Email and Facebook promotion of the survey generated what proved to be a statistically significant sample of 232 unique, globally distributed, responses6. Most respondents
were English speaking North Americans, Western Europeans, Australians and New Zealanders. The North American responses showed a spike in returns during promotion of the survey on the Facebook page of the SFFWA, indicating writers and fans
participated. The demographics of the respondents showed a broad spread of ages, no gender bias, and a dominance of tertiary educated respondents. These demographics mirrored those reported in the Science Fiction & Fantasy – Your Experiences survey (Menadue, 2016b, Menadue and Jacups, 2018). Details of both surveys are provided in Appendix E. The complete survey dataset and questionnaire is stored in a permanent online repository (Menadue, 2017a), and archived online in its original format (Menadue, 2016a).
6 The statistical significance of the number of responses received as a sample of a
larger population is more strongly affected by consistency between responses than by population size. The survey findings are statistically significant because of this lack of variation in responses. For example, a finding that “magic” is considered to be a defining (and exclusive) feature of fantasy by 94% of survey respondents gives a 95% confidence in the results with a confidence interval of +/- 3% (i.e. between 92% and 98% reliability that this would be affirmed by any other member of the population from which the sample is derived), even if we compared the sample size to the world population of English speakers. The association of “plausibility” with SF by 90% of respondents offers a reliability of between 91.5% and 97.5%. There are specific limitations of online surveys, which I describe more fully in Appendix E. In terms of standard statistical measures of reliability, however, the results indicate that the distinguishing features of SF and fantasy are not a matter of serious debate to the populations from which survey responses were received.
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Survey Results and Discussion
Only two survey respondents out of 218 employed “Fiction of Estrangement” (FoE) terms and concepts7. Two further respondents referred to Samuel Delany’s
classification of SF on the basis of “subjunctivity” (Delany, 2009: 31-36), and three referred to Clarke’s Third Law(Clarke, 1968: 255) that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” to justify apparently fantastical elements appearing in some SF stories. Qualitative examination of the remaining 97% of
responses found definitions based on presence or absence of specific content (Table 3.), which suggested statistical evaluation by word frequency and category would be a suitable analytical method to generate meaningful results. The manner in which the story employed content to build a functional narrative was frequently described by respondents in terms of plausibility or lack of plausibility, the presence of explanations or lack of explicable content. The remarkable lack of equivocation, and absence of qualification of answers, were the first clear indicators that the genre definitions of the respondents were markedly and categorically polarised.
Table 3. Examples of responses to genre definition questions.
Time stamp of response
What is it about a book that makes you think of it as fantasy?
What is it about a book that makes you think of it as SF?
11/11/2016 15:58:11 Incorporating creatures such as dragons or orcs; the story contains magical elements.
Within the realms of possibility using scientific elements or scenarios.
11/12/2016 6:59:45
Fantasy is when elements of the novel are not realistic or possible. I.e. include mythical creatures, super powers...
Evolution of science-based inventions or themes.
11/19/2016 14:48:20 A story with fictional elements that could never happen.
A story with fictional elements that could happen, usually based around advanced technology.
11/20/2016 0:23:38 Magic of some sort; something that reminds you it is not real
Generally speaking I do not read SF although I do watch SF movies; so, my
7 Total count of survey responses was 232, but it was not compulsory to answer all of
the questions in the survey. Throughout the analysis I give the precise number of answers received to each question.
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answer might be cliche: other planets, science and technology that is far more advanced than ours which makes the story implausible.
11/20/2016 14:29:24
Fantasy tends to rely on magic for its world building rather than science, engineering, or economics.
SF to me tends to focus on the future and present a vision, somehow rooted in science or engineering or real history, of how the future might work out.
Fig. 2. Perceived content, style, peer and marketing influences Q.9. Content (n=230)Q.10. Style (n=230)Q.1 1. Peer (n=231) Q.12. Market (n=231) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Fig. 1. Sources of influence
Low
…
. (Influence)
…
High
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Fig. 3. What makes a story SF? Fig. 4. What makes a story fantasy
I asked general questions about the influence of content types, style and structure, peer influence and marketing on genre definitions (Fig. 2), but the responses to these questions were largely ambivalent except for the assertion that peer influence has little effect. More exact questions regarding personal assessments of the quality of fiction provided unequivocal opinions (Fig. 8), but no SF or fantasy terms. These responses imply that generic factors do not clearly affect definitions of SF or fantasy. This is interesting, as responses to more direct questions on what makes a story fantasy or SF were focused on exclusive differences in content and structure, which may support the suggestion that the comprehension of genre is intuitive – that respondents do not consciously believe these factors are important to genre definition, but identification of a specific genre is nonetheless founded in specific content and structure categorisation.