Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Enchanted Trinkets Complete--a hardcover book containing over 500 magic items for your D&D games!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Desdichado" data-source="post: 2280796" data-attributes="member: 2205">Celebrim, before I start, let me summarize what I understand of your objections.  That way, at least, everyone will know to what I'm making a rebuttal.  If I am substantially misrepresenting what you are saying, well, then I misunderstood you and portions of the rest of my post will be irrelevent.  I'll have to cross that bridge if and when I come to it.<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Not everyone has the same understanding of what is or is not scientifically plausible, leading to an inability to classify science fiction vs. fantasy based on scientific plausibility.  Related to this is the fact that practically no science fiction is rigorous about scientific plausibility, shrinking the genre that fits this definition so small as to make the definition all but useless.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">A science fiction writer can be rigorous in one field, yet sloppy --or more likely, merely uninterested-- in another.  Your cryogenic faith healers, for example.  Someone interested in genetics or biology may be rigorous about that aspect of his alien life while making embarrassing gaffes about his astronomy or vice versa.  I know you didn't strictly raise this point in those words, but I think your point about where is the line in the sand about suspension of disbelief is, if not the same objection, at least very closely related to it.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Because that line in the sand is arbitrary for the reader, the definition cannot be extended beyond the reader and therefore becomes useless as a working categorization scheme for the genre.</li> </ol>Let me being by addressing the last point first.  This at least, is patently untrue.  As I've said many times before, "my" definition isn't really my definition; it's one that I've picked up from several books on science fiction authorship, written by a variety of science fiction authors.  It is nearly identical in content to the Library of Congress distinction between the genres.  It is the one I found with a quick Google search on several literature professor's online syllabi and notes.It is impossible to claim that the definition is too arbitrary and personal to broadly work, because "my" definition is the working, mainstream definition that is commonly used by authors, libraries and academics.  This objection fails the practical lithmus test of, "if you claim its impossible, why do we see it actually in practice so frequently?"Technically, I could stop there, my point demonstrated, but your other objections are too interesting, frankly, to not merit some response.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />For your first point about differeing levels of knowledge, suspension of disbelief, and belief patterns in general, while I think that's an interesting objection, I also think it's a bit of a red herring.  Part of that is based on my own lack of clarity up front in using the word plausible, I think.  Science fiction has pretty much always been about exploring the cutting edge of the theoretical framework provided by scientists.  When I said that FTL was plausible, even if we can't get there, it would have been better worded as, "we have a theoretical framework for FTL travel (several, in fact) but no idea how to bridge the gap between theoretical framework and actual practice."  That is what I meant by plausible, but I think you're using it differently (and more accurately, I may add) by stating that if we have no idea how to bridge the gap between theoretical framework and actual practice, then how can it be considered plausible?But that's where the handwaving of science fiction authors comes in.  They rarely handwave the theoretical framework, or else they'll be roundly accused of no longer being considered science fiction.  But the details of how the technology works can and in fact, usually are handwaved.  Naturally we wouldn't know how to accomplish FTL travel, or we would be already exploring the stars.  And there's some basis for that as well.  Most of the really world-changing technological advances were completely unanticipated, so it only seems natural that although we don't know how to bridge the gap to the theoretical framework, it's possible to be bridged by something that hasn't occured to us yet.  That's not unlike Isaac Asimov's Foundation series, where folks are still calculating their spaceship's flight paths with a slide rule.  The breakthroughs in computing were yet to come, even though the theoretical framework, heck, even the early mainframes, were already in place.  Casting a spell, on the other hand, has no theoretical framework around it whatsoever.  Therefore, a story that handwaves FTL travel is science fiction, while a story that handwaves the fireball spell is fantasy.It's possible you'll see that as a dodge, or perhaps a back-pedaling, but that's where I was going with this all along, and it's pretty much in line with the industry, I think.The second part of my rebuttal to your first point about differing knowledge levels and suspension of disbelief thresh-hold is where I really feel you've tossed up a red herring.  The fact of the matter is, that practicing, professional scientists don't agree on the science itself, so naturally fiction that extrapolates from that will be even more contentious.  To use your own example, based on your work on genetics, you think the possibility of life spontaneously generating is so statistically small that it would literally take a miracle for it to occur.  However, I read a summary not longer than a year ago --or at most two-- of an article published (in Nature I believe) by a team of biochemists, astrochemists and others who believe that the possibility of life is so statistically high that life is probably prevalent across the universe (although they do admit that complex, multicellular life is extremely unlikely.)  When the pages of peer-reviewed academic journals with articles written by professional, practicing scientists outright contradict each other, why do you demand a greater homogeneity of agreement for science fiction than we see in actual science?  Your reduction of scientific plausibility down to the individual level is unwarranted, I believe.  Science fiction doesn't require blessing by a panel of experts in the field.  It doesn't even require that the science in the science fiction necessarily be the mainstream model accepted by most practicing experts in the field.  I could write a science fiction story based on the tenets of M-theory and the interaction of various branes of reality on our own.  The fact that M-theory is still a highly controversial outgrowth of already contentious and controversial variants on string theory is beside the point.  M-theory is far from a totally accepted theory.  Heck, I could write a science fiction story about how life on earth is the product of bio-engineering of aliens from a planet around Rigel.  Despite the fact that this kind of Erich von Danniken theory has practically no mainstream support, it would still be science fiction.  Although hardly anyone really believes it, few scientists would argue that there isn't a theoretical framework that couldn't at least admit the possibility.If a story has, behind its setting, a scientific framework, based on theoretical models predicted by scientific analysis, then it's science fiction, not fantasy.Your other objection is a little more difficult to address directly; that of science fiction authors who stack up scientifically unlikely, or even incorrect, notions until suspension of disbelief snaps.  However, I think you're combining two concepts here: not science fiction and sloppy science fiction.  An author who is really interested in the prospect, potential properties, etc. of intelligent life may get all the biological details as close as he can, while, as I did above, simply picking some place for them to be from.  Rigel, as a blue supergiant with another stellar companion, is actually an extremely bad choice.  The reader may very well object to the fact that complex life could develop on any planet of a short-lived blue supergiant, or even the possibility that any type of habitable planet could maintain a stable orbit in a binary system.  Those would be good objections too.  But it's not a case of the author inserting fantasy elements into the story, it's just a case of him being sloppy on elements that didn't interest him.I agree that it's a bit of a gray area to try and define when such a work slips into the realms of space opera rather than merely sloppy science fiction, but I don't agree that there is any grayness between fantasy and science fiction in that case.What this model doesn't really address is the fact that there are works that deliberately skirt the boundaries of science fiction and fantasy and contain elements of both.  But since those are purposefully genre-benders, I don't feel the model breaks down because they're not easily classified.</blockquote>

Verification