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Looking at the course what is called sci-fi in recent years, I have noticed that many of the movies and shows are just "action films set in space."   In fact, you can take the same story line from many of these shows and set it in the middle ages.  (Try it with Star Wars Ep 2, you'll see what I mean.)  The short lived TV show Space above and beyond could have been set an Aircraft Carrier during WW II.  

To me, true sci-fi needs to tell a story and not emphasize the special effects of technology.  Now I do beleive I grew up not knowing what good sci-fi is.  I was a big Star Wars fan and if any other movie didn't have equal special effects, I didn't like it.  But I also grew up watching Dr. Who.  They did not have super special effects but they were used to help the writers tell a story.  It worked, the story was main part of the show.  (Sounds stupid to have to say that but now it looks like some writer pictures a ship drilling it's way to the center of the earth and then decides to come up with a story so they can use the effects shot.  The Core)

What are some examples of GOOD Sci-fi?  What would happen if the Sci-Fi channel started showing some of these great works of Science Fiction and not the fantasy/horror blabber they show today?

Good recent sci-fi:

GATTACA - what if everyone could be perfect...what would it mean to be imperfect?

DARK CITY - reality is what we make it...or is it what it makes us?

CUBE - put people in a death trap and see if they can find a way out.

PI - I still don't know what in the hell it's about but it was good.

A.I. ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE - hate it or love it...it is good science fiction.

BICENTENNIAL MAN - a little over-sentifmental, but good.  What makes us human?

AVALON - Mamoru Oshii's Japanese-Polish live-action anime. Another contemplation of the nature of reality...with kick ass anime-style action!

Babylon 5.
The science element is important (faster than light travel, telepaths), but the heart of the story could be set in any age.  Just substitute the Nineteenth Century Great Powers (France, Austro-Hungary, Russia, Britian) for the various races, and you'll still have the same basic milleu:  different groups plotting 7 backstabbing in order to be number one.

Good and/or great sci-fi:

* War of the Worlds
* When Worlds Collide
* The Andromeda Strain
* 2001: A Space Odyssey
* Invasion of the Body Snatchers
* Colossus: The Forbin Project
* Fantastic Voyage
* The Day the Earth Stood Still
* Planet of the Vampires (Directed by Mario Bava! It has cheap, yet imaginative special effects and creepy scenes of buried bodies rising up out of the ground)
* Journey to the Center of the Earth


Although, Colossus and Invasion of the Body Snatchers are probably better examples of Cold War fables than sci-fi.

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Gattaca, Dark City, Fifth Element,  2001, A Clockwork Orange, and Stargate are among my favorites.

By "real" Sci-Fi do you mean "hard" Sci-Fi or just Sci-Fi that must be Sci-Fi to tell the story?

For really good and hard Sci-Fi, I recommend mostly skipping movies altogether (with a few great exceptions) and reading instead. Try Robert Heinlin.

As far as what would happen if the SF channel starting actually showing some of these great SF films? Well, I would actually watch the channel is one thing that would happen.



"Supplies!" (UHF)

I really like 'concept' Sci-Fi, the stuff that really makes you think or raises issues in an analogical kinda way.  Problem is as far as I can see their few and far between, with too many, as you put it, 'action films set in space'. 'Gattaca',  'Cube' and 'The Andromeda Strain' all previously mentioned would be the one that spring to my mind.  Please let me know what others come under that category.

Pete

How do you figure Pi to be sci-fi? I've done a lot of study on the movie, and I don't see how it could be sci-fi. --The movie was about Max, our narrator and resident mathematical genious who goes through life trying to find patterns everywhere, and uses his home made super computer "Euclid"  to try to find patterns in the Stock Market. Then one day, it spits out a 216-digit number which is promptly thrown away by Max thinking it is just computer jargon. He then spends the rest of the movie trying to find the same number when he realizes the number he saw might be the numeric translation from Hebrew of the true name of God. Pursued by Hasidic Jews looking for the number for their personal religious gains, and by stock market execs for personal financial gain, Max is driven him to the brink of insanity-- There isn't much science involved except for a high emphasis on mathematics.

