McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Science Fantasy worlds
Mij:
--- Quote from: blgarver on March 01, 2007, 04:33:28 PM ---Outside of LOTR and Dresden, I guess I'm kind of a noob at SFF reading. I grew up reading Crichton, and that's all I read. Crichton is borderline, but not really the kind of SciFi we're talking about here. The first fantasy I read was...A Ripple in Time...anyone remember that? Cause i don't...lol. I'm not even sure if that's the correct title, or if it counts as SFF. I remember we read it in elementary school, but that's about all I remember.
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Did you mean A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle? It has my favorite book opening ever: "It was a dark and stormy night". I love it because it's the same phrase that Snoopy always starts his stories with. ;D
--- Quote ---But, I can kind of see where you're coming from. A good world can indeed be a character all in itself. I've got sort of a vague idea for the world in my trilogy I'm gonna write next, but I need to do a lot more developing I think, cause I want it to be one of those memorable worlds.
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I have to agree here. I think the best SFF I've read -- and I'll add the Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist to those already mentioned -- are so compelling in part because you have a feeling that the world setting works and is real.
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Dom on March 01, 2007, 06:54:27 PM ---You know, I just realized I never quite defined how I'm using the word "science fantasy". To me, a science fantasy is a novel set on a world that technically has sci-fi origins (ie, colonized by a ship from earth), but said people on the world have forgotten everything about that past, and usually have regressed to a mediaeval level of technology, so the story itself generally plays out more like a fantasy, with ancient complex machines sometimes taking place of ancient complex magic.
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Thanks for clarifying, because there's more than one borderland between SF and fantasy and I was not sure which you meant. That particular genre I tend to think of as "fantasy with SF underwear".
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: blgarver on March 01, 2007, 04:33:28 PM ---Crichton is borderline, but not really the kind of SciFi we're talking about here.
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Crichton writes technothriller/horror, not SF. It's a question of attitude. SF is about thinking about and playing with the implications of ideas; Crichton just wants the cool new stuff to be scary and kill people so that shutting it down at the end is a win. This is a form of plotting that gets me very angry indeed, because it encourages assumptions that are hostile to actual science.
blgarver:
--- Quote from: neurovore on May 01, 2007, 06:01:37 PM ---Crichton writes technothriller/horror, not SF. It's a question of attitude. SF is about thinking about and playing with the implications of ideas; Crichton just wants the cool new stuff to be scary and kill people so that shutting it down at the end is a win. This is a form of plotting that gets me very angry indeed, because it encourages assumptions that are hostile to actual science.
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Okay that makes sense. I've always called his stuff "science not-so-fiction" just because it's not entirely outside the realms of reality. But technothriller/horror is more accurate.
What do you mean by "hostile to actual science"?
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: blgarver on May 01, 2007, 07:57:17 PM ---What do you mean by "hostile to actual science"?
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Science, done in the real world, has as an absolute fundamental axiom the assumption that new things are worth knowing, be that because they are fun or cool or interesting or are going to let you build more stuff or whatever.
The basic assumptions of Crichton's work are that new things are scary and dangerous and have to be stamped out because otherwise they will have inevitable terrible consequences, and that people who work to find out new things are at best irresponsible and more likely malevolent. (I do not think this assumption is absolutely essential for making a technothriller work, though I'm having a hard time seeing where the technothriller values of preserving the status quo could fit with a geniune SFnal attitude to new ideas; horror seems pretty much defined by the Other being horrible and dangerous and scary, but I don't think the question of whether something is horror or not is in the same direction as whether it's SF or fantasy or mainstream, it's possible to be horror or not-horror in any of those spaces.)
As somebody who works in real-world science, I take major umbrage at Crichton's assumption.
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