What do you diehard TOS fans think of the new movie?

[Cakes488]

@ Cakes488: Ass-kissing? Hardly. (T'Bonz recently gave me mild friendly and said I was acting like a PMSing adolescent when I took umbrage at one of his pithier posts.) Like I said, I've taken serious issue with Dennis before and he with me. I doubt either of us (as represented by what we post here--neither of us really knows the other) can be said to truly like the other. But I can't fault him for laying out a detailed and thought-through argument, even if I don't agree.

In short, I believe civility is more important than a tv show, even a tv show I'm a fan of. I don't always live up to that belief, but I try. To show someone the respect he is due--and Dennis has proven to me time and again that his intellect does deserve my respect and, at times, my admiration--is not tantamount to kissing his ass. Kirk admired Khan; he never puckered up.

I can't fault for supporting one's own argument either.....it's just seems that whenever there is an opportunity to take a jab at TOS...it's taken....and the tone it's taken in... I don't very well like it !!
This "intellect" is really going to this person's head...it is sooooo readily apparent....and the ego must be expanding as I type....especially with all the cheerleading going on!! I tend to respect people who deserve it...not just based on their intellect alone...there are plenty of smart assholes around..... so on that note we can end this convo about said poster because there is nothing left to say --- well nothing that I'd publish on a family message board such as this. Thanks for your replies though and remember how civil you are next time you feel like wanting to kill me LOL

Civility, schvility.....civility is all well and good...but it's so damn boring!

 

[Anticitizen]

As much as I enjoyed this movie, all the glowing reviews tell me is that the mainstream still views SF as a bit of joke.

Which is why 7 of the top 10 films of all time are Sci-fi or Fantasy?

1 Titanic
2 The Dark Knight
3 Star Wars
4 Shrek 2
5 E.T.: The Extra-Terrestrial
6 Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
7 Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest
8 Spider-Man
9 Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith
10 The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

It's easy to confuse science fiction and fantasy; it doesn't help that most media retailers group the two genres. In any case, being set in space doesn't make a movie a science fiction film. Star Wars could have easily been a fantasy story about oceanfaring vessels - magical swords instead of light sabers, etc. The space element was mere setting or window-dressing.

It is my opinion that in order to be a science fiction story, the science fictional aspect itself is necessary to tell the story. It would be quite a challenge, for instance, to tell the stories in The Immunity Syndrome, Devil in the Dark, or Errand of Mercy in other genres.

Those movies are all fantasy.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

"Science fiction" and "fantasy" are properly simply marketing categories. What fans call "science fiction" when they attempt to differentiate it from fantasy is still, in fact, simply a subgenre of fantasy in the generic sense - a particular branch of fantasy that has its own peculiar tropes and is claimed by its devotees to have certain rules despite the fact that every one of those "rules" have been and are frequently violated by its most admired practitioners.

 

[aridas sofia]

I think Star Trek's origins as an updating and popularization of Gulliver's Travels make it very much a work of speculative fiction embroidered with the trappings of hard science and military culture, rather than any kind of science fiction. At most it might occasionally veer into soft science fiction.

This doesn't make getting Trek "right" any easier -- if anything it makes it even harder, as there are three targets to hit rather than one.

 

[Warped9]

^^ I must disagree. Whether it's "hard" or "soft" SF if you're envisioning something that deals with science and technology and is set in the future than it's science fiction.

Asimov didn't seem to have any qualms about it.

When you extrapolate and/or speculate about where things can go you're always going to get into areas where some people may say, "Ah, c'mon. Get outta here. That ain't never gonna happen."

Yet when someone like Michio Kaku speaks of things that can quite likely happen given sufficient time and advances in science no matter how unlikely it seems to us presently then I can see a lot of science fiction in something like Star Trek even when it ventures into realms that are more usually considered fantasy.

I've envisioned a negative energy drive for a starship to push it close to the speed of light. I researched the best I could to make it seem plausible and to also reflect relativistic effects. Presently no one can envision how to build such a drive and if it's even possible to travel that close to the speed of light (.9999c). But my math is correct in regard to the relativistic effects and my idea is no more outlandish than a warp drive. What ever way you go it's science fiction.

A good book I read some years ago was Ventus by Canadian SF author Karl Schroeder. It begins to read as if you're on a world ruled by Fantasy as the norm. But as the book progresses he reveals the use of highly advanced science and technology to explain the fantastical happenings.

Sound familiar?