Bicentennial Man was a much, MUCH better short story than it was a feature length movie. In the 45 minutes it takes to finish the story, more is explained and described than the 2 hours of film. Read the short story!

Scottie

I don't know that Dark City really qualifies, as it seems that the technology and setting were invented to support the visuals and theme, instead of the other way around.  It seems to me that honest, hard science fiction imagines an innovation or possible situation, and then constructs possible themes and issues from that.  (Just the part with Sutherland designing whole personalities and memories with blots of chemicals in a petri dish took it out of the strict SF category for me.)

On the other hand, I think that Pi is very defensible as "real" SF, simply because it plays by those rules.

Your question contains a contradiction in terms.  "Sci-fi" is not "real" SF -- it's the pulp version, the TV version, the Star Trek and Star Wars version.  It's the trappings and the whizbang, the "westerns with aliens" version.

"Real" SF is extrapolative fiction, constructing the premise by making a rational, believable "what if?" hypothesis, and then following it through and seeing how it affects society and, ultimately, individuals.

Donnie Darko, I feel, can be considered sci-fi.






**SEMI-SPOILERS**







It deals with the possibility of time travel, and what it's effect could be on the world. It's also an incredibly great story, with enough humor (albeit usually somewhat dark) thrown in to keep your attention in case you started feeling bored.

"The Time Machine" (the original one)

How about "Ghostbusters?"

"Alien," "Aliens," and "The Thing" probably qualify.

I am not certain if "Donnie Darko" is science fiction, but it is a great remake of "An Occurence at Owl Creek Bridge."

As was said, I mostly read when I want to get a "good" science fiction fix.  Along those lines, a movie based in the world of Peter Hamilton's "Reality Dysfunction" would be very cool.  Nanonics, voidhawks, Edenism...

Thank you Nathan!

Often the people who disdain SF are really familiar only with "Sci Fi" - a situation which does 'real' SF a great injustice.

Mind you, while I think the differentiation is important, I enjoy both varieties.  Which probably explains why  I come here...

I am shocked with you people. You have left off Ray Bradbury, possibly one of the greatest Sci Fi movies ever.

I always considered the Omega Man good Sci Fi. But you leftout possibly two of the best sci fi movies recently made.

Pitch Black and Minority Report. If they are not sci fi, than nothing is. Come on guys think.

The difference Nathan is talking about is the difference between what I call "Sci-Fi" and "Science Fiction"

I think Sci-Fi is probably a lot easier to write because you can deal with established storylines dressed up in futuristic settings with aliens and spaceships.  Granted, if you try, you can still put a lot of creativity into making the settings and characters interesting with unique effect on the situations.  That's still a far cry, though, from something like Asimov's "The Stars Like Dust" that takes what was known at the time about intersteller gases and postulates forward the implications and builds a whole story around it.

Evan3 wrote:
>
> I am shocked with you people. You have left off Ray Bradbury,
> possibly one of the greatest Sci Fi movies ever.

Personally, I'd consider Bradbury a writer, not a movie.  And frankly, I consider him a fantasist, but not so much an SF writer.  Very few of his stories are based on hard extrapolation, such as you would find with the body of work by Asimov et al.  Which is not to demean the man; Bradbury is one of the finest writers of any kind, bar none.  But his work doesn't really fit the confines of the genre except in the sense that publishers have no other label to give him.
 
> I always considered the Omega Man good Sci Fi. But you
> leftout possibly two of the best sci fi movies recently made.
>
> Pitch Black and Minority Report. If they are not sci fi, than
> nothing is. Come on guys think.

Personally, I thought Minority Report was overinflated and overrated.  The premise had a logical flaw at its center which everyone tried desperately to ignore like the proverbial elephant in the living room.  The photography had that "look at me, I'm so edgy" color scheme that became annoying beyond all reason after about five minutes.  And speaking of the five-minute mark, that's about how long it took me to figure out the big "whodunit".  From where I sit, Minority Report was a well-meaning misfire.

"PItch Black" is an interesting mix of "Sci-Fi" and "Science FIction", or at least an attempt at one.  It's fairly straight forward Sci-Fi for the most part, but using the triple-ecplise as the driving force was a good attempt to tie the motivation to something more 'real'.

