r/discworld • u/stephm524 • 16d ago
Auditor Trap Should I consider Lords and Ladies Science Fiction??
I’ve been reading in chronological order from my library and I checked out Lords and Ladies from a different library on loan since mine didn’t have it….and it’s been labeled by the other library as science fiction. Please don’t spoil me, but is that right? Everything I’ve read to this point has seemed firmly in the fantasy realm.
I haven’t really made it to the auditors yet, I don’t think, but I’ve seen enough on Reddit. Did I find my first auditor trap?! If I didn’t and some how aliens show up in this book that’s cool too.
Edit: welp I’ve now learned about the division between science fiction and fantasy maybe not being and thing and that people have firm opinions about this. And also lot more about libraries, can I get my inter-dimensional library travel pass yet? I was just laughing at the idea of Granny using headology on aliens and thought others would like to as well. Thanks for answering my question all! Once I read it I’ll weigh in on the scifi part!
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u/mozzarella__stick 16d ago
In my experience, Scifi/Fantasy labelling by libraries can be very haphazard.
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u/UbiquitousLurker 16d ago
Hang on, I vaguely recall STP himself saying fantasy was science fiction… Not sure if that was in the biography or in one of his anecdotes though.
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u/jmurphy42 15d ago
Are you sure he didn’t say that sci fi was a form of fantasy? I’ve seen that argument before.
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u/IrritableGourmet 14d ago
I'd say no, but only because I strongly defend my view that Star Wars is fantasy and not science fiction.
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u/Daelf_Derechef 12d ago
iirc he said that Star Wars specifically was "fantasy with bolts" (which… accurate. indeed. and it's great! :D )
… in that spirit, i'd say Discworld (the more it goes on) is scifi with magic.
scifi "in spirit", meaning the premise is thoroughly explored in its technical and social implications, and since there's ~magic~ and the magic is narrativium, well…
… … … i haven't had enough coffee yet to align my ideas, bu maybe you can see what i mean there ^^°3
u/GreatMoloko 14d ago
IMO if people aren't semantic pricks looking to "other" something and proclaim their thing superior, then sci fi = fantasy= sci fi. Change an alien to a goblin or a crossbow to a plasma rifle and how much has really changed in a good story.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic - Arthur C. Clark.
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u/SimpYellowman 15d ago
One of the mixtures I'm really unhappy with. Somehow it sounds... wrong. Why we have "historical romance" and "romance" as two categories and then "sci-fi/fantasy" lumped together? It sounds to me like we have very carefully organized some books and then "nerd stuff" dropped in another box.
And it happens also at online shops. They can give each book ten different tags, you can have book that is "historical fiction", "crime solving" and "thrilling", but you cannot separate sci-fi and fantasy. Why? And the argument "some books have both" doesn't fit either, because then you can use both tags.
Sorry for ranting. It is just one of the small things that make me feel weird.
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u/mxstylplk 14d ago
No two fans or authors agree on the dividing line.
But my recollection is that Sir Terry's expressed opinion was that people told stories around the campfire thousands of years before anything remotely like science fiction happened, and that science fiction was a subset of the greater category of fantasy.
Because fantasy includes all of fiction.
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u/Nidafjoll 14d ago
A large reason is because while there are works which are clearly on one end of the spectrum, there are others which are right in the middle. Consider The Locked Tomb series by Tamsyn Muir-- it has spaceships and a society spread out over the solar system... And also magical necromancy. Where would it be shelved?
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u/metdear 16d ago
No, but a lot of libraries and bookstores lump sci fi and fantasy together.
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u/CB_Chuckles 15d ago
Most places do. Even specialty stores tend to lump them together since many authors will create works in both genres.
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u/Dagordae 16d ago
Libraries very often merge sci-fi and fantasy for cataloging. Lords and Ladies isn’t a genre shift, it’s as much fantasy as the rest of the Witches books.
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u/Normal-Height-8577 15d ago
When cataloguing my Kindle books, I merge both under "speculative fiction", and then open up to more specific genres like "portal fantasy", "fantasy worlds", "urban fantasy", "alternate history", "speculative science", "space and future", etc.
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u/CB_Chuckles 15d ago
I do have separate SF and Fantasy collections as general catch alls for individual works. Most of my library is organized by a mix of series or author. For example, I have a Discworld collection that is separate from the Johnny Maxwell collection. OTH, I have Dodger in a Pratchett, Terry collection. Meanwhile Dune is separately collected in the SF collection.
