damon knight's credited with the only "definition" of science fiction that suits the facts of the case: "Science fiction is what we point to when we say it."
Knight knew a thing or two about the genre.
Unfortunately for the accuracy of your statement,
he's not the only one. And he's outnumbered.
To tell you the truth, I have no idea about the Hugos; I don't pay attention to awards. But if the term Science Fiction can include Ray Bradbury and Godzilla then it doesn't mean much. A term that can mean anything means nothing. We might as well say "stuff" or "thing."
It's all about communicating. And using the terms the way they're actually used in the real world, not the way you think they
ought to be used. When people want to find STAR WARS at the video store, they look in the sci-fi section.
Kind of my point. They also look for
Tales From The Crypt there.
Ray Bradbury is widely considered to be one of the most famous science fiction writers in the world. If you read books and articles about the history of sf, he's going to be prominently featured. You take a college course on science fiction, he's going to be on the syllabus. In the fifties and sixties, he was pretty much the face of science fiction as far as the general public was concerned.
And we're not just talking clueless "mundanes" here. Heck, I've been in the science fiction biz my entire career and Bradbury has always been one of the big names in the field, along with Asimov, Heinlein, Andre Norton, Harlan Ellison, etc. Pretending that nobody really considers Bradbury a science fiction writer is like saying that Marilyn Monroe wasn't really a movie star or that Stephen King doesn't really write horror. You're speaking a different language than everybody else.
Why in the world would anyone not consider Bradbury a Science Fiction writer? And Stephen King doesn't write Horror-- he writes Science Fiction. I heard someone say so.
The term isn't meaningless. Nobody is going to call GONE WITH THE WIND or CATCHER IN THE RYE. or HIGH NOON science fiction. But in the real world, where words are actually used to communicate, science fiction is a broad term that encompasses everything from BUCK ROGERS to Ursula K. Le Guin.
Why not call GWTW and the others SF? None of those people existed, so they must be alternate history.
Incidentally, the idea here is not to pile on Diogenes.
Thanks. You can call me
RJ.
I'm only harping on this because I keep running into similar attitudes here and elsewhere. It seems like every site I visit these days, from io9 to blastr or whatever, there are finicky scifi purists insisting that BUFFY or STAR WARS or LOST or whatever isn't "real" science fiction and how dare they contaminate our precious bodily fluids with all that icky-poo fantasy and paranormal stuff?
When did people get so concerned about protecting some arbitrary standard of genre purity? It's like some fans (not necessarily Diogenes) are afraid they're going to get cooties if they accidentally watch a show with vampires in it.
Hmm. I wish I knew more places where there were purists.
And it's not about "contamination." I like all that stuff. But
Buffy is supernatural,
Star Wars is Space Opera and nobody knows what the hell
Lost is. What I don't understand is why people are so eager to dilute the meaning of the term when, as you say, it's all about communicating. If somebody asked you to recommend some good Science Fiction, would you really say, "
Buffy the Vampire Slayer?"
Plus, of course, there's this weird idea that "mundanes" don't count and only the opinions of "real" fans matter . . .
It's not that they don't count, it's that the people who (should) know better should be defining the terms, not just going along with the lowest common denominator.
Ah, Clea . . . I always liked her. Remember the time she was seduced by Benjamin Franklin? Alas, that was later retconned away as an illusion.
That's just one reason that Englehart is my favorite comics writer.
Just because someone builds a statistical model of something doesn't mean it isn't nonsense, which psychohistory plainly is. I'm sure you could make statistical models about how lightsabers ought to work.
Quite frankly, you can't statistically predict history with the level of precision Hari Seldon had and honestly you can't 'predict' it period. I'm not that interested in what Joe Six-Packs and mundanes have to say about what's feasible or even remotely plausible in history. Psychohistory is sound in space.
Again, this isn't about the plausibility of a specific work. And Asimov made his point about both the predictability of history and the unpredictability of history-- don't forget the Mule (and the fact that Foundation and Gaia were there to finesse things). But I digress....
Come on this isn't Left Hand of Darkness or anything.
It's a big tent.
However, both of them have elements of fantasy - monsters, prophecy - which are explained by means of pseudoscience. In Gojira, the fantastic suggestion is made that Godzilla is a vengeful god of the seas, but the 'truth' is that Godzilla is a dinosaur who survived extinction and has lived on the sea bed.
Okay, in the interests of peaceful coexistence I'll allow that
Godzilla is Science Fiction on the grounds that it extrapolates the effect on society of a hibernating dinosaur revived by atomic radiation.
