Date: Tue, 11 Oct 2011 10:10:17 -0700 (PDT)
From: Tamar Lindsay <dicconf at yahoo.com>
Subject: [WSFA] categories - SF vs horror vs thrillers...
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at KeithLynch.net>

I really don't intend to start the old SF vs Fantasy definition debate again.  This is just to express an opinion.  Nobody else need agree or disagree or even read it.

In my opinion, "thrillers" are mundane stories with horrific elements but are not usually science fiction (sometimes they are allowed one "mad scientist" doomsday gadget or created disease as long as the solution to the problem doesn't involve more newly invented gadgets or biochem).

SF of course involves many things that are not currently in existence.  It's a stretch to include stories that only have one such element, even though if you put "one lousy dragon" in an otherwise standard western it becomes fantasy.  "One lousy rocket ship" may make it SF but it doesn't make it good SF.  (I hold to Horace Gold's example of Bat Durston on Mars, "You'll never see it in Galaxy!")

Modern Horror is a blend - thriller stories, with SF or fantasy elements.  It is a subsection of SF because, although the intended effect on the reader is a particular emotional response, the story always involves something that does not exist mundanely.
Classic horror did not have that requirement.  Some of Poe's horror stories involved fantasy elements - a forever-beating heart (if you believe that the narrator isn't insane) - but most of them didn't involve magical elements; the "horror" part was due entirely to the human responses within the story, which makes classic horror technically thrillers in my view.

=Tamar