McAnally's (The Community Pub) > Author Craft
Derivative Plots?
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Quantus347 on May 08, 2008, 06:50:05 PM ---I dont so much separate SF and Fantasy because the only difference is that scifi calls the magic Science. The potion is just a drug, the monster is a genetic creation, or an alien, the magic sword actually has nano-bots in the hilt, the man could through lightning because of implants in his hands, etc. SF just takes tech across the line into fantasy. its just easier for us to buy since the 19th century because we believe in science now instead of magic.
--- End quote ---
Science isn't about belief, though. It's inherently testable and it works. What it's for is a matter of belief, sure, but equating it with magic at that precise level is a scale error.
At risk of opening a long and complicated argument, I disagree entirely with your main point too. The difference between SF and fantasy isn't furniture, it's attitude. In SF the unknown is there to be explained and figured out, and everything, even if not rationally explained, is rationally explicable. It's the faith in the explicability of the universe that makes SF a distinct thing.
Yes, this makes Star Wars fantasy, but really, will affecting reality directly through The Force ? Fantasy. However many spaceships you add.
Shecky:
I've never understood the idea that will's having an effect on physical reality automatically counted as fantasy. Why does this get assumed (I'm guilty of it sometimes, too)?
I think (re-tangenting here) that what you're calling SF is really hard SF, the stuff written with science clearly thought out. Non-hard SF, the kind that says "Oh, yeah, really, this funky scientific advancement DOES work - trust me", edges closer to fantasy than to the SF ideal. I mean, the Dresdenverse is rigorously thought-out, with consistency being of great importance; it qualifies more as SF than does some of the non-hard SF I've seen.
knnn:
--- Quote from: Shecky on May 06, 2008, 06:21:21 PM ---The ancient Greeks were already saying, "There is nothing new under the sun,"
--- End quote ---
...and they stole that from King Solomon ;D ;D ;D ;D
"What has been is what will be,
and what has been done is what will be done;
There is nothing new under the sun."
Ecclesiastes 1:9
knnn.
Shecky:
Where do you think old Solly got it? ;)
the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
--- Quote from: Shecky on May 09, 2008, 01:18:59 AM ---I've never understood the idea that will's having an effect on physical reality automatically counted as fantasy. Why does this get assumed (I'm guilty of it sometimes, too)?
--- End quote ---
Because it translates emotional reality directly into physical in ways that have no basis in our actual understanding of the universe.
--- Quote ---I think (re-tangenting here) that what you're calling SF is really hard SF, the stuff written with science clearly thought out.
--- End quote ---
If we have this argument, we'll just all draw our own lines in different places, and I do not think anything will be resolved. Since Damon Knight is no longer with us, we can't even call on him to come over and point at things for us.
--- Quote ---I mean, the Dresdenverse is rigorously thought-out, with consistency being of great importance; it qualifies more as SF than does some of the non-hard SF I've seen.
--- End quote ---
Agreed, to an extent; there is too much intentionally left blank - cf. the discussions elsewhere about the exact nature of God in the Dresdenverse - for it to really feel like an entirely SFnal world to me.
Contrast Mike Carey's Felix Castor books, urban fantasy with exorcist protagonist, in which all of a wide range of supernatural stuff happening is, seemingly, consequences of one Event about a decade before the first book, the exact nature of which is being worked out as the series goes on. To my mind those are science fiction.
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