Non-science Science Fiction writers

At Cliff's suggestion, SF writers that don't write about science.

I hear the collective gasps from everyone reading this thread.

Cliff has suggested Ray Bradbury's Something Wicked this Way Comes and Martian Chronicles as examples of science fiction that does not use science.

Any other suggestions?

Stuff like Honor Harrington pretty much qualifies. If you ignore basic physics - which pretty much all fiction has to use - then the rest is authorial handwaving.

Oh, and they're rubbish too....

Alas, Star Wars and Star Trek would fit in there.

How about L. Ron Hubbard, Simon R. Green or Michael Moorcock (when he's in a sci-fi mood)?

I'm noticing that I don't like SF writers who don't write about science as much as those that do...

(No disrespect to Michael Moorcock who's a damn fine writer.)

Richard Matheson is a name that immediately comes to mind. Wonderful collections of non science SF: THIRD FROM THE SUN, etc.

How about John Wyndham?

Jerome Bixby.

Alfred Bester.

Philip K. Dick.

Stuff where the tech and the science is not front and center, just window dressing (the way it should be).

Ursala Le Guin comes to mind. 'Literary' authors like Margaret Atwood and Michael Chabon as well.

Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank

A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller

Most Alternate History and Dystopian novels have little science at all.

"Most Alternate History and Dystopian novels have little science at all..."

VERY good point, Sparks.

Which brings to mind Jim Crace's THE PESTHOUSE and, as mentioned on the thread that led to this one, folks like George Orwell and Aldous Huxley.

William Hjortsberg's GRAY MATTERS, Dennis Danver's CIRCUIT OF HEAVEN and END OF DAYS and, a real fave, Norman Spinrad's BUG JACK BARRON, not to mention his lovely collection NO DIRECTION HOME.

How about work by Michael Marshall Smith? John Kessel?

Half of these are books or authors that I have read and have been very impressed by, and the others I have not had the chance to read yet.

I will have to follow up on all these suggestions!

Oh, I have a good one! And I doubt it was ever mentioned in this group...

Ernst Jünger's The glass bees.

I'm sure there's Harlan Ellison work that would qualify. The best example I can think of at the moment is his Outer Limits story Demon With a Glass Hand.

This thread has taught me a little of my prejudices when it comes to sci-fi. So many good authors that I just didn't think of, because when I think of sci-fi I always tend to think of the ones that do write about science.

Ray Bradbury, honestly I think he's more fantasy than sci-fi.

But Alfred Bester, Harlan Ellison, Richard Matheson and Philip K. Dick... I can't believe I didn't think of these guys.

"Ray Bradbury, honestly I think he's more fantasy than sci-fi."

I think this is probably true--but MARTIAN CHRONICLES and quite a number of his stories are definitely sci fi.

Two other names: Philip Jose Farmer and Robert Sheckley.

I'm curious about what folks think about my comment that the science in science fiction should be "window dressing", rather than front and center. To my mind, that would eliminate much of the exposition that has been the bane of SF (in my view)...

Philip Jose Farmer: is the Riverworld saga SF or Fantasy? What is the consensus, if any, as to whether it is worth reading, an excellent read, ordinary, or trending toward, or having arrived at, rubbish?

I read the series when I was in my late teens and liked it but, then again, I was a moron back then. If I recall, I was disappointed with how everything tied up.

I think it's SF, rather than fantasy, meself.

I would give the first one--TO YOUR SCATTERED BODIES GO--a shot, see if you like it. The concept is fascinating, I'll say that.

RIVERWORLD AND OTHER SHORT STORIES introduces the notion with a long novella. There are a number of first rate stories in that collection.

The very first Farmer I came across was a bizarre vampire novel called IMAGE OF THE BEAST. Creeeepy book. I believe it was originally published by Playboy Press...

#12 - I think this is probably true--but MARTIAN CHRONICLES and quite a number of his stories are definitely sci fi.

See, I don't think of stuff like The Martian Chronicles, A Princess of Mars, An Alien Heat or even Star Wars as 'sci-fi'. But then I don't know what you would call them. This isn't a very reasoned position for me, just a gut instinct.

(I don't mean to imply that Ray Bradbury never wrote a sci-fi story though. I guess it's just that for me Mars is Heaven is my main memory of The Martian Chronicles. My personal definition as I stated above is probably way too narrow.)

I like my science as a window dressing.
I want a great plot, something to keep me turning pages and characters I can imagine in my mind.
And To your scattered bodies go is excellent.

Hey, lad, everybody defines things differently.

I just recall those Bradbury editions of my youth that bore the tag: "World's Greatest Science Fiction Author".

By the way, I bought a copy of Ray's 1997 collection DRIVING BLIND at a thrift store in Saskatoon for about two bucks and discovered that it had been signed. Whoo hoo!

No one's mentioned Karen Joy Fowler?

Her story "What I Didn't See" is a cassic example of science fiction without any science fiction.

http://www.scifi.com/scifiction/originals/originals_archive/fowler/fowler1.html

James Morrow.

Holy moley, how did I forget James Morrow?

Have you read TOWING JEHOVAH yet? Do you have any idea what you're missing?

I don't recall their being a surfeit of tech crap in another seminal SF novel, John Varley's STEEL BEACH.

How did I neglect to mention those guys...

How about Jack Vance? Virtually no science there. His sci-fi work (the demon princes, the blue world and marune: alastor 933 come to mind) focuses almost exclusively on the background worlds and the social context of the surroundings.

Y'know, I have to try some Vance. I have a writer friend, a very good writer, who calls Vance one of his "guilty pleasures".

Good enough for me...

#20

Towing Jehovah is on a borrow order at my local library. It must be getting delivered to me by camel, because I haven't seen it in three months.

Re: TOWING JEHOVAH.

To quote Michael Bishop:

"About a hundred pages in, I understood that TOWING JEHOVAH bulks as gigantic among the SF field's schools of pale commodity novels as Moby Dick would among a tide-buffeted flood of krill."

Yes!

Towing Jehovah IS first rate..but what makes it SF and not fantasy?

#24 Something of an overblown quote there, eh? Tide-buffeted flood of krill?

I don't know, just sayin'. . .

Dear God, Bob, let's not get into that debate on how to define SF--I think that one has been around since that giant squid attacked Captain Nemo...

Gene--the quote is a touch hyperbolic but TOWING JEHOVAH was/is miles beyond the vast majority of offerings the field has produced. It's simply...magnificent.

For your consideration:

The Crying of Lot 49 by Pynchon.

Conspiracies, history, physics, and a paranoid protagonist.

"The Lost Ones" by Samuel Beckett.

A short story about people who live in a tube. Kind of like the movie "Cube."

Endgame by Beckett

People in a small room. Absurdity and apocalypse in an indeterminate location.

C J Cherryh clearly SF, very very good, but hardly a word about the science itself.

Anne Mccaffery some more obviously fantasy but a lot of SF too, also very lite on the science.

David Brin does have more science explanations in some books, but not all.

#27 and #28

Not intending to get into a "what is SF" thing (seriously), but -

Pynchon always looked like SF to me. Now, with respected mainstream authors straying into SFnal territory (The Road and Micahel Chabon's recent output spring to mind first) I am even more confused than I ever was about how books gets slotted into which territories within the local bookstore.

This is a hackneyed complaint, but I still fume. Rrrr. >:-

Yogurt summed it up in Spaceballs: "Marketing!"

Sci fi and fantasy editors condescend to their audience; literary fiction editors are fast approaching finely-crafted irrelevant preciousness; and soon the mystery section will become the James Patterson Borg Collective, where the genre will collapse on itself like a dying star.

I am thinking that Space Opera qualifies as Science Fiction without science.

E.E. Doc Smith and the Lensmen series. David Weber has been mentioned, but before he wrote Honor Harrington, he was writing novels in the Starfre universe that he gamed in, with novels such as Crusade and Insurrection.

If it is set in the future or space it is inherently Science Fiction, for getting into Space must take more advanced science then we currently have. And to be in the future must have more science. Then we have S.M. Stirling with such works like Dies the Fire and Island in the Sea of Time where there has to have been some science to cause an event that leaves our heroes in a world where technology is fading.

So there is a razors edge on occasion between sci-fi and fantasy it would seem to me.

32: I think that most Space Opera can be characterized by the attribute of being translatable from science fiction to out and out fantasy without affecting the story in any appreciable manner.

Not sure I'd agree that Space Opera is totally without scientific merit. Larry Niven has written books I'd consider space opera, for one. Then there are authors like Charlie Stross, Ken MacLeod and Iain M Banks. No science in those? Really?

