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Sci-Fi: Hard Science or Soft?
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Aug 11, 2015 01:10PM
H.G. Wells was one of the founders of Science Fiction, and we call his works Science Fiction--The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds, etc.--and he didn't explain any of it.
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Two things. First, his work isn't considered science fiction, in academic circles his books are considered a precursor to science fiction called scientific romance. Second, I think it's doing Wells a great disservice to say that he doesn't explain things. The nature of the Martians in The War Of The Worlds, their physical form, why they think and act the way they do is all explored in some depth. Moreover, it's all consistent and reasoned because the Martians are based on an exploration of human evolution Wells wrote called Man In The Year Million. The purpose of the Martian invasion was consistent with contemporary notions of 'the heat-death of the universe'. The defeat of the Martians is not left a mystery.Other works focus less on this exploration, but Wells was interested in science and the implications of its ideas.
Finally, by 'explain' do not assume I mean 'info dump', I mean within the context of the narrative, and in terms of the ideas the book seeks to explore.
Or, "I went to the grocery store this morning. It's ten miles away and I got there in less than fifteen minutes." Since I didn't explain in detail how I moved ten miles through space in less than fifteen minutes, perhaps it isn't fact at all, and I only imagined it because otherwise it's clearly impossible.
I'm not sure how I have managed to offend everyone so thoroughly and start a rush to out words in my mouth. This is pretty basic stuff for SF, isn't it? Where did I say that if characters are ignorant of the tech, it's not SF? I didn't. But if a book does not seek to explore scientific ideas and reach a greater understanding of the idea or how it affects humanity (and through that process explanation of some kind is inevitable, surely?) - it is not SF. It might be space opera or fantasy, but no science = no science fiction.
Matthew wrote: "SF must by necessity explore scientific ideas or it isn't SF..."I don't actually agree with that. Alternative history is called SF but there's not necessarily science involved. It's just "what if history came out another way."
And then there are books like Dhalgren, which appear to rely very little on actual science.
Space detective stories like The Retrieval Artist series by Kristine Kathryn Rusch could be called mysteries or detective stories...except they would infuriate non-SF mystery fans because they're set in the future on the Moon and on other planets, with aliens. Just because aliens are in the story, though, doesn't mean the science of xenobiology is being explored: these are really mysteries set in space. Ergo, SF.
Much of SF is made up of works where science ideas are backdrop or plot device (the excuse for something to happen) rather than the subject of exploration itself.
My next novel is set in a "seemingly-near" future Earth with very little SF trappings. Yet due to its setting in a SF history (and some spoiler stuff) I can't call it anything other than SF. Yet it's a book about obsession, misplaced loyalty, deceit, and exploitation, not science.
Matthew wrote: "I'm not sure how I have managed to offend everyone so thoroughly and start a rush to out words in my mouth..."It's not a matter of offense really. I don't feel offended. It's just that what I've understood you to mean in your last few posts seems too narrow. It doesn't adequately describe the broad scope of what's been published in SF
I've re-posted this a lot but it's about as close to what I believe to be SF as any definition I've seen:"I will define science fiction, first, by saying what science fiction is not. It cannot be defined as 'a story set in the future,' [nor does it require] untra-advanced technology. It must have a fictitious world, a society that does not in fact exist, but is predicated on our known society... that comes out of our world, the one we know:
This world must be different from the given one in at least one way, and this one way must be sufficient to give rise to events that could not occur in our society…
There must be a coherent idea involved in this dislocation…so that as a result a new society is generated in the author's mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader's mind, the shock of dysrecognition.
[In] good science fiction, the conceptual dislocation---the new idea, in other words---must be truly new and it must be intellectually stimulating to the reader…[so] it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification, ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader's mind so that that mind, like the author's, begins to create…. The very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create---and enjoy doing it, [experiencing] the joy of discovery of newness.
--Philip K. Dick, The Collected Stories of Philip K. Dick, Carol Publishing, 1999, xviii-xiv."
(And space opera IS science fiction!)
Mod
One of my favorite science fiction authors of all time used very little science and a large amount of boundary pushing when it came to social issues of race, gender identity, and class structure. By a very narrow scifi view, Octavia Butler would not be a scifi author, yet she has won both Hugo and Nebula awards.
I think Christina's right. Some of my favorite books are defined as science fiction and yet have no real science to them. Fahrenheit 451 is one of my favorite books and yet its really a dystopian world instead of sci-fi.