But I think they got the math off in both the frequency and duration of the eclipses

Fantasy and science fiction are often lumped together under the heading "speculative fiction," because this term includes those works that don't quite fit into either category (such as SECONDS) but clearly don't fit into any other category. Also, speculative fiction doesn't have the "space opera" or "swords and sorcery" connotations that science fiction and fantasy have, respectively, with the public at large.

Speculative fiction includes any work that employs a plot device that could not exist within known reality.

Todd R. wrote:
>
> Speculative fiction includes any work that employs a plot
> device that could not exist within known reality.

Or rather, DOES not.  The common delineator between fantasy and science fiction, under the common "spec fic" umbrella, is:

Science fiction: does not, but could.

Fantasy: could not.

You're correct, Nathan. Therefore, SUPERMAN is technically a science-fiction film, as is FREQUENCY (though one could argue that it's fantasy) and THE SIXTH SENSE (because, regardless of one's personal beliefs, no one can empirically prove that ghosts exist); however, none of these films were advertised as science fiction because of the "space opera" cliche that most people pin on works of science fiction.

Gotta agree. Minority Report was a boring, predictable film. Loved Pitch Black, not for any grandiose reason, simply because it was enjoyable and well paced.


"Badgers? Badgers? We don't need no stinking badgers!"

Hummm.....
I found my old copy of Asimov's robot storys.
He was so good at creating "Logic problims", that depended on hard science.
One involved Powell and Donovan, his robotic field testers, on Mercury, with a life or death situation, created by a simple command given to a robot. It resaulted from conflicts between the three laws of Robotics.
Nicely done, and i think fitting the definition of Speculative fiction.
I think the real problim is the need for at least a working science education, for most hard science storys to work. Sci-Fi, on the other hand, only requires an acceptance of "effective convieniances". We don't need to know how anti gravity units work, just what happens when they don't! "Blaster,smaster, just shoot the damm thing before it eats us!"

When I was a kid, the "Golden Age" of Sci-Fi was ending, the era of 'hard science' and speculation about technological advances. So in a sense, it actually WAS all about special effects and technology.

The best 'classical' sci-fi takes CHANGES in the course of history (usually technological, though sometimes sociological) and extrapolates them into the future. I always loved this kind of stuff, because it seemed to me that by taking humans into unknown directions, you could examine the basic elements of what it meant to BE human. The best sci-fi should still do this.

But I guarantee that it is beyond the abilities and probably outside the interests of TV script-writers to examine these very basic questions through extrapolation and imagination. You are dead right on when you state that most modern sci-fi is just actioners with ray guns instead of rifles or swords, and aliens instead of Indians or Nazis. (see Aliens, the best Cowboys and Indians, fort-under-seige story ever!! That's a case where they just used the sci-fi elements for the hell of it, but it's still a great movie.)

The most notable recent exception would be Babylon 5...things like telepathy were dealt with in terms of their consequenses

raj wrote:
>
> Babylon 5.
> The science element is important (faster than light travel,
> telepaths), but the heart of the story could be set in any
> age.  Just substitute the Nineteenth Century Great Powers
> (France, Austro-Hungary, Russia, Britian) for the various
> races, and you'll still have the same basic milleu:
> different groups plotting 7 backstabbing in order to be
> number one.

Ah, but that, then, is postulating that such activity is a universal trait among sentient beings. Even the 'moral' Membari had a bit of connivance in them. (I'm thinking of the one story line that dealt with the politics of the Membari culture)

Our appreciation of 'storytelling' is defined by certain elements and you aren't going to get too 'alien' and still have a good story. You certainly couldn't do a five year series on races that 'all got along just famously' could you?

Hmmm...interesting.

For some reason, film makers don't seem to find speculation about the future very interesting, whereas, in book or short story form, seeing how future changes in science or society play out is fascinating. To say "X changes, and society ends up like THIS" is the heart of speculative fiction-it comments on both human nature and societal institutions. Maybe that kind of semi-philosphical endeavor is just too hard for movie makers, especially with all that tempting futuristic eyecandy just laying there...

