What do you consider SF?

[Russell Nash]

I'm one of those (and I think this is basically what Russell said waaay back in the beginning of the thread) who just wants a good story.  I don't really care what you call it; the genre lines are necessarily blurry and definitions are squishy, because in the end ALL of the stories are about ourselves and how we see our world.

Trying to put everything in a box will always leave something out... and I only want to leave out "stuff that sucks".  (Good luck finding a universal definition for THAT!)

So why do you read science fiction?

For the same reaon I read horror, detective stories, and satire.  I'm looking for a good read with a good story.  I don't care what the rules are, as long as they tell me the rules early. 

In movie references, I liked Matrix (and have a soft spot for comic book movies), because they told me why they could do this unbelievable stuff.  I hated Die Hard 4, because they told me Bruce Willis was a normal guy in a normal world.  Nothing after the first hour was believable.

[Liminal]

Then there are those of us, usually faintly annoying and pretentious I must admit, who claim to solve the issue by talking of "speculative fiction" - which could be seen as a larger set that includes various science fiction, fantasy, horror, and magic realism genres.

But then you just have a larger question of what distinguishes speculative from mundane . . . although I do think that is an easier distinction to make.

[DKT]

Then there are those of us, usually faintly annoying and pretentious I must admit, who claim to solve the issue by talking of "speculative fiction" - which could be seen as a larger set that includes various science fiction, fantasy, horror, and magic realism genres.

But then you just have a larger question of what distinguishes speculative from mundane . . . although I do think that is an easier distinction to make.

I'm good with "speculative fiction."  I usually just say genre, which is woefully inaccurate, I suppose, but I think it's the same idea.  A very broad scope. 

[wakela]

I've stopped trying to classify it, honestly.  There's been so much debate on the topic, I just don't know that there is an answer, or a way to classify/split the genres that would make me happy.  Ray Bradbury is to me SF, but he doesn't have serious science in a lot of his stuff.  Still, I can't imagine classifying him as anything else.  Ditto Star Wars.  I get the Science Fantasy thing -- it makes a lot of sense, but I just can't label it as such.

I'm with you there, partner.  I used to be one of those guys that tried to convince people that Star Wars wasn't science fiction.  But c'mon.  It's science fiction.  There are robots and spaceships. 

So why do you read science fiction?

For the same reaon I read horror, detective stories, and satire.  I'm looking for a good read with a good story.  I don't care what the rules are, as long as they tell me the rules early.

You're resistance to defining genres makes more sense now.  Me, I like reading science fiction more than other genres.  I like the escapism and sense of wonder.  But, unlike fantasy, my sense of wonder is heightened by some slim connection with reality.  The thought that people may one day actually be able to do these things.  It doesn't matter to me that I know intellectually that faster than light travel is impossible.  Emotionally, it is closer to being possible that talking trees are. 

Defining what science fiction is is important to me because I want to know something is science fiction before I read it.  If I am promised the escapism, sense of wonder, and slim connection with reality and I don't get it I feel screwed.  i.e. "Impossible Dreams."  This was a delightful story, but it had no connection to reality at all.  The fact that this story is so highly regarded in the science fiction community is troubling to me.  Either I'm wrong about what science fiction is or they are, and we all know how that usually ends up.

Sorry if I am repeating myself from earlier posts.  I don't remember what I wrote when this thread was active before. 

[Boggled Coriander]

This discussion reminds me of Neal Stephenson explaining why he considers most of his published work, including Cryptonomicon and Baroque Cycle, to be science fiction:

“People keep asking me why I think of the 'Cycle' as science fiction. When I was a kid I used to read these huge anthologies of science fiction stories, and there would always be some oddball stories that were set during the Crusades, or with cave men, or what have you. They weren't overtly science fiction, but there didn't seem to be any doubt in anyone's mind that they belonged. I make an analogy to cycling through stations on the FM dial, trying to get something other than morning talk show idiocy: when I come to a jazz station, I know within less than a second that what I am hearing is jazz. There's a particular aesthetic impression you get from jazz that you can identify and recognize right away. It's the same with SF -- once you get used to it, you just know. If you sit down and try to analyze it to death, certain elements may be there, but that kind of abstract theoretical process is not how people recognize jazz and it’s not how they recognize SF. So I like to think that what I've been working on is obviously SF. In a bookstore there are little signs above the sections. Go to the right signs, and the chances of finding what you want have just gone up quite a bit. So it's a perfectly legitimate function, and I don't mind that kind of label at all.”

