Science Fiction

My guess would be that you are referring to the Science Fiction Book Club. I have been a member for decades, and would wager that most of my SciFi and fantasy hard back books have come from there. I am also a big fan of the short story anthologies they put out every year, Years Best SF.

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Sounds more like a Columbia House type of deal to me.

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“The Fantasy Times” was a frequent nominee for the Hugo Award “Best Fanzine” category and won at least twice. It also frequently nominated and gave awards to writers like Ray Bradbury and Fritz Lieber for stories that weren’t even the slightest bit science-fiction-y.

Given the Zelazny himself meant it to be ambiguous, I’d categorize it as fantasy. I mean, you can have science-fiction window dressing for any kind of story, just like you can a western, but it’s kind of a one-way ratchet. If you add fantasy to science-fiction, it’s fantasy.

Now, when I speak of the “Golden Age of Science Fiction,” I’m referring to the period from about 1938 to about 1950, which Zelazny is outside of. There was a big emphasis on engineering and hard-science, and at least minimally lip service to the plausibility of certain things.

And it’s not a value judgment, really: A lot of these “Golden Age” stories are awful, whereas Zelazny really managed some amazing things with LoL and Amber. But I think definitions are important.

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Stars Wars and Star Trek are “similarly implausible from the standpoint of science.” Admitting that science fiction implies fiction colored by science and enough science fiction exists to illuminate a roadmap and ethic of empiricism in a bulk of the genre. Star Trek no matter its liberties and inventions adheres to observing, identifying, extrapolating, and working a problem nearer the science in science fiction than the full out myth and storytelling driving Star Wars. Lucas bowed to Kurosawa who bowed to Ford and the Western and the Western ethos regardless of how many degrees of separation is there in A New Hope (1977) and flavors the first Star Wars especially. And Lucas has copped The Searchers (1956) is recreated in finding Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru. Legends and larger than life tales were hugely on George’s consciousness then and the Western is the American mythology and either directly or indirectly fueled much of the imagery and temperament of Episode IV whether consciously or unconsciously. No matter it is plain to be seen.

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If we’re talking about books now, it isn’t hard sci-fi, but has anyone else read Robert Charles Wilson? He’s probably my favorite sci-fi author and one of my favorite authors period. His characters are always so vivid and the stories are always fascinating. I think I’ve read everything he’s published.

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It might have been. I can’t remember the name of it. I joined it around the same time as I joined a club for music as well. Same situation. I got more books than music before quitting. :slight_smile:

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Okay, so you’re talking Heinlein, Asimov, Bradbury. Do you include Arthur C. Clarke in that or is he too late for it? While he does have some that fit more into the soft SF of later times, I would say that he has some definite hard SF.

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Heinlein and Asimov to be sure. Bradbury is of the era but, if you look at his work, it’s more in the horror-fantasy realm. (But honestly, what SF mag was gonna turn him down?)

I’m not a Clarke expert but in a lot of ways, he’s the culmination of the Golden Age. It was his science book that convinced Kennedy we could go to the moon, and that’s what the “Golden Age” writers were trying to do: Not convince Man to go to the moon per se but convince Man that he had a future in the universe and he should focus on that rather than, y’know, blowing himself up.

The shift that begins in the early '50s is that the message becomes “No, not only are you not escaping Earth, you’re gonna destroy it either with bombs or pollution or overpopulation.”

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I don’t think I’ve ever read anything by him. What’s a good example of his work?

Okay, I see your setting for these now. I’m a big Clarke fan, although I can take or leave some of his stuff. I could see him being a transitional author from the Golden Age to the New Wave, in part because his writing career was so long.

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I band together aside you yielding Science Fiction and Sci-Fi aren’t the same thing in practice. In theory, I abbreviate or spell it out interchangeably hinting at the greater landscape howbeit Science Fiction in literature is a cerebral exercise compared to the window dressing of moving images where time is of the essence. I’m weary to grade one medium by the strength of another. Writing is limitless and fuels its creation on the reader’s imagination. Film and Television are shackled by length and duration whilst lending visual definition and a larger than life quality to the rendering. In spite of this, 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968) exists and proves it is possible to fully embrace the potential.

