what is the difference between fiction and fantasy?

Question

i just wanted to know.

Answer 1

Fiction is any story that is not based on real people or real events. The story could seem very plausible like something that could happen to you.

Fantasy, is a fictional story - usually something fantasitc that would never happen in the real world - magic, witches, dragons, etc would all fall under fantasy stories.

All fantasy is fiction. But not all fiction is fantasy.

Answer 2

All fantasy is fiction, but not all fiction is fantasy. Fiction is generally prose writing that is concerned with recreating worlds and people and events to populate those worlds. Authors of fiction write novels, novellas, and short stories.

Fantasy fits this definition, but it is lodged into a more specific genre of fiction. The worlds in fantasy fiction are generally understand as impossible (as in the cases of The Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter), or they may be considered expressions of humanity's desires and our place in the cosmos (as in the case of 2001: A Space Odyssey).

Magical Realism is a related to fantasy (an example is One Hundred Years of Solitude), but its magical and fantastical elements are meant as metaphors for the real world whereas the magical elements of fantasy fiction are meant to be read literally (as in, the wizard can ACTUALLY do magic).

Science fiction and fantasy fiction are almost synonymous today. The Final Fantasy video game series contains elements of both (science and technology but also magic and spells). It's clear that if the two were ever truly separate genres, they have long since been mixed and fused.

Answer 3

Fiction is made up. All fantasy is fiction, but not all fiction is fantasy. Fantasy is 100% made up.

Fiction is divided into many genres of which fantasy is one. In written works, the definition of fantasy is you can't logically get there from here. The rules of life or magic are skewed in a way that our physical world won't accept.

In reality, many books being published now as fantasy are not because they don't follow the classical definition of fantasy. Publishers have taken the easy way out in dividing science fiction and fantasy. If this is technology, it's science fiction. If there isn't a lot of technology, it's fantasy. As a result a lot of stories on other worlds have been put into a fantasy class. Here's a few examples:

PERN (Anne McCaffrey) - The planet has dragons and no obvious technology at first glance. HOWEVER, the colonists came from another world and the starships are still in orbit. The dragons are a low-tech substitute for fighter planes. The science is sound down to the evolution of the dragons and their physical makeup, but the lack of obvious technology got this series classed as fantasy when it first came out.

DARKOVER (Marion Zimmer Bradley) A lost colony develops a civilization on a world that is metal poor and cold. Heavy reliance on psionic talents. There's a sound scientific explanation behind the technology, but there's also swords and horses. It got classed as fantasy.

SAVAGE EMPIRE series (Jacqueline Litchenberg & Jean Lorrah) Civilization has fallen and split into two camps. One side uses telepaths (seers) for communication and healing. The other side uses telekinetics (mages) to do heavy lifting and for defense. Because they use horses and have swords and it looks like magic on the surface, it got classed as fantasy.

THE SYRAN NOVELS (Ellen Anthony). An advanced race colonized a primitive world when they got to be too few to control their own ship. The ship is there in orbit, but unreachable because they've lost a lot of their technology. They use horses and have swords, but also know about solar heating and germs. It got classed as fantasy.

All of these series should have been classed as Low-Tech Science Fiction, but they ended up in fantasy. The current definition of fantasy, therefore, seems to be if they have a horse and a sword, it's fantasy.

Answer 4

Fiction is anything that is fake. So it could be a realistic fiction which means it COULD happen, you COULD wake up one day and find your life exaclty like a story you've recently read, but it's very unlikely. Fantasy is a type of fiction. But it is very, very unlike (impossible, really) for what happens in fantasy to happen in real life.

So the main difference between fiction and fantasy is that SOME fiction COULD happen in real life, though it is unlikely but nothing in fantasy can happen in real life.

Answer 5

Fiction usually takes place in a "normal" world (like ours), and fantasy usually takes place in a world where magic or other special things can happen. For instance, a book about King Arthur vs. a book about Hobbits. Similar types of characters and settings and events, but with King Arthur the trees don't talk.

Answer 6

Fantasy is subdivision of fiction.
Both are made-up stories, with fantasy dabbing into the physically impossible or unreal (dragons, magic powers...)

Answer 7

fic·tion

fic·tion [fíkshən]
(plural fic·tions)
n
1. literary works of imagination: novels and stories that describe imaginary people and events
2. work of fiction: a novel, story, or other work of fiction
3. untrue statement: something that is untrue and has been made up to deceive people
The account she gave was pure fiction.

4. act of pretending: the act of pretending or inventing something such as a story or explanation
5. law something assumed to be true: something that is assumed in law to be true regardless of whether or not it is really true


[14th century. Via Old French from Latin fictio , from fingere “to make, shape.”]


The Latin word fingere, from which fiction is derived, is also the source of English effigy, faint, feign, figment, and figure.

fan·ta·sy

fan·ta·sy [fántəssee]
n (plural fan·ta·sies)
1. imaginative power: the creative power of the imagination
2. mental image or dream: an image or dream created by the imagination
3. psychology creation of mental images: the creation of exaggerated mental images in response to an ungratified need
4. impractical idea: an unrealistic and impractical idea
5. literature genre of fiction: a type of fiction featuring imaginary worlds and magical or supernatural events
6. music See fantasia


vti (past fan·ta·sied, past participle fan·ta·sied, present participle fan·ta·sy·ing, 3rd person present singular fan·ta·sies)
See fantasize


[14th century. Via Old French from Greek phantasia , “appearance, imagination,” from, ultimately, phainein “to show” (source of English phantom and phenomenon).]

Answer 8

Fiction is a made-up story, but it's about things that could happen, or could have happened.

Fantasy is also made up, but it's about stuff like dragons, unicorns, things like that.

Answer 9

Fiction - people shooting at each other

Fantacy fiction - people casting spells at each other