Allow me to make a small recommendation for the "best related work": Ada Palmer's 'Inventing the Renaissance.'
It's a fantastic work of complex history, told with the tools of science fiction and fantasy writing. But it remains a high quality academic work: the tools are used to unravel the telling of a gay and complicated topic, but you still get the vastness.
If you like ACOUP, it should be right up your alley.
Which is too bad, because Blue Prince is the better game. :)
I'm playing through Clair Obscur now. It's above average for aaa stuff. But there are way too many cut scenes, and dodge/parry mechanics continue to be tedious. And the story is fine, but isn't really grabbing me. Sigh.
Blue Prince, on the other hand, is quite probably the best puzzle game I have ever played. My partner and I worked on it for months, and have a 50+ page Google doc of notes.
> worked on it for months, and have a 50+ page Google doc of notes.
That sounds more like a part time job than a game. I'm curious if you play it for the mental challenge? I feel challenged enough at $dayjob that all I want from games is mindless relaxation.
Sinners was a scifi movie...? About vampires in the past...?! Wild. Ditto for Claire Oscura: Expedition 33, which I thought was high fantasy / steampunk at most.
*EDIT:* It appears I'm just being silly, and the Hugos include fantasy. Ironically, the biggest fantasy series of our time by far has won 3 times in Novella form and once in TV form, but never the novels!
The difference between science fiction and fantasy was always only a tenuous distinction imposed by the few nerds who cared a little too much.
As we age out of being culturally relevant, and newer (likely less literate) generations take over the definitions will change, and perhaps should.
To me only hard science fiction will ever count, but I recognize that I'm in the minority there and also don't want to scare away the three remaining readers through gatekeeping.
A Song of Ice and Fire (contemporary writing I assume), it lost to Harry Potter book against one of GRRM’s best books/chance for win in novel category one year and Spin in another year(Accelerando was another nominee that year)
You're not the only one to be taken aback by that. Yes, the Hugos do fantasy, but I'm not sure I would have even thought to categorize Sinners as fantasy.
I mean, yes, it has vampires. Was From Dusk till Dawn fantasy?
But as a sister comment suggests, categorization is never easy, and probably just reinforced personal biases. (See Old Town Road being reminded from Billboard's country music list.)
There's more to Fantasy than a single boolean "does it contain something that is not real?"
Fantasy gets applied to the work as a whole, to its dominant tone and structure, not to one element. A work of fantasy usually has other elements that show it to be such. Is there world-building? Is it a quest or a hero story? Is there some kind of lore that grounds the whole universe? Not all of those are necessary, but usually you can clearly define the whole work holistically as Fantasy.
From Dusk till Dawn in particular is a straight crime thriller that turns into a horror movie.
Ok, I got nerd-sniped into trying to define Fantasy after saying I wouldn't.
I don't think crime thriller or horror have anything to do with if a story is fantasy. Alien is a sci fi movie and a horror movie. Psycho is a horror movie with no fantasy elements. Sinners is a fantasy horror movie. It sounds like you are talking about epic or high fantasy, but there is fantasy romance, fantasy detective, fantasy crime thriller etc. You can even have a fantasy sci fi movie like Star Wars.
I agree the line between fantasy and sci Fi is very thin. In general I would say if the author intends for it to be a natural explanation like wormholes or something it's sci fi, if it's a magic teleportation spell it is fantasy. There is a series I read once Starships Mage which plays with this, it's hard sci fi for most things but magic exists and FTL is solved through teleportation. Everything non magic has to obey relativity and such.
I'd say that line can be blurred somewhat by "Blindsight". "Not real" isn't where I'd put the line, it's "not plausibly and consistently explained (or at least explained away) within the laws of nature.
Allow me to make a small recommendation for the "best related work": Ada Palmer's 'Inventing the Renaissance.'
It's a fantastic work of complex history, told with the tools of science fiction and fantasy writing. But it remains a high quality academic work: the tools are used to unravel the telling of a gay and complicated topic, but you still get the vastness.
If you like ACOUP, it should be right up your alley.
Clair Obscur is going to be game of the year every year for the next decade.
