This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
The Kakapo: Hand Maid's Tale was sci-fi how? I mean, I read it back in high school so that was at least 6 years ago, but ... the only sciencey aspect of it was that women had an exponentially more difficult time becoming pregnant, due to nuclear pollution. Or am I remembering it totally wrong? Or am I mentally categorizing science fiction incorrectly?
Ununnilium: The last one. The original science fiction stories were about "what if". What if there was a machine that could predict the exact date of one's death; what if we started receiving radio signals from space; what if a man landed on the moon. The premise of The Handmaid's Tale fits that perfectly.
Speaking of The Handmaid's Tale, I'm wondering whether we should put in a new page about books shoved into the wrong genre category, or put in some examples and an explanation here - I'm not just talking about stuff like Oryx and Crake but, say, Cryptonomicon and Pattern Recognition. Future Present/Social Satire With Fabulist Elements/Magic Realism.
Ununnilium: The thing is, many of those are because the work in question doesn't really fit in a well-defined genre, and to say that shoving it into this slot is better than shoving it into that slot...
Jedaï: Never Let Me Go is Science Fiction without a doubt but accusing it to be bad SF because Ishiguro isn't familiar with the genre is pure stupidity... The focus is on the characters and the slow discovery of the real nature of the narrator and the world around, not on some technical details (that aren't really wrong contrary to what this critic says). This book is amazing because it manages to distill its clues between the lines all along and maintains a calm and strained tone that contrasts and underlines the extreme gravity of the subject. I would read this book over most classic SF cloning tale.
Novium: Paralleling the desire not to be labeled sci-fi, didn't JK Rowling argue that harry potter wasn't fantasy? Or something like that. I remember terry pratchett calling her out on it, though.
I have once read an essay about the stigma that the term "scifi" had, by Isaac Asimov, who labeled intellectual science fiction (such as literature) as SF, while popular science fiction as scifi. Obviously, people don't do that much anymore, as everything science fiction is now scifi, but still, should this idea be mentioned in the article?
Fast Eddie: Pullin out some natter about ... You guessed it! Star Wars:
- There's science fiction and there's sci-fi. Despite the flashy paraphernalia, this troper can't think of a single plot point in the movies that actually revolves around science. And, if the reaction to the midi-chlorians is any indication, that's the way the fans like it.
- Dude. It's not. At most, it's space opera (a subcategory often even more maligned than sci-fi); it's more likely sci-fantasy, blending ancient storytelling techniques and fairy-tale tropes with starship battles and turning the swords into Energy Weapons.
- The term this troper has heard and prefers most is called "Space Fantasy." It's a fantasy, set in space.
- Though that does harken back to the tendency of bookstores to class "Science Fiction" and "Fantasy" as the same genre.
- The term used by this troper (and many others) is Science Fantasy.
- I Knew It!! Even when I was little I knew Star Wars was sci-fi. Mom always denied it.
- If this troper's humble opinion is worth anything, I would put the Star Wars books and media in the same shelves as The Three Musketeers, The Princess Bride and most Erol Flynn movies. After all, that's what Space Opera is a Recycled In SPACE of, isn't it?
- Dude. It's not. At most, it's space opera (a subcategory often even more maligned than sci-fi); it's more likely sci-fantasy, blending ancient storytelling techniques and fairy-tale tropes with starship battles and turning the swords into Energy Weapons.
Flawson: "The Jane Austen Book Club" argument. I love both Jane Austen and Sci-Fi and adored that debate.
- And it had to be a male defending science fiction and a female defending romance. (Though that gender stereotyping is probably another trope.)
- Aren't most romance novel readers women and most Speculative Fiction readers men in real life?
- And it had to be a male defending science fiction and a female defending romance. (Though that gender stereotyping is probably another trope.)
Boone: Anybody know of a scathing quote in defense of science fiction?
grendelkhan: Pete McCutcheon says
:
I read science fiction because it's not about the mundane, ordinary problems that we face every day. I read science fiction because I want to argue humanity's case before a galactic tribunal. I read science fiction because I want to battle hideous creatures beneath the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I read science fiction because I want to go on a covert mission inside the city of the alien beings who hold humanity in thrall. I read science fiction because, well, hexapodia is the key insight.
