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Classifying Star Wars: Fantasy? Science Fiction? Speculative Fiction? Space Opera?

fireproof78

fireproof78

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Inspired by a conversation from the SNW subforum the debate raged about what makes Star Wars more science fiction than fantasy, and vice versa. I found this quote from Lucas on the subject:

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Which apparently was not enough to satisfy the debate. So, where do people land on Star Wars? I do not regard it as science fiction, because there really isn't much science it builds off of. It has a speculative fantastical lens through which the story is told, being far closer to Tolkien than Heinlein or Asimov.
 
"Star Wars" under Lucas was space fantasy. However as more people add to the pool of stories it becomes more a mix of everything except speculative fiction. It is not set in our future or even universe, so it cannot speculate anything on our end of things
 
Yeah, space fantasy. It hits pretty much all of the fantasy tropes, and while it does space ships, and laser blasters, and robots, it doesn't really take a scientific approach to any of it. Change the lightsabers to swords, blasters into bows and arrows, and space ships and speeder bikes into horses, and you'd pretty much have a Tolkien style fantasy.
 
Space Opera - grand sweeping galaxy wide story with enough pathos to choke a Wookie.

Nothing more but also nothing less. Hard Sci Fi like 2001 Lucas mentioned for people who want and like it but also the everlasting tale of Good vs Evil mixed in with space batttles and mystical powers for those who like this too.
 
There are good and reasonable labels for all of this stuff, sure. My issues are with the consistency of the labels and with then with where Lucas himself draws his lines. I know for a lot of people MOST of what we watch on TV or at the movies is in the same lump with Star Wars, Flash Gordon, and A Princess of Mars.

But it is only with Star Wars that people say "Oh. Well. You know that's NOT science fiction."

"You know there's no sound in space". Well, if that's our new line then Star Trek, 2010, and pretty much every other formerly sci-fi movie gets the heave ho. 2001 and Firefly are the only two properties that come to mind that get to stay. (And even Firefly couldn't quite hold the line when they got a movie.)

"I wanted to forget science."

Traveling through hyperspace ain't like dusting crops, boy. Without the precise calculations we could fly right through a star, bounce too close to a super nova, and that'd end your little trip real quick, wouldn't it?
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(Yes, that's from memory.) Star TREK didn't ever go into that kind of detail! (Not in TOS anyway.) Warp Drive made you go fast. If it broke you had to go slow. Maybe it was powered by anti-matter. Maybe it was dilithium. It depended on the week. What is dilithium? Well, that's because the makers of Star Trek "wanted to forget science".

There's just too much science in Star Wars (Star Wars - 1977 - Directed by George Lucas no bloody IV no bloody A New Hope, and certainly no sequels or prequels) for George to get his "get out of Sci-Fi Free" card. Even in The Empire Strikes Back. With the exception of The Force (which isn't in the original Star Wars that much AND is no more fantastical than Mentats or The Squire of Gothos or Gary Mitchel) it's all pretty grounded science-y hardware. Even holograms were pretty up-to-the-minute in 1977. The desert planet has "moisture farmers". There's a centralized government with recognizable fascist tropes. Ray guns and shields, right out of that other Star thing. Data tapes and droids.

Does any of it work when you start introducing the real vastness of space, the power requirements of your planet killer, interplanetary communication, artificial gravity and whatnot? Probably not.

And it doesn't in almost every other visual representation of "science fiction".
 
Tallguy said:
But it is only with Star Wars that people say "Oh. Well. You know that's NOT science fiction."
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No. I say it with Star Trek too sometimes.

Tallguy said:
(Yes, that's from memory.) Star TREK didn't ever go into that kind of detail! (Not in TOS anyway.) Warp Drive made you go fast. If it broke you had to go slow. Maybe it was powered by anti-matter. Maybe it was dilithium. It depended on the week. What is dilithium? Well, that's because the makers of Star Trek "wanted to forget science".
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So it's space fantasy. Got it.
 
Tallguy said:
(Yes, that's from memory.)
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Of course it is. :techman:

I happen to agree with you. It may say, "A long time ago," but it also says, "in a galaxy far, far away." Droids are robots with true AI. There are spaceships and hyperdrives. Midichlorians give a biological basis for Force sensitivity. The fact that a high number of planets are capable of supporting humanoid lifeforms means there was something equivalent to terraforming in their past.

It's certainly *closer* to Space Fantasy like Burroughs than to "hard" SF. I can see where George was coming from and why - especially given the time period he was working in, when SF movies tended to be "hard" (like 2001) and he didn't want to do that. Also, George was obviously influenced by fantasy - hence Jedi "Knights".

But I've been calling it Science Fiction since 1977 and see no reason to split hairs about it.

Additionally, the movies and TV shows since the OT have leaned more into SF (IMO).
 
At it's core, Star Wars has always been a science fantasy fairytale with strong mythological undertones.
Sure, there's science present in the sense that there's spaceships, robots, and lasers . . . but that's just tropes and a type of technology appropriate the setting, just as horse & carts, weaponised metallurgy, and castle scale masonry are for medieval inspired fantasy settings.

That is to say that the technology is there and it's serves a practical purpose, but by and large it doesn't matter to the story. Hyperdrives are just how people get around between planets, the equivalent of ship & sail. In purely storytelling terms; the vacuum of space is like the depths of the ocean; there to provide a natural hazard, not to be a scientifically accurate representation of the real thing. Sure, the *audience* can hear sound in space, but the audience can also here music a see two dimensional text flying through space. Whether the characters can hears sound in space is another question, but it's never addressed because just like anything else scientific; it doesn't really matter that much.

