The definition of Science Fiction

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
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.

Hmm, not sure about the "what we know is possible" bit - taken literally, that would limit you as a writer to the technology that actually exists today.

I'd say Dune is hard to semi-hard sci-fi. Yes there's laser guns, faster-than-light travel and anti-gravity machines, but within that fictional paradigm, they are presented as realistic technology. It has limitations. It requires maintenance. It sometimes breaks. And the technology in that book that's actually interesting is the stuff that's not your typical sci-fi fare at all; stillsuits, dew catchers, 'maker hooks', the gom jabbar. Much of which is actually pretty low-tech.

Relevant here: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MohsScaleOfScienceFictionHardness

I maintain that Star Wars can be classified as pseudo-sci-fi because really, the narrative content isn't substantially changed if you simply swap out the sci-fi elements for their fantasy equivalents: Darth Vader and the Emperor are evil wizards, Obi-wan and Yoda are benevolent wizards, blasters and lightsabers don't really do anything that longbows and swords can't do, different planets fulfill the role of different landmasses or kingdoms on a single planet, space voyages are pretty much equivalent to ocean voyages, and so on. Plus the Force is more important than any technology, from a narrative POV, and that's basically just magic.

Edit: the TVTropes page above links to a page on 'science fantasy', and it says that Lucas himself categorized it as such. It's about a farm boy who becomes a wizard-knight's apprentice, fights monsters, rescues a princess from a Dark Lord and ultimately saves the universe from evil. 100% standard fantasy fayre.
 
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droid

Well-known member
Just to go back to this question:

Can you name a film/book/comic set in the future which isnt generally considered to be some kind of sci-fi?

Slothrop has identified one possibility, but that's pretty slim pickings. Anyone have any more?

This started with an argument about the road and whether or not it was sci-fi.

I said yes on the basis that it is a possible future that differs significantly from the present - but if an apocalyptic adventure story qualifies, then does this mean that the book of revelations was the first work of science fiction?
 

firefinga

Well-known member
Just to go back to this question:

I said yes on the basis that it is a possible future that differs significantly from the present - but if an apocalyptic adventure story qualifies, then does this mean that the book of revelations was the first work of science fiction?

The Bible (all the prophecies etc, as well as a lot of other Religious "foundational" books) have the "sci fi" qualities when defining it along the lines of possible future human experiences.
 
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firefinga

Well-known member
In another addition to my point about sci fi set in the "present" (or at least set in the present of the writing) wasn't Jules Verne's stuff ALL set in his present? I am not a great expert on him - of course I know the classics like Cpt. Nemo and such - but that seems to be th case with him.
 

empty mirror

remember the jackalope
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?

i had a philosophy professor who said "imagine if, suddenly, all the denim in the world dematerialized" and invited us to look around the room to explore the implications
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
i had a philosophy professor who said "imagine if, suddenly, all the denim in the world dematerialized" and invited us to look around the room to explore the implications

Class full of hip philosophy undergraduates in 2017, clad in pressed linen pants, tartan skirts, plus-fours, gingham dresses etc.:

"What is...'deh-nim'?"
 

droid

Well-known member
The Bible (all the prophecies etc, as well as a lot of other Religious "foundational" books) have the "sci fi" qualities when defining it along the lines of possible future human experiences.

The only difference between prophecy and science fiction is that the former is prescriptive.
 

droid

Well-known member
In another addition to my point about sci fi set in the "present" (or at least set in the present of the writing) wasn't Jules Verne's stuff ALL set in his present? I am not a great expert on him - of course I know the classics like Cpt. Nemo and such - but that seems to be th case with him.

No, thats true, good point.
 

droid

Well-known member
This could be a good time to bring up Bruce Sterling's 'Slipstream':

In a recent remarkable interview in _New
Pathways_ #11, Carter Scholz alludes with pained
resignation to the ongoing brain-death of science
fiction. In the 60s and 70s, Scholz opines, SF had a
chance to become a worthy literature; now that chance
has passed. Why? Because other writers have now
learned to adapt SF's best techniques to their own
ends.
"And," says Scholz, "They make us look sick.
When I think of the best `speculative fiction' of the
past few years, I sure don't think of any Hugo or
Nebula winners. I think of Margaret Atwood's _The
Handmaid's Tale_, and of Don DeLillo's _White Noise_,
and of Batchelor's _The Birth of the People's Republic
of Antarctica_, and of Gaddis' _JR_ and _Carpenter's
Gothic_, and of Coetzee's _Life and Times of Michael
K_ . . . I have no hope at all that genre science
fiction can ever again have any literary significance.
But that's okay, because now there are other people
doing our job."