 

[aridas sofia]

Well, according to some, Gulliver's Travels is science fiction. So we are definitely going to get into a debate over definitions if we insist on being rigorous. I happen to like Heinlein's definition:

...realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method.

Most critics would today use a definition like that for hard SF. That's fine, too. One thing that I believe holds true in everything I'd call science fiction, however, is how the plot device, or inciting moment is the product of science. Science fiction at its core should be about characters reacting to some development in science. If that development is firmly rooted in reality, it's hard SF. If it has a bit of bolognium, it begins to get softer. Until it becomes either poor SF or fantasy.

I think more often than not, Star Trek involved plot devices that were thinly veiled with science and were really social, historical or military in nature. As you've often pointed out, Master and Commander would make a fantastic Trek story with just the thinnest veneer of space opera gloss added. There is a reason that could be a quintessential Trek story -- it's plot driven but the characters are richly drawn, and the plot involves a mix of military and science devices.

My point is that Star Trek is not perfect SF. But whatever it lacks in SF, it gains elsewhere. It's much more than science fiction.

 

[Warped9]

^^ I have to agree it's not perfect SF.

 

[Forbin]

Aridas' definition is damn close to mine. I like Larry Niven, for example, because he postulates a scientific idea, then builds a story showing how people or society act within that new reality.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Damon Knight's is the only definition of sf that I've found useful.

 

[aridas sofia]

I guess my problem with Knight's definition is that I had to read his entire book before I got a sense of what he really meant. He basically said you know it when you see it, didn't he? I guess I think it's one thing for a community to say that about pornography, and another for a professional to categorize a whole branch of literature that way.

I really like what James Gunn wrote when he was pressed for a more detailed explanation:

Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger.

I think that really nails it pretty well for me.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

He basically said you know it when you see it, didn't he?

Yep, that's more or less what he was saying.

Not much of Heinlein's own output falls demonstrably within his own definition of sf, IMAO, though publishers were happy to market just about everything he ever wrote as "science fiction."

A specific definition of science fiction is not useful because none is widely adopted or subscribed to by either the people who create it or who read it. Publishers don't make real or consistent use of any such definition, nor do the vast majority of people who have written or otherwise created in the modern genre. The only utility I can imagine such a definition having would be within the walls of academe, but you're not going to find a consensus definition there either.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Plus, many works starddle genres: Frankenstein and Alien are 100% SF and 100% horror at the same time (sounds like the mystery of Christ's divine and human natures...) while Star Wars owes almost as much to sword-and-sorcery style epic fantasy as it does to space opera. And then there's Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote novels about the end of world thanks to Ice-9, an odyssey throughout the solar system in which we learn all of human history was the result of Tralfamadorean manipulation and a look ahead one million years to see the inoffensive otter-like creatures we will evolve into after a disease wipes out the vast majority of humans save for a small group touring the Galapagos, yet denied writing SF to his dying day because SF was a genre fore "pimply faced teen-age boys." (Check out how much of Kilgore Trout, his "loving tribute" to Theodore Sturgeon, verges on actionable character assassination.) That denial has done wondwers for his sales and his reputation.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Plus, many works starddle genres: Frankenstein and Alien are 100% SF and 100% horror at the same time (sounds like the mystery of Christ's divine and human natures...) while Star Wars owes almost as much to sword-and-sorcery style epic fantasy as it does to space opera.

Exactly.

"Science fiction" is a genre - specifically, a publishing/marketing genre - and most interesting writers don't write to genre.

 

[Noname Given]

Can't stand Battle Beyond The Stars...

Love Space Raiders

I really like SPACE RAIDERS (saw it in the theater twice), but it has Vince Edwards, which is enough to keep me from ever owning it in any form.

I give BATTLE the edge over it just due to Peppard, but I'd love to see a rough cut of it ... supposedly they shot all of Sayles' script, and it clocked close to 3hrs before Corman took out the scissors.

I find that haed to believe (that they filmed 3 hours worth) because Corman NEVER saw a bit of footage he didn't try to use (or re-use) at some point.

 

[Gepard]

And then there's Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote novels about the end of world thanks to Ice-9, an odyssey throughout the solar system in which we learn all of human history was the result of Tralfamadorean manipulation and a look ahead one million years to see the inoffensive otter-like creatures we will evolve into after a disease wipes out the vast majority of humans save for a small group touring the Galapagos.