[Windup]

Actually, I don't think the plausibility of the science or other gadgets actually has much to do with the division between science fiction and fantasy.  It has much more to do with feel and tone.  I offered Card's comment that "science fiction has rivets" tongue in cheek, but I think it gets at the real distinction -- much more so than trying to classify stories based on the plausibility of their scientific premises.

As wakela pointed out, Star Wars is science fiction because it has robots and spaceships, not because the "jump to hyperspace" is scientifically plausible or the way the TIE fighters move has anything to do with the way real objects behave in a vacuum.  Ditto Star Trek.  What makes it science fiction is that it has gadgets that look and behave like extended versions of stuff we see around us (whose physical operating principles we typically don't understand anyway) and the characters talk to each other using a vocabulary that sounds like an extension of our scientific-rational worldview. It's that tone and feel that defines the genre (and more importantly, attracts a specific audience) rather than finding a physicist to sign off on your particular flavor of FTL drive.

Similarly, Lord of the Rings is fantasy, not because the Dark Lord or the elvish "straight path" is scientifically implausible (give me a few minutes, and I could concoct an explanation for either one that sounds as "scientific" as anything used to justify a phaser) but because they're explained in mythic and magical terms, and the characters talk to one another in a language that sounds like an extension of an older, more "spiritual" world view.  Neverwhere does the same thing in a modern setting.  "London Below" is spirit-infested, and filled with magical beings, in the way we all once believed the whole world was populated with spirits.  Again, it's the tone, feel and vocabulary that defines the genre, not the plausibility or implausibility of the props.

At least, that's my take...

[Roney]

Then wouldn't anything involving time travel or FTL be considered fantasy?  I believe that current science considers both of those things impossible.

Pulling my Physics & Philosophy degree down from the shelf and dusting it off, I think I'll have to disagree with you there.  It's slightly more nuanced.

Special Relativity considers it impossible for anything within a traditional 4D spacetime to travel at the speed of light unless it's massless.  Hint: you don't want to be without mass.  You can travel FTL within 4D spacetime if you have negative mass (or maybe imaginary mass, I forget which).  Hint: you probably don't want those either.  The fun thing being that if you can get past the lightspeed barrier, instead of having to pump in more energy to go faster -- asymptotically towards infinity -- you actually go faster the less energy you have.

You're right: it's all nonsense that comes from taking equations too seriously and it won't lead us to real FTL travel.  Which is why all sensible speculation about breaking the lightspeed barrier talks about moving pockets of spacetime: you don't have to beat the limits if the limits move with your ship.  (There is no fundamental SR objection to this idea but every proposal so far has violated conservation of energy on a farcical scale.  It's Special Relativity that most people are thinking about when they say that FTL is "impossible", though, so this is a kind of way out.)

As to time travel, time has no preferred direction in any physical law except the Second Law of Thermodynamics, and even then it's more an inconvenient observational fudge than a proper building block of physics.  Moving backwards in time is not prohibited by any equation, just human perception and prejudice.  Time travel is problematic in many ways, but I don't know of any current physical theory that makes it impossible.

In short: you'll need to pull out unicorns or The Grail to make a story Fantasy.  FTL or time travel can be a marker for less rigorous SF but it's not beyond plausibility.

[Tango Alpha Delta]

I'm one of those (and I think this is basically what Russell said waaay back in the beginning of the thread) who just wants a good story.  I don't really care what you call it; the genre lines are necessarily blurry and definitions are squishy, because in the end ALL of the stories are about ourselves and how we see our world.

Trying to put everything in a box will always leave something out... and I only want to leave out "stuff that sucks".  (Good luck finding a universal definition for THAT!)

So why do you read science fiction?

Somehow, I missed this question before.  Sorry.

But the short answer is, when something works, I go back to it again. 

80%-90% of the time, I want to be amazed by what I read, and 10%-20% of the time, that can be done without invoking scientific speculation or the supernatural in some way.  John Irving can do it; John Steinbeck can... I'm sure there are others whose names aren't "John"... but when I go to the library, and prowl through the stacks, I usually end up taking home something that just ain't natural.  (Come to think of it, Irving's stuff has a wealth of unnatural in it, too. )

[wakela]

I'm one of those (and I think this is basically what Russell said waaay back in the beginning of the thread) who just wants a good story.  I don't really care what you call it; the genre lines are necessarily blurry and definitions are squishy, because in the end ALL of the stories are about ourselves and how we see our world.

