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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5429663" data-attributes="member: 4937">That isn't exactly what I said.  I'm not certain I'd go that far without completely thinking it through, but the vast majority of things that have supernatural things in them are not science fiction.  The sticky problem here to me are chiefly the works of Robert Silverburg, who tends to use supernatural elements to science fiction ends ('Time of Changes', 'Dying Inside', 'Downward to the Earth'...).  Those are really on the boundary and in some cases ('Dying Inside'), I'm not really sure of the answer myself.  Mechanically its pure fantasy, but in theme its science fiction and as many have noted in genera trappings its mostly neither.  'Lord Valentine's Castle' has superficial genera trappings of fantasy, but seems relatively uninterested in the normal good vs. evil questions that dominate fantasy.  But it's still debatable (I freely admit) whether answering the question, "What is man?", with "Man is a creature with a soul." (as RS tends to do) is actually a science fiction story.  (Of course, that depends on your interpretation of his works.  And equally valid interpretation of RS is that RS writes that "Man is a creature who believes in souls." without usually committing to the existance of them.)  One way or the other, it's certainly alot more science fiction than Star Wars is.  However, all that is an interesting academic execercise.  The point is that if science fiction is not just fantasy wearing polyester and spandex, and thinly dressing fantasies with scientific sounding words no more makes it science fiction than calling spiritualism parapsychology makes it a science.</blockquote>

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