Alastair Reynolds. Gwyneth Jones. Dan Simmons.

one of the things I'm reading righ now qualifies - Brian Francis Slattery's Spaceman Blues - and it's pissing me off how non-SFnal it is. I assume there's some speculative content in there somewhere, but I'm don't think I'll hang around to find it. Sensual paean to NYC? - yup; SF? - nope.

32 and 33

I think that is definitely wrong. Good luck with rewriting Revelation Space and Hyperion as fantasy. ;)

There is science fiction in most subgenres without science. See 36, for one.

But on the done as fantasy things, where is an Interstellar Patrol going to patrol in said fantasy book, may I ask?

Other than hard SF isn't most SF without science. While Jules Verne may have been relatively pure, SF has been veering off course since H. G. Wells. Science being a macguffin to enable different political or social scenarios to play out ( or on the garish side of the genre to permit sex and violence outside the allowed social norms).

Whether it has readily-identifiable science is completely irrelevant. Science fiction is a modernist genre - it takes as axiomatic that humans - or aliens - have the ability "to create, improve, and reshape their environment, with the aid of practical experimentation, scientific knowledge or technology". It embodies a scientific worldview. Just because there's no physics lessons, or painfully-research cosmological factoids, that doesn't mean it isn't science fiction.

Ah I loved spaceman blues partly for the reason it had no science. I prefer not have too much science in my SF and when I think about the genre the first book that springs to mind is 1984 by George Orwell...

#39. Again I don't think most SF conforms to your definition. SF like Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars series might seek to improve, reshape nature but most are what-ifs, what if there are aliens like this, what if we are on a planet like this, have a technology like this. I think in the golden age it might have reflected the better living through science view but as technology has fallen out of disfavor so SF has drifted into science led dystopias or fled into the fantasy part of the genre. True, good science fiction has a world view that is consistent with it's premises but this is hardly a scientific worldview any good work of the imagination must also have that.

I didn't say sf has to be about reshaping the environment, I said it takes it as axiomatic that it can be done. So even if your sf story features a spaceship powered by handwavium, the fact it is an environment fit for the characters embodies a worldview that says such things are possible and due to a comprehendable agency.

"But on the done as fantasy things, where is an Interstellar Patrol going to patrol in said fantasy book, may I ask?"

That's absurdly easy. An interstellar patrol can be recast in fantasy terms as a high seas fleet, or an aerial patrol mounted on fantastical beasts (dragons spring to mind). Space opera, as a subgenre of science fiction, in my experience, consists of stories using science fiction trappings that could, without doing violence to the story, be recast as a fantasy story without significant trouble.

If you can recast a sf story as any other genre then it's a crap sf story. And using crap sf as an example is a silly argument. A good sf story can only take place in the universe in which it takes place.

44: That is an extraordinarily odd claim, since many SF stories are just recastings of historical event or mythical tales in a SF setting. Illium and Olympos spring to mind as obvious examples. If you can go one direction, it shouldn't be too surprising you can go the other.

Part of Ilium and Olympos are reenactments of the Trojan Wars, but the actual story of the two novels could only exist because of other aspects of the story - the moravecs, the posthumans, etc. It's been a while since I read them, but it's more than just the Iliad transplanted onto Mars.

While some sf stories may borrow the plots from mythical tales, their resolutions are predicated on some aspect of the story's universe.

If you can swap the blaster for a sixgun, or the star-destroyer for a MTB, or the thoat for a destrier... then it's "skiffy", AKA crap sf.

Sales, is handwavium original with you? I saw that and had to clean the cereal off my laptop.

Sadly not.

I don't feel that all Science Fiction is Fantasy, though of course not knowing what course we will take as we go forward it is 'fantasy' as is any fiction. But I was pointing out, that others have now begun to say that there are those stories that could have the veneer of the future removed and it could be recast as Fantasy.

Ian, however, all storied are not crap if they can be recast. Some would say the bible is often a collection of stories from earlier times, though others argue it is the inspired writings of God through the arms of men. And there are probably others who would say it is poorly written. The Begats part of it puts me to sleep. But it is still a phenomenal work not only in terms of religion, but in terms of historical and political context. Yet it might all be a fantasy also. (I don't want to debate the merits of the bible, just that retellings are not bad)

Harlan Ellison has his famous 7 plots. How many Boy meets girl, Boy loses girl, Boy gets girls plots are actually good stories? Good Novels. I don't expect any chiming in with names of books, just to think about that there are many stories that are the same over and over, but told with a different genre and thus we have a great read.

Why novelize The Killer Angels a story of the factual events of Gettysburg, fictionalized, that then becomes a great read? Would that not also be akin to saying that the story of Gettysburg is known, so telling it again another way is going to produce an inferior piece.

Aside from that issue, I think that this thread has led us to the path that there are many Science Fiction books, that are fantastical for being set in a world that is not our own, with either physics, or current time, that have no science in it, that yet are clearly Science Fiction. And that this is the majority of what we see in Science Fiction.

You're still confusing the furniture with the genre. Science fiction is not about the zappy future trappings. It's a mode of modernist fiction. Fantasy is a mode of fantastical fiction. You cannot simply recast as one as the other because they are incompatible modes.

However, wallpapering a story with sfnal furniture does not necessarily make it science fiction. So if you can swap out the furniture, and the story doesn't need to be changed... then it's not proper sf, it's skiffy.

Oh, and there are between 3 and 36 plots depending on which authority you believe. Ellison will have stolen his seven plots from some Greek philosopher.

anyway, that's confusing plot with story...

It may be that our views of what is Science Fiction differ...

I'm not even sure I agree I agree with the description of SF as modernist. While modernism could be descibed as 'the cult of the new', it also applied to the fictional technique not just the subject matter Beckett is modernist Asimov isn't. Although it is intriguing to consider cyberpunk as Futurist and people like Cory Doctorow as postmodern.

Why isn't Asimov modernist?

#38-Actually HG Wells was far more scientific than old Jules.
The Time Machine in some sense popularized Darwinism; The War of the Worlds- disease resistance and susceptibility. Wells was trained as a scientist in Hulxley's lab iirc and was thinking through what the social implications of what was new in science the time might entail.

Ian, not trying to quibble, but earlier it was mentioned the Doc Smith and his Lensmen was more Space Opera then Science Fiction, and I am not sure where you stand on that.

Is Lensmen Science Fiction, or not? There is future science mentioned in such a way that it is all magical. Wasn't there something in the entire series that talked about inertia and how they had a way of stopping on a dime so they could pretty much counteract inertia? Is that Science or fantasy.

To me someone like Arthur C Clarke when he writes The fountains of Paradise and talking about a Space Elevator is Science Fiction, but then Asimov talking about Foundation I find more about using history (Psycho-History) to discuss what we will go through as empires wane and grow in the future so not Science Fiction by what you have told us. Then of course we have the Laws of robotics which are definitely science.

To me, space opera is a sub-genre of science fiction. So, the Lensman series is sf. Just because some of the handwaving is feasible given our current knowledge of the universe, there are aspects of the story which signal it's more sf than fantasy -- the fact that Kimball Kinnison's Lens-based talents often save the day, for example. I plan to reread Second Stage Lensman some time this year. Should be an interesting experience...

Having said that, it sounds to me as though you're confusing Clarke's "any sufficiently advanced technology must be in want of a wife" -- no, wait. That's not right... Anyway, "magical" science & technology doesn't make it fantasy, because it's assumed it's a science or technology reached using a scientific methodology.

56: "To me, space opera is a sub-genre of science fiction. So, the Lensman series is sf."

I think you are not understanding my point - my point is not that all science fiction can be recast as fantasy, but that the defining feature of Space Opera is that it is a subgenre of science fiction for which that could be done.

Lensman is a perfect case in point - the entire series could be easily translated into a fantasy story without affecting the story in any significant way.

So what about the space opera of Alastair Reynolds or Dan Simmons? You can't recast that as fantasy. Space opera is a sub-genre of sf, and it has nothing do with fantasy.

My point is that sf and fantasy are incompatible modes of fiction, and that if you can recast one as the other then it wasn't what it purported to be in the first place. And bad sf is skiffy, which isn't necessarily science fiction.

58: It shouldn't be too hard, you just have to think about it for a bit. On the other hand, if it can't be recast as fantasy, then it may not really be Space Opera. For example, yes, in Illium there are science fiction elements, but most of them could be recast as fantastical or magical elements without affecting the story.

