. . . but is it Science Fiction ?

[psikeyhackr]

Interesting, because I would have regarded it as the other way around.

Star Wars aimed for visual realism - planets looked like planets, and each had a distinct environment; aliens looked alien, and robots were varied, practical, and common. There was a clear sense of the society involved, and a spiritual belief system. The underlying science behind everything was hidden - but the same is arguably true for most people in our modern technological world.

Star Trek began in 1966. The first movie with computer generated graphics was Tron in the 1982.

Tron - Wikipedia

How much money can be spent per episode versus per movie? There are more than 500 Star Trek episodes. Compare the effects of Trek1966 to Trek2001.

I never saw a computer in the flesh until 1969. Programmed FORTRAN with punched cards. Luke Skywalker was an alien in another galaxy. LOL

psik

 

[RX-79G]

My point is that 1984 is SF no matter who it was written for, inside the genre or for readers outside.

PKD is seen as serious SF, "literary SF", its maybe subjective choice for you that PKD isnt that but he is seen as one of the most hailed,serious SF authors. Listed in Library of America classic series alongside Poe,London,Hemingway and co.

And my point is that we can classify virtually anything as SF - Sherlock Holmes, James Bond, Coma, James Michener's Space, The Lake House, etc. And that's fine, it just misses that those books or films are also and primarily some other genre: Detective, spy, medical, historical, romance, etc. Or in the case of 1984, literary political fiction. All SF, but all something else as well. But there is no question what genre I, Robot or Dune or Rama or Neuromancer belong in.


As far as the Library of America goes, if we take their POV of what makes a classic SF novel, it is primarily the works of PKD and Vonegut, with a smattering of mostly obscure short novels from a few other big names, and not a thing from Herbert, Asimov, Clarke, Gibson, etc. I don't think the criteria for being considered important to the Library of America is anywhere near universal or literary. I think a lot of those selections were priced right. PKD was a man of great ideas and quick writing. His stories are endlessly adapted to movies because they contain great hooks but not a lot of detail, action or dialogue that anyone would object to modifying.

In general, the opinion of what is great SF literature seems to be wildly different if you ask a SF genre reader or a literature critic. The critics don't particulary like SF, so their criteria for the "great" stuff is if it contains a heavy amount of allegory to the real world or has a good hook while not getting caught up in all that unnecessary "science" stuff: Bradbury, Vonegut, Ellison, PKD, Orwell, Sirling, Roddenbury.

 

[RX-79G]

Star Trek began in 1966. The first movie with computer generated graphics was Tron in the 1982.

Tron - Wikipedia

How much money can be spent per episode versus per movie? There are more than 500 Star Trek episodes. Compare the effects of Trek1966 to Trek2001.

I never saw a computer in the flesh until 1969. Programmed FORTRAN with punched cards. Luke Skywalker was an alien in another galaxy. LOL

psik

I'm not sure why any of that is important. Star Trek was in production at the same time as 2001. Computers don't make SF movies "good". (Wrath of Khan in 1982 actually has some of the very earliest computer graphics used in film.)

The distant galaxy thing does not prevent the hyperdrive lovin' people of Star Wars from eventually settling the earth, so that really doesn't mean anything. "Ancient astronauts" was a common SF meme in the '70s and was also used in Galactica. It is also entirely incidental to the actual story.

Trek is much more basic SF than everything that was to follow, but it is SF. Star Wars is even more obviously SF, and if a movie about spaceships, aliens, people with Spock-like powers and solutions using engineering blueprints in a robot isn't SF, then Star Trek's weekly low budget morality play certainly is not.

 

[Extollager]

I wonder how often the question "Is it SF?" really comes up. It's not that we shouldn't discuss the topic. But maybe a way to proceed would be something like this: How is it that, given the lack of a clear, universally accepted definition of sf, there is in fact so little debate about whether a given work is indeed science fiction?

