A comparison of sorts.

During the lecture about science fiction the most interesting point made, atleast for me, was that a lot of science fiction stories are about control and people freeing from it and so on. It really rings true to me- the hi-tech future that is most often seen in sci-fi media is the result of people wanting to control the enviroment, and very, very often that control is seen going over the hedge, or representing the antagonists of the story.

Essentially, fantasy seems to follow a similar path, except in technology's place we see magic. While I am definetly a bigger fan of sci-fi than of fantasy, I think I have a grasp of the most basic fantasy elements. And I often find that fantasy has a more strict framework: the classic fantasy story has to have elves, dwarves, dragons, magicians, a medieval setting and so on, while sci-fi doesn't have any specific types of aliens it should have or anything like that. Actually, a 'typical' sci-fi story can even do without any aliens at all, unlike fantasy.

The way these different creatures are classified and how they act in relation to each other also seems to differ to me- in sci-fi, more often than not, all or most alien races are regarded as citizens of one big space society or whatever and mix among themselves a lot, while in fantasy creatures seem to be a lot more divided, caring about their own territories, often having some negative historical baggage among themselves whitch is often brought up. Also, in sci-fi, the space, the territory all these creatures spread out to is the outer space, whitch we all know to be a BIG, BIG place with multiple planets the aliens can live in and strive without bothering anyone else (unless the story commands it so). In fantasy we get one planet at the most, so these creatures have to share a lot less space in comparison, resulting in much more bitterness when wars for territory happen etc.

Also, in many classical fantasy stories (meaning, the ones that are heavily based on LOTR) the need of all or most of the races in the story to come together against the evil forces is highlighted. That is often made hard, because of prejudice and even some sort of passive racism can be felt in the air of the classical fantasy story. In sci-fi, while the 'we must work together' bit is also quite clear, it is not directed towards the specific races working together- actually, sci-fi seems to have a lot less general racism going on, with most societies featured in sci-fi being quite advanced and beyond racism (unless, of course, the story commands it so).

As I mentioned before, fantasy relies on magic the way sci-fi relies on future technology. Both of these factors allow impossible things to happen in the stories, even know their sources are at tottaly differrent ends of the spectrum- magic is nature based and technology is... well, technology and is based on the knowledge of people. Yet in both cases they are still surprisingly similar- both are often the driving force of the societies presented in these stories in some way, often the sole reason for the plot to happen. The presence of these factors is the main reason these two genres are brought together so often, even know both these genres, while sometimes mixing together a lot, still deviate from each other a LOT.

Which leads to a myriad of questions on how we really should and should not classify something as abstract and uncountable as a story.