And the ability to transform a story from one genre to another is not necessarily a mark of being a bad example of that type of fiction. There are many science fiction stories that are good as science fiction that can have their story translated to another genre without singificant difficulty. Genre is a choice, not a straitjacket.

#53 - Asimov isn't modernist because did style is conventional. Modernism is about style not just content. Also modernism implies a break with the past and Asimov was an unashamed classicist. Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire for the Foundation series. Arthur Conan Doyle for his detective fiction.
Actually Conan Doyle would fit quite nicely into your definition of SF. Holmes uses science and scientific methodology to solve crimes something virtually unheard of when Conan Doyle wrote them by now the accepted procedure. He may have been only a few minutes into the future but it was the future nonetheless.

#54 yes if Wells had kept on with his studies he could have become a renowned scientist but writing took him into science populism ( he was after all the Stephen Jay Gould/Neil de Grasse Tyson of his day) and also into politics. I feel the social implications of science became more important than the science itself. To me the Time Machine is more about capitalism creating insurmountable social divisions than lead to Darwinian speciation than it is about Darwinism itself.

I guess the point I am making is that any well written SF book ( or any fiction book for that matter) focuses on characterization and the social circumstances than on the material circumstances of the story - it has to otherwise it doesn't work, it becomes a pot-boiler or a non-fiction book or a political diatribe. In Iain Banks Culture the tech is so advanced it is magic, only AIs can understand, but what it allows him to do is create a post-scarcity economy and see what happens to the humans. And of course the humans always remain human or have human-like responses otherwise no reader could identify with them and you end up with something as turgid as Olaf Stapledon .

#59 If you think you can recast space opera as fantasy then you're not only missing the point of space opera, you're also missing the point of science fiction. Just because Luke Skywalker carries a lightsabre, that doesn't mean he's the same as Elric with his Stormbringer. It's more than just superficial resemblances.

Name one of these "many science fiction stories that are good as science fiction that can have their story translated to another genre without significant difficulty".

Genre is not a choice - genre is a label.

#60 Modernism is not a style. It's a cultural movement, and as much about modes of thinking as it anything else. The past is irrelevant because it's about the power of humanity. And Asimov certainly wrote about that.

#60 and that is exactly why i think Wells is far more important than Verne - not in the popularization of SF - but in the creation of multifaceted fictions that were based on the "best" scientific knowledge of his time and fusing those ideas with social speculation. I agree, the Time Machine IS a critique of capitalism..but (this WAS the era of Flatland) it also invokes the idea of time as the 4th dimension, biological evolution etc). The Victorians were really the first to get into making "science" available to the reading public. Of course, the creation of a large reading public, was very much a 19th happening. A reader could buy his Dickens in regular v. inexp. installments (rather like comic books) at RR stations, or serialized in newspapers or in nicely bound books fit for a middle class library room.

Verne was most important in the selling of a genre.

But doesn't Luke Skywalker really carry a Katana? So in essence Star Wars is not Science Fiction.

The Katana reference is because to my understanding, and this is 30 years ago now, Star Wars the movie was based on a Samurai movie that Lucas was influenced by.

And if that was the case, then can you tell the entire Star Wars story (First movie when there was no clue how big it would become and whether more had to be created for it) as if it were a Japanese Historical epic, which I believe you could.

So does that then give credence that some stories that are classic Sci-Fi can be interchanged elsewhere, or have their been other classic stories that were not Sci-Fi first that have been put into a Sci-Fi setting and become great Sci-Fi.

Piers Anthony had a series Bio of a Space Tyrant that too me seemed like it was based on something other than Sci-Fi first.

Or Harry Turtledove has his Darkness Descending which seems a clear parrallel to the 2nd world war.

#61 Sorry, I meant Asimov's writing style. Modernist writers write in a modern style - Joyce, Becket, T.S. Eliot all broke with the stylistic conventions of the day. I don't see Asimov as doing that at all. And modernism was a cultural movement precisely because it did break with those stylistic conventions. I don't think that Asimov would agree in the slightest that the past is irrelevant. The moral of Nightfall, say, is that that those would forget the past are doomed to repeat it.

#62 I certainly agree that Wells is more important than Verne. Wells raised SF to an important genre that could compete with mainstream literature where with Verne is was all a bit gee whiz Boy's Own Paper stuff. Wells was also among the first to show the dangers of science, where most Victorians though only of its positive side.

#60 (last paragraph) and #61 “Just because Luke Skywalker carries a lightsabre, that doesn't mean he's the same as Elric with his Stormbringer. It's more than just superficial resemblances.”

I’m way out of my depth here my erudite brethren & sisteren, but this reminds me of something Rudy Rucker said about Realism. What is so compelling about “character” and (to continue in this reckless vein) what is the obsession with Henry James definition of the novel? I know I’m gonna get my head taken off for this, but I am sincerely asking – somebody school this willfully ignorant soul, please. From a purely Materialist perspective, the Self is not the self anyway (i.e. whatever consciousness is, surely it participates in an ongoing exchange of physical matter with its environment). Point being, the environment is more than bric-a-brac that is interchangeable, no matter what genre you’re writing in (if it’s of any quality), but especially in SF. IMHO, SF’s thrust lies completely opposite that of the mainstream in that it is outward looking, not inward looking and hence the intense focus on the mechanics and methods of a world-of-tomorrow. In contrast to the intense navel-gazing (in a both profound and mundane way) of mainstream fiction (with its whines, wheezes, gasps and guffaws), science fiction looks up and out, with a well known sense of possibility and wonder. My brain tends to throw science fiction into the same drawer that I store philosophy of science: it’s not quite science, but its’ scientistic. It uses scientific heuristics to explore conceptual spaces where science cannot (today) venture.

#60

Why should humans have human-like responses? If they have sufficiently changed from our current form, in either natural or artificial circumstances, or live in a completely different society or environment, why should they not act in a completely different manner to what we are accustomed to today?

Oh, and I personally think Olaf Stapledon to have written two of the best books in SF, but that's just one person's opinion.

#63

I thought Star Wars was science-fiction, and I do not see how carrying a sword around makes it transplantable to fantasy. Severian carried a sword around in The Book of the Long Sun, but does that make it fantasy? Hiro Protagonist in Snow Crash carried a sword around too, but does Neal Stephenson suddenly become a fantasy writer?

I think of Star Wars as Science Fiction also, but the point about its science Fiction is that it is a non science fiction story. A story that happened in a Samurai movie that Lucas liked and adapted to his boyhood characters that he was carrying around in his head. Lucas=Luke.

So we go back to there is a lot of great Science Fiction, written by a lot of authors that Science is no big deal for. Yet it is still good. And worth reading and something that I would call Science Fiction. But it could also be a Western.

Look at Firefly and Serenity. Totally Westerns after the American Civil War...

#63 Parts of Star Wars was inspired by Akiro Kurasawa's "The Hidden Fortress" - and that's chiefly referenced by the Death Star, not the lightsabres. So, no Lucas didn't write a samurai movie in space.

It doesn't matter that you can "base" a sf story on something else. That doesn't make it not sf. I had a story published only a few weeks ago in a magazine which I based on the play "Iphegenia in Tauris" by Euripides. I set my story on Tethys, a moon of Saturn, but you couldn't recast the story in Ancient Greece.

#65 interesting premise. Need to think about that for a bit.

#66 I agree. By the same logic, all sf characters that carry guns should be translatable to the Wild West... and that's rubbish.

#67 Despite the mentions of Star Wars, media sf is no good in this argument because most of it is skiffy. I'd also like to know why, in a sf readers group, if there's any discussion of what sf is... out come the examples of films and tv series...

#58 "sf and fantasy are incompatible modes of fiction..."

The Steerswoman series by Rosemary Kirstein melds them very nicely, thank you.

I've not read them, but the reviews I've found on the net say it has "science disguised as magic". Which makes it sf, not fantasy.

43

You must have some pretty bloody big dragons, then. None of whom need to breathe, and all fly really fast. Or do they have spacesuits and engines? :)

Besides, lots of other sf stories are much easier to make fantasy stories than a lot of space opera.

1984? Wizards can change words.
I, Robot? Get your homonculi here.

Postapocalyptic no tech left stories? Plenty of swords there. :)

>65 cmthomas: - is SF really forward looking? Obviously much of it is forward looking in the sense that it takes place in a possible future but when you analyse SF from virtually any other standpoint it is relatively conservative. (By their nature, genres tend to be conservative).

