Why lump SF and Fantasy together

[elcreative]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

The "you'll know it when you see it" ploy, huh?

Yes... most effective at 4 or 5 in the morning after consuming a "modest" amount of alcohol (purely for medicinal purposes) before collapsing in sleep or showing stamina by going for breakfast...

[hidari]

One elf's dragonslayer sword is another Klingon's lazer blaster.

[haydnfan]

I think that you would be hard pressed to find much SF that wasn't fantasy. Even something like hard sf, colonizing Mars is a plausible future, but it hasn't been done yet so anything written about that is dealing with fantasy.

As for horror, well that is about atmosphere. If the story is written to disturb you, set you on edge etc that is horror. It could be fantasy or realism.

As for paranormal, that is urban fantasy and thus fantasy. I don't know why people have these weird hangups and want fantasy to only be medieval Tolkien-esque narratives.

[hidari]

Well maybe if some of the Tolkien freaks try to read another book or two instead of reading LOTR for the 75th time backwards in Hebrew, they may see that there is a lot that was written before and since that series...and some of it is better written and more interesting than Middle Earth... gasp....there is life beyond wimpy hobbits and Tom Bombadil and even Tom would agree with that...

[hidari]

kudos on the SF.... a lot of Sci Fi is great to read ..but the space flights between stars...... long way off for this species if ever.....Proxima Centauri is Only 4.24 light-years away from Earth. I am sure there will be a lunar Bus stop there in the next Billion years...

Originally Posted by haydnfan

I think that you would be hard pressed to find much SF that wasn't fantasy. Even something like hard sf, colonizing Mars is a plausible future, but it hasn't been done yet so anything written about that is dealing with fantasy.

As for horror, well that is about atmosphere. If the story is written to disturb you, set you on edge etc that is horror. It could be fantasy or realism.

As for paranormal, that is urban fantasy and thus fantasy. I don't know why people have these weird hangups and want fantasy to only be medieval Tolkien-esque narratives.

[JD Gumby]

Originally Posted by hidari

kudos on the SF.... a lot of Sci Fi is great to read ..but the space flights between stars...... long way off for this species if ever.....Proxima Centauri is Only 4.24 light-years away from Earth. I am sure there will be a lunar Bus stop there in the next Billion years...

Eh. That'll happen once the scientific community stops worshipping Albert Einstein and sees that, like Newtonian physics, Relativity is just the current best *approximation* of what's going on.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

Eh. That'll happen once the scientific community stops worshipping Albert Einstein and sees that, like Newtonian physics, Relativity is just the current best *approximation* of what's going on.

I for one am waiting for the day the particle physicists find a data point their Curve-fitting "Standard Model" can't ignore or accomodate in that Kludge of a theory.

For all that the SM supporters harp on String Theories being just mathematical constructs, at least there is an underlying insight behind the models. The Standard Model is like a bunch of blind guys measuring bits and pieces of a dead elephant without bothering to ponder if they have all of the corpse before them. A dead end, most likely.

Newton and Einstein's models had a fundamental insight expressed through math and later verified through experiment. Standard Mode is just curve fit data with no insight into why the menagerie exists, blind groping in the dark.

We'll do better at some point.
We just need a modern day Rutherford.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

I for one am waiting for the day the particle physicists find a data point their Curve-fitting "Standard Model" can't ignore or accomodate in that Kludge of a theory.

For all that the SM supporters harp on String Theories being just mathematical constructs, at least there is an underlying insight behind the models. The Standard Model is like a bunch of blind guys measuring bits and pieces of a dead elephant without bothering to ponder if they have all of the corpse before them. A dead end, most likely.

Actually, that's the whole point of the excitement about the (probable) detection of the Higgs Boson by the LHC. It is predicted by the Standard Model, and the theory would have been in trouble had it not been there.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by JD Gumby

Eh. That'll happen once the scientific community stops worshipping Albert Einstein and sees that, like Newtonian physics, Relativity is just the current best *approximation* of what's going on.

Dark Energy! That's the Ticket!

(good book here has got me thinking of it: http://www.amazon.com/Origins-Fourte.../dp/0393327582 )

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Actually, that's the whole point of the excitement about the (probable) detection of the Higgs Boson by the LHC. It is predicted by the Standard Model, and the theory would have been in trouble had it not been there.

And we would be better off it it hadn't.
Or better yet, if it doesn't do what it's supposed to do.
So there's still hope.

Physics needs to get back to basics, because a universe with 300 fundamental particles with no underlying explanation why that particular combination and not another--other than the much abused Anthropic principle--is no more insightful than shrugging and saying, "Because."

Too much reliance on data collection and models, not enough on pondering the imponderable. Newton was a philosopher first; maybe modern physicists ought to give it a try. Or read more SF.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by hidari

Well maybe if some of the Tolkien freaks try to read another book or two instead of reading LOTR for the 75th time backwards in Hebrew, they may see that there is a lot that was written before and since that series...and some of it is better written and more interesting than Middle Earth... gasp....there is life beyond wimpy hobbits and Tom Bombadil and even Tom would agree with that...

I've never met a "Tolkien freak" to read nothing but Tolkien. I can assure you that they are aware of the existence of books before and after LotR. As for whether such books are better, that's a matter of opinion.

[QuantumIguana]

Originally Posted by haydnfan

I think that you would be hard pressed to find much SF that wasn't fantasy. Even something like hard sf, colonizing Mars is a plausible future, but it hasn't been done yet so anything written about that is dealing with fantasy.

No. Not having been done yet does not make it fantasy. Colonizing Mars isn't just possible, it's something we really could do. It's just a question of whether or not we would put the resources into it. It's not fantasy by any reasonable definition.

[HarryT]

It's fantasy in the sense that all fiction is fantasy: it's describing something that is not real.

[Catlady]

As I read through this thread, I'm thinking that science fiction and fantasy seem to refer more to the setting than to specific plot elements, as the reader expects in a romance or mystery, for example.

[HarryT]

Originally Posted by Catlady

As I read through this thread, I'm thinking that science fiction and fantasy seem to refer more to the setting than to specific plot elements, as the reader expects in a romance or mystery, for example.

Certainly, yes. I entirely agree.