What isn't SF?

[Robot Overlord Minion]

  I was planning on dropping my first submission to EscapePod but came screaming to a halt against the submission guildlines.  Works out, at a fresh look, that I couldn't honesty call the story I wanted to submit a SF story.  Maybe Urban Fantasy, sliding towards Horror.  So as we all have probably done at some point, I thought about what a SF story is, or is not.
  The story I wanted to submit was earth based, in the here and now, without funky, far flung tech or cutting edge research, no nano-this, techno-organic that, cyber implants or cloud based sex.  So where's the defining ring around SF?  It can't just be space ships and lasers, anti-grav lifts and teleporter pads.  What's the "You must be this high for this ride!" sign say in the SF theme park?

[Scattercat]

SF is whatever we say it is.

<shrugs>

[eytanz]

As a slush reader, I have to say I appreciate it when authors read the guidelines. It's a waste of everyone's time when they don't. But I'd also like to point out that the guidelines deliberately avoid giving a positive definition of SF. They give a negative condition - it shouldn't be fantasy or horror. Now, horror is a matter of tone, not content - a story involving robots and spaceships may be better suited to pseudopod if it's meant to tap into some sort of existential dread. Whether or not a story counts as horror is a subjective question, then. It's up to the author to decide and then up to the slush readers and editors to decide whether they agree. The line with fantasy is about content, but it too has a massive grey area. If your story makes explicit reference to the supernatural, then it's probably not suited for EP (though exceptions have been made). If it doesn't, it's again a matter of the author needing to make a call.

Put it this way - if you're genuinely unsure, submit. Worst case, we'll say no. If we really like the story but think it belongs in a sister podcast, we'll probably tell you that. But a more pertinent question is (and this is directed at all authors, not you particularly) - if you're not sure yourself, why not? Is it really a case where they story lies in the borderline between genres, or have you simply not spent enough time thinking your story through? If it's an old story you wrote years ago and it's no longer fresh on your mind that's one thing, but if it's a recently written story then I'd say 95% of the time if an author doesn't have strong opinions about what their story is about, then the genre issue will be the least of that story's problems.

[Robot Overlord Minion]

  M'ok.  I will submit it then and take my chances with the SF dice.  As to the general question of why I wasn't sure, that bubbles up from the little pits of my writing insecurity.  I call myself a SF writer...and then i go and write something with supernatural elements in it, fit around those some science and pull out the red hot SF brand when I'm done.  Is doesn't really need a brand, I just find its cries of seared distress funny.
  See?  That's not SF humour, too dark, too narrow.  If I'm going to lay down on the couch and tell all my woes, I guess this disregard for genre sprang from my childhood.  From the age of reading onwards I had no boundries in what I read and this was in the pre-internet days when those strange buildings with books in them were all the silent rage.  From this I have grown a complete lack of respect for litery boundries.
  Young reader, young adult, old adult, SF, Horror, etc.  I don't see why a story should be shackled to a name that best descibes where it will be easy to find amongst the other books on the shelves. Yet I'm a self confessed SF writer.
  M'eh, like that sailor said, I yam what I yam.
   

[eytanz]

So, you think Escape Pod's guidelines need to have a more clearly well defined criteria for SF but at the same time feel that clear genre boundaries are restrictive?

[Robot Overlord Minion]

  You make me sound fickle when you put it like that, but yeah, maybe. 

[schizoTypal]

If you want a random SF fan's (and fellow writer, but you'll never see any) opinion, Science Fiction defines itself by its name: A story with a set and setting based on science that is fictional. Often fictional physics will play that role. Interestingly, a lot of scientific advances stem from what was once science fiction. We can actually fly out into space now! (Well, some of us ... not the U.S.)