Rucker's argument falls down rather quickly, at the second word in term "science fiction", to be precise. Virtually all fiction is dependent upon character - without character it is very difficult for the reader - therefore the sf novel must also be a novel of character. Any ideas in an sf story are reflected through the characters, and so on. If you concentrate on the idea then you mind as well write non-fiction works on futurology.

Re alien characters - to create believable alien characters is a very difficult trick. The author is bound by 'human' language and culture, can only use these to create an alien culture hence the only true description is one of confusion - and most readers don't want this.

72

You can't have fiction without character, and identifying with believable characters is key to making a reader want to turn the page (or even finish the first page). I was more pointing towards the hegemony of character over environment in literary critique (or writing workshops, or whatever) and that: a) in the real world we're not at all clear on what "the Self" is, so why are we so sure what it (the fundamental "essence" of character) is in fiction that it should take primacy over all else? b) character and environment are in fact not so easy to tease apart and should actually be intimately related, hell intimately dependent on each other and c) that science fiction in some way (through the use of handwavium no doubt - love that!) bridges the gap between scientific speculation and... well, a cracking good read for one. ;)

>73 cmthomas: - but isn't this question mark over the the self the reason why literary, and much sf, fiction focuses on character? Isn't the big question in sf what makes us human?

Is there a difference from the scholarly discussion of what Sciecne Fiction is to what you find displayed udner science fiction in libraries classifications and on store shelves. Is there a difference in this discussion then when the term was first coined, whether it was at the time of Wells, or earlier, or John Campbell and the 'Golden Age'

I think that is a possibility.

We are talking about analytical terms. To me that is irrelevant. I have a definition in my mind of what is Science Fiction, and that is based on the stories and books I have acquired or borrowed at the library, whether in the 'Science Fiction' section or in a 'Science Fiction' journal such as Analog, or Amazing, or Asimovs...

It would appear that one person's definition of Science Fiction is different than anothers.

As to Lightsabers for Katanas, and Star Wars as a movie discussed in a reading forum. Well I have Star Wars as a book... There are also countless books set within the Star Wars universe, now many more tales than we have seen on the screen. And when Lucas wrote the screenplay, he was adapting the story in his head to the words on paper for all to read, that he then turned into a visual story. It has been argued elsewhere that Movies are just books in video. Are comic books literary events? This opens up a whole new thought process. Would not a Comic book be like a stop motion movie?

I think the distinction is that here in a forum whether their is Science in our Science Fiction, we find that the Science isn't always really there, it could be a whole different element entirely, thus the story could be set in a different genre. Yet when the story is in that Science Fiction setting, it is Science Fiction.

I think jargoneer answered cmthomas's objection to my posts #60 & #64 (I'm beginning to think we need a wiki structure for this thread, the linear structure isn't working for these branching arguments). I would add that character doesn't have to be revealed by endless internal monologues. I recently read Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men and was impressed by how little use of introspection there was and how powerful the novel was because of that.

On the subject of aliens and why they have to be presented as human-like ( and why Stapledon doesn't work) I'm reminded of Solaris and it's premise that the structure of human language is so hard-wired into our brains (a Chomsky idea, I know, and one that has been at least partially discredited) that aliens will be incomprehensible to us and us to them.

#75 the history of the term is well documented, as are the various theories as to when it began. Personally, I take the creation of the genre as a seperate entity and ecology as the starting date - i.e., the publication of the first issue of Amazing in 1926.

And yes, there are as many "definitions" of sf out there as there are readers of sf (more probably, since assorted non-sf type also think they knowwhat it is). But that shouldn't stop us from trying to come up with a definition that works. And by that, I mean one that useful for commentating on the genre, not simply for finding the right section of the book shop.

"Star Wars" may have been published as a book, but it was not created within the literary tradition of sf. No sf writer worth his salt would have used "parsec" as a unit of time, for example. So the fact that paper was involved in the creative process for the film is a red herring.

The presence of overt science in a science fiction story is another red herring. And it's completely daft to suggest that some entirely different and random definition of sf operates in a forum as to elsewhere. It's not context-dependent.

61: You've got to be kidding, Star Wars is fantasy already without much in the way of changes needing to be made. You have sword wielding heroes, wizards, an evil empire, a princess needing to be rescued - it's barely one step removed from being Barsoom or Mongo. Changing Star Wars to Magic Wars is easily done, without any changes to any of the characters or the plot.

71: Why do they have to be in space? They can have the same purpose in a fantasy story without ever leaving the atmosphere. In most Space Opera, the patrol serves as either (a) the elite military forces of the good guys, or (b) a sort of international peacekeeping, exploratory, and/or police force. Neither of these functions require them to be in space other than the fact that the various nations are usually on distant planets. But in most Space Opera, distant planets serve as nothing more than subsitutes for nations and environments. Change the planets to nations, and the story will remain the same. Change the patrol to a "knights of justice" or something similar, and the story remains the same.

Ian, you like to use "skiffy" as a pejorative for bad SF or something else masquerading as SF. Does it reference scifi?

That's what prompted the term, yes, the dislike many fans have for the term "sci-fi". Myself, I'm not particularly bothered - at least "sci-fi" is better than "speculative fiction".

#76 - respectfully disagree. It's to promote intergalactic sex.

That's one of the most impressive tricks that Chiang pulls off in the title story of stories of your life and others - handling the "translation thing."

Since there are so many takes on science Fiction, then it will be hard, in my estimation to come up with a term that we can all agree on.

We have found it difficult to agree on whether some works we all have read is science fiction without science in it.

The use of Parsec as a unit of time example is just one that we have many instances of Science Fiction not written by scientists and therefore many stories are Science Fiction with bad science in it. If the contention that all the follow on books of Star Wars then is forced to use bad science because of George Lucas first using bad science, we have hundreds of Science Fiction books stuck with it.

As a teenager when Star Wars premiered, I saw the movie, and then went and got the book and read it. Remembering things clearly in the book that were not in the movie, like Luke's friendship with Biggs, and already thinking of joining the rebellion.

It is possible that Lucas always wished to write the book but his artistry allowed him to do a screen representation first, and his success allowed him to follow up with a book. The reverse of what we usually get.

71

That's a bizarre question, as Space Opera = space. I am wondering just how much of it you have read. Perhaps not much, with this opinion.

It would also seem to follow from this argument that an espionage novel about skullduggery between nations would be the same if it was all set in the same street in one town and just used different houses.

Er, he didn't write the book. It was ghost-written by Alan Dean Foster.

#70 The Steerswoman series is sci-fi, no doubt, but it also contains a sword-wielding barbarian and a quest, which makes it a fantasy.

(I seem to remember that the books were marketed as fantasy when they were first published, but maybe that's because fantasy sells better?)

83

Lucas can't write though - the book was by Alan Dean Foster (thankfully).

In his recent intro to The Reavers of Skaith he says he dislikes writing, having all sorts of problems with the first movie.

84: No, Space Opera doesn't have to include "space". For example, the Barsoom tales easily fit into the subgenre of Space Opera, and they almost all take place on a single planet, with only a handful of stories leaving that planet, and even when they do, it makes no difference to the story. Flash Gordon, taking place on Mongo and its moons, is also space opera, but could be made into a fantasy without changing the story in any significant way.

The key element of Space Opera is that the "Space" part is merely a convention - it isn't actually necessary to the story most of the time. Set Star Wars on a fantasy world with a floating doomsday city fought by dragon riding rebels and the story itself remains the same. The planets and spaceships are window dressing. Take the Lensman series and move it to a fantasy genre, and the story remains the same.

86

Genghis Khan novels are fantasies? (Sword wielding barbarian on a quest). :)

You can't change Flash Gordon into Fantasy. The best parts of Flash were those funky spluttering space ships. The thought of them still makes me smile.

87

Actually you are wrong, the Barsoom stories (and Flash Gordon pretty much) are Planetary Romances, so nothing to do with it, and a different sub-genre.

The 'key element' being a convention is your opinion only. The only examples you can manage are Star Wars and the above error? Or one series from the 40s or so? While completely ignoring anything recent mentioned. What is a fantasy anti-matter planet - just a really big boulder? :)

#86 A quest does not a fantasy make. If the book is science fiction, it's science fiction. and there are plenty of barbarians in old-style space opera.

#88 Barsoom is planetary romance, not space opera. You seem to have a peculiar understanding of space opera.

91: Just about any Space Opera is translatable to fantasy without trouble, no matter the vintage. Some would be more difficult than others. The "one series from the 40s or so" (i.e. Lensman) is pretty much the foundation upon which the Space Opera rests, so it being easily translatable to fantasy is actually pretty significant.