The scientific and creative agencies counter one another and to purely embody intellectual purity in an emotional medium like film dilutes the thinking inevitably for feeling leading to Sci-Fi versus Science Fiction. Alien (1979), Blade Runner (1982) [The Final Cut], Back to the Future (1985), and Terminator 2: Judgment Day (1991) are noteworthy on graduating to actual Science Fiction in steering the intricacy into comprehension and not dumbing it to razzle dazzle alone. The remainder isn’t as rewarding and exists as Sci-Fi not Science Fiction.

Honorable Mentions? Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979), The Thing (1982), Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986), The Fly (1986), Robocop (1987), Back to the Future Part II (1989), Total Recall (1990), Star Trek: First Contact (1996), Minority Report (2002), and Blade Runner 2049 (2017) prove true Science Fiction is out there even now.

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I think my favorite of his books has been Julian Comstock: A Story of 22nd-Century America.

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I’d agree that those are good movies. I’m not sure I’d agree that any are “science fiction” in the sense I mean. I don’t mean it as a good/bad judgment. Nothing wrong with sci-fi/space-opera. I just think it serves a separate purpose from science fiction.

2001’s space scenes are amazing and fairly true to reality (except for the Bonestells, but I’ll take a Bonestell lunar landscape over a realistic one any day of the week), but the framing story is theological.

Blade Runner is kind of interesting because the (sorta) source material, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep is a horror story. The hilarity of Scott insisting that Deckard is an android completely subverts the theme of the book, which is that Deckard doesn’t know what’s real, beyond himself. That is the raison d’être of the book (and a lot of Dick’s work from that period).

Also, in the movie context, if androids are “real” then Deckard is a monster. If they’re not real, it’s all a sham. If he’s not real, then it’s unreal things destroying unreal things, so who cares?

Anyway, there’s no science to be found anywhere in the movie. Heh.

I guess The Martian is an honest attempt. Gravity. Uh…that Gene Hackman flick…Marooned

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We purely have separate guiding methodologies on our measuring moviegique. There is ideal Science Fiction in conception and there is the trend of Science Fiction architecture as it’s expressed in the arts and in motion pictures. 2001’s (1968) is theological possibly whereas its Darwinism, evolution, advanced technology, AI, and aliens behave as fine fodder for Science Fiction. The theology if there is one is not ageold religion but new age belief. You gauge its tone and mentality disqualifying. I’m at a loss to call it anything else except Science Fiction frankly. “To each his own…” Blade Runner (1982) clasps Film Noir and Thriller trappings however the existential properties of existence, artificial intelligence, living in the future, and its dystopian society mouth Science Fiction ambiance and thinking gelling it altogether. Specially The Final Cut. The Martian (2015)? Magnificent Science Fiction and a masterpiece of a flick. Gravity (2012)? I’d have to say Yes. Marooned (1969)? At that instant, it was nearly Science Fact since Apollo 11 was that year.

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Yes, the Hugo awards cover both SciFi and Fantasy, and has more than one category. Perhaps I should not have said “hard” enough for me, but rather “good” enough for me. Lord of Light was very SciFi to teen aged me, regardless of how you interpret that Zelazny quote. A quote which goes on to say “because I wanted it to lie somewhat between both camps and not entirely in either”. So placing it precisely in the Fantasy camp ignores the point of what he was trying to say.

At risk of being argumentative (I love a good argument!), I wholly disagree with the idea that Science Fiction, SciFi, and SF are somehow referring to different things. The latter two are simply shorter ways of saying the same thing. All humans, with the sole exception of Germans (I kid!), love to shorten words to be able to communicate more quickly and concisely. When I type SciFi, it is because I don’t feel like typing out the long form. Of course SyFy is different, that is a cable TV channel that changed their name so they could show wrassling, and other crap that bears absolutely no relation to SciFi, and that really pissed off their fan base. I think there is a bit of gatekeeping involved when it is said that “X has science fiction elements, but it is not Science Fiction, it is Fantasy”. Here’s the way I see it, all Science Fiction is Fantasy, and gatekeeping does a huge disservice to the Science Fiction community at large.

Finally (for now), the “Golden Age of Science Fiction” was not a person, it did not try to convince anyone of anything as a whole. Just like today’s Science Fiction, it was writers trying to make a living by selling fantastic stories. Each may have had other additional motivations, and some of those may even have been exactly what you put forth, but I think most were just plying a trade, while attempting to entertain themselves as well as their audience.

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And more power to ya.

Dean Koontz takes a very strong stance that he is not a horror writer, because the horror tradition is one of nihilism, which is very much against his worldview and the tone of his books. And if you look at Poe, Lovecraft, even more modern guys like Ramsey Campbell or Clive Barker, you can certainly see this tradition at work.

