D&D General Settings of Hope vs Settings of Despair

[Hussar]

That's a rather particular definition of SF and not one I've encountered before in any discussion of what it means to be SF including discussions that define SF by theme.

And I'm not sure you can convince me of it, because I'm not sure you can convince me the theme of "The Alien Way" is that we are defined by our free will, unless you can include the rejection of the idea that we have free will as being also an explanation of what free will actually means. And for that matter, it's not clear to me that Dune claims that any character in it has free will either. Or "Leviathan Wakes". And that means that the theme you've defined is so broad, that it would be hard pressed to claim any book isn't science fiction. Hemingway's "The Old Man and the Sea" for example.

It's equally not clear to me that issues of free will are at the heart of everything I'd want to call science fiction, say the "Culture" books by Ian M. Banks.

Sorry, I think you misunderstood.

I said that the primary theme of Dune was an exploration of free will in the face of prescience. Not that SF's only theme is free will. I'm not quite sure how you made that jump.

 

[Celebrim]

Sorry, I think you misunderstood.

I said that the primary theme of Dune was an exploration of free will in the face of prescience. Not that SF's only theme is free will. I'm not quite sure how you made that jump.

Maybe because you offered no definition then of what the common theme in all SF actually was. "Questions the norms" is for example not the same as " exploration of free will in the face of prescience".

 

[Remathilis]

Ahhh. I think I see where the problem lies. To me, SF is not defined by trope. Like, at all. You can have SF set in the stone ages (Quest for Fire) and SF set in post-human Doctor Who level magic. That's not what defines SF. SF is defined by theme

I've always looked at fantasy as the "how we got to this point" and sci-fi as "where do we go now" with a healthy dose of optimism (hope) or pessimism (despair). Fantasy+Optimism is the Golden Age trope, Fantasy+Pessimism is the Dark Age tropes. Sci-fi+optimism is futurism (Star Trek), sci-fi+pessimism is dystopian (cyberpunk).

Fantasy tries to mythologize the past. Sci-fi tries to imagine the future.

 

[Frozen_Heart]

It's a bit of a tangent to good vs evil settings, but I've always liked the approach where most of the setting is 'unexplored'.

You don't know what's beyond that next hill. Entire areas of the world have completely undiscovered species and continents. Most people never travel beyond the village where they are born.

It's another thing which I feel modern DnD has moved away from.

 

[Hussar]

Fantasy tries to mythologize the past. Sci-fi tries to imagine the future.

That's... a really good way to phrase that. Maybe "mythologize" is a better descriptor than romanticize. Not that SF is always about the future, but, again, we're painting with a fairly broad brush. I like that definition.

 

[Hussar]

Maybe because you offered no definition then of what the common theme in all SF actually was. "Questions the norms" is for example not the same as " exploration of free will in the face of prescience".

Well, number one, I was talking to someone specifically about Dune, and not about SF in general. If you wanted to know my definitions, instead of presuming, why not just ask?

/edit to add a bit later

Thinking about it, I really rather doubt there is any single theme that encompasses all SF. More that there are a collection of themes that tend to be very common across most SF.

 

[Remathilis]

That's... a really good way to phrase that. Maybe "mythologize" is a better descriptor than romanticize. Not that SF is always about the future, but, again, we're painting with a fairly broad brush. I like that definition.

I mean, science-fiction's future can be five minutes from now, but it's always a little farther ahead than we were when we made it. Even if that Future is "what if we cloned dinosaurs" or "what if a zombie plague happens in Las Vegas (would it stay in Vegas?)". Its not all lazer guns and rockets, but it is ahead of the moment it was created.

Again, broad strokes and all that.

 

[J-H]

I got to get college credit for taking a Science Fiction literature class in college.
The prof's definition was basically "Science fiction takes the real world and asks "What if X? What would that look like?, where X is at least somewhat scientifically plausible."
It's where you end up with grounded and reasonably plausible stories, like Michael Crichton (What if dinosaur cloning? What if time travel?) or Larry Niven or some of the other hard SF.
This is in contrast to Space Opera, where you have knights and wizards in space (Star Wars), or Fantasy (What if dragons? What if magic?) or Urban Fantasy (what if now, but with hidden mythological creatures?). Stuff like Star Trek varies from episode to episode since there's everything from "we're studying interesting stars" To "magic brat teleports the Enterprise around until his parents show up."

 

[Hussar]

I got to get college credit for taking a Science Fiction literature class in college.
The prof's definition was basically "Science fiction takes the real world and asks "What if X? What would that look like?, where X is at least somewhat scientifically plausible."
It's where you end up with grounded and reasonably plausible stories, like Michael Crichton (What if dinosaur cloning? What if time travel?) or Larry Niven or some of the other hard SF.
This is in contrast to Space Opera, where you have knights and wizards in space (Star Wars), or Fantasy (What if dragons? What if magic?) or Urban Fantasy (what if now, but with hidden mythological creatures?). Stuff like Star Trek varies from episode to episode since there's everything from "we're studying interesting stars" To "magic brat teleports the Enterprise around until his parents show up."

But, Space Opera isn't just knights and wizards in space. Allastair Reynolds is a master of Space Opera, but his stories are very strongly grounded in plausible science. Space Opera is characterized by the operatic (sorry) tone. Massive casts, galaxy spanning plots, huge scenes of grandeur. So, sure, Star Wars fits in that. Essentially Space Opera is the SF equivalent of Epic Fantasy.

Sure, we can subdivide into hard SF and soft SF. But, at that point, we have to then ask ourselves why are we putting them both into the same genre? If the division is based on how scientifically plausible it is, then something like Doctor Who shouldn't be SF. But it very much is because, as you say, it asks "what if X".

The problem really is that speculative fiction in general is really hard to pin down. We've got Star Trek and The Handmaid's Tale in the same genre and that's a very big basket. But, the question is, why is The Handsmaid's Tale SF and not fantasy? There's no ray guns or robots. Why isn't it considered fantasy?

 

[J-H]

The problem really is that speculative fiction in general is really hard to pin down. We've got Star Trek and The Handmaid's Tale in the same genre and that's a very big basket. But, the question is, why is The Handsmaid's Tale SF and not fantasy? There's no ray guns or robots. Why isn't it considered fantasy?

I wouldn't class the Handmaid's Tale as science fiction at all. There's no scientific or technological advance. It's just a thriller* of some sort set in the near future, similar to how many of Tom Clancy's novels were when they were written.

*I don't know the actual genre, but it probably has a lot of tension without being outright horror or having magic or science-magic. All I know is it has something to do with lost fertility leading to a dystopia, plus the weird political costume stuff.

I think this is where you get into categorizing fiction in multiple categories at once. "Dystopian fiction" can be Handmaid, Hunger Games, 1984, Logan's Run, or Soylent Green, but only some of them are considered science-fiction because...uh, the presence of advanced technology instead of simply social differences?

I'm probably going to drop out of the "What is what category" discussion because I have determined that my definitions are fuzzy enough that it's an "I know it when I see it" opinion.