Lord Of the Rings or Star Wars? The Discworld or The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy? Game Of Thrones or Star Trek? Whether it’s films, books, TV series or games the debate of which is the better genre rages ever on, with seemingly no end in site. Well worry not, dear readers, for I am here to settle this question once and for all, having key elements of both genres go head to head and then making a series of completely arbitrary decisions to conclude the winner. The loser must have all mention of that genre purged from history. Or you know, just get called nerds and stuff. Onwards!
Round One – Location
Fantasy
So your basic fantasy setting comes in three flavors which are forests, castles, and peasant villages/towns. If you’re lucky you might get a dwarven mine that doubles as a convenient mountain location thrown in as a bonus. Now I’m not saying that there aren’t variations, sometimes the forest is haunted and spooky, sometimes is beautiful and tranquil and full of elves. Equally sometimes the castles are grim and despotic or sometimes they’re beautiful palaces full of treasure, with pesky guards between you it, that you have to take out silently with that one move that you learnt in the first act and haven’t used since. But ultimately, you’re still going to end up stamping round a good few hundred forests on your way to the next village full of filthy peasants talking at you in a variety of regional English accents.
Score: 3/5 – Random villager number 87 “Narp”
Sci-Fi
We’re talking space here, and depending on which franchise you’re invested in that usually comes with literally infinite possibilities. Yes, from the interior of your cockpit it does all look like so much black with twinkly bits, but when you beam down that’s when things really start to get interesting. For some never really adequately explained reason, planets in sci-fi often seem to be dedicated to one thing, with almost psychotic single mindedness. You have the lava planet, the cyborg planet, the industrial planet, the water planet, the planet dedicated to nothing but eating jelly. But because the universe is infinite then sci-fi can go wherever it wants with this. You can have a planet made entirely out of rhubarb and custard, with a deep seated hatred between the Rhubarbions and the Custardites where a bitter war for Mount Crumble has been waging for millennia.
Score 5/5 – For the possibility of having a planet made entirely of brie
Round Two – People
Fantasy
We all know what to expect from any media that dares to call itself a fantasy these days, and that’s Humans, Elves and Dwarfs. Furthermore, Humans have got to be racist dicks, Elves have got to be spiritual forest dwellers and Dwarfs have got to be tough and hardy and brilliant with metalwork. Sorry, that’s just how it has to be. Which is why it blows our minds when this trope is subverted. The Discworld books make Elves psychotic murdering bastards, Game Of Thrones has Dwarfs in it that *gasp* aren’t living in mountains and wielding axes! They’re just people! And humans are still racist dicks! Add to this a HUGE number of other races that you can mix and match at your leisure, Orcs, Goblins, Dragons, Gnomes, Vampires, Witches, Halflings. You have a ready made cast that everyone knows about sitting right there for you and for extra fun just make orcs the sex symbols.
Score 4/5 – Seriously, can humans ever not be racist dicks?
Sci-Fi
With infinite planets comes infinite possibilities of people to inhabit them, so it’s kind of disappointing that sci-fi runs the theme of ‘one planet = one theme’ to their characters to. So let’s see now, you’ve come across a new, undiscovered planet with a mysterious alien race on it, let’s beam down and take a look. What’s the betting that they’ll be
- Hostile and warmongering
- Cold and logical
- Tranquil and enlightened
- Weak and powerless and possibly fluffy
Where’s the subtlety? Where’s the complexity? Where’s the deep seated love of smooth jazz? They may be blue, or green or have six eyes but they’re still going to have one dimensional personalities.
Score 2/5 – “veS qamuSHa’”
Round Three – Transport
Fantasy
So if you’re a standard mud shovelling peasant in your standard mud-exporting village you’re most common transport is going to be your own two legs, maybe a donkey if you’re a bit ‘la-di-da.’ Then it’s just various upgrades of horses from raggedy, cart-pulling nag to King grade war stallion. BUT that’s just for the humans. Look a bit further afield and things start to get interesting. How about a griffin, or a giant eagle, or a dragon? Or forget the unreliable mythical animal industry altogether and just go straight for zooming across the landscape via magical teleportation. Or walking, talking, friendly tree? There’s plenty of options available for the enterprising traveller on a budget.
Score 3/5 – It still does all kinda boil down to horses though
Sci-Fi
From your big Jupiter Mining Ships to your nippy little X-Wings, there will always be a ship to suit your needs. There are ships the size of cites, ships for one man crews, ships on the backs of giant space wales, ships powered entirely by the numbers on a waiters bill pad, ships that can travel across galaxies in the blink of an eye. And they’re a combination of your home, your defence system and your transport. But what if spaceships just aren’t for you? Well fear not weary traveller, because Sci-Fi boasts the best in cutting edge teleportation technology. A galaxy need never be far far away for you, when you can head on down to Super Savers Spaceship Emporium and pick up your new vehicle today.
Score 4/5 – Give me a big skip with thrusters.
Round Four – Weapons
Fantasy
Thanks to the heavy influence of the Middle Ages, fantasy has a broad range of pointy, bludgeony, flaily and fiery weapons to kill your fellow sentient beings in a variety of interesting ways. Combine that with magic and you’ve got weapons that are twice as deadly and 100% more sparkly. Take your standard, perfectly balanced broadsword. Throw a rune of lightning on that bad boy and give it a Curse Of the Black Tomb and suddenly you have Shadow Bolt The Destroyer, the Blighted Blade of the Wastes. But what about the busy warlord that needs to lay waste to his enemies en masse? Of course an atom bomb can vaporise the entire landscape in an instant but it will never create the same sense of dread as a giant flaming trebuchet being pushed towards the castle gates by two angry war hippos. Alternatively you can summon your mighty sorceresses that can freeze enemies in their tracks, make the blood boil in their veins or summon an undead horde (provided their mana doesn’t run out).
Score 5/5 – Because when it comes to raining down fire upon your enemies, there’s nothing quite like raining down fire upon your enemies.
Sci-Fi
At first glance, sci-fi looks to be a heavily beam weapon focused genre. I mean, you think sci-fi gun, you’re thinking laser beams. And you’d be right. BUT, there’s so much more! Technological advancements that made deep space travel and teleportation possible obviously extended to humanities enthusiasm for destroying anything and everything that looks at it funny. So as well as your classic, ‘slice you into ribbons’ laser beams you also have freeze beams, portal guns and anti-gravity guns for when you need to kill your target in a slightly more comical way. Or how about shrinking rays for lovers of the unconventional kill? But what if you need a little more oomph? With the likes of a Death Star in your back pocket you can destroy a planet at the touch of a button. And you need never risk your own men as you can have a robot army marching across the plains, mowing down innocent civilians to your hearts delight.
Score 4/5 – Just make sure your robot army doesn’t gain sentience and turn against you, it always makes a terrible mess.
Final Scores
So, after careful consideration of what each genre has to offer let look at our final scores. So in the Fantasy corner we have an impressive 15/20, and in the Sci-Fi corner we have a very respectable, 15/20. Everyone’s a winner! So go and get your copies of Lord Of The Rings and The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy, tear out all of the pages and use them to throw yourself a parade for having such excellent taste.
The Tricksy Tavern 