Something like "Clockwork Orange" may NOT be a work of speculative fiction. It doesn't postulate any major technological or social changes,  Burgess just set it in the future to more starkly outline his use of the dilema: contrasting the untenable consequenses of control  of individuals by the state against the untenable actions of individuals unconstrained by the state or anything else. It's actually an old-fashioned moral allegory.

Minority Report at least TRIED to address speculative issues AND work a little whodunit type plot at the same time. (Unsuccessfully, I guess. I liked it, though.)

Trollificus wrote:
>
> When I was a kid, the "Golden Age" of Sci-Fi was ending, the
> era of 'hard science' and speculation about technological
> advances. So in a sense, it actually WAS all about special
> effects and technology.

But you realize that the Golden Age, like most golden ages, didn't really exist as a unspoiled utopia.  It was largely the province of one man, John W. Campbell.  The majority of science fiction both before and during the time that he was redefining the literary genre in Astounding was still whiz-bang pulp adventure stories.

> The best 'classical' sci-fi takes CHANGES in the course of
> history (usually technological, though sometimes
> sociological) and extrapolates them into the future. I always
> loved this kind of stuff, because it seemed to me that by
> taking humans into unknown directions, you could examine the
> basic elements of what it meant to BE human. The best sci-fi
> should still do this.
>
> But I guarantee that it is beyond the abilities and probably
> outside the interests of TV script-writers to examine these
> very basic questions through extrapolation and imagination.
> You are dead right on when you state that most modern sci-fi
> is just actioners with ray guns instead of rifles or swords,
> and aliens instead of Indians or Nazis.

But again, that's not a "modern" thing; that's been part of the publishing genre of science fiction ever since Hugo Gernsback started Amazing.  Most pulp writers were "hacks" in the original sense -- they could write according to genre conventions in whatever genre was popular.  Westerns?  Sure.  Detective adventures?  You betcha.  Oriental adventures?  Okey-dokey.  Sci-fi?  You got it.  If anything, today's television SF is more concerned with some semblance of verisimilitude, if only because they need to be able to sustain long story arcs and characterizations with moderate internal consistency.


 (see Aliens, the best
> Cowboys and Indians, fort-under-seige story ever!! That's a
> case where they just used the sci-fi elements for the hell of
> it, but it's still a great movie.)

Hmm... I'd say it's more of a take-off on a classic "monster in the haunted house" tale...

I mostly agree with you, (of course, I DID put "Golden Age" in quotes) I don't read sci-fi as much as I used to , but even years ago, it seemed there was a paradigm shift (ack! never thought I'd use THAT canard.) away from more 'whiz-bang adventure' and 'extrapolative speculation' and towards more internal and psychological stories.  Your point about the 'hack' quality of most of the writing from the "Golden Age" is well taken.

Do you really think todays sci-fi movies and TV shows are 'real' sci-fi?? The latter incarnations of Star Trek, for example, seem to merely use the futuristic milleu as a platform for middlebrow moral and political sermonizing, of the type our poor grade-school children are subjected to daily.

Maybe it's always been that way, and I'm just romanticizing the artifacts of my youth...hell, it was all new to me then, and seemed hella cool. Hmmm...I usually try to be careful to avoid that kind of prejudice, but maybe that's what I'm doing.

And your comment about Aliens made me think, for the first time, about the similarities between the 'plucky band of heroes under siege in the fort/house/island/planet' and the 'plucky band of heroes under siege in a haunted house' genres. Guess they are pretty similar. Still a good movie.

Trollificus wrote:
>
> Do you really think todays sci-fi movies and TV shows are
> 'real' sci-fi?? The latter incarnations of Star Trek, for
> example, seem to merely use the futuristic milleu as a
> platform for middlebrow moral and political sermonizing, of
> the type our poor grade-school children are subjected to daily.

Well, I think we need to remember that while "sci-fi" and "SF" can be defined as opposites, they're usually both present in any given work or text to a certain degree.  There are some harder-than-hard-SF authors (Robert L. Forward, for example) who think that any author who makes use of convenient genre tropes such as FTL travel is playing "with the net down" and allowing too much sci-fi in their SF.