Or is there a lot of vigorous dispute and I just haven't happened to see it? If so, would it be good to look over one of those places where debate has occurred and have a critical discussion of the discussion? I mean, if, say, the Guardian listed the "hundred essential science fiction novels" and there was a lot of uproar -- would it be good to look over what was said, and see if one agrees, or changes one's opinion -- ?

My own take? I'd see "science fiction" as a big umbrella, covering everything from sword-and-planet adventures (ERB, Brackett) to sociological extrapolation to hard-tech fictions of the future. Someone mentioned some James Bond stuff. My own take would be that these are probably pop spy novels "with sf elements." The presence of "sf elements" (usually as the McGuffin for a story) would not, in my view, make a book "science fiction" -- so maybe that's where my fairly broad notion of sf ends.

 

[BAYLOR]

House on The Borderland By William Hope Hodgson is classified as horror and science fiction .

 

[RX-79G]

Or is there a lot of vigorous dispute and I just haven't happened to see it?

I don't think that there is any real dispute about the genre definition in the English literature criticism world. The dispute is among the in-group of SFF fans who construct their own criteria based on their preferences, and as a reaction to external criticism that elevates works that we don't actually find to be all that amazing.

On the inside of the genre, we have arguments over what is "hard SF", and sometimes these really raise eyebrows when fans arbitrarily make space opera the polar opposite of hard SF, or insist that one of the greatest SF movies of all times is fantasy. No one else but us cares, and it is like guys at a car show arguing about which Camero was the last muscle car.

Externally, literary critics look at the width and breadth of ideas and prose available from the SF genre, and then pick out something like Fahrenheit 451 as "important". Which rankles because as both ideas and writing, 451 is not exactly high art to SF fans.

But no one on the outside cares about our classifications, and maybe on a board with no writers they would care even less.

I find the topic interesting because I find classification a bit interesting, and SF is near and dear to me. And I think that the SF sub-categories are at least a bit relevant because they set reader expectations, so I prefer not to see them abused too badly. But this kind of discussion is our own internal literary criticism, and has value as that.

 

[psikeyhackr]

I'm not sure why any of that is important. Star Trek was in production at the same time as 2001. Computers don't make SF movies "good". (Wrath of Khan in 1982 actually has some of the very earliest computer graphics used in film.)

Production for the initial season of Star Trek (TOS) cost an average of $190,635 per episode. (Memory Alpha) In contrast: Star Trek: The Next Generation was shot on 35 mm film, and the budget for each episode was $1.3 million, among the largest for a one-hour television drama.

2001: A Space Odyssey was $10,500,000. So 2001 cost about as much as 52 Trek episodes from the 1960s and 8 episodes from the late 1980s.

Wrath of Kahn == $11,000,000 with one minute of complete CGI
Tron == $17,000,000 mixed CGI with other techniques through much of the movie

I have only seen 4 Star Wars movies in their entirety so I don't know if leaving their galaxy is ever mentioned or if they ever say anything about how fast the ships travel in terms of distance in real space versus time in real space.

The distant galaxy thing does not prevent the hyperdrive lovin' people of Star Wars from eventually settling the earth, so that really doesn't mean anything.

So you treat "hyperdrive" and "magic" the same and distances between galaxies far, far apart as irrelevant. Are the writers of canon Star Wars stories that cavalier? But you demonstrate my point that if the readers don't care then the discussion makes no sense.

I don't think SF must be hard for the authors recognize that changes in magnitude in reality would force changes in technology.

But what I said about The Ultimate Computer isn't about technologies that may be fantasies. FTL travel may be impossible. This happened:

Google’s AlphaGo AI Runs the Table on Asia’s Go Champs

psik

 

[RX-79G]

2001: A Space Odyssey was $10,500,000. So 2001 cost about as much as 52 Trek episodes from the 1960 and 8 episodes from the late 1980s.

