And even when one has defined the phrase to one's satisfaction, that doesn't result in knowing anything worthwhile.
How to define Science Fiction
- Thread starter RAMA
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I haven't read this entire thread, but this does bring up a good point: while fantasy and SF as a whole are fairly distinct, there are subgenres within each which fall closer together.
For instance, hard SF is a distinct subgenre from space opera. Similarly, elves and dwarfs and knights are a distinct subgenre from modern-day-with-magic.
The subgenres into which Star Trek and Buffy fall are a lot closer together than the whole of SF is to the whole of fantasy. Both tell similar types of stories (albeit in very different settings). Both fill their plot-holes with made-up stuff; one just calls it technobabble while the other calls it magic.
Part of this closeness may also have to do with both being TV shows that are therefore expected to regularly draw audiences of a certain size. The tropes they use are similar and serve the same end.
What's really weird is when they start to include ghosts and werewolves and dragons and stuff (and, yes, I know you're going to bring up Pern).
Nah, I was going to go left field and bring up Childhood's End, which has another familiar creature given a science fiction explanation. I won't say what for anyone who hasn't read the book but I'm sure those that have understand immediately.
Also Childhood's End was my very favourite novel when I was fourteen so dismiss it at one's peril.
Anyway, the dividing line when dealing with obvious fantasy things is often how it is explained. Foundation is basically a story about the fall of the Roman Empire and Oracular prophecies intended to mitigate it, it is science fiction because the empire is in space and the Oracular prophecy is a scientific discipline. One could tell a broadly similar story about the fall of a fantasy take on Rome and a wise sage's efforts to save civilization, now that I think of it.
This 'scientific discipline' bit is the key dividing line between sci-fi and fantasy, such as it is. This is how we get from mindreading magic to psionics. Arthur C. Clarke's dictum about sufficiently advanced science being indistinguishable from magic and all that.
So, yes, if there is a werewolf virus that is transmitted bacterially as the result of a bite, that's a rather more sci-fi idea than werewolves being the result of a curse.
Multiple categories are fine, but unless the science fiction category is foregrounded - Hari Seldon's prophecies being given more weight than Star Wars' robots - it doesn't get in?
Yes, I'd call that rather messy.
In fact, there's a really rather wonderful science fiction novel about werewolves by Jack Williamson called Darker Than You Think. In style and content, it's a straight down-the-line werewolf story, but as the novel progresses, the explanation for the werewolf phenomenon becomes more and more clearly scientific. The reason it's science fiction and not fantasy has nothing to do with how foregrounded certain themes are to other themes in the novel. The reason it's science fiction is because there's a scientific rationale in the novel for why werewolves exist. (Of course, whether it were science fiction or fantasy, the novel would also fall squarely in the genre of "horror.")
Genre definitions are always slippery (which is why they're so much fun to debate) but I'm really very intrigued by several points in the original article in the OP.
Brin brings up the Look Back attitude, the Golden Age fixation, that certainly exists (and that my dad hits me over the head with constantly in his red state fervor) versus the Look Forward attitude and the possiblity that things might one day get better (which I like to think characterizes my own progressivist political philosophy). Brin seems to be blaming something (stubbornness, grouchiness?) for the generally dystopian viewpoint that keeps rearing its ugly head.
But isn't it simply the rules of drama that demand this? If you want to write a story about how, one day, science and human get-up-and-go has solved the basic foibles of human nature - isn't it going to be a giant bore? Not to mention, difficult to relate to for all of us still-so-imperfect beings?
As Brin rightly points out Trek did it pretty well there for a while, but that was because Trek focused on the struggle to be better, the journey of getting to better, rather than Life in Better Itself. (And when it did fall into Life in Better Itself, as it did occasionally on TNG, it did indeed become a bit of a snore.)
The struggle to be better is a great subject for story, and actually is very popular, despite Brin's protests to the contrary. We all love a becoming a hero story, and I'd even argue that many a dystopian future novel is actually a becoming a hero story at heart.
Take Terminator for example - horrible dystopian future waiting for us all. But the tale is actually Sarah Connor's journey from vapid waitress to future warrior. Or Blade Runner - society is a mess, but the tale is actually about Deckard's journey from hard-bitten and disillusioned copper to a man (or replicant) who has found the courage to try living and lving for the first time.
