Scifi and Fantasy: where do we draw the line?

[olive]

For the record, I don't see my own taste as superior. No way. It's just mine and I love it with its good and bad and garbage. I especially love the garbage, between us. Same goes for everyone and this doesn't even require a mention.

But I can see what I love as it is and I don't tend to think it is 'good' just because I enjoy it or it is good for me. And I find this approach too politically correct, barren and wrong. Because it stagnates, it sterilises the field.

Doesn't matter if we enjoy, like it or not, some works are superior than others. Some writers are superior than others. I don't get why this bothers some people. Some of the works have stood against hundreds of years while some were forgotten for good even after making big. And genres get defined by the superior work, lol they are made by them. This is the reason I have a general reaction, call it an attitude regarding the general tendency of masses of overrating a work. It could be anything.

Yeah, there will always be conflict in these kind of subjects, a lot of people will disagree with each other. This is not a bad thing, it is a good thing. Nobody is expected to change their taste or opinion. It's an exchange. Just writing about a book or a movie on why do we like it or not without any criticism or standing behind some opinion sounds boring to me.

We should be able to discuss and enjoy these titles, besides our tastes and fandomship. Otherwise, what is the meaning of this technology linking people around the globe?

 

[Venusian Broon]

I don't know if I agree with this idea when it comes to visual mediums. Plot is merely one element of film, and some don't even have one. Check out La Jetee.

Hey, some novels don't have plots. (And some of those are still pretty good!)

It is true that I am thinking about all these in terms of the written word, so I used the word 'story' a bit loosely. If I were thinking about it more carefully (and not in the middle of a gym session!) then I would redefine it to something that captures the 'core themes and ideas' that the art is trying to convey.

But I take your point that different mediums could have different foci, although there is much overlap between TV & Film and novels/short stories IMO.

 

[Toby Frost]

Well, I agree with a lot of this, and I think a lot of things are best discussed and not just passively soaked up. I just don't think this particular issue gets us much further in appreciating the things we're trying to categorise. To my mind, for instance, The Matrix is a science fiction film, because it's about a man in VR who is chased by intelligent programmes and robot squids, and that's pretty much that. If someone tried to make me explain that view, I'd really just end up saying some fancier version of "It's got robot squids!" over and over again. But I'm not sure it matters what I say The Matrix is - at least, it would matter a lot more if I said that it owed nothing to Philip K Dick, which seems a more interesting and debatable point to me.

 

[olive]

Well, I agree with a lot of this, and I think a lot of things are best discussed and not just passively soaked up. I just don't think this particular issue gets us much further in appreciating the things we're trying to categorise. To my mind, for instance, The Matrix is a science fiction film, because it's about a man in VR who is chased by intelligent programmes and robot squids, and that's pretty much that. If someone tried to make me explain that view, I'd really just end up saying some fancier version of "It's got robot squids!" over and over again. But I'm not sure it matters what I say The Matrix is - at least, it would matter a lot more if I said that it owed nothing to Philip K Dick, which seems a more interesting and debatable point to me.

I gave an ancient example out of the genre, because those characteristics was related to my argument. But yeah reality as simulation is a very ancient idea. But I don't see how can anyone could claim that Philip K. Dick has nothing to do with The Matrix while Wachowski sisters themselves have said that it is based on -more than insipired- Dick's work according to his wife. Also apparently, Philip K. Dick actually believed that he lived in some sort of a computer simulation, talked about the events he experienced and defined as 'changes' and 'glitchs'. According to her she was describing The Matrix.

I had no idea.

Philip K. Dick, the Matrix, Aliens and Alternate History: My Conversation with Tessa B. Dick | HackerNoon

So as part of research for my new book, The Simulation Hypothesis (see original <a href="https://hackernoon.com/the-great-simulation-why-quantum-physics-artificial-intelligence-and-eastern-mystics-all-agree-b6c185213a18" target="_blank">article</a> here), I interviewed Tessa B. Dick, the last...

hackernoon.com

 

[Star-child]

I just don't think this particular issue gets us much further in appreciating the things we're trying to categorise.

What surprises me is why anyone feels the need to exclude a work from a genre - especially when it is widely accepted as being in that genre. Why the exclusivity? What does it accomplish to declare that a work about space ships isn't SF?

I think a passionate evaluation about why a work might be better viewed as some other genre is pretty interesting: 'Is Sherlock Holmes actually SF?' for instance. But that's different than dismissing Holmes as not mystery. That's like saying that something isn't 'good' enough to qualify for the genre, which is just going to irk people who love that genre and that work.


As for Star Wars, there have never really been any films as convincingly visually science fiction as SW and Empire. They built audio/visual language of design, makeup, costume, motion and sound that is the equivalent world-building to what Herbert or Tolkien did with words. So I don't understand dismissing that world as window dressing.

