguities,
characters and groups with different definitions of "good" coming
into conflict, "it all depends on your point of view," etc.

(And I should say straight out that the above characterizations
are definitions, not value judgments!  I don't personally think
that either style is inherently "better."  They are simply very
different in tone and "feel.")

Using this definition, I think the Harry Potter books sit pretty
firmly in the classic fantasy camp, despite their
slightly-altered-today's-world setting, the fact that the magic
is portrayed as a counterpart to technology in being morally
neutral in itself (as far as I can make out, the "Dark Arts"
spells are mainly classified that way because they have very
limited, if any, "good" uses), etc.  It's fairly obvious where
the lines are drawn between the Good Guys and the Bad Guys, and
which is which -- even if some characters straddle the lines.

Comments on this?


--Margaret Dean
  <margdean at erols.com>