I can't say that modern incarnations of Star Trek are any better at fulfilling the honest extrapolative spirit of "true" SF, but I can say that they pay better attention to internal consistency, good storytelling, and honest human drama than "Captain Future" and his compatriots.

I know it's kind of lame, but I have a permanent soft spot for guys like Forward and Niven, more or less hard science guys who create stories of sometimes dubious literary merit but terrific "Wow! Factor" in their concepts.

Is that the dividing factor? Between stories that USE sci-fi concepts or environments to tell a story and those that START with a speculative concept around which the story is written?

First category-Aliens, Clockwork Orange, 1984, anything by Gibson or Heinlein?
Second Category-Ringworld, Brave New World, anything by Forward or Asimov?

Seems like a useful distinction, but I'm not sure if that's how you are defining the terms.

I think the common distinction is this:

Science fiction is a literature of extrapolation -- the environment, premise, or some other integral part is a function of a rational or scientifically supportable hypothesis.  (The problem that some classical hard SF writers have typically run into is that they make their story ABOUT their innovation, rather than about PEOPLE.)  

There have been some long-used ideas -- FTL travel is the most common -- which many writers, including those usually thought of as "hard," use as their "freebie":  An idea which they can't really justify scientifically, but which enables the situation they want to explore.  To the ultra-hard writers, it's a copout; to others, it's simply non-commital -- "We can't positively rule out FTL travel, so as long as we simply assume the technology and don't try to explain it, we're okay."

I don't think that trying to divide it along "which came first" lines -- the speculation or the story -- is all that useful, because I think most stories come from something in the middle; the speculation and the story idea are one.

>Bradbury a writer, not a movie. And frankly, I consider him a fantasist, but not so
>much an SF writer.

He's said in the past that he considers himself a horror writer.

I always thought Bradbury was trying to be a prose poet. He had some good ideas...for a while. Especially for uncritical teenage readers.

As for dividing Sci-Fi and SF, or Specualtive Fiction and Science Fiction, or whatever...I'm aware that such labels are artificial constructs, and as such, inadequately represent reality. Always, some members of a class fit neatly into such a construct and seem to validate its usefulness, but usually there are many more examples that are problematic.

So I'm aware of the futility of such labeling...but I do it anyway. *sigh*

(Did I not get enough bulls**t sessions in school to sate my appetite for trite characterizations? Does dropping out in ones' second year leave one with a lifelong need for 'sophomoric'? Apparently so...)

Heres what i think Are Some real good scifi movies .

A clockwork Orange

Cube

Star wars exept for  ep2

twilight Zone movie

Trollificus wrote:
 
> Ah, but that, then, is postulating that such activity is a
> universal trait among sentient beings. Even the 'moral'
> Membari had a bit of connivance in them. (I'm thinking of the
> one story line that dealt with the politics of the Membari
> culture)

No, what I'm saying is that JMS (I ain't gonna try and spell his name) took what is essentially a human drama and gussied it up in a science fiction milieu.  Not that i'm complaining, I love the show.  Most sci-fi does that.

Our interaction with real, sentient aliens will be vastly different.  It'll be very complicated, and not really something that'll fit well in a two hour movie.  There are very few books that actually have first contact as the main theme, and don't have the aliens be humanoids.  The only one I can think of off the top of my head is "The Mote in God's Eye".  I can't really recommend the book.  Aside from the idea of the aliens being sentient hive type creatures (like bees & ants) and the difficulty of just communicating with them, the novel just didn't do it for me.
 
> Our appreciation of 'storytelling' is defined by certain
> elements and you aren't going to get too 'alien' and still
> have a good story. You certainly couldn't do a five year
> series on races that 'all got along just famously' could you?

Correct.  The heart of drama is conflict.

>There are very few books that actually have first contact as the main theme, and
>don't have the aliens be humanoids. The only one I can think of off the top of my
>head is "The Mote in God's Eye".

Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster is the story of the first meeting of humans and a race of intelligent insects. The twist is that it's told from the insects' point of view. It's supposed to be a prequel to some of his other books, but that's the only one in the series that I've read.