 

[Elckerlyc]

I think any dialog about this subject is going nowhere, without having first established -and by all agreed on- a definition of what makes SF and what Fantasy. Only then can you start qualifying films or novels as one or the other. This thread started well, 4 pages ago, but now I see arguments going left and right, without being acknowledged as such.
Anyways, labelling things isn't always the answer.
Just my 2c.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

I got some good ideas from reading the scifi fantasy discussion. It wouldn't surprise me if this discussion hasn't been going for a hundred years. I don't think PDK was far off the mark anywhere, and he could push up some pretty strange ideas. Seeing all the words here, the idea of living in a simulation suddenly struck me as not too far off. We live in a simulation created by the flow of money. The rules of money are for the most part strictly obeyed. People are geared towards keeping it, you hardly see it being physically destroyed. Even atheists believe in money. Money is numbers and numbers is data and the rules of that data are used to strictly control all kinds of human activities.

The river of money is bathing human activity and makes decisions for us everyday. It even determines what science fiction or fantasy physically looks like. The old cash register was just an adding machine. Now the cash registers are data centers and for a while the terminals had usb ports on them where an enterprising person could upload a virus into the corporate center (Just like in Independence Day) and have company money and data sent to people who didn't own it. Inside the computers there are good forces and bad forces. The magnitude of computer fraud seems to have no limits and is definitely not going away anytime soon. While it is a virtual force existing within a machine it can physically damage lives outside of that machine. On the basis of these activities do I define my existence as fantasy based or science fiction based? Science fiction sounds good, but so many of the ideas being being flown around today as reality seem to be pure fantasy.

I think any dialog about this subject is going nowhere, without having first established -and by all agreed on- a definition of what makes SF and what Fantasy.

That is the center of the discussion, what defines it, so that can never be clearly defined where everyone will agree to it. You could try making up rules as to what could actually exist or happen vs something that could never exist or happen but that won't get anywhere either.

 

[Dave]

I think any dialog about this subject is going nowhere, without having first established -and by all agreed on- a definition of what makes SF and what Fantasy. Only then can you start qualifying films or novels as one or the other. This thread started well, 4 pages ago, but now I see arguments going left and right, without being acknowledged as such.

Or even an explanation of why the SyFy Channel (when I last subscribed to it) only showed Horror films and Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan?

We deliberately don't close threads here. Conversations never end. There are most probably several older threads also on this subject with similar responses, but the subject will always remain new to some people. If this argument has become boring, then no one is forced to take part.

 

[Pyan]

We deliberately don't close threads here....

However, the staff can and do exercise the option to lock threads and/or take further action if we consider that the participants are straying into personal attacks on others, regardless of how politely they're expressed. Think before you write - think again before you post.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Just a polite reminder to everyone that we critically discuss the subject, not the posters, thank you - if you see a post you're not happy with or think is otherwise appropriate, rather than tackle the poster, please use the "Report" post link at the bottom left of the post area, thank you.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

I always wondered why it was sy fy instead of sci fi, now I know

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

Just to resurrect this thread, I've just come across this question on scifi.stackexchange.com which helps to answer the question 'Is Star Wars sci-fi?'

Why did George Lucas set Star Wars in the past instead of the future?

I always found it interesting that Star Wars is set in the distant past instead of the (more obvious) future. Has George Lucas ever commented why he chose to do that?

scifi.stackexchange.com

The accepted answer includes this quote from George Lucas from August 25, 1977

Rolling Stone: You firmly establish that at the beginning of Star Wars with the words: “A long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away…”
Lucas: Well, I had a real problem because I was afraid that science-fiction buffs and everybody would say things like, “You know there’s no sound in outer space”. I just wanted to forget science. That would take care of itself. Stanley Kubrick made the ultimate science-fiction movie and it is going to be very hard for somebody to come along and make a better movie, as far as I’m concerned. I didn’t want to make a 2001, I wanted to make a space fantasy that was more in the genre of Edgar Rice Burroughs; that whole other end of space fantasy that was there before science took it over in the Fifties. Once the atomic bomb came, everybody got into monsters and science and what would happen with this and what would happen with that. I think speculative fiction is very valid but they forgot the fairy tales and the dragons and Tolkien and all the real heroes.

Full article is here

George Lucas: The Wizard of 'Star Wars'

Conversation with 'Star Wars' creator George Lucas, who reveals the voice behind Darth Vader, where Wookies come from, robots need love too.

www.rollingstone.com

So there we have it. Star Wars is Space Fantasy.

 

[tegeus-Cromis]

Which makes me wonder about this: in 1953 EC Comics discontinued Weird Science and Weird Fantasy, and combined them into one: Weird Science-Fantasy. Was this the first use of the term "science fantasy," or are there earlier ones?

Weird Science-Fantasy - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

 

[Star-child]

Just to resurrect this thread, I've just come across this question on scifi.stackexchange.com which helps to answer the question 'Is Star Wars sci-fi?'

