We mentioned in yesterday's post that it often is difficult to know where fantasy ends and science fiction begins, and vice versa. Actually, if one looks at some of the more popular sub-genres of fantasy (as noted in this lengthy list), it often is difficult to tell where fantasy ends and lots of other genres begin.
Although fantasy can trace its archetypal tropes, themes and symbolism to humanity's earliest mythologies, fairy tales and folklore, the permeable borders it shares with other genres is what makes it possible for the overall genre to be divided into so many popular sub-genres. The sword and sorcery fantasy sub-genre, for example, is influenced not only by mythologies and epics like the Norse sagas, but also by such other genres as the historical fiction of authors like Sir Walter Scott and the swashbuckling tales of authors like Alexander Dumas:
In addition to the permeability of the borders that fantasy shares with other genres, fantasy is one of the few genres where the distinction between child and adult frequently is not clearly drawn, nor is such distinction necessarily important to either the story or the audience:
Finally, like other critically dismissed genres such as science fiction and the western, fantasy was propelled to new heights of readership by pulp fiction, a topic to which we shall turn tomorrow....
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