Christina wrote: "...the genre that originally was meant to expand our minds and broaden our acceptance of that which is different..."Nicely said. I've always thought of SF as the genre that's mostly about just letting your imagination blaze...without stooping to elves and conjuration. If that's hardcore physics, then cool. If that's bizarre societies, awesome. If that's action adventure romps with all blasters firing, wonderful. Astound me.
Alternative history seems to be a spur of SF, which I think happened as a result of texts like Bring The Jubilee and other stories where time travel is used to alter history, but took off by itself without needing the SF elements. I don't see it as SF, more an offshoot. I find any definitions of SF that don't involve science a bit problematic. PKD's definition is a good one, but still a bit broader than Gernsback et al, and the whole sense of one key difference leading to something that can't happen in our society today looks more like fantasy. Which is strange, as most definitions of SF suggest that it involves the possible, and anything impossible within the current rules of our universe is fantasy. While we're on definitions, I like John W Campbell's: 'a well-constructed theory will not only explain away known phenomena, but will also predict new and still undiscovered phenomena. Science fiction tries to do much the same – and write up, in story form, what the results look like when applied not only to machines, but to human society as well.'
...and space opera can be SF, but only if it is done according to the principles of SF. If it's (to use the old analogy) a Western dressed up in futuristic clothes - which is, after all, what the term was coined to describe - it is not SF. Just adventure that seeks to appropriate some of SF's furniture.
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;p
That sounds like an awesome book! When is it coming out?
Genres aren't rules. They are loosely defined categories that hopefully make someone's search for something to read a little easier.The reason debates like this one take place at all is because there is no single agreed upon definition for SF or Fantasy or pretty much any other genre.
So, let me cut this down to this statement: Science Fiction is anything that is marketed as or is called Science Fiction by authors, publishers, critics, or readers.
Too broad? Tough, because that's the actual reality.
We can discuss what SF means to each of us individually. We can discuss SF (or Hard vs Soft SF), but everyone's idea of what is Hard or Soft is going to vary...A lot.
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I've got a bit on my plate at the moment, but if you want to run with it... :)
Science fiction sounds boring and now I am glad I have never written it.
Matthew wrote: "I'm not sure how I have managed to offend everyone so thoroughly and start a rush to out words in my mouth. This is pretty basic stuff for SF, isn't it? Where did I say that if characters are ignorant of the tech, it's not SF? I didn't. But if a book does not seek to explore scientific ideas and reach a greater understanding of the idea or how it affects humanity (and through that process explanation of some kind is inevitable, surely?) - it is not SF."I don't think anyone's offended -- I'm certainly not -- though people clearly have different views. For myself, a book that seeks "to explore scientific ideas and reach a greater understanding of the idea or how it affects humanity" is a type of sci-fi, but it's one fairly narrow type of sci-fi. I just don't think that's what "science" in sci-fi means.
For myself, the difference between sci-fi and fantasy is simply that in sci-fi there are some principles of physics you don't break (conservation of energy and entropy). The narrative gives some nod here and there to the physics and physical laws. It may or may not explain these things in any detail -- any more than your average person can explain the math that behind the operation of a CDMA smartphone (maybe 1 person in a 1,000,000 has a detailed knowledge of that). So to me, "science" applies only to the setting (which is not contemporary), in that the setting abides by scientific principles (broadly defined). If that is not the case, I consider it fantasy.
An example I like is dragons. As I recall the Hobbit has a dragon in it. The Hobbit is pretty clearly fantasy, and if the dragon flies (does it?), it is not explained how, and if the dragon's origins are explained, they are mystical.
Then there are the Pern books. They have dragons too, and they fly and how exactly they manage that is also not explained. But the Pern books take place in a universe where physics is obeyed and things have non-mystical origins, etc. So I consider those sci-fi, of a rather soft sort.
Then there's this other book. It also has "dragons", which fly (in 1-g, and an Earth-normal atmosphere) and they are about the size of a blue whale. How they are able to fly is described, with the engineering worked out to a degree (though not fully explained). I'd call that harder sci-fi than the Pern books, although maybe not that hard. (To be "hard" would probably require many pages of detailed calcs with a complete set up diagrams and an attached treatise on the biology. Even I don't want to read that.)
That's me. From the practical perspective (as Micah points out), sci-fi is what people say it is.