Trying to put everything in a box will always leave something out... and I only want to leave out "stuff that sucks".  (Good luck finding a universal definition for THAT!)

So why do you read science fiction?

Somehow, I missed this question before.  Sorry.

But the short answer is, when something works, I go back to it again. 

80%-90% of the time, I want to be amazed by what I read, and 10%-20% of the time, that can be done without invoking scientific speculation or the supernatural in some way.  John Irving can do it; John Steinbeck can... I'm sure there are others whose names aren't "John"... but when I go to the library, and prowl through the stacks, I usually end up taking home something that just ain't natural.  (Come to think of it, Irving's stuff has a wealth of unnatural in it, too. )

I've never gotten around to Irving, but I agree wholeheartedly about Steinbeck. 

I agree too with wanting to be amazed.  But the problem I have is that I'm not getting that amazed feeling from a lot of the stuff I'm reading/listening to.  I didn't find "Impossible Dreams" amazing, though it was certainly a charming story.  "Kallakack's Cousins" also lacked amazement.  Nothing from Resnick as amazed me.  So is it me?  Am I just harder to amaze for some reason?  Or are other people not amazed with these stories either, but consider amazement less of a priority?  Judging from the awards Resnick keeps winning, and "Impossible Dreams" won, I must be in the minority about something. 

[Tango Alpha Delta]

I agree too with wanting to be amazed.  But the problem I have is that I'm not getting that amazed feeling from a lot of the stuff I'm reading/listening to.  ... So is it me?  Am I just harder to amaze for some reason? 

I think a huge part of it is the expectation factor.  Something catches you by surprise (like "A Prayer for Owen Meany" did me), and then you explore (I read "Garp" and thought, "Wow!  There's more!")... and then you're a little jaded.  Sure, Hotel New Hampshire is good, but by this point you KNOW it's his sophomore effort; sure, everyone was anticipating Cider House Rules, but now you see the patterns in his writing...

So, yes, it is you. 

[Tango Alpha Delta]

This "is it/isn't it" genre battle rolls on, constantly cropping up as we add new listeners/posters... and I have to laugh.  Long ago, when I was a blearly-eyed Airman in the U.S. forces, stuck working the mid-watch, I used to peruse a read-only feed of the USENET newsgroups to pass the time, and one of my favorites was bit.listserv.blues-l

They had a number of enthusiastic and witty members, and were always fun to read, but occasionally, they would get sucked into these horrible flame-wars (like like this one) over what was/wasn't "blues".  The usual suspect was a guy named Rick Edwards (aka "Voodoochile") who started from the opinion that Jimi Hendrix counted, and then expanded his definition to encompass nearly anything he listened to... including the Beatles, Alan Parsons, and... Captain and Tenille?

I like that we've advanced from quibbling at length over what is allowable in the forums (thanks, Gallimaufry!) and griping about bandwidth issues, and I certainly think there are times when something is questionable... but at the end of the day, I think our editors are justified in publishing whatever they want, and we should simply figure out how to manage our expectations accordingly.

Are the Blues Brothers "blues"?  Maybe.  Is Kurt Vonnegut sci-fi?  Yep.  Does the box they're in affect my ultimate enjoyment of what they offer?  Nope.

Anyway, off to sign the kiddies up for the Summer Reading Program.  Thanks for tolerating my presence! 

[stePH]

This "is it/isn't it" genre battle rolls on, constantly cropping up as we add new listeners/posters... and I have to laugh.  Long ago, when I was a blearly-eyed Airman in the U.S. forces, stuck working the mid-watch, I used to peruse a read-only feed of the USENET newsgroups to pass the time, and one of my favorites was bit.listserv.blues-l

They had a number of enthusiastic and witty members, and were always fun to read, but occasionally, they would get sucked into these horrible flame-wars (like like this one) over what was/wasn't "blues".  The usual suspect was a guy named Rick Edwards (aka "Voodoochile") who started from the opinion that Jimi Hendrix counted, and then expanded his definition to encompass nearly anything he listened to... including the Beatles, Alan Parsons, and... Captain and Tenille?

I've seen (and participated in) similar arguments in rec.music.progressive, such as whether Pink Floyd or Porcupine Tree count as "progressive rock", or whether the group that released 90125 in 1984 or the group that released Discipline in 1981 should have used the names "Yes" or "King Crimson" respectively (for my part, my position on the above, in order, was: no, no, no, and no.)

Oh, and I used to consider Whitesnake to be a blues band (up until the Slide it In album anyway.)