A society gone to hell gives a character a reason to become a hero. A society that's paradise gives a character a reason to become a villain - because there's not much else for her or him to do in a story. So in SF, which often takes place in the future so that the author can speculate about how things will roll out from now, it's way easier to write that becoming a hero story if you imagine that things rolled out badly. I'm not sure there's a whole lot else going on and I really doubt it's some conspiracy of grouches.
Brin brings up the Look Back attitude, the Golden Age fixation, that certainly exists (and that my dad hits me over the head with constantly in his red state fervor) versus the Look Forward attitude and the possiblity that things might one day get better (which I like to think characterizes my own progressivist political philosophy). Brin seems to be blaming something (stubbornness, grouchiness?) for the generally dystopian viewpoint that keeps rearing its ugly head.
But isn't it simply the rules of drama that demand this? If you want to write a story about how, one day, science and human get-up-and-go has solved the basic foibles of human nature - isn't it going to be a giant bore? Not to mention, difficult to relate to for all of us still-so-imperfect beings?
As Brin rightly points out Trek did it pretty well there for a while, but that was because Trek focused on the struggle to be better, the journey of getting to better, rather than Life in Better Itself. (And when it did fall into Life in Better Itself, as it did occasionally on TNG, it did indeed become a bit of a snore.)
The struggle to be better is a great subject for story, and actually is very popular, despite Brin's protests to the contrary. We all love a becoming a hero story, and I'd even argue that many a dystopian future novel is actually a becoming a hero story at heart.
Take Terminator for example - horrible dystopian future waiting for us all. But the tale is actually Sarah Connor's journey from vapid waitress to future warrior. Or Blade Runner - society is a mess, but the tale is actually about Deckard's journey from hard-bitten and disillusioned copper to a man (or replicant) who has found the courage to try living and lving for the first time.
A society gone to hell gives a character a reason to become a hero. A society that's paradise gives a character a reason to become a villain - because there's not much else for her or him to do in a story. So in SF, which often takes place in the future so that the author can speculate about how things will roll out from now, it's way easier to write that becoming a hero story if you imagine that things rolled out badly. I'm not sure there's a whole lot else going on and I really doubt it's some conspiracy of grouches.
Buffy is as much science fiction as Farscape or Star Trek is. The only differences are which set of magic words the writers use to enable the impossible.
Doctor Who had a werewolf and has had vampires. can't say that's not sci-fi.
Star Trek TOS did an episode about demonic possession, even including a supernatural murder during a seance. Bloch used special skiffy words for it all, so it was "sci-fi" instead of "horror." 
Foul. That's hitting below the belt.
Bloch clearly had a preference for horror - not to mention a sentimental fondness for Jack The Ripper - and it really seems as if when he did contract work to pay the bills he'd twist the assignment that way if he could. "What Are Little Girls Made Of" is the most down-the-middle skiffy of his Trek episodes, and he had to pepper it with Lovecraft references. Then he did the Halloween episode and the aforementioned possession story.
Kirk to Enterprise. Beam down a virgin to send in alone with Scotty.
I think you answered your own question there.
You can be optimistic about the future and future societies without precluding the existence of drama. You don't need a dysfunctional dystopian society to have an interesting story. And at its basic level, an optimism about the future is pretty encouraging.
It's not a perfect world, it's a better world. But better worlds have problems, puzzles, conundrums. For example, your social refinement will not overcome the fact that our solar system will eventually die - but is there another solution? Problems can be personal, like struggling to succeed in one's job. And so on.
The settlement of a new world. The massive social and cultural implications of a new breakthough. The construction of family. There's frontiers that go beyond 'everything around me is terrible'.
Simply put I don't think this kind of stark contrast:
Makes a hell of a lot of sense. Perhaps if our stories must always cling to some Great Man power fantasy that the derring do hero will run around and shoot a few people and save the world somehow (or try and fail) maybe, but I think that's a rather narrow definition of what genre fiction can do.
No, you don't need a dysfunctional dystopian society to have an interesting story - but it is kinda the shortest distance between two points.
Hey, I'm all for it - but I get why, as a writer, a society in turmoil is more interesting to write about, just like a character in turmoil is more interesting to write about than one who has achieved perfect zen happiness.
Sure, and I wish we had more stories of that sort - I'm a true blue TOS fan and that was what it's basic tone was all about. And I think Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are two of the most iconic hero figures of late 20th century pop culture - so certainly you can get to that without a dystopia (though Kirk was constantly grousing about bureaucrats as a point of less than perfection to TOS's society). My point was that, as a writer, a dystopia makes it that much easier. Basically that imagining an optimistic future is really much harder than imagining a pessimistic future. And given that generating creative ideas for a story is pretty rough from the get go, I can see why lots of people opt to the dystopia. Not because they're grouches but just because of the nature of dreaming up a story.