An anti-matter planet? Not any trouble at all. Theres are a number of fantasy stories that have some sort of negative energy/negative reality type element to them that could easily substitute for something like that.

Here's a suggestion, you post a book that you think is Space Opera and untranslatable to fantasy (preferably one I haven't read before). I'll read it and write up a summary translation.

90: The ships are one of the easiest parts to translate. Flying sailing ships (and the like) are a staple of fantasy.

A staple?

Name me 50 fantasy novels with flying sailing ships, and 100 short stories, then. Name one where starting the ship incorrectly annihilates the place. ;-)

You are seriously clutching at straws, now.

One example of anything when attempting to draw conclusions about an extremely large group is not significant at all.

I like the thought that John Carter/ Barsoom are romances. Since it is always boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl (Who would be the perfect Dejah Thoris... Was Princess Leah a Dejah Thoris in disguise???)

Didn't know or remember about Alan Dean Foster and Star Wars. My copy has George Lucas plastered as the author on the cover. (Only read it once in the late 70's)

http://www.librarything.com/work/5257112/book/40269673

But StormRaven has points. Change the noun on what some of these things are and the story can be something else entirely.

In any event, here we are discussing is there Science Fiction writers who don't have science. So I think we have a resounding yes, as we have a very broad definition of what is science fiction. Some of have said if it is in space, then it is science fiction.

As an example of 50 fantasy novels with flying sailing ships, Pern has over a dozen books just on that. The Sailing Ships that fly are called dragons. Perhaps you can also think of them as Vipers, or X-Wings...

It can be interchanged, not that it would be a good thing, but it is a possibility.

Perhaps one of the more interesting is where Fantasy and Science Fiction do meet, the Apprentice Adept series, but perhaps that too is Romance as Science Fiction/Fantasy

Here are some that are explicit: Stardust has a flying ship. So does The Fool of the World and the Flying Ship. The Jerle Shannara is a series based around a flying ship. The eleven books of The Edge Chronicles pretty much all feature flying ships. Order of the Stick features a flying ship.

Passarola Rising is probably a fantasy too. The bird powered peach in James and the Giant Peach qualifies as a ship as well. The flying island of Laputa in Gulliver's Travels also fits the bill.

It isn't a "book" per se, but in the fantasy genre nontheless, Spelljammer is a fantasy built entirely upon the idea of flying ships.

#93 All you're doing is recasting the furniture.

In fantasy, there's an underlying assumption that the world is at the whim of unexplainable forces, that the world exists because of those unexplainable forces - whether they're magic, gods, demons, etc. In sf, everything is either explainable or assumed to be open to explanation. In other words, in sf reality can be engineered, whether or not the ability to do so exists. In fantasy, it can never be because there are some things beyond our ability to change. Fantasy accepts the world for what it is, science fiction gives us the world that we want.

So swapping spaceships for sailing ships, etc., is not relevant.

For the record, the term space opera was originally a pejorative, and Smith and his like weren't writing it. The term has altered in meaning over the decades, and Smith and Williamson are now seen as early writers in what is now understood to be space opera. At the time they were writing, it was science fiction. It wasn't fantasy. It bore no resemblance to fantasy.

"All you're doing is recasting the furniture."

And? That's all genre is for the most part.

Fantasy and science fiction have lots of cross-over - that's why so many authors flip back and forth between the two. The difference between fantasy and science fiction is usually that science fiction is forward looking, while fantasy yearns back for better times in the past. Space Opera is the genre of science fiction that flips this - most Space Opera is very nostalgic in tone - which is what makes it so translatable to fantasy.

Dragon's Egg probably couldn't be translated into fantasy. Star Wars, Babylon 5, and even say, the Uplift series probably could.

Science fiction is more than furniture. Planetary romance is sf, alternate history is sf, space opera is sf.

Some space opera is consolatory like fantasy, but that's as close as it gets. The likes of Alastair Reynolds and Iain M Banks certainly aren't "backwards-looking".

Sure, there's more than furniture. If it wasn't, then there wouldn't be subgenres. I object to a certain extent to your characterization of fantasy as necessarily being unexplainable though - the Recluce series, for example, is a fantasy series that posits a very explainable magic. Earthsea seems to be fairly explainable too. Playing with the idea of an explainable fantasy universe is not all that uncommon, although it is executed better by some authors than others.

P.S. I could probably figure out a way to translate something by Reynolds or Banks to fantasy.

74 - “Isn't the big question in sf what makes us human?”

and 97 - “In fantasy, there's an underlying assumption that the world is at the whim of unexplainable forces, that the world exists because of those unexplainable forces - whether they're magic, gods, demons, etc. In sf, everything is either explainable or assumed to be open to explanation. In other words, in sf reality can be engineered, whether or not the ability to do so exists. In fantasy, it can never be because there are some things beyond our ability to change. Fantasy accepts the world for what it is, science fiction gives us the world that we want.”

It is not that SF has Science with a capital ‘S’ that is relevant, but that the “lifeways” of Science to use Wittgenstein’s term are always present in SF. So, the point is not that we aren’t interested in “what it is to be human” but rather we assume (in SF) that the Self is not some nebulous, ineffable thing that just exists, and we can only know it through transcendence (e.g. glimpses of the sublime in the everyday) but instead it is a knowable unknown which we are striving towards understanding. SF makes careful accounting of it’s buttons and leavers, gravity wells and particle beams not necessarily because it wants to be true to Science as it is, but true to Science-as-it-should-be. Another analogy: theoretical physics is in a quandary right now because it has exceeded it’s ability to test it’s hypotheses. So, cosmologists and theoretical physicists are left to appeal to concepts like simplicity, uniformity, or beauty to assess their theories. These are the same ways of thinking or "practices" SF writers appeal to so that suspension of disbelief may occur.

These edits were grammatical in nature - D'oh!

#100 an "explainable" magic system does not mean it has rules like AD&D. Admittedly, I've not read any Modesitt.

I could probably figure out a way to translate something by Reynolds or Banks to fantasy.

No doubt you could. But that's because you're missing the point.

102: It is explainable in a way that is entirely different from the way AD&D magic is explainable. As in it is a coherent system that follows fundamental rules and one can make logical assumptions based upon those rules.

It isn't that I'm missing the point, it is that I see the point differently than you do. Space Opera is window dressing on a story, there isn't anything necessarily critical to the story about it - and you can tell the exact same story as a fantasy without significant trouble. In my view, you have tunnel vision with respect to genre, more or less that science fiction must be defended at all costs from being mixed with other genres.

#103

I have the same opinion as you in that because there are only a limited number of storylines/plots that appear, therefore there must be able to be an interchange between genres. You can have mysteries set in the sf world that remain mysteries AND sf. Romance in fantasy that could be changed to romance on a spaceship with no significant problems.

The dedication sf fans shows to their genre is great, but by claiming that their genre is unique and unable to be interchanged with other things is preposterous. Of course it can be mixed. Just look at Doomsday Book. That has sf elements in that is a future world and has technology, and yet is also historical fiction. And the sf elements of that could have been done as fantasy as well.

Maybe I'm not knowledgable or 'dedicated' enough to see this but in my view, any genre can be interchanged with anything else. It is indeed just window dressing. The basic story is still one of the humans involved, and what impact outside influences have on their lives, and the progression of them.

working through some of the implications here, to my mind it seems that Sales' definition of fantasy could be transferred to a wide swath of mainstream fiction, and perhaps accounts in some small part for the rise of Fantasy in troubled times: a reaffirmation of the confusion and crises the individual experiences by assuring her that "Don't worry, you're right: the world is a dangerous and chaotic place that you will never understand, so make yourself content on comfortable delusions (or fantasies) - that's the best you can hope for."

Brings to mind one of my favorite comic books (Howard the Duck) and it's infamous subtitle "Trapped in a World he Never Made". Har har.

105

I know this is bad form, but I wanted to follow up my own post because it was not intended as a slam on Fantasy. Rather that Fantasy is, if anything, comfortable and reassuring, timeless and immutable. By these lights, Homer and Chaucer gleam brightly, so it should be clear there was no insult intended.

I hold Fantasy in high regard, but it has it's template and for good or ill, it is characteristically predictable.

I wouldn't worry, one could claim every single genre is mostly characteristically predictable, with some exceptions!!!

true dat I suppose

#102 that was precisely the way I didn't mean. A magic system based on invented rules, no matter how logical they are, is still not explainable.

