In my opinion horror authors are more properly called horror fantasy authors. After all, they are usually writing about things which most people think can’t actually happen. Trying to
define fantasy fiction as different from realistic fiction puts most horror fiction on the fantasy side, not on the realistic side.
Science-fiction is vague by that definition, though supposedly a science-fiction story should also seem to be scientifically possible, even if it involves time travel or faster than light travel. So is Jules Verne’s
From Earth to the Moon hard science-fiction rather than fantasy when Verne knew that his method of space travel really couldn’t work, or only when we do? Or does it remain science-fiction with an unfortunate error in the science.
I see Lovecraft as mostly writing fantasy with a science-fictional cover over it. Same with Stephen King. But his
Dark Tower series is very fantasy in my opinion, unless all alternate word stories are to be classed as realistic fiction which seem just wrong to me. His
The Shining seems to me to be very much fantasy. So does
Carrie. Is Kenneth Grahame’s
The Wind in the Willows really science-fiction set in a parallel world in which animals can talk?
Quibble away if you wish. And remove most of Lovecraft, and Poe, and King from my lists if you wish to fit your definitions which don’t agree with my definitions. It doesn’t matter very much to me.
You will not be able to find any definitions of fantasy and horror that are universally accepted. I was at a conference here in Toronto last weekend at which academic Robert Runte discussed writer Margaret Atwood who has very much denied being a science-fiction writer and has been blamed for making up a definition of science-fiction of her own which no-one else uses. Runte showed that the definition Atwood was using was the same one Robert Heinlein used, but that since the date when he put it forth science-fiction criticism has moved on.
So drop all the horror-fiction and Hugh Lofting from my list if you wish. But I hope you now understand why I disagree.
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Originally Posted by Galadriel55
Based on the few of Lovecraft's stories that I've read, I'd actually put him under sci-fi, with a little bit of fantasy and horror sprinkled in. Maybe I just haven't read the right stories, though.
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That seems to me to be an adequate way to look at much, perhaps most, of Lovecraft’s work.
But there are exceptions in his writing.
Consider Lovecraft’s story “The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kadath”. That seems to me to be very much a fantasy tale by any definition, despite the horror elements. The definitive version, with corrected text is published by Arkham House in
At the Mountains of Madness and Other Novels and by Penguin Classics in
The Dreams in the Witch-House and Other Weird Stories.
See a discussion of this story by John D. Rateliff (
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_D._Rateliff ) at
http://web.archive.org/web/200307040...sicsdreamquest .