SF/Fantasy Poll

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by HarryT

Absolutely. Mr. Weber openly admits that it's no coincidence that "Honor Harrington" and "Horatio Hornblower" share the same initials.

Yep. Honor's career parallels both the fictional Horatio Hornblower and the real Admiral Lord Nelson.

IIRC, Honor was originally planned to die heroically in battle, ala Nelson. That seems to have been postponed, at least, possibly because plans are fairly well advanced for an Honor Harrington TV series. The last I heard, it was at the point of lining up financing, because there was significant interest, and there have been interminable threads elsewhere on who should be cast for various roles. The one certainty is that Angelina Jolie would not be approached to play Harrington.

I can see why people would like it, though: we saw "Sky Captain and the World of Tommoow", and my SO took one look at the Jolie character and said "As I live and breath! Honor Harrington!"
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Dennis

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

These days, there's less perceived need, unless the explanation ties into other things as well. An example of the latter is the "impeller wedge" used by David Weber as the technology for FTL travel in the Honor Harrington books. Weber is retelling the Napoleonic Wars in space, and his starships are the equivalent of the old three masted ships of the line. He uses his FTL method to let him do things like having ships of the line drawn up stationary relative to each other in a "wall of battle", whaling away with lasers, grasers, and missiles in best Napoleonic War fashion.

David Weber moved away from the Napoleonic template in his HH series many books ago, and now he is both starting the complete upheaval of the established order in his Universe and introducing both new weapon systems that are making the wall of battle less relevant, and new ftl travel that we have no clue for now what's going to do - the missile pods and Apollo on the good guys side and the new Spider Drive on the *real* bad guys side

[DMcCunney]

Originally Posted by Liviu_5

David Weber moved away from the Napoleonic template in his HH series many books ago, and now he is both starting the complete upheaval of the established order in his Universe and introducing both new weapon systems that are making the wall of battle less relevant, and new ftl travel that we have no clue for now what's going to do - the missile pods and Apollo on the good guys side and the new Spider Drive on the *real* bad guys side

I'm aware. But he did start with that template, and manipulated his physics in support of it.

The wall of battle started becoming irrelevant with the introduction of missile pods, Ghost Rider technology, and carrier-borne LACs.

I once asked Weber whether treecat communication was relativistic, and what the maximum range of two cats paired with humans (like, say, Nimitz and Samantha) might be. The answer to both was Weber's "I know but I'm not telling because I plan to address that down the road" Tum-te-tum-te-tum, which told me what I wanted to know.

The fundamental issue underlying most of the problems in the Honorverse is communications lag over interstellar distances, and if you can address that...
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Dennis

[pilotbob]

Steve and others...

I think its funny about how you say that SF tech has to be possible/credible. How do you know. I bet there are a lot of things that we can do today that 200 years ago people would have said was not possible.

BOb

[Liviu_5]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I
I once asked Weber whether treecat communication was relativistic, and what the maximum range of two cats paired with humans (like, say, Nimitz and Samantha) might be. The answer to both was Weber's "I know but I'm not telling because I plan to address that down the road" Tum-te-tum-te-tum, which told me what I wanted to know.

Interesting

Anyway with so many people parsing all of Mr. Weber's pronouncements - and he is so kind to answer a lot of questions if they do not impinge on Tum-te-tum - the Honorverse universe feels very *real* in a way that many others do not and that I think is an important reason why the books sell so well after 18 volumes - 14 novels , 4 ss collections - and counting and people beg for them even as drafts

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

Originally Posted by pilotbob

Steve and others...

I think its funny about how you say that SF tech has to be possible/credible. How do you know. I bet there are a lot of things that we can do today that 200 years ago people would have said was not possible.

How do you know?

You read... you study... and you guess. You try to postulate, to the best of your ability, what science is capable of, and go with that (or ignore it and create handwavium).

Some writers are better than others at guessing at credible scientific advancements. Some don't even try, they just write what feels right to them, credible or not. In terms of entertainment, though, it's really not important. It's only important to the writer's and reader's personal sensibilities.

Sometimes, credibility just comes down to how well you describe your handwavium to your audience... if they buy the explanation, your science is "credible" to them. I've given explanations of FTL in 2 books, and they might be credible to the audience who reads them... but they only need to be credible enough to allow the reader to accept it long enough to enjoy the story.

[dickon25]

I clicked the 'Fantasy' tab because, of the two, that's the one I read most. But I do read some SF as well - Greg Bear, Peter Hamilton, Asimov and others. I'm never quite sure why the two are lumped into one genre, because to me they are completely different. As someone else said above, SF is the art of the possible, or even probable, but fantasy is exactly that!

I can't say I have a favourite fantasy author, since my favourite book is usually the last one I read! But I loved the Robin Hobb Farseer series (but not the Soldier Son Trilogy), also Guy Gavriel Kay (Fionavar Tapestry & Ysabel), Raymond Feist, K J Parker, L E Modesitt (Corean Chronicles) and heaps of others!

I'm just about to start Game of Thrones, 1st in the Song of Fire and Ice series by George Martin. I haven't read any of his stuff yet so wish me luck!!