Effectively what you're doing is painting a blue Ford red and claiming that it's the same as the red BMW. One aspect of their appearance is the same, but different engines drive them.

#103 Again, plot and story are different. Boy meets girl is a plot. And plots are not genre-specific. Stories are, however. Audrey Niffeneger's The Time-Traveller's Wife is boys meets girl plot, but it is sf because the whole relationship is predicated on a sfnal device - time-travel - without which there'd be no story.

Also, reality as we known it - the modern world - is open to explanation, even if the motivations of groups and individuals are opaque. For example, if in a mainstream book you come across mention of an AK-47, you know what it is. You know how it works, you have a vague understanding of the chemistry and mechanics which cause it to work, and you know that there are people who can model its working using the most basic building blocks of reality.

Likewise, in a sf story if you come across mention of a VanGriff Mk 29 Magnum Blaster, you understand - or are told in an infodump - how it too works and that there are people who can model its working using the most basic building blocks of reality.

But a "Take That, You Fiend!" spell in a fantasy story is an entirely different matter... Perhaps the writer throws in some "æther" or "phlogiston" or "the One Source" or whatever, and embellishes it with a few rules... but it's not the application of rule-sets hardwired into the nature of reality.

109: I don't think you understand the nature of magic described in Recluce. You just have to read the books. I think you will find they are quite explainable.

Time travel isn't a science fiction device - even in science fiction stories it usually amounts to being fantasy, a point Larry Niven made in The Flight of the Horse and Rainbow Mars. Magic can easily be used for time travel (and in many fantasy stories, it is, for example, in The Dark is Rising, or The Grey King by Susan Cooper).

I just think you are too hung up on labels, and aren't looking at things for the plot devices they are. Most science fiction blasters, even when given a supposedly scientific explanation, amount to little more than a fire throwing wand - the alleged science is often based upon fairy tale versions of reality, just like faster than light travel, time travel, telepathy, and any number of other science fiction conventions.

Ian, from my understanding of great fantasy, just as great "hard" Science Fiction, there are rules. Magic has rules that are explainable, and one I just finished, Brandon Sanderson and his The Final Empire's use of rules for its magic elevates it. Here he spends several pages describing the system of magic and then sticking to it throughout the book.

I do understand that difference between plot and story, but there is a tendency in this thread to prove a point by the argument of semantics.

I know the point I am comfortable with is that much of Science Fiction could be anywhere, but that doesn't detract from my liking those stories. I like Lensmen and Smith's Space Opera, but why is that not a Seventeenth Century Age of Sail novels in the Spanish Main. I believe they could easily be so.

Some here have a definite idea of what Science Fiction is, others of us believe it differently. My comfort zone calls Recluce both, as the Engineers are Science Mages to my mind.

Not to be intransigent, but it appears that we have some who believe that there is a great deal of Science Fiction, with Science in it, that could be made into another genre, just as there are members of this thread who beleive that if such were the case, then perhaps that book might not be science fiction, or that a pure science fiction work could not be rewritten in any way to be a different genre.

What ever side one falls on in that argument, I do believe we have shown that there are science fiction authors who have very little science in their work.

109 - “…reality as we known it - the modern world - is open to explanation, even if the motivations of groups and individuals are opaque.”

While I understand and agree in principle with what you are saying here, I think the practice may a bit different.

“In fantasy, there's an underlying assumption that the world is at the whim of unexplainable forces, that the world exists because of those unexplainable forces - whether they're magic, gods, demons, etc.” – I would just add the market, the id or mid-life crises and you have a fit with a huge number of mainstream works. I’m not going to push this too far, because I think one could insist that there is always a kind of presumed folk-theory of physics in operation in all realism, but I do think there are some interesting parallels here.

111 – “What ever side one falls on in that argument, I do believe we have shown that there are science fiction authors who have very little science in their work.” Any author who is a self-proclaimed Science Fiction author feels a pressure to have their work take place in a scientistically explanatory context, even if that context has receded to the background (e.g. The Book of the New Sun)

To continue to grind my axe of the day, picture this: scientific theorizing based on verifiable evidence lies at the center of a bull’s-eye with near perfect experimental correlation, philosophy of science lies near the edge of the bull’s-eye and science fiction is floating in the space near the edge trying to make sense of the relationship between the center of the bull’s-eye and allllll that space surrounding it. It sure as hell ain’t science, but if someone calls herself a SF writer and doesn’t try to participate in some way in explaining that relationship, then she’s not really participating in the tradition of science fiction no matter what she says.

"But a "Take That, You Fiend!" spell in a fantasy story is an entirely different matter... Perhaps the writer throws in some "æther" or "phlogiston" or "the One Source" or whatever, and embellishes it with a few rules... but it's not the application of rule-sets hardwired into the nature of reality."

Apply the above to Doctor Who shows that to be a fantasy. Jeepers!

The chief difference between fantasy and SF, even if both have hard rules, is that SF has rules that are ground in science of the time of writing (even if these rules are not explained, is futuristic science anticipated to occur by the author, or has gone out of date since the time of writing), while fantasy, even if it has it's workings grounded in rules of some description, is either grounded in dated science, with use of æther and the like, or constructed entirely upon the author's own imaginings of a system not relatable to any current science.

I probably have a much more simplistic view of what is Fantasy to me and what is Science Fiction then others. As I mentioned in an earlier post it is based on how the books were marketed and what monthly journal they were sold in. Even the cover illustration and blurb has led me to the classification of which genre it is in, within my library, and no matter who argues at me their definition, I know I have 1100 Fantasy books and 1500 Science Fiction books.

Perhaps Forrest Ackerman would have been the definites authority on this issue. He had the most of any of us to catalog and keep straight.

Magic=Fantasy
A Future stemming from our world=Science Fiction

of course there are nuances. The world of 1632 is a little of both to my mind, though perhaps more on Science Fiction, as with the S.M. Stirling works like Dies the Fire and Peshawar Lancers but then you L. Sprague de Camp and Lest Darkness Fall and that is a great book, with no magic, except for Martin Padway transfering back in time.

95

Pern, is of course science fiction, so claiming that as fantasy doesn't work, nor does it have flying sailing ships.

111

Recluce has more of a logical seeming magic system because one of the early engineers of such arrived in a starship from another planet.

Would you add Naomi Novik and her Temeraire series to Fantasy and Flying Ships, since the Dragons is the third wing of the military service, and the soldiers fight from their backs in groups, not just one rider as in Pern.

Or the 2 novels in David Webers Hell's Gate which also has Dragons where soldiers fight from them and travel on them in groups at a time?

116: Sure they did (in Fall of Angels), but that doesn't make it any less fantasy. They also didn't dictate the structure of magic in the setting. For the record, I also note that a flying ship appears in one of the books (The Magic Engineer if I remember correctly).

And Pern is a fantasy dressed up a science fiction, much like Star Wars.

and then there's Paul Park's very fine Roumanian quartet. 2 parts alternative history in which Roumania is a preeminent power in pre-wwI Europe and w/ the origins of modern tech (nuclear devices, various war machines created in N. Africa; 1 part fantasy w/ Newton's alchemical works bearing fruit; and one part SF, w/ current New England existing as an "experimental" subworld. 4 parts good writing.

I am getting we are still at a significant amount of us have a broad view of what constitutes science fiction and fantasy, and what could cross over if we change the furniture around...

How about Ash by Mary Gentle. Definitely marketed as fantasy however it is a SF story. There are also works that really push at the boundaries of SF - like Stephenson's Baroque Cycle (which is almost an ahistorical historical) but to me qualify as SF - there is one possibly SFnal scene (in terms of trappings) but generally the mindset embedded in the books makes it SF.

Whilst I do not 100% agree with Ian I do have broad sympathies with his view. SF is far more than the dress that it often wears however I am not totally happy with it being completely defined as a mode of writing.

>75 DWWilkin:: Apropos of nothing, DW, but your little comment "It has been argued elsewhere that Movies are just books in video" reminded me of an over-the-counter exchange between customer and bookshop staff reported in 'The Bookseller', the magazie if the UK book trade:

Customer: "I see you have books on tape. Do you have books on video?"
Bookseller: "You mean - 'films'?"
Customer: "Oh."

> 77 & 83: Sorry to drag you guys all the way back, but I have to challenge some of you on the parsecs in Star Wars...

Lucas knew full well what a 'parsec' is. Let me give you the readings from inside the characters' heads:

Solo: Here's a kid and an old man, asking me to do something dangerous. The kid looks green; the old man I don't know about. How much can I sting them for? Let's test them out: "It's the ship that made the Kessel run...(etc. etc.)"
Kenobi: Yeah, sure, right.
(Skywalker, wisely for his tender years, keeps quiet)
Solo: Ah, so not as stupid as they seem....

