Quote:
Originally Posted by DMcCunney
Would you call Edgar Rice Burrough's Mars, Venus, or Moon series SF? I wouldn't.
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No, I wouldn't; I'd call them Fantasy. But there's a fundamental difference. As you very rightly say, when Heinlein wrote "Space Cadet", he was making a plausible extrapolation of the future. It's SF. But when Burroughs wrote "A Princess of Mars", I'm 100% certain that he didn't actually believe that there were princesses on Mars. To me, it's the intent of the author that makes the difference between SF and Fantasy. Heinlein was trying to write a plausibe story about space travel; Burroughs was writing a fantastical adventure story. It doesn't matter that Heinlein got the science wrong; it's still SF to me.