SciFi history?

[nyrath]

Originally Posted by emellaich

Anyway, it's been jarring to see these 'modern' books that have no concept of a cell phone. Our character would get stuck in a broken down car and have to hike back for help, or would go searching for a pay phone to check in, etcetera.

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but that is equally jarring in older non-science fiction movie and TV shows.

And on the other side, Robert Heinlein had his characters using cell phones in his 1948 novel SPACE CADET
http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/content.asp?Bnum=745

[Joebill]

I remember reading of Bussard Ram Jets in stories, and several years after that i started to see them mentioned in stories by other authors.

i.e.:

Kilometers across magnetic fields in the shape of a cone scooping up hydrogen, the gas moves back to the engines, lasers fire into the hydrogen, plasma out the back.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

And you can argue that a fair number of books that could be called SF when written have become Science Fantasy now, simply because we've learned better, and we're aware, for example, that there isn't a habitable surface under the clouds of Venus.

I would argue that, if proven science was required for speculative works to be considered Science Fiction, then they should all be labeled Fantasy until all scientific speculation is proven!

Seriously, I don't think the disproving of a theory should automatically relegate all SF to fantasy. SF is scientific speculation for entertainment's sake, not an attempt to actually divine the future. And it is still different from fantasy, which has its own separate set of rules. (Anybody gonna start a "Rules of Fantasy" thread?)

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

I would argue that, if proven science was required for speculative works to be considered Science Fiction, then they should all be labeled Fantasy until all scientific speculation is proven!

I'll agree. And you can probably find people who will seriously propose just that definition.

Seriously, I don't think the disproving of a theory should automatically relegate all SF to fantasy. SF is scientific speculation for entertainment's sake, not an attempt to actually divine the future. And it is still different from fantasy, which has its own separate set of rules. (Anybody gonna start a "Rules of Fantasy" thread?)

I didn't say "relegate all SF to fantasy". I was specifically referring to cases like the Burroughs novels, where they qualified as SF when written because we didn't know better about what things were like under the clouds, but arguably became science fantasy when we did know what's under the clouds, and Burroughs proposed setting simply isn't possible.

If the difference between SF and fantasy is that the first might be possible given things we don't know/can't do yet, and we know fantasy is impossible going in and agree to ignore that and say "What if it was possible?", you can make a case that some things written as SF has been pushed over into the fantasy category as our knowledge has grown.
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Dennis

[Joebill]

Eventhough I know Venus doesn't have swamps under those clouds, I can still enjoy such a story setting.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Joebill

Eventhough I know Venus doesn't have swamps under those clouds, I can still enjoy such a story setting.

As can I. I just assign them to a separate sub-genre of the field. I consider them part of science fantasy, simply because we know the setting isn't possible, but we pretend it is for the duration of the story. At the time they were written, we didn't know that, and the whole sub-genre of science fantasy had not been defined. (For suitably vague meanings of "defined":...)
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Dennis

[Joebill]

As in 'David Starr Space Ranger' in 'Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus'. original author name was Paul French, a pseudonym of Isaac Asimov.

They were written as juveniles, but I enjoyed reading them a bit later than that.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Joebill

As in 'David Starr Space Ranger' in 'Lucky Starr and the Oceans of Venus'. original author name was Paul French, a pseudonym of Isaac Asimov.

They were written as juveniles, but I enjoyed reading them a bit later than that.

Yep, that's a good example. I knew Isaac, back when. His passing was a blow to the field.
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Dennis

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I didn't say "relegate all SF to fantasy". I was specifically referring to cases like the Burroughs novels, where they qualified as SF when written because we didn't know better about what things were like under the clouds, but arguably became science fantasy when we did know what's under the clouds, and Burroughs proposed setting simply isn't possible.

If the difference between SF and fantasy is that the first might be possible given things we don't know/can't do yet, and we know fantasy is impossible going in and agree to ignore that and say "What if it was possible?", you can make a case that some things written as SF has been pushed over into the fantasy category as our knowledge has grown.

