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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2286992" data-attributes="member: 4937">You know, I maybe just don't understand how you are using them, but I'm not sure I see a meaningful difference between normative stories and morality tales.  Generally speaking, ethics and morality seem to me to be all about what is normative and what is normative behavior.  Ask someone what is good, and generally they will reply with what they think is normative.  In fact, CS Lewis builds his argument around the proof of the existance of good and evil on the concept that humans understand that there are things that people 'ought' to do.  I don't see how you separate them.Likewise, I don't see how sci-fi routinely deals in 'what ought to be'.  I can think of a great many more sci-fi tales that are distinctively dystophian than I can think of that are utophian in outlook, and yet even amongst these few actually try to deal with what ought to be done to avoid these dismal fates and many seem uninterested even in what should be done to escape them.  A good example might be 'Brave New World' by Aldous Huxley.  He's less interested in showing the world as what it ought to be, as simply what the think it will be (the predictive, not the normative).  He offers neither solice nor remedy.  Most SF authors seem frankly uninterested in what ought to be to me, and certainly less interested in what ought to be than in other things like 'Is there something which is me?' (Silverburg) or 'What does it mean to feel pain?' (Banks) or 'What makes life worth living?' (Pohl).  Read Brin's 'Glory Season' and try telling me that he's suggesting through his setting what ought to be.  You can certainly find a few SF authors that are preachy, and are offering commentary on what they think ought to be - Heinlein comes to mind - but the fact that SF is occassionaly didactive is not what I think defines it.A more interesting question to me is whether Heinlein remains Sci-Fi when he starts taking his preachiness to its logical extreme, in say 'Stranger in a Strange Land' or his other later works.Look at it this way.  Under my definition, I've yet to see it demonstrated that there are exceptions to my definition.  In fact, if I am only strict in the application of my definition, then it will follow that everything that you claim is an exception to my science fiction definition, I counter claim you are falsely classifying as science fiction for the purposes of creating a false exception.  I do not accept that Star Wars is science fiction, and hense I have no exception under my definition.  But these things should only be compelling to you if my classification system produces the results you expect.   Apparantly it doesn't, since you expect a definition of SF for 'Star Wars'.   But likewise, I expect a definition of fantasy for 'Star Wars' (or reason I consider highly reasonable and objective) and will tend to reject a classification scheme that puts it elsewhere.Right, and I would expect the same thing under my definition, since 'mystic abilities' are just setting trappings and therefore produce no exception for you.  Whereas, they produce exceptions to any strict definition revolving around fantastic settings, something you seem completely comfortable with.  For my part, I won't be happy until I produce a definition which gives me no exceptions to my expectations as to where a particular work should be classified.A statement which totally ignores both the previous statement you made which suggests that the settings/trapping distinction is arbitrarily ignored when convenient, and the extensive arguments I made to show that one man's magic is another man's science - and vica versa.But I would argue that such superficial elements are merely trite conventionality, and did not circumscribe the limits of the genera.  It would be like arguing that romantic fiction could be identified solely on the presense of torn bodices and strong willed women, and then when it was pointed out that there were exceptions to that rule glossing it over by assuring me that no other rule would produce fewer exceptions and abitrarily recognizing something without torn bodices as romantic fiction.Depends on what you mean by another planet.  The vast majority of fantasy epics out there are explicitly set 'not on Earth'.  What you mean is that its really unusual to see a fantasy epic out there set on another planet which happens to use the same astronomical naming conventions as the Earth.  However, I could point you to several Burroughs style swords epics which feature essentially no science fiction trappings (no motors, plastics, rayguns, or any such) which are set on another planet in the galaxy - for example Lin Carter's "Under the Green Star's Glow".There you go contridicting yourself again.  Earlier, you said indentifying SF trappings from fantasy trappings was highly objective.  Would you make up your mind?Several science fiction authors I've read have said that they see no meaningful distinction between them.  I think that that is a stronger argument than most, but I'm not sure I completely buy it.</blockquote>

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