Wrath of Kahn == $11,000,000 with one minute of complete CGI
Tron == $17,000,000 mixed CGI with other techniques through much of the movie

I have only seen 4 Star Wars movies in their entirety so I don't know if leaving their galaxy is ever mentioned or if they ever say anything about how fast the ships travel in terms of distance in real space versus time in real space.



So you treat "hyperdrive" and "magic" the same and distances between galaxies far, far apart as irrelevant. Are the writers of canon Star Wars stories that cavalier? But you demonstrate my point that if the readers don't care then the discussion makes no sense.

I don't think SF must be hard for the authors recognize that changes in magnitude in reality would force changes in technology.

But what I said about The Ultimate Computer isn't about technologies that may be fantasies. FTL travel may be impossible. This happened:

Google’s AlphaGo AI Runs the Table on Asia’s Go Champs

psik

I'm having a hard time understanding what point you're making. The blurb at the beginning of Star Wars is there to set a tone, not to provide clues to extract a complex theory about the history of mankind.

But, even at relativistic speeds, the amount of ship time it takes to get to Andromeda at 1g of accel/decel is only 28 years. So I don't think it requires "magic" for a "warp drive" to make that number much smaller.

And all of that is supposing that the "audience" of Star Wars is people of the 20th century, when a lot of science fiction is written with the conceit that that the reader is also part of a distant future - like Pushing Ice or the Forever War. Star Wars is arguably just doing the same thing.


That is entirely separate from your as yet to be explained protestations about computer effects and budgets. Star Trek was a low budget show, but that doesn't mean we can't comment on the effort (or lack thereof) made to depict realistic SF. Tron used a huge budget to depict something even less realistic. What does it matter?

 

[Connavar]

In general, the opinion of what is great SF literature seems to be wildly different if you ask a SF genre reader or a literature critic. The critics don't particulary like SF, so their criteria for the "great" stuff is if it contains a heavy amount of allegory to the real world or has a good hook while not getting caught up in all that unnecessary "science" stuff: Bradbury, Vonegut, Ellison, PKD, Orwell, Sirling, Roddenbury.

I dont care what critics who doesnt like SF say dont limit great,huge field like SF to Hard SF books,other SF that isnt soft SF.
Social SF without too much science is huge part of rated SF among the fans. We can agree that there are many types of SF, i wouldnt have read 100+ books in the field if it wasnt for social sf, dystopian novels. Very few science oriented SF is interesting to me unless its cyberpunk stuff or great Hard SF like Heinlein type. That doesnt mean i dont respect other types of SF.

PKD was man of ideas and quick writing? It sounds like you have read very few of his novels or the early pulpy stuff. Like PKD is unknown hack inside the genre, to SF fans. The so called literature critic you mention sounds like me, many other fans of those writers

I respectfully disagree that there is a difference between 1984 and Dune/Neuromancer because as books they are only few types, subgenres of SF. The fact 1984 was written outside the field, also to other fans outside the genre doesnt change that fact its dystopian novel like many others by PKD,Zelazny,Bradbury etc Even Heinlein has political SF that is similar to 1984.

I think you are talking more about the field, the place the author Orwell belonged before he wrote 1984. He was not a SF writer generally. I think you might mean which type of writer Herbert,Gibson was, generally they belong to SF, that i agree with.

 

[RX-79G]

I dont care what critics who doesnt like SF say dont limit great,huge field like SF to Hard SF books,other SF that isnt soft SF.
Social SF without too much science is huge part of rated SF among the fans. We can agree that there are many types of SF, i wouldnt have read 100+ books in the field if it wasnt for social sf, dystopian novels. Very few science oriented SF is interesting to me unless its cyberpunk stuff or great Hard SF like Heinlein type. That doesnt mean i dont respect other types of SF.