[Slite]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

I'm aware. But he did start with that template, and manipulated his physics in support of it.

The wall of battle started becoming irrelevant with the introduction of missile pods, Ghost Rider technology, and carrier-borne LACs.

I once asked Weber whether treecat communication was relativistic, and what the maximum range of two cats paired with humans (like, say, Nimitz and Samantha) might be. The answer to both was Weber's "I know but I'm not telling because I plan to address that down the road" Tum-te-tum-te-tum, which told me what I wanted to know.

The fundamental issue underlying most of the problems in the Honorverse is communications lag over interstellar distances, and if you can address that...
______
Dennis

Meh! Please don't do that, I just started on the Honorverse series! I haven't gotten through "On Basilisk Station" yet

And yes, my e-Reader has introduced too stuff I had no idea was out there, i.e. the Baen books

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

God, I miss Martin's Wild Cards series. Now there was a series that strained the definitions of SF and fantasy... which is why they called it "pulp," lit-speak for "we couldn't care less how credible it is... but it's so cool!"

Still waiting for the latest book to become an e-book...

[dickon25]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

God, I miss Martin's Wild Cards series. Now there was a series that strained the definitions of SF and fantasy... which is why they called it "pulp," lit-speak for "we couldn't care less how credible it is... but it's so cool!"

Still waiting for the latest book to become an e-book...

I've just looked this up on Amazon.co.uk. Did Martin write any of them or was he just the editor? How many were there? Amazon seem to go up to 3......

[Slite]

Originally Posted by dickon25

I've just looked this up on Amazon.co.uk. Did Martin write any of them or was he just the editor? How many were there? Amazon seem to go up to 3......

Mostly edited by Mr. Martin, there were 12 books in the series:

Wikipedia - Wild_Cards

[pshrynk]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

"Loosely tie"?

Let's see: Discworld is a flat disk, supported on the back of giant elephants, who are standing on the shell of great A'Tuan, a giant turtle swimming through the see of space. It has magic, wizards, barbarians, various non-human inhabitants like the Nac Mac Feegle...

If Discworld isn't straight up fantasy, I'd have a hard time saying what is.
______
Dennis

But they are on the verge of splitting the thaum.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by DMcCunney

Yes, I think the Quest is the dominant form. Fortunately, it's not the only one.

It's the reason I used to think I'd given up on fantasy, though. For a while I was actively avoiding fantasy, reading SF only, because it seemed like every new fantasy book was part of a long series with yet another quest.

More recently, I've found that I'm actually reading more fantasy than SF, but it's usually either contemporary/urban fantasy, or has a really strong worldbuilding element, or has excellent characterization. Charles de Lint is an example of the first category; contemporary/urban fantasy. Patricia Briggs (Mercedes books) might be another, though she's a little heavy on the romance for my tastes. Garth Nix would be an example of strong worldbuilding (although the Old Kingdom books are arguably SF as much as fantasy....) For strong characterization, I'd point to Tamora Pierce, in particular the "Protector of the Small" series, which I have re-read and enjoyed many times despite the world being a medieval fantasy (at least without elves, orcs, and dwarves) and the plot being based around a military organization.

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

I personally agree: If it isn't credible, it shouldn't be part of an SF story. Of course, that just means that if you use it anyway (as I did in Berserker and Sol, for instance) that you just consider it "soft" SF, which is generally defined as SF with additional non-credible elements tied in... like Star Wars, Star Trek, etc.

I always thought of "soft SF" as being a story with credible science, but a story more focused on social sciences, rather than physical sciences. Stories like Star Wars get the tag "Science Fantasy" in my internal system, though I think "Space Fantasy" might be even better.

I'd say that regardless of whether a story is supposed to be SF or Fantasy, it will need to be credible, unless it's being written for humor or sheer adventure (e.g. "pulp" as Steve noted in another post). I think that's what Dennis is alluding to, above.

Lately, I've come to feel that SF and Fantasy really can't be easily distinguished. You can try to categorize by the types of props used, e.g. spaceships, but then you run into Melissa Scott's Five Twelfths of Heaven (the Silence Leigh series that Dennis mentioned, above). You can say if the story has technology in it, it's SF, but then you have Garth Nix's Old Kingdom stories (starting with Sabriel). Not only do the inhabitants of one region have machine guns and airplanes, but across the Wall, where those don't work, magic seems to operate via construction with symbols in a manner rather similar to computer programming, making the whole series impossible to categorize.

In fact, I'd say my favorite stories are those that can't easily be categorized.

[nekokami]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

God, I miss Martin's Wild Cards series. Now there was a series that strained the definitions of SF and fantasy... which is why they called it "pulp," lit-speak for "we couldn't care less how credible it is... but it's so cool!"

I think "pulp" has less to do with it straining the definitions of SF and fantasy than the lack of caring about credibility.

[Gibbo]

Originally Posted by Slite

Mostly edited by Mr. Martin, there were 12 books in the series:

Wikipedia - Wild_Cards

Fictionwise has the latest one Inside Straight