Well that's all well and good, and everyone is entitled to define their book however they like. SF is a genre with a history, though, and part of that history involves its founders and practitioners defining what is and isn't SF. As we've seen above, there are different, and conflicting, definitions, and that's fine. Some people have scrambled to insist that their books aren't SF (Margaret Atwood for example) when to my mind, their books fit several widely accepted definitions of it. That's up to them. But to deny that the genre has or needs any definitions at all is to ignore history, IMO.
Matthew wrote: "Margaret Atwood for example ... "Well, in that case (as in some others), she simply viewed sci-fi as a genre no "legitimate" author would touch. She wanted to write sci-fi and she clearly did, but then derided the genre as being all about "talking squids in space" (I think that was the quote) to make sure everyone knew she wasn't one of "them."
And SF is a genre with a history, but that doesn't mean it's static. I once made the argument that Star Wars is not sci-fi: it's a classic fantasy hero tale (which it is). It just happens to have spaceships in it. No one bought it.
I happen to agree about Star Wars. It's not *about* or *exploring* science, it just happens to have some of the trappings of SF. And I think that's the problem, i.e. pretty quickly the trappings became the genre in the popular consciousness, which is why the founders of the modern genre in the 1920s had to work so hard to express what they meant by the term. Atwood's dismissal of the genre defined it in a way that was polar opposite to how the founders did, i.e. that it is specifically about things that *cannot* happen - it either showed ignorance of the genre's history and purpose or, as you suggest, a deliberate attempt to be something else. (Interestingly, she later discussed it with Ursula le Guin, and admitted that what she thought of as SF, le Guin called fantasy, and what she thought of as 'speculative fiction', le Guin called SF).To put my cards on the table here, I have a particular interest in the history of SF as I studied Thomas Dolby's course on it at the University of Kent many years ago. Later on, I taught a course on the historical relationship between science and literature, and wrote my MA thesis on it, so this is something I've devoted a chunk of my life to and is dear to my heart.
To go back to the original topic, which I feel I've drawn us away from, perhaps the reason we need terms such as 'hard science' now is in recognition of how far the mainstream if the genre has moved from its roots (although I still think a book can be good science without being hard science). To my mind, hard science is where everything in the book adheres strictly to scientific reality, so if you have FTL travel, for example, you have to have navigation figured out, because you literally can't see where you're going. SF doesn't have to do this to be good SF, though I find it very satisfying when it does. I still have a bit of trouble accepting the idea that a book that is not in some way about an exploration of a scientific idea (even in the manner of, e.g. star Trek TOS episodes) can be SF, but then people are always telling me my idea of it is narrow.
(Personally, I don't see how defining SF as an exploration of scientific ideas can possibly be considered narrow, considering the vastness of what science encompasses. And it's not exactly short of wonder and the mind-blowing)
Micah wrote: "Christina wrote: "...the genre that originally was meant to expand our minds and broaden our acceptance of that which is different..."Nicely said. I've always thought of SF as the genre that's mo..."
How are elves stooping?
Actually, now my phrasing makes me imagine elves who are hunched over. Not quite as impressive and graceful, perhaps.
Still, my question stands.
If you are meaning any well-worn character type or trope smacks of a severe lack of skill or maturity when thrown into the mix as though writing is a paint-by-numbers activity, then I don't like to see that, no. About any trope or character type. Of course, there is still value in people doing that, if they enjoy it, and we all need to start somewhere, but it is lacking.
Elves per se... Well. Fascinating if done well. :)
Matthew wrote: "...and space opera can be SF, but only if it is done according to the principles of SF. If it's (to use the old analogy) a Western dressed up in futuristic clothes - which is, after all, what the t..."Yes. I love Star Wars, but it is fantasy in space.
Now, Star Trek has elements of each, to me. Then again, I tend to feel SciFi, done in the truer way (and I am not quoting anyone, here - this is my feeling, which means it is 100% accurate, due to the self-referential nature of my thought-system. ;) ) is about exploring the ideas of a concept and its impact on society/people/a person. In that vein, considerations such as whether Data is property are proper SciFi.
Of course, I'm not worrying over whether it is hard or soft SciFi, there. I don't see as it matters. The central concept there is about what makes someone human and whether sufficiently advanced tech can reach that state...and a comment on slavery, obviously.