PKD was man of ideas and quick writing? It sounds like you have read very few of his novels or the early pulpy stuff. Like PKD is unknown hack inside the genre, to SF fans. The so called literature critic you mention sounds like me, many other fans of those writers

I respectfully disagree that there is a difference between 1984 and Dune/Neuromancer because as books they are only few types, subgenres of SF. The fact 1984 was written outside the field, also to other fans outside the genre doesnt change that fact its dystopian novel like many others by PKD,Zelazny,Bradbury etc Even Heinlein has political SF that is similar to 1984.

I think you are talking more about the field, the place the author Orwell belonged before he wrote 1984. He was not a SF writer generally. I think you might mean which type of writer Herbert,Gibson was, generally they belong to SF, that i agree with.

I'm not sure if you are objecting to ideas I personally wrote. But I will try to restate them:

SF is a grossly inclusive description, in that any literature that has a focus on developing science or technolog (or even just "the future") qualifies.

SF is also marketplace genre; a subdivision of literature for books of a certain focus that aren't better classified into other genres.

The point I was making is that 1984 or 451 can most certainly be described as SF. But when it comes to their purpose in being written, their handling of science and technology and their relation to other genres, they function more as part of a genre I would describe as "polictical or social commentary". By the same token we could classify Orwell's Animal Farm as fantasy or children's story because it is about talking animals, but it would be crazy to view Animal Farm as something that falls into some completely different category than 1984 when they are read as companion commentaries on oppression.


I didn't say PKD is a hack. Nor do I think that. I just think he wrote 44 novels and 120 stories in very quick succession before he died at 53 by writing short, punchy material that isn't necessarily super refined. But I'd much rather read Dick than David Weber.

What I was getting at is that literary critics outside of SF generally favor SF that has as few trappings of the most immersive examples of the genre in favor of shorter, allegorical works that provide an easily extractable "real world" theme to provide the basis for criticism, while turning their noses up great writing that favors the exploration of more abstract ideas. This is an ongoing process, and I'm sure the coming crisis of fresh water availability will transform Dune from a treatise on the superman to "an important work about the struggle for ecological balance", or something like that.

 

[Dave]

Interesting, because I would have regarded it as the other way around...

Star Trek never came close visually. Aliens were just people wearing different clothes, or a little rubber on their face. Additionally, its repeated attempts to engage in topics relating to science and technology always seemed anachronistic. I remember an episode of Star Trek: Voyager where Janeway said their ship had gel packs in the ship's computers.

Some cheap digs at the Original Star Trek, I feel. The set design in that series was not anachronistic at all and one of the reasons that series didn't age quickly, so I agree with @psikeyhackr regarding budgets and make-up. The problems were with the later series trying to stay tied to the 1960's tech while also being futuristic. That could never work. Totally agree with you about Voyager. It is even worse than you said because Janeway had a huge PC sitting on her desk. Even Kirk only had a screen and a slot for a disc. Why some people vote Voyager as the best Trek is beyond me.

If we return to the original question, I'd like to know the answer. Gravity's Rainbow is one of the few books that I gave up on reading. After about 50 pages of that dense wordiness already described then I couldn't take any more. I got the gist of it. It was about probability, maths and psychology, yes? However, is that science fiction?

I think we should stop defining science fiction though, as it is different things to different people.

 

[BAYLOR]

Some cheap digs at the Original Star Trek, I feel. The set design in that series was not anachronistic at all and one of the reasons that series didn't age quickly, so I agree with @psikeyhackr regarding budgets and make-up. The problems were with the later series trying to stay tied to the 1960's tech while also being futuristic. That could never work. Totally agree with you about Voyager. It is even worse than you said because Janeway had a huge PC sitting on her desk. Even Kirk only had a screen and a slot for a disc. Why some people vote Voyager as the best Trek is beyond me.

If we return to the original question, I'd like to know the answer. Gravity's Rainbow is one of the few books that I gave up on reading. After about 50 pages of that dense wordiness already described then I couldn't take any more. I got the gist of it. It was about probability, maths and psychology, yes? However, is that science fiction?

I think we should stop defining science fiction though, as it is different things to different people.