But if I were talking to him about in person, the discussion might go something like this:

“But, Dean, surely not all horror is nihilistic. What about the Gothic tradition? Walpole, Mrs. Radcliffe…”
“That’s Romance!” he might (hypothetically) say.
“Well, what about Dracula? That’s one of the most famous horror novels of all time!”
“That’s Adventure!”

At this point, the truculent, imaginary Koontz would have a point: The Gothic tradition is very romantic, and Stoker’s novels were almost entirely adventure/romance, the spirit of which pervades even Dracula! But I would press on:

“But if you say the horror tradition is nihilist and a big part of what people generally recognize as horror, like Dracula, have the strongly human-affirming aspects, who do you expect to understand your claim not to be a horror writer?”

And, at that point, my imagination fails. Even my imaginary Koontz can’t answer that. Which is my way of saying, I can’t really do more than define what I mean when I say the word.

For me, “science-fiction” is something that is oriented around a possible scientific idea, or possibly a number of ideas—though the more ideas there are, the more likely it is to fall afoul of the second requirement, which is: That if it primarily uses the genre as window dressing, it at least must not offend science (and engineering).

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No one should get the idea—and I have repeatedly stated this—that any of this is a good/bad issue.

If you have a science-fiction story where guys are fighting with laser guns and then someone pulls out a magic wand that shoots harmful-light-rays, you have a fantasy story. So, I’m not ignoring it, and I’m not refuting that (as an experience) he blurs the lines expertly. But I’m refuting that the end product remains science-fiction.

Sorry, this is abuse. Arguments are down the hall, room 12A.

I think “SF” also commonly means “speculative fiction”, which was the cool kids’ way (back when Harlan Ellison was a kid) of distancing themselves from the previous generation, and it was a blanket term for science-fiction, fantasy and horror/the weird. But you’re right that people use the terms interchangeably and to be more concise; I’m aware of that, and that’s fine.

But it’s just a reflection of what you care about, and the context you’re in. Bruce set up this thread with “Science Fiction knows no bounds”. Well, fine, but what then makes it different from fantasy?

Over in the game thread (What games have you played recently?), I mentioned that I’m a fan of Heroes of Might and Magic 3, which for all the world looks like a bog-standard fantasy world. There was a big controversy at the time, because an expansion for the game was going to include a faction that was, essentially, DOOM-type monsters (cyber-demons, arachno-trons) that were bio-machines. The backlash against adding SF elements was enough to kill the expansion, sadly, but people were quite fierce about it remaining “pure” fantasy, even though the author of the series said that it had always been envisioned as a post-apocalyptic science-fiction world. (And there were plenty of clues on that front.)

Would it have been any less fantasy had they gone through with it? I don’t think so. It “knew no bounds” all along.

You know, I don’t disagree with this paragraph on the whole, but there are such things as artistic movements, and the GAoSF was one, just like the pre-Raphaelite brotherhood or the Bauhaus. John W. Campbell had a vision, and that not only influenced the contents of Astounding but the contents of all the science-fiction magazines—and the culture as whole.

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Thanks for the clarification, and while I do not necessarily agree, I certainly understand where you are coming from. To me, a work does not need to revolve around science to earn the Science Fiction label. I think that Science Fiction is broad enough and encompasses varying degrees of relying upon science to tell a story. That is not to say that I do not see the appeal of your more strict definition of Science Fiction. My method of determining what is and is not SciFi is certainly much more messy, and prone to failure. To paraphrase Justice Stewart, I can’t define Science Fiction, but I know when I see it.

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Oops, sorry, didn’t mean to imply you had. I guess my point was, back when I first read Lord of Light I remember thinking that it was exactly what I wanted SciFi to be. The fact that it had already won a Hugo decades before I ever read it, validated for my young teen-aged self that I was not the only one who thought that way. I probably only read it because I had just read all of the Amber books that had been published, and was craving more Zelazny. It was quite formative of my tastes in SciFi during my late teens and early 20’s.

As I noted before, I consider Science Fiction as a whole to be a sub-genre of Fantasy. Guys fighting with laser guns is a fantasy, at that point it doesn’t matter what crazy trappings you add. Sometimes, the crazier the trapping the better. I think we are all MST3K fans here, so to some degree we revel in the crazy, whether it be crazy bad or crazy good, regardless of genre.

