Far be it from me to critique other people's ideosyncratic classification systems

[james_davis_nicoll]

After all, I will argue that Starship Troopers is proto-MilSF.

Brin's system of sorting SF from F will produce counter-intuitive results, like Asimov's Foundation, which is all about restoring the Old Order What Stood for Thousands of Years, is fantasy, whereas any Diskworld novel about clackers and the post and dwarves and trolls learning to coexist is SF.

(it's important to note "Having said that, what is my definition of the separation?". Brin's definition, not THE WORD OF MIGHT DEGLER HIMSELF)

Comments

[vschanoes.livejournal.com]

That seems like a very specific kind of fantasy narrative, though, not one that's applicable to, for instance, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland or the Mary Poppins novels, or Angela Carter's Nights at the Circus, or the stories I've published as I understand them, or what Farah Mendlesohn calls "intrusion narratives," where magic has intruded into the real world and that intrusion is the problem that the protagonist has to defeat (E. Nesbit's Five Children and It is a bit of that).

I wonder if what you're talking about is specific to epic fantasy?

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Perhaps, yes. Good points.