Holiday Wishes Meme

There's a Holiday meme going round in which people give a list of a few things they're wishing for. I think this is an excellent idea - it's interesting to watch, and there's always the chance that something you want is the same thing that someone else is about to throw out - but I just can't do it myself. For a start, I can't think of many things I want that aren't either already on my christmas list with family and friends or utterly impractical, and for another thing I just can't get over the cultural conditioning Not To Ask for things (Christmas lists being a special case). So, here's my version:

( Utterly Impractical Wishes )

Actually, combining aspects of another meme that's going round at the moment, if anyone would like to imagine what they'd do with me if I were magically able to drop in for a flying visit, I would be most grateful. This afternoon is shaping up to be long and boring.

And, come to think of it, something else it's possible to ask for: music recommendations. My taste is pretty eclectic but my knowledge is patchy.

Categories

There seems to be a lot of discussion about defining the terms 'Science Fiction' and 'Fantasy' going on at the moment: see matociquala here and here, papersky here and probably some other places I've forgotten, as well as all the arguments linked to in those posts. This reminds me very strongly of the term I did Philosophical Aesthetics and spent at least two hours a week discussing what someone thought Art was. Two arguments that I haven't spotted yet in this discussion are:

1. The idea that something is Fantasy if someone in the Fantasy World (Fantasy author, Fantasy publisher, Fantasy critic) says it is. I can't remember whose idea this was, but I suspect that something like this gets used a lot in places where this discussion isn't happening, for example, among harassed book-shelving people in bookshops where SF and F are shelved separately. Unfortunately, it's not a lot of help for critical discussion and creates the further problem of making people decide which World they're going to be in today.

2. Wittgenstein's categories, where there isn't a definition as such but a fuzzy idea based on comparison, and 'Science Fiction' and 'Fantasy' would change slowly as new works appear.

I've been thinking about the categories in a vague sort of way as 'Science Fiction'='a story which could take place in the known universe or makes a case for being so' and 'Fantasy'='A story which couldn't". This is rather simplistic, however. Mostly, I just think of sf&f as a single category with two marketing-induced poles - the term 'speculative fiction' is handy - and don't look at it too closely. I'm aware of not having read enough in either 'category' to start theorising with any authority. I'm enjoying the discussion, though.

ETA: Further links on the genre debate.
sartorias here and matociquala here, here and here.