Which is too bad, because Blue Prince is the better game. :)
I'm playing through Clair Obscur now. It's above average for aaa stuff. But there are way too many cut scenes, and dodge/parry mechanics continue to be tedious. And the story is fine, but isn't really grabbing me. Sigh.
Blue Prince, on the other hand, is quite probably the best puzzle game I have ever played. My partner and I worked on it for months, and have a 50+ page Google doc of notes.
> worked on it for months, and have a 50+ page Google doc of notes.
That sounds more like a part time job than a game. I'm curious if you play it for the mental challenge? I feel challenged enough at $dayjob that all I want from games is mindless relaxation.
Sinners was very cool but I'm surprised to find it as Hugo winner.
Sinners was a scifi movie...? About vampires in the past...?! Wild. Ditto for Claire Oscura: Expedition 33, which I thought was high fantasy / steampunk at most.
*EDIT:* It appears I'm just being silly, and the Hugos include fantasy. Ironically, the biggest fantasy series of our time by far has won 3 times in Novella form and once in TV form, but never the novels!
The difference between science fiction and fantasy was always only a tenuous distinction imposed by the few nerds who cared a little too much.
As we age out of being culturally relevant, and newer (likely less literate) generations take over the definitions will change, and perhaps should.
To me only hard science fiction will ever count, but I recognize that I'm in the minority there and also don't want to scare away the three remaining readers through gatekeeping.
What is the biggest fantasy series of our time?
A Song of Ice and Fire (contemporary writing I assume), it lost to Harry Potter book against one of GRRM’s best books/chance for win in novel category one year and Spin in another year(Accelerando was another nominee that year)
You're not the only one to be taken aback by that. Yes, the Hugos do fantasy, but I'm not sure I would have even thought to categorize Sinners as fantasy.
I mean, yes, it has vampires. Was From Dusk till Dawn fantasy?
But as a sister comment suggests, categorization is never easy, and probably just reinforced personal biases. (See Old Town Road being reminded from Billboard's country music list.)
Culture is fluid, it must be to continue. Categories like this will evolve, expand, and shrink over time.
I think by definition any vampire story is a fantasy story yes. Since vampires are not real and thus a fantasy creature.
There's more to Fantasy than a single boolean "does it contain something that is not real?"
Fantasy gets applied to the work as a whole, to its dominant tone and structure, not to one element. A work of fantasy usually has other elements that show it to be such. Is there world-building? Is it a quest or a hero story? Is there some kind of lore that grounds the whole universe? Not all of those are necessary, but usually you can clearly define the whole work holistically as Fantasy.
From Dusk till Dawn in particular is a straight crime thriller that turns into a horror movie.
Ok, I got nerd-sniped into trying to define Fantasy after saying I wouldn't.
I don't think crime thriller or horror have anything to do with if a story is fantasy. Alien is a sci fi movie and a horror movie. Psycho is a horror movie with no fantasy elements. Sinners is a fantasy horror movie. It sounds like you are talking about epic or high fantasy, but there is fantasy romance, fantasy detective, fantasy crime thriller etc. You can even have a fantasy sci fi movie like Star Wars.
>You can even have a fantasy sci fi movie like Star Wars.
And Star Trek.
I will die on the hill that Star Trek is just as much space fantasy as Star Wars.
Vampires aren't any more fantastical than FTL travel, and yet we're perfectly happy to have that in SF.
I agree the line between fantasy and sci Fi is very thin. In general I would say if the author intends for it to be a natural explanation like wormholes or something it's sci fi, if it's a magic teleportation spell it is fantasy. There is a series I read once Starships Mage which plays with this, it's hard sci fi for most things but magic exists and FTL is solved through teleportation. Everything non magic has to obey relativity and such.
I'd say that line can be blurred somewhat by "Blindsight". "Not real" isn't where I'd put the line, it's "not plausibly and consistently explained (or at least explained away) within the laws of nature.
I'm comfortable considering horror as a subgenre of fantasy. Vampires and folklore and magic are staples of fantasy after all.
Snakes on a plane fantasy?
I'm comfortable considering horror a subgenre of fantasy when it incorporates explicitly supernatural elements.