I'm more concerned with whether something feels worthwhile, and that can cover a vast range of things for me. If a novel jars me completely with such clearly wrong science that I can't miss it, then that damages the reading experience for me. If someone goes on about the science to the detriment of the narrative and its message, then that ruins it completely, no matter how well it is calculated. If a character is yet another tired, over-used, limited, default-to-the-same-thing-and-pretend-no-one-else-exists...then that did not used to put me off, but these days it does.
I also prefer there to be something to make me think, which is what Philip K Dick's novels do, but it is the impact of the science that does that, the exploration and explanation of how the science affects things, not whether the science stands up to testing.
Shell wrote: "I also prefer there to be something to make me think, which is what Philip K Dick's novels do, but it is the impact of the science that does that, the exploration and explanation of how the science affects things, not whether the science stands up to testing. "Yes, absolutely.
Shell wrote: "Elves per se... Well. Fascinating if done well. :)"
Actually, I agree. I am intrigued by people taking elements of what would be considered classic fantasy and approaching them in a scientific way, as with the example given with dragons above. There's the old saw that science, sufficiently advanced, can appear to be magic, so there's plenty of scope for this. Maybe the elves are posthumans.
Yes. Although now that dragons have been mentioned, and Pern specifically, my mind is thronged with dragon wings again, making thinking of anything else difficult. :)Or elves as aliens. After all, enough people insist every ancient civilisation 'must' have had help from aliens, so why not? Rather than, you know, asking ANYONE who deals with similar techniques today and who could just explain easily what the pictogram or mural is showing...
But cloning and genetic engineering and so on could come into play.
Matthew wrote: "(Personally, I don't see how defining SF as an exploration of scientific ideas can possibly be considered narrow, considering the vastness of what science encompasses. And it's not exactly short of..."Narrow in a literary sense. Narrow is not a disparaging term, it a mathematical one. Confining stories to plots that explore scientific ideas is by definition narrower than (and contained within) the set of plots that are not so constrained. There is nothing mutually exclusive about narrowing a sub-genre to meet specific criterion and that genre being fascinating and/or mind-blowing.
A genre can be infinite in its possibilities and still narrow. (Ask any line.)
Good to see all these waters being stirred up again.To my mind, the very broad category 'speculative fiction' covers various flavours of both scifi and fantasy. It is defined by a question beginning "What if..."
Broadly, fantasy is defined by the question "What if all the old stories were true?" and the subgenres can be teased out by deciding which stories.
Scifi includes stories where the science is the _focus_, and the question is "What if [insert hypothesis here] were true?" - spacetime donuts, Neutron star, and many many more.
Scifi, confusingly, also includes stories where there is no new science, and simply extrapolate into the future. My books, for example, work on the question "What if we could colonize space with existing technology?"
I don't want to redefine scifi to exclude either of those, so I'm in the "broad church" faction. I do find there is a sloppiness to a lot of works, especially films, where totally unscientific concepts like FTL travel and fairground cons like telepathy and fortune telling are thrown in to something which is referred to as scifi. But that's just me, of course.
If genre categories are meant to help steer readers to the kind of stories they like, I don't think they're working very well. I can find no label that leads to the kind of stuff I write.
Good discussion, though...
Shell wrote: "Elves per se... Well. Fascinating if done well. :)..."In fantasy. Not in SF. Put them in SF and they aren't elves, they're either aliens, transhuman, or inhabitants of a parallel dimension, but they're not elves (especially not elves with magic powers).
Micah wrote: "Shell wrote: "Elves per se... Well. Fascinating if done well. :)..."In fantasy. Not in SF. Put them in SF and they aren't elves, they're either aliens, transhuman, or inhabitants of a parallel di..."
But why? There is plenty of SF where ancient gods turn out to be aliens - why not the álfar?
To my mind Star Wars is equally SF and F. Only technology is much more on display than magic and it's set in space and on other planets, so it's more SF than F. And it ALWAYS has been marketed as SF. Therefore, you might as well just say it's SF.I have no problems with people thinking of it as fantasy, but trying to insist that it's fantasy just becomes an exercise in semantics. Go look up Top Fantasy Movies and guess what? SW isn't going to be listed.
Genre really means nothing at all, except in its use in marketing. It's a filter. That's its only practical use.
And Star Trek...what the heck would you call it if it's not SF? Is it hard SF, no way. But I can't see anyone other than SF fans wanting to watch it.