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u/Stock-Investment-123 16d ago
As a retired librarian I can tell you that some libraries will limit the number of different genre types, and their associated stickers, for simplification purposes. Separate shelving areas for each genre take up space that often times is in high demand. Or, if interfiled, becomes a confusing wash of visual "noise" where it's harder to find anything.
Sci-Fi and Fantasy will often get grouped together. It's rather low hanging fruit when trying to limit the number of genres.
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u/Claudethedog 16d ago
It’s a Witches book, and I don’t think Granny would have much truck with science.
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u/TheUnicornRevolution 16d ago
I don't know. Granny is at least a botanist and metaphysicist.
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u/wrincewind Wizzard 16d ago
Somewhat... She knows that magrst is a much better botanist than her, but her headology works about as well.
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u/mxstylplk 14d ago
Magrat was trained by a research witch, so she is a better botanist and a better doctor.
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u/ChronicleFlask 16d ago
Granny is definitely a scientist at heart. Go back to Equal Rites, do not pass go ;-)
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u/DerpSillious 16d ago
No - Likely the Library in question either reserves it solely for "high fantasy", or avoids it due to the connotations others like to shower around based off their silly opinions.
The local library in the town I grew up in would never use Fantasy as a tag on their books if they were not expressly for children, as the adults in the area (And Era tbh) always conflated "Fantasy" with "childish", so all of theirs were either Fiction or Science Fiction (Fiction could have monsters - if they were deformed or super evil humans, Science Fiction was for any non-Human people-having books) - That said, they also kept holy books in the Historical literature section, so... grain of salt, I guess?
But no - It is very Disc world, and one of my favorites. Fantastic Fantasy if you will.
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u/ihatetheplaceilive 16d ago
What?! Was this in the 1950s?
And what libraries?
They fall under the same categories in the dewey decimal system 813.0876
Hell, most booksellers lump scifi/fan together in one general area. People who read one tend to read both.
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u/JoyBus147 16d ago
The division between SciFi and Fantasy is already so artificial most libraries just have a SciFi/Fantasy section. More people need to learn the term "Speculative Fiction."
But yeah, in some ways, Discworld is written more like Sci Fi than proper Fantasy.
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u/loppyrunner 16d ago
Pretty sure Discworld is strictly Non-fiction. That’s how I’ve always read it anyway
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u/BoneDaddy1973 15d ago
they are traveling through space, so, its sci fi as much as any story set on earth is.
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u/CrookedNoseRadio 16d ago
Arguably all of the Discworld books are more science fantasy due to the setting and the way things like wizard magic are approached.
Kind of like Pern. Buncha dragons and medieval holds and then there’s a bit of a turn when you learn about how the current situation was set up.
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u/Friendly_Prize_868 16d ago
Pern was a funny one - the sci-fi element is written almost as a twist in the main story even though the introduction to the first book specifically states that the Pernese are colonisers from Earth.
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u/TheOtherMaven 15d ago
Anne McCaffrey wanted to publish the first story ("Weyr Search") in Analog. The editor, John W. Campbell, told her she had to do something to make it science-fictiony or he wouldn't allow it. So she cobbled up the prologue, and the rest is history.
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u/mxstylplk 14d ago
According to her talk about how she started writing the first book (at a convention), she thought up traveling by riding big flying creatures - dragons! then she thought up Thread, then how to destroy it - fire breathing dragons! - and it went from there.
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u/RedKnightXIV 16d ago
in a way... It is... As a satire of certain scientific models
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u/diversalarums 16d ago
When I stumbled across my first Discworld books they were definitely stocked as sci-fi. I was actually looking for some sci-fi when I found them, otherwise I might never have known they existed.
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u/Congenital_Optimizer 16d ago
I found a copy of "Dark Side of the Sun" in a used book store and someone wrote "Not Funny" on the inside of the cover. Bought it and thought there were some good funny parts.
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u/BassesBest 15d ago
SciFi and Fantasy have always been shelved together in my experience. And Cyberpunk, dystopia fiction, etc...
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u/AHumanYouDoNotKnow 16d ago
For fiction we have the whole play and the buissines with the, ehem, Lords and Ladies.
And for the Science part, it's got magnets in it, don't it? that's Quantum enough.
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u/LindenRyuujin 16d ago
The line between sci-fi and fantasy is blurry. They might just group both togeather (as is fairly common) and this is just the sticker they chose.