I will say that I don't think a story which imagines grand improvements to basic human nature would be worth squat. Optimistic or not, it simply wouldn't be identifiable for me, nor would I be able to suspend disbelief for it. Imperfection, which includes human selfishness, greed, both intentional and inadvertent cruelty to others, envy, etc, is simply a part of the structure of the universe in my book. A book full of characters who never display any of this in favor of gung ho nobility and non-stop loving kindness would make me want to gag. A little imperfection is necessary for beauty.
Worked for the Dune series though, didn't it. In God Emperor after Leto II has created a perfect peaceful society for 3000 years - he finally breeds his own destroyer (creates a villain) to move the story forward.
Trust me, I was making no effort to produce an all-encompassing definition as I think that's essentially a fool's errand (as fun as it might be to debate it). Rather, I was talking about why I think the mainstream of the genre looks like it does.
"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."
You beat me to the punch. I was thinking about mentioning Darker Than You Think, as well as I am Legend, Some of Your Blood, and any number of books and stories that offer quasi-scientific explanations for traditional horror concepts, thus blurring any arbitrary genre distinctions.
(Says the guy who co-edited two anthologies of science fiction vampire and werewolf stories. And just edited a horror-fantasy-western for Tor. Clearly, I have a weakness for trashing genre boundaries!)
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^^ Science is knowledge and art is perspective; the synergy of the two is Science Fiction.
Interesting. I like it, but I'm not sure it would stand up. I'll have to mull that over.
Clarke is my favorite writer and Childhood's End was one of his first books that I read after 2001 (way back in 1971). One of the things I like about him is that he often seasons his SF with a mystical flavor; but that's a literary aspect of his work. Whenever he has an advanced race become "pure mind," as far as I can remember, it's through advanced technology-- building a structure with energy rather than matter. That's a major extrapolation to be sure, but nobody said SF had to be conservative-- just the opposite. Since CE is about a mentor race cultivating Humanity to that state, I would say it qualifies as SF (the memory echo from the future bit is a little weird, but nothing is perfect).
Well, sure; you can probably retell any story with magic. Magic is magic.
Curses have frequently been depicted as transmitted like a disease. When modern writers use scientific terminology to explain the occult, it's just mostly for the purpose of verisimilitude, not extrapolation; nobody really believes in werewolves and so forth (except maybe a few Fortean types). This is the equivalent of robots being stage dressing in Star Wars. Not to say that it can't be done, just that it's not usually the case.
It just has to be what the story is about rather than props. Instead of Hari Seldon, think of Susan Calvin's robots versus George Lucas' robots. See what I mean?
Well, sure. Scientists are constantly debating where certain species fall in the taxonomical chart. That doesn't mean that it's useless or shouldn't exist.
Now, come on. Even I will admit that wrestling is Sci Fi.
Here we are in agreement. Not that dystopian fiction is bad; we've had plenty of that all along, especially in the heyday of SF New Wave. What's different now are several things: The sense of laziness in defaulting to the dark and gritty cliches. The atmosphere of nihilism versus rebellion. Plus, I think so many people grew up seeing "Rated M For Mature" on adolescent video games that they've come to believe it's true.
Genre distinctions are far from arbitrary-- nobody would call Casino Royale a Western-- but there's nothing wrong with blurring (or trashing) them. I do it all the time in my own work. One must have a plan to deviate from, as they say. Or, more specifically, a good writer must know the rules so he can know when and how to effectively bend or break them.
On Star Trek and Buffy being similar:
I think that's more of a form thing than a genre thing, not that I've seen a lot of Buffy (so I couldn't offhand say what genres it fits into).
That is, they're both genre TV. And TV can be similar in ways that cross those genre boundaries. Another example that comes to mind are the HBO series Rome and Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones is for all intents and purposes a fantasy equivalent to Rome, with its HBO decadence and lavish sets and political conniving and murders and what have you. This doesn't mean Rome's a fantasy, although Game of Thrones - and the novel series it's based on - obviously owe something to historical fiction.
Anyway!