> >There are very few books that actually have first contact as
> the main theme, and don't have the aliens be humanoids. The only one I can think
> of off the top of my head is "The Mote in God's Eye".
>
> Nor Crystal Tears by Alan Dean Foster is the story of the first meeting of humans >and a race of intelligent insects. The twist is that it's told from the insects' point of >view.  It's supposed to be a prequel to some of his other books, but
> that's the only one in the series that I've read.

Turtledove's "Worldwar" series.  Of course, they are still bipeds...

I am trying to remember if "A Mission of Gravity" and a number of other books were first contact, or humanity having already met other races.  That is what disqualifies "A Deepness in the Sky" along with "Ringworld."

Would "Rendezvous With Rama" count?  I can see someone saying that is more of a first contact with alien technology book.

Cool.  Looks like I've got a couple of books to get.  I don't mind bipedalism, but when the aliens look just like us (with some differences in head shape) it just kills the whole "these are not humans" feel.  There are so many different shaped creatures on earth, surely the lifeforms on other planets are much more different still.

"The Gods Themselves" by Asmiov was a good story about human contact with a completely different life form

Another good one is "Dragon's Egg", about life on a nuetron Star

>Cool. Looks like I've got a couple of books to get. I don't mind bipedalism, but
>when the aliens look just like us (with some differences in head shape) it just kills
>the whole "these are not humans" feel. There are so many different shaped
>creatures on earth, surely the lifeforms on other planets are much more different
>still.

You might also want to check out The Visitors by Clifford Simak. The aliens in this book are giant, floating, black rectangular blocks. I don't recall too much interaction with them though, mostly they just arrive and the people of Earth try to figure out what they want.

Got to throw in both the book & movie 2001 for first contact classics.

For first contact with a bovine species, check out Asimov's short story "Hostess."

Err... Bladerunner? Solent Green? Omega Man? Quite Earth? Do these count as "Hard" SF?

Funk, E. wrote:
>
> Err... Bladerunner? Solent Green? Omega Man? Quite Earth? Do
> these count as "Hard" SF?

Blade Runner comes closes out of those.

Soylent Green: No because the ending (you know, that big surprise revelation) makes no sense.  No moneygrubbing corporation would try to make a go of a foodsource that made such little economic sense.

Omega Man:  You explain to me how hair that's already grown out can change color one way or the other.  Or how contracting a virus makes you a spooky religious fanatic, instantly devoted to Anthony Zerbe.

The Quiet Earth:  They've got plenty of technobabble, but it makes very little sense -- and the whole premise of surviving because you were at the moment of death takes it right into the mystical realm.

But I thought is was more the exploration of the premise that was important. I must have missed the part about "technologically probable." 2001 isn't exactly realistic technologically speaking. Neither is The Cube. I mean we can get away from the "action film in the future/space/whatever" thing, but both Scientifically viable AND intellectually consistent is a bit of a tall order.

Vanilla Sky?

Silent Running?

Ghost In the Shell?

Wolf Brigade?

Give me your examples

Funk, E. wrote:
>
> But I thought is was more the exploration of the premise that
> was important. I must have missed the part about
> "technologically probable."  2001 isn't exactly realistic
> technologically speaking. Neither is The Cube. I mean we can
> get away from the "action film in the future/space/whatever"
> thing, but both Scientifically viable AND intellectually
> consistent is a bit of a tall order.

In movies, yes, because movies are concerned with spectacle, and telling a story in a relatively short timeframe; there isn't the space to develop a premise fully.

It's still a tall order for novels, but it's demonstrably more doable.


> Vanilla Sky?
>
> Silent Running?
>
> Ghost In the Shell?
>
> Wolf Brigade?
>
> Give me your examples

Off the top of my head, I can't think of a single movie that unassailably plays by the rules of "hard" SF; the nearest I can get is just slightly-ahead-of-the-curve technothrillers like The Hunt For Red October.  Even 2001, while easier to defend as a novel, gets a lot more mystical on film; Kubrick playted to the strengths of the medium and thus emphasized image over idea.

Just about every SF movie draws more from the trappings and traditions of Sci-Fi more than the serious literature of SF and its extrapolative basis.  Such is the nature of the beast.

Nathan