Owen wrote: "A genre can be infinite in its possibilities and still narrow. (Ask any line.) "OT, but this reminded me of the debate around the BBC Radio 4 science show 'The Infinite Monkey Cage' (referring to the Infinite Monkey Theorem) which had complaints before it had even aired suggesting it condoned cruelty to animals. The show replied that if the cage was infinite, then the monkeys would not be inconvenienced, and that the cage could just as easily refer to the entire universe. Someone went to the trouble of setting out that a cage might have a 6" x 6" floor plan, for example, and be of infinite height, therefore still being of infinite volume, and yet being a cruel place to keep monkeys. They suggested as an alternative title, 'The Sustainable Monkey Habitat'.
Micah wrote: "To my mind Star Wars is equally SF and F. Only technology is much more on display than magic and it's set in space and on other planets, so it's more SF than F. And it ALWAYS has been marketed as S..."Has it? Not that I've noticed. It was a modern-day Matinee serial. ALL the tropes are those of fantasy. Dark Lord? Check. Lowly Orphan Who Is Actually Prince/Chosen One? Check. Princess Who Needs Rescuing? Check. Quest? Check. Throwing the Ring (Proton Torpedo) into the Fires of Mount Doom (down the exhaust port of the Death Star)? Check. In fact Star Wars is a glowing example of those stories from another genre dressed up in SF clothes that the early editors of the founding SF mags were so keen to insist were definitely *not* SF.
star wars is a science fiction fantasy. :) i thought everyone knew that...
Richard wrote: "Scifi, confusingly, also includes stories where there is no new science, and simply extrapolate into the future. My books, for example, work on the question 'What if we could colonize space with existing technology?'"I take your point - although there is bound to be a degree of exploration and boundary-pushing therein that would constitute science. The broadening of knowledge of the universe we inhabit counts, does it not? I'd definitely call Titan. by Stephen Baxter SF, and that is very much along the lines you suggest.
I don't think the sci-fi or fantasy tags work for movies the same way they work for books. I would guess that many people who see a star wars or star trek movie aren't there because it is sci-fi or fantasy but because it is action adventure. When it comes to reading, I don't think people are reading sci-fi because of the action and adventure.
Mod
I have to disagree. The action and adventure are a huge reason why I read scifi and fantsy. When I was a kid and I still judged books by their covers, I tended to pick the ones with people running or jumping from explosions with their blasters blazing or something similar. Certainly, there's the human interest side to consider. I like well developed characters, but they have to be doing something. If I wanted a three hundred page book on how a rocket ship works, I would pick up a nonfiction science book. I read scifi because the people on those rocket ships are typically having action packed adventures.
Matthew wrote: "Has it? Not that I've noticed. It was a modern-day Matinee serial. ALL the tropes are those of fantasy..."Those tropes are not owned by fantasy. Much of the story is based on the comparative mythology--the hero's journey--as put forth by Joseph Campbell, and draws a hell of a lot from Arthurian knights tales. So by that you might as well call it mythology or classical chivalrous romantic legend.
But I think you're missing my point. I agree it has a huge amount of fantasy elements in it. No question about it. But insisting that it's so much fantasy as not to be SF is either just making semantic arguments, or is blind to the fact that it's categorized as SF pretty much everywhere. And what's really most important about classifying a movie or book in a genre is that people get an idea of what they can expect from the work.
Purity of classification may mean a lot in the sciences, but in literature, music, and film, it's totally unimportant except in that you can formulate a consumer's expectations to some degree with the term.
SW is always called SF in the media, by marketers, by movie critics, by Wikipedia...even by science fiction writers like Arthur C. Clarke who said its galaxy-wide society resembled Asimov's Foundation Trilogy. Frank Herbert swore Lucas stole a bunch of it from Dune.
I've always believed that the plot was the true master, and everything else was window dressing, right down to the space ships and dragons and faeries and aliens.So really we're just discussing the decorations, since any plot can pretty much be inserted into any genre.
Charles wrote: "I've always believed that the plot was the true master, and everything else was window dressing, right down to the space ships and dragons and faeries and aliens.So really we're just discussing t..."
I disagree, on the basis that science fiction should have that foundation on scientific ideas, which other forms of fiction don't have. It contributes to human discourse in a distinctive way.
Science is different things to different cultures. A story set in pre-history about the first person to forge metal, and the process through which they discovered this cutting edge technology, and a long winded explanation about how to replicate the process is science fiction?By your very narrow definition it is. A story about the first person to harness fire and the destruction it caused on their tribe would also be science fiction.
But a story about ancient aliens giving man these secrets would not be.
Just seems backwards.
