What is "real" Sci-Fi and would people know it if they saw it today?

[Fearless Freep]

"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

[Todd R.]

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.

[nshumate]

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.

[Todd R.]

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.

[lonecorndog]

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!"

[Flangepart]

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!"

[Trollificus]

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

[Trollificus]

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?

[Trollificus]

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.)

[nshumate]

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...

[Trollificus]

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.

[nshumate]

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.

[Trollificus]

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.

[nshumate]

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.

[JohnL]

>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.