What is Science-Fantasy to you?

[Korgan26]

I wasn’t going to post on this thread mainly because people had said what I felt and there wasn’t a reason for me to reiterate it. But I started reading “The songs of distant earth.” By Arthur C. Clarke and part of his Authors note struck me.
“This novel is based on an idea developed almost thirty years ago in a short story of the same name (now in my collection The other side of the sky). However, this version was directly-and negatively-inspired by the recent rash of space-operas on T.V. and movie screen. (Query: what is the opposite of inspiration-expiration?)
Please do not misunderstand me: I have enormously enjoyed the best of Star Trek and the Lucas/Spielberg epics, to mention only the most famous examples of the genre. But these works are fantasy, not science fiction….”
I just thought that it was interesting that within days of this thread I read this passage./
Z

 

[Halivar]

“This novel is based on an idea developed almost thirty years ago in a short story of the same name (now in my collection The other side of the sky). However, this version was directly-and negatively-inspired by the recent rash of space-operas on T.V. and movie screen. (Query: what is the opposite of inspiration-expiration?)
Please do not misunderstand me: I have enormously enjoyed the best of Star Trek and the Lucas/Spielberg epics, to mention only the most famous examples of the genre. But these works are fantasy, not science fiction….”

I agree with ACC. Star Wars and Star Trek are fantasy, no matter what kind of techy words like "reverse photon capacitor neutrino dispersal array" or somesuch nonsense like that they throw in there (does anyone else wish they would just say, "Hey look, we can make X do Y"?). Oh, and the Force.