Nope. Not convinced.

As I recall, the in-continuity excuse (as far as the books go) is that the aim of the Kessel Run is to get from point A to B in the shortest distance. Hence, parsecs. That it's a retroactive explanation to fix Lucas's mistake I don't think has ever been denied.

It's an immutable law - any discussion whatsoever about science fiction will invariably lead to a discussion of the definition of science fiction.

Or 'Genre Discussion of DOOM', as I and my friends call it (capitals optional). :)

Does there have to be a do or die definition of Science Fiction?

In any case have we identified science fiction writers that never write science, or ones that hardly ever or only sometimes omitted science in their works...

127

'Genre Discussion of DOOM' - Aye, 'tis truly that; love it! I am totally stealing that.

128
If there is one, I ain't seen it, but that don't mean I don't have a sense for it (I don't know what Art is, but I know what I lahk (p'tooey)).

Seriously, I think it helps to define terms for clarity of discussion and historical perspective, but moreover, personally it has something to do with defining subjectively what is compelling in SF and then attempting to compare notes with the community. And sometimes I just like to rush a brick wall, rinse and repeat. See 127

I just am not sure that this group can have one definition of Science Fiction...

I'd agree with you, but what fun would that be. ;)

#131

The fun is coming up with the definition, not actually having said definition.

I am not sure how many who have been proposing different defintions regarded it as fun as opposed to pull your hair out frustrating why can't you see I am totally right and my definition is the best and needs to be adopted right now or the earth will dissolve... Kind of way...

Perhpas if it is fiction, and has an element of time, or any particular element of science in it, it is science fiction... (Yet another defintion...)

I wasn’t trying to be flip, rather emphasizing what Rosje said in 132: debate is stimulating in and of itself. But…

Without soapboxing too much (if I haven’t already here) we seem awash in a tide of cultural relativism (while dated, I think Robert Silverberg’s story “Schwartz Between the Galaxies” prefigures some of our current cultural blandizement). The chief tool we have against the seemingly inevitable slide from monotony to anomie is a strong sense of history, combined with rigorous, well-informed debate. Geez, that was a touch grandiose, but you get my drift.

It can be frustrating at times when one feels that an opponent in a debate, or a participant in a conversation, is being dogmatic. However, I think any group conversation that is productive has organic processes for eventually pruning those “participants” with listening handicaps.

Well if I was to be more serious in this post, for I have been serious in many other posts in this thread, there are pieces of fiction, that are cast in the future, that are clearly not planned to be science fiction, or stories in the recent past.

I can recall vaguely a Kennedy wasn't assasinated story a few years back, that would fall into the category of fiction, and because it was an event that parralleled our world some would be able to call that science fiction, but the exploration of the story dealt with Kennedy living and how things would be different at that time.

So parallel worlds theory are not always science fiction as part of the definition?

By that definition The Man in the High Castle wouldn't be SF. Shurely some mistake here?
With regards to the definition of SF, I'm holding out for a mathematical one. I have a hunch it will involve the Riemann zeta function.

> 115 Magic=Fantasy
A Future stemming from our world=Science Fiction


I agree. Although I would also add 'World not our own (world, not planet, not alternative universe, but world with absolutely no connection!) = Fantasy'

That said, the genre lines are flexible all over the place. Enjoyable so! Someone mentioned Pern as fantasy earlier. Sure feels like it, with the dragons and telepathy and what not. Of course, those dragons are created through science and the entire thing is a far-future planet found through space travel...

A lot of post-apocalypse stuff feels the same way.

There are lots of works that are clearly one or the other. But there are a great many that play havoc with definitions.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is science fiction. It's set in 1992.

The future, space or science are red herrings. Sf does not require any of the three to be sf.

But Androids was written a lot earlier than 92. Fifties I think...

So then that would hold a future stemming from our world.

But is 1984 by Orwell Science Fiction, or just powerful Literary Fiction? Wheras is Brazil by Terry Gilliam, which to me looks like a play on 1984, anything but Science Fiction? (Yes I know it was not a novel but a film argument, but lets use the concept for the discussion of the definition, and look at Brazil as a possible Non-Science Science Fiction entry)

So a book written in the 1950s but set 40 years after it was written is science fiction... and is still science fiction after the year it's set has passed? That makes no sense.

> 140

I dunno, makes sense to me!

It doesn't if you define sf as "a future stemming from our world".

Brazil may not be scientific SF but it sure is ugly furniture SF.

#141

How far in the future? Obviously 40 years is OK (see above) - 10 years? 5 years? 1 year? 1 day? You are going to add in an awful lot of stuff I wouldn't consider SF.

Does it help to be more specific and say 'A book in which the author postulates a future stemming from their world?'

I feel like we're getting a bit pedantic now. It's true, 1984 is not a future of our world, if we're sticking strictly to dates (and that's another conversation all together).

I don't think I'm the only one who understands 'a future stemming from our world' to be relative to the time the author was writing, though.

Ian, the definition for when a book is written has to apply as time passes.

When Androids was written it was clearly Science Fiction, just because the date has passed that it says it was going to take place does not make the situation not science fiction any longer. Androids is not the only example you will find that is no longer Science Fiction by your argument.

Is the Time Machine Science Fiction? Our hero is a Victorian, did any Victorian's invent Time Travel? Well as that period is past, then obviously it is no longer Science Fiction. Is Frankenstein Science Fiction? Again the era of Baron von Frankenstein is past and we didn't see anyone create life from dead matter...

Your argument in post 140 is not going to hold water at all. How much of the Golden Age would you throw out by that definition? And if it was Science Fiction before, it doesn't not become Science Fiction.

> #144

I don't insist on the definition being steadfast and unbendable. ;)

I think that there is lots of grey in the borderlands, and that any definition will have such. There are books set in that 5-10 year range that others have called Sci Fi (Kim Stanley Robinson's Fifty Degrees Below springs to mind, although heck if I can remember whether there was an actual /date/ given there) that I would not have on first glance.

On second, I can see where they're coming from. But I still probably wouldn't shelve it with the sci fi on my bookshelf.

So take my definitions to be rather general, if that helps! Fuzzyness all around!

Everything is SF. If a single character is not a true representation of a living or historical figure then it's set in an alternate universe, thus SF. If a single event that comes from the mind of the author is imaginary and not real then it represents an alternate universe, thus SF. If the world described is this world, but based on an unreal set of assumptions: the South won the Civil War, the crown won the Civil War, Magellan lived to finish his voyage, the Nazi's survived WWII and set up a vassal state in Britain. These are all alternate universes and thus SF. Everything in the way of fiction represents an alternate universe and is thus SF.

Aerrin, as you mentioned Kim Stanley Robinson, how about the collection of his stemming from Time Travellers Strictly Cash. Here we have the lead story not Science Fiction at all, but the beginning of a work that becomes totally Science Fiction.

Being locked away from the world and all of sudden we have portable phones, definitly time travel which is a Science Fiction theme, but the protagonist didn't travel in time, just sat in prison. Later the series devolves into fantastical, alien beings so that would be Science Fiction also, but the lead story, was a humane story, not a Science fiction piece, yet I would believe Robinson would call it Science Fiction.

So does the author of a piece contribute to the classification of a piece

My point was that the year the novel was set, whether in the future of the writer or not, was irrelevant. The fact that a novel is set in the future is an indicator that a novel is science fiction, it is not a definition of science fiction.

Besides, as John Clute said, all sf novels have three dates: the date they are set, the date they are written, and the date they are about.

Then you would interpret as Science Fiction is something which stems from our world but in a world where the reality has differences then our world does.

You could have a world that is previous to our own time, everything being the same, but Rome never fell, Roma Eterna by Silverberg, for instance, clearly not fantasy as no magic, but is it Fiction, or Science Fiction?

> 150

Ah! I see. I think my reading of the definition is a little different - I don't actually intend to refer specifically to the date something is set. When I say 'future', I don't mean strictly 'this will happen on Tuesday' sort of future.

I mean something a little vaguer that has something to do with predictions and expectations and exploration - a key part of the work revolves around thinking about what the world /might/ look like in the future. Speculation.

This is very different from a book in which the main action happens in twenty years, but very very little of the story has anything to do with the differences that have occurred over those twenty years, in my mind.