I thought I read somewhere that Fantasy was a derivative of Science fiction. If it's really the case, then shouldn't it still be under the same tree?Let's speak science for a second.
Centuries ago, the average man was around 5 foot 6 and lived about 35 years. Nowadays, the average height has gone up to 5 foot 10 and the life expectancy has also gone up to around 80. Does that make us less human as compared to back then? :P
That said, there are still people who think that because there are aliens involved, it's science fiction, and if we have vampires, it's urban fantasy, and they can't even imagine fantasy without elves.
While I don't completely agree with that, it still has value when it comes to finding what you're looking for. It becomes more of a blur when species are mixed. I know because I'm paying that price since my own books bring aliens and vampires together, but that's part of the joy of being an indie.
Just because some aliens drink fresh blood doesn't make them vampires!
Charles wrote: "Just because some aliens drink fresh blood doesn't make them vampires!"No, they could be Martians in 1897 Surrey
Charles wrote: "Science is different things to different cultures. A story set in pre-history about the first person to forge metal, and the process through which they discovered this cutting edge technology, and..."That only works on a definition of science which doesn't apply to the culture that invented science fiction, so it would be an odd way of looking at it. The currently-understood boundaries of the discipline of science pre-date science fiction. Theories about discovery of fire are not really scientific ideas within this, more archaeological ones. The prehistoric culture had neither a discipline resembling science nor a form of storytelling to explore its implications.
A story about ancient aliens giving man fire, metalworking etc would be science fiction if it was exploring genuine notions that ancient man could not have managed that and needed the help. Not so far away from 2001, although that was exploring the rather surprising step that saw hominids relatively suddenly become tool-using omnivores and dominate their environment. Stephen Baxter's Evolution looked at a number of ideas, i.e. that there might have been the beginnings of intelligent, tool-using velociraptors, and extrapolating evolution into the far future. So all things are possible, it just depends on the approach as to whether it can properly be considered SF.
It looks it is being sorted out by trying to find the line between sci-fi and fantasy. I think that line has a huge overlap, or might even be a circle.
---A story about ancient aliens giving man fire, metalworking etc would be science fiction if it was exploring genuine notions that ancient man could not have managed that and needed the help.
I would call it fantasy if the man got the knowledge from the gods, and science fiction if the man got it from a flying saucer that crash landed.
Looking at it that way, the gods supplied the magic, those stories came before the flying saucer stories, so wouldn't sci-fi be a derivative of fantasy?
Because of the high visibility of product, you can call a successful movie anything you want and a lot of people are going to see it. You won't lose the audience.
I think mislabeling a book can definitely cause it have less of an audience because people won't be able to find it. People don't go to the movies for the same reason they read.
Matthew wrote: "Charles wrote: "Science is different things to different cultures. A story set in pre-history about the first person to forge metal, and the process through which they discovered this cutting edge..."So you admit your classifications are just smoke and mirrors based on your own relative perception to time and space.
Matthew wrote: "I disagree, on the basis that science fiction should have that foundation on scientific ideas, which other forms of fiction don't have. It contributes to human discourse in a distinctive way..."Two things puzzle me with this sentence: why "should"? I can get behind "I prefer" but "should" seems arbitrary and out of place.
The second part I don't get is the "which other forms of fiction don't have" bit. If I write historical novel about the physicists working on the Manhattan Project, it will undeniably have that "foundation on scientific ideas". Is that historical novel then "sci-fi"? I don’t think so.
Doesn’t all writing contribute to human discourse in a distinctive way, if it contributes at all? I’m not fathoming the point there. What does the contribution a work makes have to do with the label someone assigns to it? The label allows a person to locate it in library or a store. The label itself is arbitrary and semantically null. We could call it anything and as long and as we can find stories of hot chicks with ray guns, the label worked.
All that really matters is the hot chicks with ray guns. Maybe we can just ditch the whole sci-fi label, since it seems to be controversial, and call the genre “hot chicks with ray guns”? Those predisposed in other ways might substitute what they like for “hot chicks” (intelligent use of regular expression will cope with that). Is that better?
Sci-Fi, fantasy and speculative Indie Authors...
Books mentioned in this topic
Space Scout - The Peacekeepers (other topics)Titan. (other topics)
Dhalgren (other topics)
The Time Machine (other topics)
The War of the Worlds (other topics)
Authors mentioned in this topic
Stephen Baxter (other topics)H.G. Wells (other topics)