Yes but my veiled point was
I think there's a distinction between, say, Van Helsing in Dracula and Robert Neville in I Am Legend. Van Helsing is a man of science for whom reason has led him to believe in the existence of the occult, in a fantasy underworld, while Robert Neville's research grounds vampires in a scientific theory.
But yes, I don't think anyone believes in werewolves. But neither does anyone believe in ancient alien astronauts building the Pyramids, although aliens tinkering in humanity's past is a pretty common idea (2001, for example).
Right but easier doesn't mean better. How societies work can be interesting and simply saying 'they suck' - while it can create a wonderfully paranoid world like 1984 - isn't inherently better. Although David Brin classes her as one of his old grouches, my mind just keeps going back to Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossesed. It's a novel which features a working anarcho-syndicalist society. It's not perfect, and the main character has to struggle against some of its problems in the course of becoming a physicist - but it's basically good. He has some serious problems with the rampant capitalism of the former home planet, of course, but...
And generally? People today by and large live longer, healthier lives, in better conditions, with more options, than they did five hundred years ago. There's no guarantee that the same could be truly said of people five hundred years hence - but it seems a perfectly reasonable idea to suggest and work with. And just like the 21st century has, er, a few minor problems of no consequence, that 26th century would be sure to have issues of its own.
Eh. For me that depends on the who and how (and is distinct from a society simply being better - the 21st century may be nicer to live in but that doesn't preclude really nasty people).
What's changed in how humans behave, and why has that happened? The closest Star Trek gets to coherence on the collapse of its monied society boils down to replicators, although I'm sure people could come up with others.
It was not the only option for the Dune series, which seems to be how you frame it. And as good as God Emperor was, for me it's pretty much where the series stopped being any good.
I think that's more of a form thing than a genre thing, not that I've seen a lot of Buffy (so I couldn't offhand say what genres it fits into).
That is, they're both genre TV. And TV can be similar in ways that cross those genre boundaries. Another example that comes to mind are the HBO series Rome and Game of Thrones. Game of Thrones is for all intents and purposes a fantasy equivalent to Rome, with its HBO decadence and lavish sets and political conniving and murders and what have you. This doesn't mean Rome's a fantasy, although Game of Thrones - and the novel series it's based on - obviously owe something to historical fiction.
Anyway!
Yes but my veiled point was
that the Overlords are a science fiction take on demons in appearance and angels in action. Demons are normally something you'd expect in fantasy, after all.
I think there's a distinction between, say, Van Helsing in Dracula and Robert Neville in I Am Legend. Van Helsing is a man of science for whom reason has led him to believe in the existence of the occult, in a fantasy underworld, while Robert Neville's research grounds vampires in a scientific theory.
But yes, I don't think anyone believes in werewolves. But neither does anyone believe in ancient alien astronauts building the Pyramids, although aliens tinkering in humanity's past is a pretty common idea (2001, for example).
Not really. They're both robots. Fictional robots who are scientifically run and have different purposes. I mean, a robot with a few thousand languages for use as a translator does sound awfully SF to me...
Right but easier doesn't mean better. How societies work can be interesting and simply saying 'they suck' - while it can create a wonderfully paranoid world like 1984 - isn't inherently better. Although David Brin classes her as one of his old grouches, my mind just keeps going back to Ursula Le Guin's The Dispossesed. It's a novel which features a working anarcho-syndicalist society. It's not perfect, and the main character has to struggle against some of its problems in the course of becoming a physicist - but it's basically good. He has some serious problems with the rampant capitalism of the former home planet, of course, but...
A character from Earth will basically tell him that this capitalist society is fairer and better then any Earth has had. Which is a brief thing, and surprising considering how deeply dissastified people are with it - but then, a better society is not necessarily a contented society, is it?
And generally? People today by and large live longer, healthier lives, in better conditions, with more options, than they did five hundred years ago. There's no guarantee that the same could be truly said of people five hundred years hence - but it seems a perfectly reasonable idea to suggest and work with. And just like the 21st century has, er, a few minor problems of no consequence, that 26th century would be sure to have issues of its own.
Eh. For me that depends on the who and how (and is distinct from a society simply being better - the 21st century may be nicer to live in but that doesn't preclude really nasty people).
What's changed in how humans behave, and why has that happened? The closest Star Trek gets to coherence on the collapse of its monied society boils down to replicators, although I'm sure people could come up with others.
It was not the only option for the Dune series, which seems to be how you frame it. And as good as God Emperor was, for me it's pretty much where the series stopped being any good.
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