It's hard to stop quoting this interview. All
interviews should be this good. There's some great
campy guff about the agonizing pain it takes to write
short stories; and a lecture on the unspeakable horror
of writer's block; and some nifty fusillades of
forthright personal abuse; and a lot of other stuff
that is making _New Pathways_ one of the most
interesting zines of the Eighties. Scholz even reveals
his use of the Fibonacci Sequence in setting the
length and number of the chapters in his novel
_Palimpsests_, and wonders how come nobody caught on
to this groundbreaking technique of his.

Maybe some of this peripheral stuff kinda dulls
the lucid gleam of his argument. But you don't have to
be a medieval Italian mathematician to smell the reek
of decay in modern SF. Scholz is right. The job isn't
being done here.

"Science Fiction" today is a lot like the
contemporary Soviet Union; the sprawling possessor of
a dream that failed. Science fiction's official dogma,
which almost everybody ignores, is based on attitudes
toward science and technology which are bankrupt and
increasingly divorced from any kind of reality. "Hard-
SF," the genre's ideological core, is a joke today; in
terms of the social realities of high-tech post-
industrialism, it's about as relevant as hard-
Leninism.

https://w2.eff.org/Misc/Publications/Bruce_Sterling/Catscan_columns/catscan.05

...Sterling went on to say that writers from the mainstream (in and around 1989) were doing SF better than SF. Generally, his argument seems to go something like this: Toni Morrison’s Beloved was a better ghost book than any other ghost book in 1987, but wasn’t nominated for genre awards and it should have been. Or, Kurt Vonnegut’s Galapagos had just as interesting far-future Earth in 1985 than say, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, though SF readers didn’t pay much attention to Vonnegut at that time. Now, whether you agree with this line of reasoning in 1989 or 2015 isn’t my point here (really), my point here is that Sterling was seemingly mad at the SF establishment and really excited about “mainstream” lit that was doing cool SF-esque things. All of this is super-interesting to keep in mind when you think about where the word “slipstream” supposedly originates. Sterling seems to suggest that he thinks a “genre” has power, while a “category” is simply a marketing term. Notably, in 1989, Sterling believed the “mainstream” would never refer to itself as mainstream. So, he coined “slipstream,” — a sort of in-between kind of fiction — which Sterling says was represented by a bunch of specific authors of which he provides a list. Ironically or not, a lot of them (like Kurt Vonnegut) are authors that people like me continue to wonder about in almost exactly the same way Sterling did back in 1989. Is Kurt Vonnegut sci-fi or not? The debate is endless and I could have it with you right now and we’d end up in a slumber party that lasted for about six months. So, various writers and critics (myself very guilty) seem to continuously have this sort of genre discussion about all sorts of writers from Karen Russell to Etgar Keret and where the supposed genre membranes do or do not exist. But the conversation is complex and ongoing. My feeling about it lately is that it all seems like a game of impossible ratios. Hmmm, let’s see, if a story has two parts monster but one part “regularness” then it’s probably “slipstream.” But if that ratio favors more “regularness” and the monster just waves in the background (and/or is maybe not “real”) then it’s just normal plain old literature...

...About a decade after Bruce Sterling’s “slipstream” essay, in 1998, Jonathan Lethem wrote an essay called “The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction.” In it, he asserted that in 1973 had Thomas Pynchon’s Gravity’s Rainbow beat Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama for the Nebula Award, that science fiction and the mainstream would have more or less coalesced, at least in the critical sense. From Lethem’s piece:

“Pynchon’s nomination now stands as a hidden tombstone marking the death of the hope that science fiction was about to merge with the mainstream.”

https://electricliterature.com/oh-s...s-the-weirdest-genre-of-them-all-755bead4389c
 

droid

Well-known member
And because we love lists.

