I agree to the general point and have used similar argument to why I don't really get involved in star wars or Star trek.
I think for layman (like me) a question to ask to make the distinction is just to ask "if we replace all the science element in the scifi with magic, would anything change?"
In star wars the force could simply be magic, light saber is the magic swords, space travel is portal between worlds, aliens is just magic species (yoda is a fairy), and almost nothing of the story or any core message would change.
Now can you say the same for say, Black Mirror? Not really, removing the "science / tech" from those stories will drastically change the meaning of the story and how the audience will relate to it.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" as Arthur C. Clarke said.
Core of good science fiction is to make that magic relatable and still somewhat convincing that "in the future, this might be something we would just call science"
Eh. I think that is backwards. Star Wars would not (and in some works, does not) work without the magic. Science Star Wars is bad. Star Wars worked because it operated under a backdrop of objective morality. Good guys who learned the virtues of being good. Bad guys who were kind of just evil.
When you choose to lean into the science you tend to start doing things related to practical consequences of the tech that frankly just make the universe a lot shittier. Things like Jedi blood, droids that have machine intelligence and perfectly calculated 360 no scope shooting instead of their goofy “organic” personalities and flaws, light speed kamikaze attacks, annoying characters asking if the bad guys are the ones self identifying as the dark side powered by hate or is it some dickish wealthy arms dealers?
The important difference imo is not realism but whether the ability of the tech comes from supposed ingenuity or does it come from moralistic fantasy willpower stuff.
Game of thrones is more sci fi than Star Wars. While the former has fantasy elements, a lot of it is deconstructed practical consequences of the premise of the tech and magic. Game of thrones is not by any means emblematic here of what I’m saying though*
The techification of Star Wars is just a slow grind of ruining a world with canon
I think the problem with Star Wars isn't the objective morality, but rather the simplistic morality. Stories with objective morality can still present complex moral situations, dilemmas in which the answer isn't clear cut despite morality being objective. It's been many years since I've read it, but IIRC I think Ender's Game is a good example of this. The author at least believes in objective morality (from what I understand) but the situation presented to Ender is morally complex.
Simple moral messaging doesn't seem to be a problem today. Almost more valuable than ever.
Even here in Australia, where we're not as nutty as the US, we just had a bunch of teenagers stab someone for his phone. The world could do with a re-grounding in simple morals.
Huh, I've come to completely the opposite conclusion. Simplistic moral messaging like Star Wars is harmful to public morality. It teaches people that evil is some obvious lifestyle / alignment that people consciously choose. That evil people know they're evil, believe being evil to be good and behave in evil ways for the sake of being evil. What's wrong with that? It gives people a framework for rationalizing away their own evil acts because they believe themselves to be fundamentally good, not aligned with evil. Simplistic moral messaging facilitates moral self-licensing, in which people form a self-image of being fundamentally good and use that self-image to give themselves license to occasionally commit evil acts. People 'know' themselves to be fundamentally good, and believe an occasional evil act doesn't define them as a person. Mass media like Star Wars promotes this model of morality because it helps the audience feel good about themselves, and that is good for business.
We should instead be teaching the public about the banality of evil. Evil people should be depicted as complex characters with a mix of good and bad traits, not flat sociopaths fanatically dedicated to evil for the sake of evil. This encourages people to evaluate their individual actions, and particularly to evaluate the morality of their own actions when they know themselves to have a mundane (or even good) motivation rather than some comic book supervillain's alignment to evil itself. In stories with complex morality, a character who is generally good can do something evil and the story recognizes that as evil; this helps people who believe themselves to be fundamentally good to recognize that they might nevertheless sometimes do something evil. Even better is when a story shows how evil can be motivated by the pursuit of some good and noble goal; it teaches people that they might be tempted to commit evil acts when "the ends justify the means", and that doing so is still evil despite their pure motive.
The ends can justify the means though. Writers often suggest otherwise as a lazy crutch. Guy tries to do good and ends up preparing to genocide a whole country. Yeah no shit that sounds pretty evil. But you can’t really extrapolate that into every scenario.
Batman’s an idiot who generally argues with slippery slope bullshit about “where does it stop” if you start killing villains. Killing the joker is a no brainer. Killing a goon probably not so obvious. But let’s not pretend either that breaking his spine is fine.
Evil may be banal, but in practical settings it’s not a twisted duality. It’s just hoping that the person in question at least wonders if they are doing the right thing. That’s more than we get.
There aren’t really complex characters. There are complex situations. Very rarely is it unclear who is trying to be a good person and who is not. And while fiction writers may portray some folks as trying to be good while doing humongous bad, they’re full of shit and just not particularly realistic viewpoints. Geralt from the Witcher is thrown into a lot of complicated moral choices, but there’s no ambiguity that he’s trying to be a decent guy.
I'm glad you brought up Batman; that's a great example: Batman violates everybody's civil liberties by creating a panopticon device that spies on everybody to catch one terrorist, but it's okay because he's Batman, the good guy, and he's fighting the evil terrorist who's evil for the sake of being evil. And then the audience gets to feel good about this not-so-subtle allegory to the American government's response to 9/11 because Batman has his friend destroy the panopticon device once the terrorist has been defeated, showing the audience that the good guys can be trusted to relinquish these great powers once the crisis has passed. Except in reality that never happens and those powers are not just retained but greatly expanded. The narrative is a sweet lie that the audience feels good about, making them complacent towards reality. You saw this one, right? It was very popular, audiences clapped like trained seals.