Of course, then you have books that are set on spaceships and have aliens but don't appear to be /terribly/ concerned with those things... So maybe that doesn't work either!

#148

Defining books as belonging within a particular genre or sub-genre is only useful in giving us a guide that relates to our reading tastes. Certainly, we could define any book that even slightly contravenes history as being science fiction, but what is the use of such an action?

Or how many units you can ship in a month. It is a business, after all. Art and craftsmanship are secondary, at best.

Let me state the obvious and point out that there’s a lot of meta stuff being discussed here (e.g. whether inter-subjective aesthetic comparisons are even possible and/or meaningful) that doesn’t have anything directly to do with textual or historical analysis of the literature of Science Fiction. These are definitely related areas of inquiry, but bringing one type of solution to bear on a categorically different type problem never bears fruit. Just a thought. Having said that, let me dig into one of those meta-issues:

154

Sure the publishing biz is filled with whores, and drek often gets the best publicity (read Miley Cyrus’ new book yet?), and yes the room is quickly filling up with shite, but: a) Is the publishing industry different from any other industry? Financial collapse of the western world anyone? b) Are there really thousands of talented artists not getting through to publication because of the greedy gatekeepers, or is everyone I meet working on a novel and ignorant of the fact that they are in desperate need of an editor, or god willing, a new hobby? c) Are the consumers of America ever going to allot more than 1 cent of their entertainment dollar to fiction? Perhaps if we were a nation of voracious readers, plenty of drek could be published with no threat that the next A Confederacy of Dunces would ever be overlooked or possibly go unpublished.

While I agree that it sometimes appears as editorial whim that an author ends up “segregated” or “ghettoized” into the SF&F section of the local bookstore (which simultaneously (by some lights) locks in minimal exposure and guarantees derision or anonymity in the literary community at large), there are also many upsides to livin’ in ghetto: pre-existing dedicated community of fans, a history of openness to new authors (by comparison to mainstream publishing), and a wider world which has been primed with genre content through other media.

My sentiments are instinctively sympathetic kswolff, but every once in a while I like to slap myself in the face with the clammy fish of pragmatism. Oh, and the next time a get a rejection letter I’m posting to this forum RIGHT AWAY, to tell everyone how much BS this post was, and how right you were.

148

Hilariously delicious, but isn't that like, Sf-nal solipsism Dude? To quote Keanu Reeves - "Whoah."

#155 I know of no author whose books have been categorised as sf despite their wishes or intent. In fact, the opposite tends to be true - when Jeanette Winterson writes an sf novel - The Stone Gods - it doesn't get shelved in the sf section because she's not a sf writer. Writers self-identify as genre writers... and they send their manuscripts to genre editors.

156
Granted most do, and those with higher ambitions rue the downside. I think for those who might write with an eye towards mainstream success but an itch towards anything "speculative" (sorry), they resign themselves to writing in the genre somewhat reluctantly.

I can't think of any such writers, off-hand. There are those who make the leap from genre to mainstream - Jonathan Lethem, Simon Ings, for example. But I don't think they originally wrote sf because they had to.

Well, once they are published, they are all ready categorized. I am thinking of a writer like Lethem or maybe somebody like Will Self, but who is unknown, writing "between genres" so to speak, and is at a loss at when a mainstream agent says the work has literary merit, but has genre elements and is not therefore marketable as mainstream fiction.

You mean like Nick Harkaway's The Gone-Away World? That was published as mainstream.

I suspect if someone writes a novel, no matter how literary, set in a galactic empire with spaceships and aliens, then they know they're writing sf and they have every intention of having it published as sf. OTOH, it might well be too literary for the sf audience...

How about Grimus by Rushdie? Aldiss claims he was on a judging panel for a SF novel prize and Grimus was about to be short-listed when the publisher withdrew the book as they didn't want it to be classified as science fiction for marketing reasons - they didn’t want Grimus on the SF shelves. So somewhere along the line they had a change of heart otherwise they wouldn't have allowed the book to be considered for the prize in the first place, as far as I know that never happened with Nick Harkaway.

I suspect a lot has changed in 34 years. Publishers these days can't afford to ignore markets any more.

>161 andyl: That probably wasn't the first time such an event occured, and certainly wasn't the last. To take a recent example, The Road could've been in contention for a SF novel prize but the publisher refused to provide any copies of it for consideration. There was another book which too fell victim to this, but I forget what it was.

Which award? There have been books which publishers have not sent to the Arthur C Clarke Award, but you never know if that's refusal, incompetence or fortgetfulness.

I have my suspicions that we have hijacked this thread.

We no longer talk of works that are from writers who are Science Fiction writers without science in them but the definition to each of the participants of what is Sci-Fi. Perhaps there should be just a thread for that.

>153 rojse: & >155 cmthomas:. My post at >148 geneg: was out of frustration. We read Farthing by Jo Walton, a self-described SF writer for the last SF Group read. I had a major problem with it being SF. It was a rather careless murder mystery that didn't seem to care much about the mystery. I suspect she was doing world building in preparation for the alternate history of the following two books more than creating a murder mystery, but nonetheless the central story of the book was a murder mystery. Other than the fact that it was set in an alternate history, it has none of the elements I identify with SF.

However, it was described as SF because of the alternative history aspect. No Science, precious little history, alternate or otherwise. Describing this book as SF, to me, is the same as declaring all red cards wild in Poker, it's a real stretch.

The claims I made in >148 geneg: are no less than the claims that identify Farthing as SF.

How about: "Science fiction is what science fiction fans cite when they argue over definitions of science fiction." That includes all manners of fantastic literature but excludes badly-written or badly-realised novels by non-genre writers (after all, if mainstream authors can get sniffy over saying 'My book isn't science fiction", we get get equally sniffy in saying "It certainly isn't - it's nowhere near good enough.")

It also excludes the techno-thriller, which often has a near-future setting but lacks a genre sensibility or any sort of 'gosh-wow' factor.

"It also excludes the techno-thriller, which often has a near-future setting but lacks a genre sensibility or any sort of 'gosh-wow' factor."

tell that to William Gibson.

>168 cmthomas:

If you're referring to Spook Country, the only genre I've seen that shelved under around these parts is crime. Ditto Greg Bear's techno-thrillers.

in the Eighties and the Nineties at the companies I was at people were all agog to have a company mission statement, as if that was going to really get the message across.

I just didn't see it. One president once said to be at a company that manufactured wood products, that we were in the business of 'Making Money'

I see our discussion or quest for a definition, as just that. A search that really is not going to arrive at the right place.

This thread has shown that so far people are in disagreement.

So I am left with my little thought, Science Fiction, i know it when I see it

>164 iansales: "Which award?"

Why, it was the Ar-

"There have been books which publishers have not sent to the Arthur C Clarke Award"

Now why ask a question like that if you already know the answer? :P

Did the publisher actually refuse to submit The Road to the ACCA? That seems odd since 1997's winner, The Calcutta Chromosome, was published by the same company, Picador.

>172 iansales:

That's how I remember the story being told. Although, now you have me doubting my memory and wondering if it wasn't actually that the publisher never responded to the request for it. No, I'm sticking with my story until evidence otherwise, I think.

In other news, I see you also saw what reminded me to come back here and respond to the above post.

The one and only. It is perhaps easier for me to recognise you there than vice versa, for while you use the same name both here and there, I don't.

I take it you're Nick H, then.

You've unmasked me, sir!

(For those looking bemused, Ian's link above points to the release of this year's Clarke Award longlist, and its subsequent discussion).

And you'd put Debatable Space on the shortlist?!

Not one of your favourite books, I take it?

Was not overly impressed, no.

Sounds like there's space for debate between you two on this subject.

Don't tell Ian, but if we were to have a debate then I'd have to actually read the book first.

I thought it odd that you liked it...

Actually, Debatable Space has been described as a "Marmite sort of book".

If I'm honest, I ran out of books after five, so stuck Debatable Space on as the 'well, people whose opinions I know and trust liked it, so that'll do!' book. It's on my TBR shelf too.

(Any questions along the lines of "Why not Anathem, then?" will be met with the 'I didn't rate it that much' reply).

The first non-science science fiction writer who popped to mind was Stanley Weinbaum. His short story "A Martian Odyssey" was just wonderful. Here is a clip from the Wikipedia entry on him:

"Stanley Grauman Weinbaum (April 4, 1902 - December 14, 1935) was an American science fiction author. His career in science fiction was short but influential. His first story, "A Martian Odyssey", was published to great (and enduring) acclaim in July 1934, but he would be dead from lung cancer within eighteen months."