Thread: Is SF dying?
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Old 02-05-2015, 07:20 AM   #189
BWinmill
Nameless Being
 
Quote:
Originally Posted by DiapDealer View Post
I'm not bringing the fallacy of anything to the discussion. Merely pointing out where opinion is being presented as fact. You only get to decide what is or isn't science-fiction for you. Not for anyone else. Same goes for Azimov, Heinlein, and all the other big names you dropped. They don't (didn't) get to decide what people think SF is any more than you do. They just get/got to write it and present their version of it.
To a degree. There are going to be some stories that are science fiction and some that are not, and the vast majority of people are going to agree on those stories. (I'm sure that some won't, but there will always be outliers.) Yet it is also undeniable that most of the stories out there will be in a fuzzy area where people will disagree on it's science-fictionness. Perhaps it will be because the story uses the trappings of science fiction but ignores the science, so it is little more than a fantasy story or the more generic speculative fiction. Perhaps it is because the story would have been considered science fiction in the past, but the changes in society and technology means that it would be categorized as something else today. That's particularly true of "science fiction" that is about technology rather than science.

I'm claiming that most stories are hard to categories specifically because of that technological angle, and because a lot of SF stories are focussed upon the technology. Technology used to examine society through a critical lens, technology to form the basis of war stories, technology as a tool for adventure, and so forth. Yet there are stories that are about science proper. Science as a tool, such as we see in some Asimov mysteries. Science as a means to understand human behaviour, perhaps we see in books where scientific research serves as a foundation for the story. Science as a motivator for adventure. I find it hard to see why those wouldn't be classified as science fiction. They are, after all, about science. On the other hand, they don't reflect the majority of stories that fall under the banner of science fiction.
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