Tolkien says:
I have claimed that Escape is one of the main functions of fairy-stories, and since I do not disapprove of them, it is plain that I do not accept the tone of scorn or pity with which "Escape" is now so often used: a tone for which the uses of the word outside literary criticism give no warrant at all. In what the misusers are fond of calling Real Life, Escape is evidently as a rule very practical, and may even be heroic. In real life it is difficult to blame it, unless it fails; in criticism it would seem to be the worse the better it succeeds. Evidently we are faced by a misuse of words, and also by a confusion of thought. Why should a man be scorned, if, finding himself in prison, he tries to get out and go home? Or if, when he cannot do so, he thinks and talks about other topics than jailers and prison-walls? The world outside has not become less real because the prisoner cannot see it. In using Escape in this way the critics have chosen the wrong word, and, what is more, they are confusing, not always by sincere error, the Escape of the Prisoner with the Flight of the Deserter. Just so a Party-spokesman might have labelled departure from the misery of the Fürher's or any other Reich and even criticism of it as treachery. In the same way these critics, to make confusion worse, and so to bring into contempt their opponents, stick their label of scorn not only on to Desertion, but on to real Escape, and what are often its companions, Disgust, Anger, Condemnation, and Revolt. Not only do they confound the escape of the prisoner with the flight of the deserter; but they would seem to prefer the acquiescence of the 'quisling' to the resistance of the patriot. To such thinking you have only to say 'the land you loved is doomed' to excuse any treachery, indeed to glorify it.
David Brin says:
Science fiction is the genre that posits the slim possibility that children might — sometimes — be capable of learning from the mistakes of their parents. That people may someday be better than us, even partly on account of our efforts. They may no longer need kings. They may, each of them, be capable of rising up and being heroes.
- Nobody ever remembers Temple of Doom and how all of the religious magic there stemmed from a theme park version of Hindusim, including voodoo and a man who could rip out your heart by chanting? If there was no Temple, then you'd have a point - but it's place in the original trilogy makes it pretty clear that the Indy universe has a Crossover Cosmology, and aliens aren't really a huge shift from that.
- This other troper would argue that part of the point still stands. The Indy universe does have a Crossover Cosmology but that only means that aliens exist if you assume that all the gods are life forms with sufficiently advanced technology. This is not explicitely stated in the fourth movie and never seemed like a logical hypothesis in the first three since only gods were around - so it may have struck some viewers as inconsistent. The fact that there was a signigicant difference between the way the aliens and the gods were presented (the aliens were actually shown while the gods only appeared through the manifestation of their power) only added to the perceived genre shift.
- This troper believes the shift from mythology to aliens can be justified by the time setting. The 50s was a time of boom in the Sci-Fi genre, both in literature and film. As it has been stated that Indy IV was trying to emulate the style of the 50s, it would be a logical conclusion to make that this style included, well, aliens.
- Nobody ever remembers Temple of Doom and how all of the religious magic there stemmed from a theme park version of Hindusim, including voodoo and a man who could rip out your heart by chanting? If there was no Temple, then you'd have a point - but it's place in the original trilogy makes it pretty clear that the Indy universe has a Crossover Cosmology, and aliens aren't really a huge shift from that.
Real Slim Shadowen: Ahem...
- Ayn Rand hates fantasy? So her oppion of fantasy is the same as any rational human being's oppion of her? Sounds about right.
Real Slim Shadowen: Natter. Pointless natter. Pointless natter featuring misspellings of a grade-two word. Nuuuuked.
Doctor Nemesis: I loved the Battlestar Galactica image, but I came across the image I replaced it with on Stumble Upon and it just seemed perfect for this trope.
- Kraas: Page image = win.
Regarding the Brin/Star Wars stuff: what the hell is the "GFFA"?
Some Guy: I reworked several elements of the page to make it sound less victimy. Guys, I can appreciate that the Sci Fi Ghetto exists and that much science fiction is marginalized simply because of the genre designation. But the artistic critical situation is nowhere near as bad as the old write-up made it out to be.
