[Hitch]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

The problem is that while Pern is SF - it's a "lost colony", whose human inhabitants got there by starship, and the telepathic dragons are products of genetic engineering on the indigenous fire lizards - it got more popular and acquired greater readership as it went on. People coming in mid-series don't know the back story, see a medieval social structure and fire breathing dragons, and say "Aha! Fantasy!" because it has the fantasy tropes.

The confusion is understandable.


Well, was a hoot. She died in November 2011.

Yes, sorry, I should have used the past tense, but...well. You know.

About Pern, however--I have to disagree with that one. Actually, she did NOT interject genetic engineering until WELL into the series. If you read the series, as it was originally published, they were pretty damn magical for hell...7, 8 books? The first remotely science-y thing she did was in Moreta (vaccines, created the old way.). Other than that, all feudal, all fantasy. Magical dragons. Nothing like the Brains and the Brawns, for example, in her B&B ships in...To Ride Pegasus, I think, was the first one in that series? The B&B's weren't in that one...crap. Nope. Wrong genesis book. That one went on to be the telepaths in space. What was the name of the first B&B ship book? Anyone remember? (Sorry for dipsy memory; I think I bought that book second-hand...shit. God, 44 years ago? URHG! I think the cover on my [badly-beat-up] paperback still shows one of those 1950's-type ships, you know, the "stilettos" with the 3 fins as stabilizers. Hilarious.)

If you come to them now, of course, you can read them in the order in which they would have "taken place," but honestly....I think that takes such an element of surprise away from the series. Not to mention, such a great reveal, for so many things. By the time you get to "All the Weyrs of Pern," if you've read them in the order in which they have been published, you are dying to find out how the hell those dragons came to be. At least, long ago and far away, I was. I think reading them in the "chrono" order would really ruin huge bits. But, that's just my opinion.

I knew her, back when. She lived on the East Coast and attended East Coast SF conventions before emigrating to Ireland.

We had some things in common. Both had horses (of a particular Irish kind, which weren't ubiquitous, like Thoroughbreds) and a few other things. It was just one of those things. I really, really liked her. Of course...she didn't pull her punches, either.

The notion that mainstream fiction was a subset of fantastic fiction was proposed by the late John W. Campbell, SF writer and long time editor of Astounding/Analog magazine.

Of course it was. Shoulda known.

But John loved to argue, and was known to make outrageous statements that would provoke an argument. That was one of them.

a la Rex Stout's "Watson was a woman" address. ha!

I'll have to poke around and see if I can find the original statement.

I'd love that, thanks. I owe you a note, anyway.

The latter is a very common trope in SF.

Bill Gibson's "Sprawl" series (Neouromancer, Count Zero, Mona Lisa Overdrive), is set is set in the Sprawl, a term applied to the result when Boston through Washington DC expanded to become one huge metropolis covering a good bit of the East Coast.

Yeah, I confess that typically, I'm not wild about dystopian fiction. I think I'm cynical enough, thanks.

Robert Silverberg's "The Tower of Glass" shares a concept with Bladerunner - androids created to be slaves who are unhappy about their status.

Isn't everyone?

And his The World Inside (a collection of related novellas) takes place in a world where population growth was encouraged, and most people live in titanic megascrapers holding millions of inhabitants in each to leave maximum available land on which to grow food.

Is it me, or is that utterly moronic?

Alfred Bester had the notion of a common vernacular called Black Spanglish in a later novel (The Computer Connection, I believe) where you get dialogue like "gemmum, ah gone esplain any pagunta you ax"

I gemmum du. Me eight dat spanglish.

See my earlier comments. As I said, the essence of SF is that you can speculate all you want about what we don't know, but must get what we do know right. SF must be at least possible.

As our knowledge increases and what we do know expands, a lot of what was considered possible when written we know to be impossible now. The general descriptor for stories we know aren't possible but enjoy anyway is fantasy.

To me, it seems rather sad, really. I mean...think of Verne. Surely, he patently wrote science fiction. Not fantasy as we think of it now. Today, he is simply Fantasy. Of course, this is surely true of much fiction, pulp or otherwise; the passage of time (and acquisition of knowledge) jettisons much of the value of the piece--in terms of the delight of fresh eyes to it, I mean. I'm pretty sure that young men today aren't reveling in Journey to the Center of the Earth, eh? Now it's hardly even fantasy. Sad.

Science Fiction (might be possible) becomes Science Fantasy (known to be impossible, but still a fun story.)


Which makes Shanarra an example of stuff moving the other way, starting as outright fantasy but moving into the grey area where the sub-genres intersect. Because they do intersect, such movement is possible.

Agreed.

And the notion of such changes is another common trope. Fred Saberhagen's "Empire of the East" trilogy is is in a post apocalyptic world where the cause of the apocalypse was an event that altered natural law and permitted both science and magic to operate.

Actually, alternate realities are SF staples, and the sub-genre of "alternate history" has arguably become an independent genre of it's own. You get things like Robert Harris's Fatherland, published as a mystery, where a German police inspector investigating a murder in contemporary Berlin gets unexpected interference from another government agency that wishes to take over the case.

But the contemporary Germany in which it is set is in an alternate time line where the Third Reich won in Europe, Germany dominates the continent, and the interfering agency is the Gestapo.

Steampunk is also becoming established as an independent genre. The underlying premise is that mechanical computing via descendants of Charles Babbage's Difference Engine and Analytical engine mix with steam power to fuel a highly developed technological society that developed on rather different lines than our own. It's all over the map, too, with things like Jay Lake's Escapement, set in a world where out solar system is (and is known to be by the inhabitants) an immense clockwork Orrery.

So you can now find Steampunk SF and Steampunk Fantasy, with steam power and mechanical calculating devices the common elements.
______
Dennis

And has migrated over to Romance, god help us all. I bought a book that I mistakenly thought was Steampunk--well, it was, inarguably, but then it turned into Romance. Who knew?

There you go, an official rant. Ladies of a certain disposition, keep your romance outta my damn Steampunk!

Hitch