Damn. I need to start reading Vonnegut.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

And then there's Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote novels about the end of world thanks to Ice-9...(Check out how much of Kilgore Trout, his "loving tribute" to Theodore Sturgeon, verges on actionable character assassination.)

Vonnegut wrote a really good essay about "defining science fiction" or more properly "science fiction writers defining themselves" back in the mid-1960s. It's somewhere online.

Vonnegut's recounting of Trout's fictional career contains a good deal of satire of the science fiction publishing business - IIRC, among other things Trout wrote really fascinating stories that he could not get published except in pornographic magazines published by "World Classics Library." There, novels like "The Gospel From Outer Space" would appear sandwiched between explicit photographs of women's...uh, anyway I'm sure that there was no commentary intended with regard to publications like "Astounding Science Fiction Stories.

 

[trevanian]

Can't stand Battle Beyond The Stars...

Love Space Raiders

I really like SPACE RAIDERS (saw it in the theater twice), but it has Vince Edwards, which is enough to keep me from ever owning it in any form.

I give BATTLE the edge over it just due to Peppard, but I'd love to see a rough cut of it ... supposedly they shot all of Sayles' script, and it clocked close to 3hrs before Corman took out the scissors.

I find that haed to believe (that they filmed 3 hours worth) because Corman NEVER saw a bit of footage he didn't try to use (or re-use) at some point.

Well, some of the used and unused fx footage went into RAIDERS, and other shots went into the opening 5min of FORBIDDEN WORLD.

Maybe he thought he could pull a 3MUSKETEERS/4MUSKETEERS and get a whole second movie out of the cut footage, but then realized the returns weren't going to be worthwhile, given that he'd have had to pay everybody a second time (I think the laws changed after MUSKETEERS and SUPERMAN about getting 2 flicks under 1 movie's worth of contract.)

 

[Brutal Strudel]

And then there's Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote novels about the end of world thanks to Ice-9...(Check out how much of Kilgore Trout, his "loving tribute" to Theodore Sturgeon, verges on actionable character assassination.)

Vonnegut wrote a really good essay about "defining science fiction" or more properly "science fiction writers defining themselves" back in the mid-1960s. It's somewhere online.

Vonnegut's recounting of Trout's fictional career contains a good deal of satire of the science fiction publishing business - IIRC, among other things Trout wrote really fascinating stories that he could not get published except in pornographic magazines published by "World Classics Library." There, novels like "The Gospel From Outer Space" would appear sandwiched between explicit photographs of women's...uh, anyway I'm sure that there was no commentary intended with regard to publications like "Astounding Science Fiction Stories.

I've read that article. I thought it was interesting but, ultimately, crap--his stuff walks and quacks as well as any duck I've seen. But I fully understand why he went to such great lengths to piss on the genre he so readily plundered for his ideas. Philip Dick used to talk about how SF writers were looked down upon as being on the same level as pornographers--World Classics Library indeed. Vonnegut knew that, if he didn't mock SF every chance he got and if he didn't strenuously object to being so ghettoized, he'd suffer mightily.

We geeks of today live in an SF utopia of our own making.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

And then there's Kurt Vonnegut, who wrote novels about the end of world thanks to Ice-9, an odyssey throughout the solar system in which we learn all of human history was the result of Tralfamadorean manipulation and a look ahead one million years to see the inoffensive otter-like creatures we will evolve into after a disease wipes out the vast majority of humans save for a small group touring the Galapagos.

Damn. I need to start reading Vonnegut.

The novels alluded to are Cat's Cradle, The Sirens of Titan and Galapagos. Not all of his books employ SF elements--iirc, Mother Night, God Bless You, Mr. Rosewater, Deadeye Dick and a few others steer clear of the fantastic and Slaughterhouse: Five--considered by many to be his best work--provides enough hints to suggest that the nove's SF trappings are symptoms of the main character's psychosis.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I thought it was interesting but, ultimately, crap--his stuff walks and quacks as well as any duck I've seen. But I fully understand why he went to such great lengths to piss on the genre he so readily plundered for his ideas. Philip Dick used to talk about how SF writers were looked down upon as being on the same level as pornographers--World Classics Library indeed.

There's no "pissing on the genre" of any note in the essay - there's a good deal of accurate observation about the way sf writers behaved in those days (and often still do) socially and in regards to the label.

It's true, he does say that a lot of science fiction writers are poor writers who couldn't sell outside the genre...an observation that doesn't set him apart from Michael Moorcock, or Norman Spinrad, or James Blish, or Harlan Ellison, or...