YAHOO users are idiots

[Ben Kenobi]

No, it's an establishing character moment, punctuated by the force choke to establish the Darth Vader is a) a baddie, b) a badass, and c) someone you really don't **** with.

Why does he say "I find your lack of faith disturbing", instead of just saying, die!

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by snoopy369
Nice BAM, but that's flat out wrong. I'd suggest that, rather, you simply misunderstand the definition, and its usage by people who matter (ie, SF writers and readers) ... I don't care in the least what non-SF folk consider SF, excepting bookstore merchandising teams...

Not any more BAM than your definitions, and you subvert your own point. People reading stuff in the SF section of a bookstore tend to believe they're reading science fiction... which makes them, for all practical purposes, science fiction reader, which makes them relevent. Unless you want to say that there's a whole class of people who "don't count" because they think they're reading science fiction, but they're wrong. Good luck with that.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...nVersusFantasy <-- check this out to see in intricate detail why your theory is bunk

Essentially: genres don't exist independently of stories. Genres are collections of stories. And if most people consistently put a story in a particular collection - which, again, is defined only by its own composition - then it is in that collection. No amount of misguided purism can change that, as much as you'd like to think that your POV is really special because it's exclusive.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Why does he say "I find your lack of faith disturbing", instead of just saying, die!

Because the line sounds awesome.

Duh.

[Lord Avalon]

OK, snoopy, if Star Wars isn't SF, then why does the Death Star's reactor core have a thermal exhaust port?

[Kuciwalker]

By the way, Firefly's plots could easily be rewritten as a standard Western, with no space elements at all - by design. But if you say it's not sci-fi I'll laugh at you.

[Ben Kenobi]

Because the line sounds awesome.

Why does he use the word faith?

I agree with you completely that the setting is important, but I also think there is philosophy in star wars. There is philosophy in every story and good philosophy = good story.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ben Kenobi
Why does he use the word faith?

Because the line sounds awesome. Even more so when delivered by James Earl Jones.

[Asher]

Star Wars is sci-fi. It's bad, popcorn sci-fi liked by children and people like Ben everywhere...but it's sci-fi.

[Asher]

And no, Star Wars is not philosophical. It has no more philosophy in it than Harold and Kumar go to White Castle -- which is actually a better movie than any of the seven Star Wars movies.

[Straybow]

Originally posted by snoopy369
In fact, you note that one of the big turn-offs in Star Wars Ep. 1 is when they do start to talk about the why (the force-particles) ... nope, not SF.

No, not because SW isn't SciFi and introducing a "why" element is incongruous. It is because 1) Lucas' idea is idiotic and 2) the "why" does nothing to advance the plot or setting. It fails at both the low and the high end of criticism.

But, of course, that 2001, Blade Runner, and Forbidden Planet aren't in there is a travesty.

[GePap]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
The idea that "Star Wars" isn't sci-fi is, as I've said over and over, utter crap. Yes, the space setting is essential to the Plot.

I mean Hell, take 2001. Change HAL into a strong wizard who has been put under a spell by humans, but isn't working exactly right according to the spell. OMG!!1! It's fantasy!!

I have to completely disagree and say that Snoopy is correct.

Details are just that, details. The question is, what is the story about?

Star Wars is a coming of age adventure story. Lucas himself stated that his inspiration were old serial stories. What is the very first line of the movie? Long long ago, in a Galaxy far far away. Right there, Star War divorces itself from anything having to do with how man deals with technologically and scientifically driven change.

To say that one could replace HAL with a wizard is wrong because that isn't HAL's place in the story Clarke and Kubirck were telling. Kubirck throws in a lot of things into 2001; one of them is how modern man has to essetially become a machine himself, which he shows with the precise, trained movements of the astronauts. It is not by mistake that the most "human" character in the movie, the one that shows the most emotion, is the computer. And HAL's breakdown is not something magical, it is the result of a fundamental conflict between two sets of orders, one public, one private.

All fantasy tries to explore scenerios that are not actually possible. Scifi is a subset, but a specific one, one dealing with what if scenerios driven by the fact that we inhabit a fast changing world in where technology keeps granting us human beings powers and abilities we didn;t have before. Scifi tries to see what might be if some new technology made something brand new possible. Good scifi, like 1984 or Brave New World, can be seen as partly prophetic, if only because some writer in the past was able to paint some scenerio about what humans might be turned into by these new technological abilities, and they happen to be darned close.

