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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Mustrum_Ridcully" data-source="post: 4360652" data-attributes="member: 710">And fits well into a science fiction story. In many ways, science fiction uses all its tropes to give us more tools to reflect on us. Humans with bumps on their foreheads and a stereotypical culture for example can be used as such. Spock, Data or Odo and Quark are used in Star Trek to help us reflect about human traits - both strengths and weaknesses. Yes, it is philosophical, not strictly "scientific". But the difference is not as strong as it might seem today - Philosophers typically were Scientists and vice versa. Einstein pondered the meaning of "randomness" or unpredictability inherent to the Quantum Theory (which he helped developed!) when he said "Gott würfelt nicht". The heliocentric world view had strong philosophical implications and was one of the reasons why Galileo and many other people of his time got into trouble defending it. Science Fiction typically uses its fictional science to explore the implications of them on our world or our world view.PS: I like Hussars attempt to define science fiction about this "exploration" aspect. I am not sure it's in any way common usage, but it works well for me. Still not sure if that doesn't mean that Star Wars can't count as Sci-Fi - after all, part of its theme is exploring what it means to have unusual power. Maybe a further differentiation might be whether the exploration is personal or universal. Maybe even the exploration view is to attempt and Sci-Fi is like D&D or porn - you know it when you see it? <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f609.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=";)" title="Wink    ;)"  data-smilie="2"data-shortname=";)" /></blockquote>

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