The definition of Science Fiction

droid

Well-known member
I am glad to hear it but we can't seriously suggest that a novel set in the year 2018 in which carrots had disappeared from the world (with no involvement of either aliens or spaceships) was science fiction, could we?

Maybe? Are you considering writing that book?
 

firefinga

Well-known member
Hmm... firstly, not really (but I agree there will always be outliers, hence my qualifiers on the definitions. Secondly how do you know? When was Jurassic park set?

Jurassic Park was set in 1993 pretty much. The year it got released, bc it played with the gadgets of the currents, like CD-Roms presented as the hottest shit of the dawning "information age"
 

john eden

male pale and stale
Hmm... firstly, not really (but I agree there will always be outliers, hence my qualifiers on the definitions. Secondly how do you know? When was Jurassic park set?

Wait, so if Orwell published 1984 in 1985 (or if he had called in 1947) it wouldn't be science fiction?
 

droid

Well-known member
Jurassic Park was set in 1993 pretty much. The year it got released, bc it played with the gadgets of the currents, like CD-Roms presented as the hottest shit of the dawning "information age"

Bullshit. It featured gene splicing technology way ahead of anything we have even now.

Fact is, AFAIK, there is no mention of timeframe anywhere and would presumably be 'near future'.
 

droid

Well-known member
Wait, so if Orwell published 1984 in 1985 (or if he had called in 1947) it wouldn't be science fiction?

No, it would be alt-history, a sub genre of science fiction. Defined as:

'Anything that could HAVE happened in the past that differs in some way from what actually happened'.
 

droid

Well-known member
Point I'm trying to make I guess is that the defining feature of sci fi is not space, aliens, technology or anything really sciencey at all, its possibility.
 

john eden

male pale and stale
No, it would be alt-history, a sub genre of science fiction. Defined as:

'Anything that could HAVE happened in the past that differs in some way from what actually happened'.

Well that's just confusing. I think we can all agree that minimal techno is a sub-genre of techno and is therefore techno.

But I simply can't agree that alt-history is a sub-genre of science fiction. SS-GB isn't science fiction, is it?

Nor is the other book I am writing in which Brit Pop triumphs over jungle in the 1990s.
 

firefinga

Well-known member
Bullshit. It featured gene splicing technology way ahead of anything we have even now.

Fact is, AFAIK, there is no mention of timeframe anywhere and would presumably be 'near future'.

I think it's a bit the other way round, if there is no distinctively different timeframe being mentioned, it's always assumed the setting of a story - also with "sci if"-background - is the present.

Another example would be Demon Seed or The Forbin Project.
 

droid

Well-known member
I think it's a bit the other way round, if there is no distinctively different timeframe being mentioned, it's always assumed the setting of a story - also with "sci if"-background - is the present.

Are you sure you want to go with this?

Demonseed: The story takes place in the then-future of 1995.
 

droid

Well-known member
I gotta rewatch Demon Seed then, bc I don't remember 1995 being mentioned in the actual movie. If it got mentioned, it's actually not against my statement from above.

All youre saying is that if a timeframe isnt mentioned than you automatically assume that the story is set in the present. This is flawed logic.

Demonseed was written in 1973 and is set in 1995.
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
There is a danger of this thread ending up like a heated discussion about the distinction between tech-house and housey techno.
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
Yeah, yourself and the distinguished JE are both wrong. Science and tech are a red herring. Consider just a few examples:

The Dispossessed,
The Handmaids tale,
Slaughterhouse 5,
The Drowned world,
Ada, or Ardor,
The Master and Margarita,
A Clockwork Orange,

Science and tech play little or no role in these books but they are generally considered to be SF.

Who considers the Master and Margarita to be science fiction? A quick Google can't even find them used in the same sentence, so you're going to have to back that one up. Meanwhile, the Dispossessed features space travel and a new theory of time leading to instantaneous interstellar communication, Slaughterhouse 5 involves (possibly) aliens and time travel, the Drowned World is based on catastrophic climate change...
 

Slothrop

Tight but Polite
I think the difference is meant to be that 'hard' sci-fi is more about the implications of future technology while 'soft' is more about societal changes, right? So the latter would include 1984, which doesn't really feature any technology not available in the late '40s when it was written (edit: apart from some of the surveillance stuff, as JE mentions - although even then, it's mostly just a refinement of technology that already existed at the time, isn't it?). I guess this would put Gibson in a sort of intermediate position.
The way I've always heard them used is that in hard SF the technology is meant to be a pretty plausible extrapolation of what we currently know is possible, whereas in soft SF the technology does roughly whatever you need it to do to create a setting that's fun or interesting. Hence I'd say that things like Star Wars, Dune and Trek are soft SF, and that the "Star Wars isn't really science fiction" thing is trite smart-alecky sophistry.

Edit: I'm comfortable with the idea that the only real distinction between the softest SF and fantasy is that in SF scientists did it, whereas in fantasy a wizard did it.
 

droid

Well-known member
lol, OK, fair enough on M&M, its been 25 years since I read it - its basically fantasy, but I have seen it described as speculative.

Dispossessed, could easily be set on Earth, space travel is immaterial and the time theory tangential. Left hand of darkness a better example perhaps.

Drowned world (and also the drought) have virtually no technology involved whatsoever, climate change angle... as they say on the right, climate change has always happened - or is Noah's ark sci fi?

Billy's adventures in S5.. are they meant to have literally happened or are they symptoms of PTSD? Skipping between events in time is a fairly standard literary device.
 
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droid

Well-known member
“Science Fiction is something that could happen – but usually you wouldn’t want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn’t happen, though often you only wish that it could.”

– Arthur C Clarke.
 
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