To me, a major part of a story is the context... in the case of older SF, the context is the state of science and understanding at the time it was written. If the story is SF under that original context, it should stay SF, even if the context--the time period in which it was written--has passed, and therefore is no longer valid.

IE, I don't consider The War Of The Worlds fantasy, because we now know there are no living evil Martians and no Martian civilization. I don't consider any old SF to be fantasy, if the dates presented in the book have passed and some of the technology hasn't arrived by then. In the given context, if it was SF, it is still SF.

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Steven Lyle Jordan

To me, a major part of a story is the context... in the case of older SF, the context is the state of science and understanding at the time it was written. If the story is SF under that original context, it should stay SF, even if the context--the time period in which it was written--has passed, and therefore is no longer valid.

IE, I don't consider The War Of The Worlds fantasy, because we now know there are no living evil Martians and no Martian civilization. I don't consider any old SF to be fantasy, if the dates presented in the book have passed and some of the technology hasn't arrived by then. In the given context, if it was SF, it is still SF.

Okay, that's fair, and I think I agree.

But it raises another question. Jules Verne and H. G. Wells are both considered SF writers. They were writing before the genre existed as such. (War of the Worlds", for example, came out in 1898.) Verne thought he was writing adventure stories for boys.

Given the "context is king" thesis, are Verne and Wells works SF?
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Dennis

[GeoffC]

Is it too simple to suggest SF is a storyline that includes what is possible given technological extrapolation; whilst fantasy encompasses the impossible or unlikely ?

I am sure that anything with "magic" powers is unlikely to be classed as SF - although having written that I wonder now about Star Wars! (with light sabres).

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Given the "context is king" thesis, are Verne and Wells works SF?

I would say so.

Adventure, Fantasy and SF have been close bedfellows for... well, forever. Though there may not have been a specific label for science fiction at the time, the works clearly follow the definition of SF... and the context, the period in which the stories were written, support the definition of stories with extrapolated or postulated scientific theories.

The actual labels came later, just as the label "horror" came after Shelley's Frankenstein, but that doesn't change what they are. Labels always come after a new genre, because after all, how could there have been labels before a genre is invented?

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

I am sure that anything with "magic" powers is unlikely to be classed as SF - although having written that I wonder now about Star Wars! (with light sabres).

Light sabres, though not in existence, are presented to have a scientific basis in reality (in the Star Wars universe, at least), and I've seen attempts to create scientific explanations that would make them work (if certain technological requirements are ever met). So light sabres are SF, and hardly the least SF thing in Star Wars (the Force).

Of course, Star Wars encompasses almost every SF convention that we've collectively stated should be fantasy, but are accepted in SF from extensive exposure...

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by GeoffC

Is it too simple to suggest SF is a storyline that includes what is possible given technological extrapolation; whilst fantasy encompasses the impossible or unlikely ?

In point of fact, I think that's the beginning for any attempt to separate the two I can think of. SF might happen, given things we don't know/can't do yet. Fantasy can't happen, because it violates the physical laws we've observed of the universe.

I am sure that anything with "magic" powers is unlikely to be classed as SF - although having written that I wonder now about Star Wars! (with light sabres).

Which one it is may depend upon the observer's viewpoint. Consider the late Arthur C. Clarke's famous dictum "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic". (Which has been restated as "Any sufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology". )

There are interesting games that can be played if you attempt to provide an underlying scientific basis for magic, or create a world in which both function. Consider Fred Sabrehagen's _Empire of the East_, where a global war had weapons used that had the effect of altering natural laws, permitting magic to exist alongside of science.

The trick, in an SF story, is to provide that suspension of disbelief, and a hook on which you can hang your suspension long enough to get on with and enjoy the story.
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Dennis

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

A favorite comic series of mine, Planetary, once described magic in technological terms as "the cheat codes of the universe."

Another Marvel comic character, the Scarlet Witch, used her mutant "hex power" to locally alter physics in unpredictable ways, usually in such a way as to hamper the bad guys in some unanticipated but predictably useful way.

Mutants. Now there's an SF element ripe for discussion...