I really liked your post, and it’s made me think a lot about scifi/fantasy. This might get long… And you’re also right – to me, lost is neither scifi nor fantasy. To me (and apparently the wiki definition) scifi isn’t *true* (hence the fiction, duh), but everything should be possible without changing any science-based laws, and generally could happen in a sciency way. Space travel at faster than the speed of light is the typical scifi exception, but i’ll let it slide out of a general sense of optimism for the ingenuity of our future theoretical physicists. Fantasy series, to me, have a leap of faith to accept the new world’s laws, but are generally extremely consistent. Por ejemplo, the twilight series explains how vampires don’t age and need blood, reflect light, can kill eachother, etc etc, and then it is all consistant with those rules. No changing! Also, you can generally tell it is fantasy if there’s a map at the beginning of the book because fantasy doesn’t happen on earth.

Avatar is a movie that is right on the line between scifi/fantasy. I’d probably say it is scifi because it all could happen within our science laws. The one possible exception is the “soul migration” at the end – but this is told through the natives’ mysticism to avoid a clunky bad-science explanation. It is hard to imagine all of those life forms being able to communicate through their tails, but we-the-viewer are supposed to assume that it happens through the same chemistry laws we know/love. It’s just some new biology we haven’t discovered yet.

Lost is just a fairy tale. It is fiction with no rules. Anything goes. It sort of reminds me of some stoner trailing on and on about some story where the scene keeps changing, and he keeps forgetting to get to the point. or that there is a point. And the characters are so insane and oblivious. Lost can’t be scifi – the “island” has “powers”. It isn’t fantasy because the magic only applies for suspense and the plot (no one is learning how to “wield” it).

On another note… How is jack so non-curious? He sees a piece of equipment made like eons ago, and it displays his childhood house, and he’s not at all interested in how it works? He does no experiments before irrationally yelling at hurley and breaking it? And HE’S the man of science on the show? are you kidding me? I would have gone to every person’s number i recognized and looked at the projection. I would have touched it to see if it smeared. No one was ever curious as to why there was a polar bear, or why you had to press the button… and i thought there would be a plot reason for their indifference. Like they are all terminators and have no emotions. ugh, i’m so pissed at this show.

I agree with you that it’s bizarro land trying to make a scifi/fantasy distinction when either one of those options is going to have to include a big “plus there are gods, sort of, and also super obvious good vs. evil symbolism.” But as I mentioned in the post, I don’t really have any problems with mysticism – Battlestar Galactica did an *amazing* job of being both hard-core scifi and a universe with a meaningful, undeniably real spiritual force. I don’t find them mutually exclusive. I’m reasonably prepared to accept a mysterious, unknowable force that is responsible for crazy island stuff.

It can be an unknowable force and still be scifi, particularly when the Dharma Initiative is all about its experimental stations and microscopes and polar bear cages. Ultimately, both fantasy and scifi point to something that doesn’t exist in the real world as an explanation for the way it works, whether it’s an FTL drive or a vampire. My categories for this are essentially superficial – it’s not about the reasoning behind everything, it’s about all the stuff, the trappings. Which is not to say the paraphernalia is meaningless; it’s not, because it affects the way your characters interact with whatever the Giant Unknowable Thing actually is. But it doesn’t have to be any more or less like a real-world object for the audience. It’s just not scifi anymore if we’re supposed to be trading in the microscopes for magic wands.

And just for the sake of persnicketyness, I believe Smokey is parading around in his own specially-made version of Locke’s body, because Locke’s corpse was quite prominently displayed spilling dramatically out of the coffin.

Just curious – if Lost is neither scifi or fantasy for you, what is it?

this show was better when the question was “what is in the hatch?” At one point i had hope that there’d be a sixth-sense-esque-aha-moment that explained everything (smoke monster gets a pass)… but then the time travel started and the island moved, and jacob “touched” everyone and they got on ANOTHER plane that crashed at full speed and they returned to the island. ugh.

are you kidding me? this isn’t even fantasy. at least with fantasy there are rules.