No one is ever going to talk about Star Wars and its insight into what humans might one day face with our increasing technological abilities, unlike say with 2001, when people consider what may actually happen the day we human beings do develop real artifical intelligence.

[Kuciwalker]

That's all fine and dandy, but that's not what makes something science fiction. That's part of what makes something hard science fiction.

[snoopy369]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker


Not any more BAM than your definitions, and you subvert your own point. People reading stuff in the SF section of a bookstore tend to believe they're reading science fiction... which makes them, for all practical purposes, science fiction reader, which makes them relevent. Unless you want to say that there's a whole class of people who "don't count" because they think they're reading science fiction, but they're wrong. Good luck with that.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.ph...nVersusFantasy <-- check this out to see in intricate detail why your theory is bunk

Essentially: genres don't exist independently of stories. Genres are collections of stories. And if most people consistently put a story in a particular collection - which, again, is defined only by its own composition - then it is in that collection. No amount of misguided purism can change that, as much as you'd like to think that your POV is really special because it's exclusive.

Wait, so if you call something SF, it is?? Good one. Also, quoting a wiki for evidence in a nonfactual debate... icing on the cake.

How about Robert Sawyer's opinion? Or Isaac Asimov??

[q="Robert Sawyer"]Succinctly: there's discontinuity between our reality and fantasy; there's continuity between our reality and science fiction.[/q]

[q="Isaac Asimov"][S]cience fiction, given its grounding in science, is possible; fantasy, which has no grounding in reality, is not. [/q]

That's the key element. SF starts with the possible, and speculates what might happen; Fantasy ignores the possible, and just describes an entirely unhindered universe. SF is an effective tool for discussing sociological issues such as the reaction to change, the reaction specifically to technology, and the actions of people in different, often nearly unimaginably different, situations, such as post-scarcity or long-time-delay FTL or STL transit. Fantasy often avoids quite such complex subjects, as much fantasy is escapist, but plenty of fantasy deals with moral questions as well; but it deals with questions typically related to moral character or religion, primarily due to its setting.

My point about not caring what non-sf readers think, is simply that they're not going to know the difference, any more than you'd know the difference between different kinds of romance novel. (My bookstore experience, sadly, leads me to know things like that... sigh ... ) Plenty of people can have opinions on things, but that doesn't make them right, any more than it made most of the world right when slavery was legal, or thinking the world is flat... and it doesn't really matter, either, because not only is genre largely irrelevant (I know what I like, fantasy or SF, and if it pleases me to make a distinction, I will); it doesn't affect my enjoyment of the novels, nor generally my ability to find or purchase them. So, if you prefer to think of them the same, so be it... that's up to you I've named a difference (multiple differences, arriving from the same basic difference) that I'm comfortable with, and I think correctly defines novels (and movies) that are definitely one or the other.

Regardless, if you don't see a difference between SF and Fantasy, stay out of the debate of whether Star Wars is SF or Fantasy ... since you don't see a difference, you shouldn't care which outcome is chosen by those of us who do

[Jon Miller]

If we are going to start using quotes:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gene_Wolfe

When asked the "Most overrated" and "Most underrated" authors, Thomas Disch identified Isaac Asimov and Gene Wolfe, respectively, writing: "...all too many have already gone into a decline after carrying home some trophies. The one exception is Gene Wolfe...Between 1980 and 1982 he published The Book of the New Sun, a tetralogy of couth, intelligence, and suavity that is also written in VistaVision with Dolby Sound. Imagine a Star Wars-style space opera penned by G. K. Chesterton in the throes of a religious conversion. Wolfe has continued in full diapason ever since, and a crossover success is long overdue."

Many of the greatest works of science fiction exist in a future that is impossible to get to, because the author didn't know or care about the science. The science provides the setting (generally), and the science fiction broad strokes are used (so that people can identify it as science fiction), but generally (when it isn't hard science fiction), the science plays no significance in the plot.

JM

[Jon Miller]

By the way, according to wiki your defitino of science fiction is the definition of hard science fiction:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_science_fiction

JM