I also see Science Fantasy as a sub-genre of Science Fiction, so when I see something labelled as Science Fantasy, I may entirely concur, but I will still maintain that it is Science Fiction.

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What’s fantasy and what’s SF are largely a matter of perspective. Has anyone but me read ‘Enchantress From the Stars’ by Sylvia Louise Engdahl?

The story is told from two points of view - from one it’s straight SF, from the other it’s a straight fairy tale. I learned something very important when I read that book.

In the end I don’t think it’s important to draw a hard line - a good story is good, no matter what category you plunk it in.

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

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We three are living evidence of variable opinion. Parallel to moviegique, I must profess Star Wars (1977) as a total work is not Science Fiction to me and yet even 2001 (1968) fails to meet his litmus. I myself fall somewhere in-between the two of you. To be candid, no gatekeeping is occurring in this debate. We three abide by individual measures that occasionally overlap and often stand alone. My defining of Science Fiction in the realm of filmed media consists of fantastic elements dealt with fascination or dispassion, intellectual complexity, handling of the essential concept(s), and a certain realism that this world could plausibly be an extension of our own. Maybe not now but some day. This is the recipe I’ve come to know as Science Fiction over the course of my life.

I love cinema as many do cooking. I speak of the genres or elements as others would ingredients. It’s what I learned growing up. Movie genres are like Italian, Mexican, Greek, or Polish cuisine. All are their own category still you have Mexican Lasagna and other experiments that fuse various variables together. Same here. I so innately lived and breathed this as a lad it hits me automatically not as a form of elitism or segregation but simply how I see things. I so adore the Western and have watched so much of it when I look at A New Hope it makes me smile and I detect the spirit of Ford and Howard Hawks in the movie. It is Space Opera in its outer exterior and how it frames its performances though its mysticism and reverence to higher meaning coupled with the Saturday Matinee derring-do dwarfs the universe and the technology which normally would be of interest to Science Fiction and it isn’t. Not there. THAT is a prerequisite of Science Fiction to me.

Fantasy harkens to acceptance of its odyssey and immersing one in the spirit of the proceedings versus Science Fiction’s eyeing of the world(s), presenting details, posing quandaries to stew on, and resolving the dilemma by thought not finishing a quest or destiny. Star Wars is unquestioning and highly passionate in its plunge into The Force and the Empire and this enthusiasm is devoid of any explanation of what allows the galaxy to function, indifferent to the Science behind Light Speed or The Death Star, and the “A Long Time Ago” of the crawl nods to history not the future in its suggestion. These are traits of Fantasy not Science Fiction as I’ve come to know them.

I myself do not subscribe to Fantasy as a larger box where Science Fiction is a part. This explains your interpretation Hippy and I respect that. I now grasp how you got there. My view which explains why I refer to Westerns, Fantasy, and Science Fiction as individual specialities not subservient to any other pertains to the autonomy and character of those disciplines as their own beast with set conditions and qualifications that have been established and met in the past which become a barometer I listen to. Science Fiction and Fantasy taste differently to me and obey distinct voices and priorities in how they proceed and weigh their composition and stories. THIS is the reason I diverged on Trek and Wars with you.

Trek largely operates as Science Fiction in its exploration, its Prime Directive, the use of tech to solve difficulties, and the manipulation of concepts in each story that test the thinking of its audience. Wars is a rich decadent telling of a tale not entirely seen in 1977 where the fable and the continuing story are where the narrative focuses and the spaceships, lasers, and lightsabers are trappings and decorations and not of primary interest to the plot or its filmmaker. That’s not a slam but it is a distinction we differ on in forming our particular vantages.

You gaze on Science Fiction as a subgenre in Fantasy and their aspects interchangeable. I see Science Fiction and Fantasy like German and Polish food. Each have sausages and cabbage in their diet nevertheless the Polish embrace Ashkenazi Jewish approaches and flavors whereas the Germans don’t. Over time this made them unique from one another despite certain shared qualities. This is where I’m at. Science Fiction and Fantasy are not one and the same. They each shine in their own way and I love them both for specific personalities I find native to themselves.

Inevitably films akin to dishes blur a bit of this and a dash of that though depending on the soul of the picture and how it operates is where I sense what it is for my mileage. Further flicks may flirt on multiple tastes and types whilst the essence points somewhere. We won’t entirely agree though you might gather my angle better with this explanation. No matter “Live Long and Prosper…”