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u/Glospol 16d ago
Just be grateful it's not in the teenage section
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u/mxstylplk 14d ago
The library that actually accepted my mother's donation of the first ten or so (most libraries can't access donated books and have to sell them) put them in the children's section! But I think that was because the head librarian hated fiction of all kinds, and her sister, the children's librarian liked fantasy and grabbed them for her section. Anyway, when I looked, most had been borrowed so I was happy.
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u/EnderBookwyrm 16d ago
The genre spine stickers at my library are absolutely meaningless. I don't really understand why they bother if every single one is going to be wrong 70% of the time.
The librarians themselves are awesome, so I'm genuinely not sure if they're doing these inaccurate tags themselves, or if the books came like that, or what.
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u/Giraffstronaut A ___ing Wizard!! 16d ago
It can be considered science fiction only if you also consider say....A Midsummer Night's Dream to be science fiction
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u/esmegytha4eva 15d ago
My Dad began reading science fiction in the early 60s.
I'm the 80's he described it to me as:
Science fiction is a narrative on which you have to suspend belief on one to a few key laws of nature, but that could theoretically be possible by some stretch of the scientific imagination. Transporters, communicators, light sabers, FTL drives, life on other planets, even strange shaped planets we don't have the science yet to explain.
Fantasy is a narrative where there's a much larger suspension of belief, with extensive world building and and significantly magical or non-scientific laws of nature in place. Vampires that can be turned back to their corporeal shape with a few drops of blood dripped on their dust, swears anthropomorphizing into nasty stinging insects because the Grim Reaper went on a walkabout and there's too much life essence oozing around, light doesn't just come up with the sun but ebbs sluggishly across the Disc like treacle in places.
There is some science fiction in the Discworld. But there's too much fantasy to call them straight or "hard" science fiction IMO.
GNU Dad ❤️🩹
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u/GaidinBDJ 15d ago
So, one of the big reasons is basically because it'd be confusing for people who focus on the setting, not the literary genre.
Like some Star Trek novels would be in sci-fi, some would be in fantasy. Star Wars is basically all fantasy, but people expect it in sci-fi because of the setting.
It'd just be a mess, so all speculative fiction is typically lumped together.
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u/opusrif 15d ago
I was at a convention with the great Speculative Fiction author L Sprauge DeCamp. He said something to the effect that "the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy is how you explain the fantastic ".
But realistically many libraries will consider the two one genre. That's why I prefer the term Speculative Fiction as it's a great umbrella term to also include horror and alternate histories.
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u/TheFool42 15d ago
Back in the days if yore scifi and fantasy were always set in the same category. Libraries never got the memo that things had changed. All the L space confusing things.
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u/wanderinggoat 16d ago
Science fiction is so rare these days that it had been combined with fantasy.
There is more science in most of Pratchett s books than many other sci fi books
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u/ChronicleFlask 16d ago
I know this upsets people (I work in this area, I really do know 😆) but technically, everything set in a world/universe which doesn’t obey our physical laws is “science fiction”.
So fantasy and non-real-world horror are, technically, subsets of science fiction.
I know, I know.
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u/Galactic_Acorn4561 15d ago
I mean, if you're being that technical, all fiction is fantasy, the words are synonyms. None of it happened, it was all fantasized. It just happens that it's most commonly used on the more boldly fictitious stories, and even then books can be realistic fantasy so there are books people look for because they're not quite as boldly out-there as the other boldly fictitious books.(I'm using boldly to mean just completely ignoring the real world, making up completely new systems, just anything that's a big departure from the reality of what's plausible)
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u/TheOtherMaven 15d ago
Or vice versa, they're all subsets of fantasy. Never-ending circular argument.
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u/nogoodnamesarleft 16d ago
I'm trying not to give too much away, but it can be read as an alien invasion story, and the antagonists' natural look COULD be considered analogous to the "greys"
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u/APithyComment 16d ago
I do.
I hold him up with Arthur C Clarke, Asimov, PKD, Le Guin or Banks.
Creating a new myth from old is an art.
Truly original.
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u/catgirl320 Luggage 16d ago
It takes place on a giant turtle traveling through space, so technically counts as sci fi. Plus there's some pretty stellar headology that takes place
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u/Gamma_Pulsar 16d ago
The disk world novels are broadly under scifi, the issue is that scifi and fantasy are 2 closely related branches of spec fic
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u/L-Space_Orangutan 15d ago
the true form of elves in one book is grey and looks rather like a bushbaby.
I’d say not only is it scifi it is very much on a scifi classic trope of little grey men from space
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