Voyager had some great episodes. Year in Hell comes to mind , But overall it was a meh series.

The Best trek series and one the best science fiction series of all time Is DS9. It doesn't get the appreciation it deserves.

 

[Cathbad]

But, even at relativistic speeds, the amount of ship time it takes to get to Andromeda at 1g of accel/decel is only 28 years.

Say what??

From Wiki: The Andromeda Galaxy /ænˈdrɒmɨdə/ is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years (2.4×1019 km) from Earth.

And you're saying at speeds UNDER light speed it would only take 28 years?

 

[BAYLOR]

Say what??

From Wiki: The Andromeda Galaxy /ænˈdrɒmɨdə/ is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years (2.4×1019 km) from Earth.

And you're saying at speeds UNDER light speed it would only take 28 years?

At the speed of light (even if you could attain it which you really can't because of the infinite mass issue) would take 2.5 million years to get to Andromeda . At less then the speed of light, It takes considerably longer.

 

[Cathbad]

At the speed of light (even if you could attain it which you really can't because of the infinite mass issue) would take 2.5 million years to get to Andromeda . At less then the speed of light, It take considerably longer.

I would think so!!

 

[RX-79G]

Say what??

From Wiki: The Andromeda Galaxy /ænˈdrɒmɨdə/ is a spiral galaxy approximately 2.5 million light-years (2.4×1019 km) from Earth.

And you're saying at speeds UNDER light speed it would only take 28 years?

Ship time. Time dilation.

 

[Cathbad]

Ship time. Time dilation.

You're at least talking near-Light Speed, then - if the theory is correct. We're a long way off from such speeds.

 

[RX-79G]

You're at least talking near-Light Speed, then - if the theory is correct. We're a long way off from such speeds.

No kidding. But if you were able to make a 1g continuous drive that uses vacuum energy or some other source that doesn't get depleted, it only takes 1 light year to get to 87% of the speed of light. So a 2 light year journey, with the entire second half at 1g of deceleration takes 3.4 years externally and 2.5 years ship time. With the same acceleration the external time gets closer and closer to the speed of light, and the internal ship time becomes a smaller and smaller percentage of the time.

So a non-FTL drive that doesn't violate relativity could make a galaxy hopping trip reasonable.

 

[Cathbad]

So a non-FTL drive that doesn't violate relativity could make a galaxy hopping trip reasonable.

Hmmm... well thought out (he grudgingly admits).

 

[Connavar]

I'm not sure if you are objecting to ideas I personally wrote. But I will try to restate them:


SF is also marketplace genre; a subdivision of literature for books of a certain focus that aren't better classified into other genres.

The point I was making is that 1984 or 451 can most certainly be described as SF. But when it comes to their purpose in being written, their handling of science and technology and their relation to other genres, they function more as part of a genre I would describe as "polictical or social commentary". By the same token we could classify Orwell's Animal Farm as fantasy or children's story because it is about talking animals, but it would be crazy to view Animal Farm as something that falls into some completely different category than 1984 when they are read as companion commentaries on oppression.


I didn't say PKD is a hack. Nor do I think that. I just think he wrote 44 novels and 120 stories in very quick succession before he died at 53 by writing short, punchy material that isn't necessarily super refined. But I'd much rather read Dick than David Weber.

.

Ah i think i agree with those ideas because i was talking about how those stories are SF setting,storywise and not the type of story, commentary they are. I get what you mean Animal Farm. These discussions remind me of literary uni classes we talked about what is children literature vs adult literature, what is say fantasy or magical realism, what makes SF and when SF isnt SF etc. Mostly academic are as elitists as the literary critics.

We can agree that the field is broad, open for many type of stories,i dont like when readers,fans limit the genre, the types of stories it can tell as much snobby critics have narrow view on what is quality SF.

Im a big PKD fan, i know his early stuff, many of his short stories was more for getting paycheck, than anywhere near the quality of his mature works.