I can't remember where I heard/read this, but I recall one of the story group (I think it might have been Matt Martin?) address how they generally approach advanced technology in Star Wars, and the general rule of thumb is that nothing should be so advanced you can't explaining it in 1940's terms (or words to that effect.)

So there's no "galactic internet" because that doesn't fit into those terms. Yes there's the HoloNet, but that seems to work in a fashion more akin to the telegraph, telephone, and television of the period all rolled together. A lot of data-streams, direct messaging and broad transmissions, but no digital space in the way we think of it. The droids generally aren't digital entities that happened to be loaded into physical mechanisms which is how we tend to think of how AI should work; their mechanical bodies are just as integral to who they are as their programming, just as it is with organics.

The "lived in universe" has always been a signature feature of the franchise; and that doesn't just mean "everything looks beat to hell and back" (that was only ever mostly just Tatooine anyway), it means that the technology is just taken for granted. It all just works, it doesn't need to be explained, anymore than the mechanics of a wheel, a sail, or a crossbow needs to be explained in a more standard fantasy setting. It's not magical science, it's just mundane science.
 
There are lots of different stories that you can tell in a western setting. There are adventures, comedies, dark introspections on right and wrong, literal historical retellings of real events. But if you put a guy on a horse with a six shooter in the American southwest in the 19th century it will invariably be called a western.

You will more than likely have found Stagecoach, Silverado, Unforgiven, The Searchers, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, and Support Your Local Gunfighter in the same section of the video store.

Reverend said:
The "lived in universe" has always been a signature feature of the franchise; and that doesn't just mean "everything looks beat to hell and back" (that was only ever mostly just Tatooine anyway), it means that the technology is just taken for granted. It all just works, it doesn't need to be explained, anymore than the mechanics of a wheel, a sail, or a crossbow needs to be explained in a more standard fantasy setting. It's not magical science, it's just mundane science.
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Except as I quoted above they went out of their way to explain hyperdrive and later midi-chlorians, as an example. How long was it before Star Trek (generally accepted as sci-fi) explained phasers? Or warp drive? Or transporters?

Maybe I can rephrase the question:
What is gained by saying "Star Wars is NOT science fiction?" And why is it inaccurate if you say it is? (I know Lucas doesn't want anyone being able to say something doesn't make sense because now he can say "Well, you know, this is really a fantasy movie." The technology is not your problem, George.)

Going back to my westerns analogy, if someone hates westerns what would be the western they would like? And at that point would you say "Oh, my friend hates westerns but he loves this movie. It must not be a western." "But it's set in Tucson in the 1880's and there is a gunfight and it has horses." "Ahhh, but it explores the spiritual dichotomy what we think of as the old west but is really the modern day." "Uh huh. It's still a western."

No Star Wars in not 2001: A Space Odyssey. But neither is Forbidden Planet and nobody is kicking that movie out of the club.
 
Reverend said:
So there's no "galactic internet" because that doesn't fit into those terms. Yes there's the HoloNet, but that seems to work in a fashion more akin to the telegraph, telephone, and television of the period all rolled together. A lot of data-streams, direct messaging and broad transmissions, but no digital space in the way we think of it. The droids generally aren't digital entities that happened to be loaded into physical mechanisms which is how we tend to think of how AI should work; their mechanical bodies are just as integral to who they are as their programming, just as it is with organics.
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For the most part I tend to take Star Wars on terms with it being 1977. For one thing, that's how I encountered it. For another that's how it was made. And in 1977 there wasn't anything about the tech that was "retro" or "throwback". Even the way ships were shot / lit was much more real life Apollo / 2001: ASO than Star Trek. Way more than TNG era Star Trek.

So if there is no Galactic Internet (isn't there?) it's because there was no Internet (to the common folk) in 1977.

Interestingly the whole purpose of the Artoo Detoo / See Threepio pairing was because Artoo could NOT be understood because he literally spoke in a data stream. (I seem to recall that it was described as digital or at least electronic.) It was no more learnable than reading pure 1s and 0s. It's like someone learning to speak to a modem. It was only in later films / media that you started to get humans who spoke "droid".

We've made some slight "advances" in Star Wars. "Slicing" was introduced (is that a Zahn thing?) and finally mentioned on screen in The Last Jedi. (If it was in Clone Wars I don't know anything about that.)

Taking it back to the topic, there is lots of sci-fi where the technology is the setting, not the story. Alien comes to mind.

If I remember correctly Ellison objected to his work being titled sci-fi (preferring speculative fiction) for just that reason.

Again, I consider that hair splitting of the highest order. (I disagree with Harlan Ellison. Shocking. I'll have to see if the sun came up in the east today too.)
 
Yeah as far as I can tell (from looking at Wookieepedia) the only TV/movie productions to use slicing are TLJ and an episode of Mando

There's also computer/security spikes which are a different type of hacking from slicing. They first appeared in the KOTOR series in Legends (though according to Wookieepedia a retcon gave them an appearance in ANH) , but in current canon they first appeared in Rebels.

starwars.fandom.com

Computer spike

Computer spikes, also known as data spikes, were electronic devices that, upon insertion into a computer, allowed the user to access classified data and programs. Spikes could be set to initiate a program or be operated manually, and plugged into the same kind of sockets as scomp links. They...
starwars.fandom.com starwars.fandom.com

It's funny, computer spikes actually have more appearances in canon stories (not counting source books) now than they do in Legends.
 
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