THE SLIPSTREAM LIST

ACKER, KATHY - Empire of the Senseless
ACKROYD, PETER - Hawksmoor; Chatterton
ALDISS, BRIAN - Life in the West
ALLENDE, ISABEL - Of Love and Shadows; House of
Spirits
AMIS, KINGSLEY - The Alienation; The Green Man
AMIS, MARTIN - Other People; Einstein's Monsters
APPLE, MAX - Zap; The Oranging of America
ATWOOD, MARGARET - The Handmaids Tale
AUSTER, PAUL - City of Glass; In the Country of Last
Things
BALLARD, J. G. - Day of Creation; Empire of the Sun
BANKS, IAIN - The Wasp Factory; The Bridge
BANVILLE, JOHN - Kepler; Dr. Copernicus
BARNES, JULIAN - Staring at the Sun
BARTH, JOHN - Giles Goat-Boy; Chimera
BARTHELME, DONALD - The Dead Father
BATCHELOR, JOHN CALVIN - Birth of the People s
Republic of Antarctica
BELL, MADISON SMARTT - Waiting for the End of the
World
BERGER, THOMAS - Arthur Rex
BONTLY, THOMAS - Celestial Chess
BOYLE, T. CORAGHESSAN - Worlds End; Water Music
BRANDAO, IGNACIO - And Still the Earth
BURROUGHS, WILLIAM - Place of Dead Roads; Naked Lunch;
Soft Machine; etc.
CARROLL, JONATHAN - Bones of the Moon; Land of Laughs
CARTER, ANGELA - Nights at the Circus; Heroes and
Villains
CARY, PETER - Illywhacker; Oscar and Lucinda
CHESBRO, GEORGE M. - An Affair of Sorcerers
COETZEE, J. M. - Life and rimes of Michael K.
COOVER, ROBERT - The Public Burning; Pricksongs &
Descants
CRACE, JIM - Continent
CROWLEY, JOHN - Little Big; Aegypt
DAVENPORT, GUY - Da Vincis Bicycle; The Jules Verne
Steam Balloon
DISCH, THOMAS M. - On Wings of Song
DODGE, JIM - Not Fade Away
DURRELL, LAWRENCE - Tunc; Nunquam
ELY, DAVID - Seconds
ERICKSON, STEVE - Days Between Stations; Rubicon Beach
FEDERMAN, RAYMOND - The Twofold Variations
FOWLES, JOHN - A Maggot
FRANZEN, JONATHAN - The Twenty-Seventh City
FRISCH, MAX - Homo Faber; Man in the Holocene
FUENTES, CARLOS - Terra Nostra
GADDIS, WILLIAM - JR; Carpenters Gothic
GARDNER, JOHN - Grendel; Freddy's Book
GEARY, PATRICIA - Strange Toys; Living in Ether
GOLDMAN, WILLIAM - The Princess Bride; The Color of
Light
GRASS, GUNTER - The Tin Drum
GRAY, ALASDAIR - Lanark
GRIMWOOD, KEN - Replay
HARBINSON, W. A. - Genesis; Revelation; Otherworld
HILL, CAROLYN - The Eleven Million Mile High Dancer
HJVRTSBERG, WILLIAM - Gray Matters; Falling Angel
HOBAN, RUSSELL - Riddley Walker
HOYT, RICHARD - The Manna Enzyme
IRWIN, ROBERT - The Arabian Nightmares
ISKANDER, FAZIL - Sandro of Chegam; The Gospel
According to Sandro
JOHNSON, DENIS - Fiskadoro
JONES, ROBERT F. - Blood Sport; The Diamond Bogo
KINSELLA, W. P. - Shoeless Joe
KOSTER, R. M. - The Dissertation; Mandragon
KOTZWINKLE, WILLIAM - Elephant Bangs Train; Doctor
Rat, Fata Morgana
KRAMER, KATHRYN - A Handbook for Visitors From Outer
Space
LANGE, OLIVER - Vandenberg
LEONARD, ELMORE - Touch
LESSING, DORIS - The Four-Gated City; The Fifth Child
of Satan
LEVEN, JEREMY - Satan
MAILER, NORMAN - Ancient Evenings
MARINIS, RICK - A Lovely Monster
MARQUEZ, GABRIEL GARCIA - Autumn of the Patriarch; One
Hundred Years of Solitude
MATHEWS, HARRY - The Sinking of the Odradek Stadium
McEWAN, IAN - The Comfort of Strangers; The Child in
Time
McMAHON, THOMAS - Loving Little Egypt
MILLAR, MARTIN - Milk, Sulphate and Alby Starvation
MOONEY, TED - Easy Travel to Other Planets
MOORCOCK, MICHAEL - Laughter of Carthage; Byzantium
Endures; Mother London
MOORE, BRIAN - Cold Heaven
MORRELL, DAVID - The Totem
MORRISON, TONI - Beloved; The Song of Solomon
NUNN, KEN - Tapping the Source; Unassigned Territory
PERCY, WALKER - Love in the Ruins; The Thanatos
Syndrome
PIERCY, MARGE - Woman on the Edge of Time
PORTIS, CHARLES - Masters of Atlantis
PRIEST, CHRISTOPHER - The Glamour; The Affirmation
PROSE, FRANCINE - Bigfoot Dreams, Marie Laveau
PYNCHON, THOMAS - Gravity's Rainbow; V; The Crying of
Lot 49
REED, ISHMAEL - Mumbo Jumbo; The Terrible Twos
RICE, ANNE - The Vampire Lestat; Queen of the Damned
ROBBINS, TOM - Jitterbug Perfume; Another Roadside
Attraction
ROTH, PHILIP - The Counterlife
RUSHDIE, SALMON - Midnight's Children; Grimus; The
Satanic Verses
SAINT, H. F. - Memoirs of an Invisible Man
SCHOLZ, CARTER & HARCOURT GLENN - Palimpsests
SHEPARD, LUCIUS - Life During Wartime
SIDDONS, ANNE RIVERS - The House Next Door
SPARK, MURIEL - The Hothouse by the East River
SPENCER, SCOTT - Last Night at the Brain Thieves Ball
SUKENICK, RONALD - Up; Down; Out
SUSKIND, PATRICK - Perfume
THEROUX, PAUL - O-Zone
THOMAS, D. M. - The White Hotel
THOMPSON, JOYCE - The Blue Chair; Conscience Place
THOMSON, RUPERT - Dreams of Leaving
THORNBERG, NEWTON - Valhalla
THORNTON, LAWRENCE - Imagining Argentina
UPDIKE, JOHN - Witches of Eastwick; Rogers Version
VLIET, R. G. - Scorpio Rising
VOLLMAN, WILLIAM T. - You Bright and Risen Angels
VONNEGUT, KURT - Galapagos; Slaughterhouse-Five
WALLACE, DAVID FOSTER - The Broom of the System
WEBB, DON - Uncle Ovid's Exercise Book
WHITTEMORE, EDWARD - Nile Shadows; Jerusalem Poker;
Sinai Tapestry
WILLARD, NANCY - Things Invisible to See
WOMACK, JACK - Ambient; Terraplane
WOOD, BARI - The Killing Gift
WRIGHT, STEPHEN - M31: A Family Romance
 

