[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Nope.
Science Fiction isn't about the trappings or the setting.

Not the good stuff.
Good SF starts with ideas and then a rationalist narrative is built around it.

Yes, I think this is mostly right.

Science Fiction needs a core of science; whether physics or biology or psychology or even cybernetics.

I think this is almost completely wrong. The most common technology used in SF, I think, is FTL travel. Not only does FTL travel not exist, based on everything we know about physics, it *can't* exist. If it existed, pretty much all of our physics would be broken. It would be like biology if evolution didn't exist. FTL travel is the intelligent design of science fiction.

However, it doesn't matter for science fiction because science fiction is not really about the real science. All science fiction has to do is posit the impossible technology and then realistically treat it as if it existed and had been created through the scientific method. But the real purpose of the technology is just to further the story - if the story is about the interaction with humans and aliens, for example, the FTL drive just isn't important to the story. In the same way that the fact that Yoknapatawpha County doesn't really exist doesn't matter for Faulkner's work.

Of course, once we've posited the "technology," we do need to treat it realistically, so the FTL drive will probably need fuel of some sort, and will work in a certain way, and may need maintenance, and may break down...and we want all of these to be internally consistent and superficially plausible (given the impossibility, of course). But the genre is science *fiction,*, not science. And the science has usually been as fictional as anything else. And that's okay.

It needs ideas that challenge our worldview.

SF requires discipline and consistency; good SF is *always* about something of significance. Even when entertaining us, good SF will make us think.

Yes.

Of course, as Theodore Sturgeon said; "90% of SF is crap."
He also added; "80% of everything is crap."

He may have been an optimist.

STAR WARS is fun stuff. It introduced a lot of people to the trappings of the genre and the sense of wonder that is Science Fiction's calling card. It led some of those to the good stuff. A lot of them have simply bought into the mythology of the movies and the books and the toons and the toys. No harm done as long as they're having fun.

But Star Wars is simply too sloppy, too mystical, too undisciplined to be anything more than good fantasy.

Star Wars is science fiction. It requires too much special pleading to argue otherwise. You can't just wave away the aliens, spaceships, technology, etc. It's as least as "sciency" as, say, "The Demolished Man."

I suppose I might call it "science fiction lite," though.