If you read this site regularly, you will realise that my book Shadow and Night, the first volume in the Lamb among the Stars trilogy, has been widely discussed this week. First of all, let me thank all of those who have liked the book and expressed the fact and also anyone who didn’t like the book but who stayed quiet.

Anyway, on this site there has been some discussion as to whether Tyndale mismarketed the books as fantasy, when they are really science fiction. May I add my own authorial comments to this interesting debate? First of all, I’m ill-inclined to criticise Tyndale, who took a considerable risk with a long book series by an unknown Brit. It also needs to be borne in mind that, as someone has reminded us, it was necessary to point out that this was not British fantasy in the JK Rowling tradition. I should also say that when the tagline (‘A fantasy in the tradition of C. S. Lewis and Tolkien’) was cooked up, Tyndale had a fairly good idea where the series was going. Reviewers need to remember that the first volume of a sequence may not be an infallible guide to the rest.

But there are issues to do with fantasy and science fiction that need addressing. The idea of a ‘Speculative Fiction’ genre which combines the two seems to me to be a very good one but as it has not supplanted the older terms we need to live with them yet. Let me give you my own feeling about the differences between the two overlapping genres.

Science Fiction tries to keep to what we call the laws of physics with the minimum of alteration. It also operates in worlds that are essentially in continuity with ours and upholds plausibility as a key virtue. There may be dragons in an SF novel but they are aerodynamically feasible. Normally in SF speaking, magic, the supernatural and eschatology are avoided. Yet there are cases in mainstream science fiction in which the supernatural occurs: I think for instance, of Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘Nine billion names of God’ and the rather troubling novel by James Blish, Black Easter.

Fantasy, it seems to me, it is beholden neither to Newton nor Einstein. Not only that but fantasy operates in worlds that are in clear discontinuity with ours. Middle Earth and Narnia are, in very essence, different places. Normally speaking, in fantasy, magic, the supernatural and eschatology are embraced and ultimately problems are met not with technical solutions but with magic. As a friend of mine says; Star Trek (those dilithium crystals) is science fiction; Star Wars (that Force) is fantasy. 

Interestingly, both genres have their strengths and weakness. Crudely put, fantasy is good on awe and poor on plausibility; science fiction is strong on realism but weak in generating wonder.
 
Significantly there has, I think, been a growing polarisation between the two genres. Science fiction appears to be getting more and more technical so that those of us without physics doctorates feel disadvantaged. Equally I think the fantasy world is moving in the other direction: freeing itself from any bounds of physical law. (Are the culture wars between faith and scepticism being played out here too?)  Now I don’t like this either/or divide for many reasons. The chief one is that it is too reminiscent of the view propounded by extremists on both sides of the science and faith debate which so polarises matters that there can only be either faith in religion or science. Yet why must a trust in science be at odds with faith in God? I believe in a universe where both operate (although I know Who’s boss). I am very wary of any rule that a book that invokes the supernatural must be fantasy: it is too close to treating faith as a fantasy. So if there must be a choice can I be filed under science fiction? Mind you I like the tag someone suggested for my books; ‘As if C S Lewis had written Star Wars’. I can live with that.
 
So can my bank manager.