firefinga

Well-known member
The technology/science-heavy aspect doesn't have to be projected into the future necessarily. Take many x-file episodes or the 2004 Manchurian candidate. Scenarios of present times, but with (just slightly) interpolated technology.

Quite a few 1970s/1980s TV series were like this, too. The Man From Atlantis, 6 Million Dollar Man, Bionic Woman, *cough* Knightrider *cough*,
 
I hate to start with a question, but here's something Ive mulled over: Can you name a film/book/comic set in the future which isnt generally considered to be some kind of sci-fi?

A Canticle for Leibowitz is set more than a millennium in the future at a time when science and learning has been discarded
 

CrowleyHead

Well-known member
Does life after the sort of culture we presume from sci-fi imply that its not there b/c of its absence in the book's world though?
 

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'.

Jurassic Park is indeed set in the time of the movie release (somewhat) which was 1993. I re-watched it on DVD recently and there is this scene before all the action starts where they have dinner (and Goldblum is spoiling all the tech-naivety) and in the dinner room they got all those buisness plans projected on to the walls. And one chart clearly shows: opening 1993, and every two years doubling the revenue. Invest people!!!
 

Mr. Tea

Let's Talk About Ceps
In the list of 'slipstream' novels a few pages back there's a book titled 'The Oranging of America', which seems somehow prophetic.
 
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