Why did George Lucas set Star Wars in the past instead of the future?

I always found it interesting that Star Wars is set in the distant past instead of the (more obvious) future. Has George Lucas ever commented why he chose to do that?

scifi.stackexchange.com

The accepted answer includes this quote from George Lucas from August 25, 1977


Full article is here

George Lucas: The Wizard of 'Star Wars'

Conversation with 'Star Wars' creator George Lucas, who reveals the voice behind Darth Vader, where Wookies come from, robots need love too.

www.rollingstone.com

So there we have it. Star Wars is Space Fantasy.

If Star Wars is in the past, then Dune and a number of other SF written as historical novels of a hypothetical future reader are also "in the past". Looking at the future from even further in the future is common.

 

[Fried Egg]

For me it is not about settings or tropes. Both SF and Fantasy change some of the general facts of reality as we know them. But SF extrapolates or rationalises those changes but fantasy does not.

 

[The Big Peat]

For me it is not about settings or tropes. Both SF and Fantasy change some of the general facts of reality as we know them. But SF extrapolates or rationalises those changes but fantasy does not.

Depending on how you define rationalising them, I've read a lot of fantasy that seems pretty strongly bent on explaining its changes.


For me, I would argue that a work is Fantasy when it's differences to the world as know them rely at least partially on something out of myth, legend, folklore, fairy stories and so on - and Sci Fi when they rely at least partially on a seemingly possible scientific advance. And if a story has both, then it is at the least eligible for being in both genres.

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

Another resurrection post
I came across this article today in which the author proposes criteria to define Science Fiction and Fantasy

Criteria for Science Fiction & Fantasy

rec.arts.sf.written.narkive.com

Some interesting points. Here are the first two paragraphs to whet your appetite

On the "Fantasy is not SF" thread, Mark wrote that "most people want
their fantasy and science fiction aesthetically inseparable, so no
argument will ever establish a legitimate criteria [sic] for saying
the one is not the other." In truth, though, easily applied criteria
can readily differentiate between science fiction and fantasy.
Indeed, fantasy can be identified by a single criterion. And eight
criteria sometimes standing alone, but typically found in
combination with others can identify science fiction.

Granted, science fiction and fantasy sometimes overlap. But usually
they do not. An example of overlap is the STAR WARS films. These
films are basically science fiction, but they do include some fantasy.
The overlap results from the inclusion of (a) The Force, a
metaphysical entity, and (b) the ghosts or spirits of Obi-Wan Kenobi,
Yoda, and Darth Vader. I'll explain why (a) and (b) constitute
fantasy shortly. But first let's examine the criteria that identify
science fiction.

 

[Swank]

Another resurrection post
I came across this article today in which the author proposes criteria to define Science Fiction and Fantasy

Criteria for Science Fiction & Fantasy

rec.arts.sf.written.narkive.com

Some interesting points. Here are the first two paragraphs to whet your appetite

I don't follow this argument. If something is offered as SF, it is because the seemingly impossible things shown are the result of forces, understood or not, that are based in the physics of our universe. It doesn't matter if something appears ghost-like; if it isn't specifically supernatural then it results from the same bottomless trove of yet-to-be-discovered science that those future characters have access too.

Really, the main criteria that makes fantasy fantastic is that the strange forces are largely borrowed from irrational concepts that contemporary readers know are false, because fantasy uses the labels we all agree belong in the superstition category: Magic, ghost, spell, portent, spirit, enchanted, prophecy, troll, wizard, dragon, demon, witch.

SF might adopt some of those terms, usually as self-aware and disdainful labels, but it isn't embracing the underlying concept as real, just acknowledging that an hacker may seem like a wizard or a reptilian alien with wings is dragon-like.

Star Wars never insists that dead Jedi are ghosts. Trek transporters aren't spells. Pern has zero mythological dragons from ancient Earth, Dune has no prescient crystal balls and Ghost in the Shell is not about spirits. All these things are no less or more likely than FTL, tractor beams or anti-gravity, so they can coexist in the rational SF setting with them. They are okay for the same reason that magnetic levitation is not magic.

 

[Guttersnipe]

I've heard it said that much of sci-fi is just fantasy in sfnal trappings. At the end of the day, it's basically sci-fi when the author tells us it is, unless there's a stronger fantasy bent that makes it clear it's not explicable through science in its present and future states. Google makes it harder when they label things sci-fi when it's fantasy or vice versa.

 

[Robert Zwilling]

People in general can draw up their own rules for deciding what is fantasy. What is a backdrop for some can be a primary factor in deciding what is fantasy. Some people believe that any kind of space flight outside of the solar system is pure fantasy. For them, any book or movie featuring galactic space travel, no matter how well put together the story is technically, it is automatically fantasy.