And then here you are calling Batman an idiot for having any boundaries at all. It's a no-brainer that he should be murdering bad guys without so much as a trial; it would be fine because he's the good guy so obviously he'd get it right. The great atrocities of the 20th century were perpetrated by people who felt certain the ends justified their means, but fictional media has you thinking that reality is unrealistic. Capeshit is trash, it rots your brain. It belongs in the rubbish bin.
Ironically, characters who speak as you do would make excellent villains in stories with nuanced morality. You seem certain that you're in the right as you speak of murdering people. This exemplifies realistic evil.
From A Man for All Seasons, a play by Robert Bolt:
Roper: So now you’d give the Devil benefit of law?
More: Yes. What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And, when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you – where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast – man’s laws, not God’s – and, if you cut them down – and you’re just the man to do it – d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.
Sadly, I've come to believe that any story with FTL in it must be classified as fantasy. I might be willing to accept natural wormhole travel. Even with generation ships, authors vastly underestimate the difficulties of traveling interstellar distances. When authors posit intergalactic travel, forget about it! Galaxies might as well be pocket universes because they don't interact. (Unless they collide, which will happen with the Milky Way and Andromeda in about 4.5 billion years. Oh man if we can make it that long and have even slow interstellar travel, what an opportunity for exploration!)
But yeah, thank god most of science fiction is actually fantasy because if any of those things were possible, they'd immediately be used to destroy planets. Ships going FTL could be collided into a planet. Teleportation and easily accessed anti-matter could be used to annihilate cities - or planets. Most authors don't even bother building in reasons why that can't happen, its just that no-one thinks of doing it.
I think the limits of the real world are quite fascinating. It's almost like reality was designed to support a huge array of civilizations that cannot interfere with each other. Interstellar travel is so hard that any civ capable of it is going to be capable of executing technologically advanced projects over centuries or millenia, and I daresay such a civ is not doing it for conquest, but to discover and explore. If the urge is militaristic, then such a civ would turn on itself long before the project succeeds. There's a kind of poetry to it.
Most scifi I've read with FTL usually has some explanation that isn't pure fantasy. For example, I just finished reading A Fire Upon the Deep[1] by Vernor Vinge, and the in-universe explanation for FTL in the novel is that different regions of our galaxy effectively have different laws of physics, which is (admittedly somewhat handwavingly) due to the density of the interstellar medium.
Sure, FTL travel is never grounded in our understanding of physics and the universe, but do you really think our understanding is anywhere near complete?
I don't have anywhere near the physics chops to debate this in detail, but the usual contention WRT FTL is that our understanding of physics actively precludes the possibility of FTL. Winchell Chung's Atomic Rockets website gives a good account of the basic argument here: https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fasterlight.ph...
Love that book, but it's fantasy. It's a cool idea that is impossible to rule out without literally going to every part of the universe and doing experiments there. But that's impossible, so it's unfalsifiable. In fact, you could make the same claim about Earth. We aren't going to do every experiment at every place on and in Earth.
First, falsifiability does not a theory make (that's Popper's view, and the ability to test doesn't always include the possibility of falsification). Second, science fiction stories aren't theories, and aren't actually science. They don't have to pose a testable theory.
> Most authors don't even bother building in reasons why that can't happen, its just that no-one thinks of doing it.
Is it really necessary to spell out that a civilization capable of building a FTL starship is also capable of building a sufficient defensive technology?
> I daresay such a civ is not doing it for conquest, but to discover and explore. If the urge is militaristic, then such a civ would turn on itself long before the project succeeds.
I think this is much more complex. Consider a civilization so advanced that this is children's toys for them - and then that civilization falls. Then, on the scraps of it, a new imperialistic faction is built and they go for the conquest; they don't even need to understand the magic that powers their warships. I recommend you to read the full Foundation series in chronological order.
"Is it really necessary to spell out that a civilization capable of building a FTL starship is also capable of building a sufficient defensive technology?"
We have had ICBMs for a long time, yet no sufficient defensive technology as of yet.
Beyond the fact that using them would lead to MAD, that is.
I've read everything. I probably read the Foundation series before you were born (assuming you're 20-something). In fact, Asimov certainly knew that FTL was fraught - but he was writing for a living, and FTL was in vogue and he used the hyperspace version of it. It's unfortunate - I would have liked to see more grounded SF from him
Well the issue remains the same with Bussard ramjets. It's just simpler to make so the whole scenario is more likely (though still very unlikely, ofc).
I think FTL is reasonable cop-out. So just existence alone does not make something fantasy. At least if the implications are properly explored and things are consistent.
Neither Star Wars or Star Trek do things well. Some other material does things reasonably well explained and thus actually are on Fiction side.
Hardest possible take does not really leave too much room to go around. Some expectations make more interesting stories and explorations.
But Low Energy FTL travel is far greener for our Galaxy than HE FTL. With HE FTL, just one mistake can born new supernova. Moreover, it requires year of whole star energy for singe travel. 90% of stars turned dark just because of that. I will call you "Dark Lord" from now.
I feel that Event Horizon is the most effective science fantasy movie produced. I've seen it once, which was enough to leave an indelible mark on me.
Event Horizon combines the supernatural with some elements of vaguely plausible science fiction. The movie comes together in a way that traces back to the present-day with a pretty bright line, especially in prop and spaceship design. It keeps you connected and then dumps the fantasy element on you hard. Disturbing but well done stuff. Deeper nerd-cut, it's a 40K prequel, if only unofficially.
"Deeper nerd-cut, it's a 40K prequel, if only unofficially."
Yup. Horrors of the warp could hardly be better brought to cinematic form. The actors are surprising high profile as well. An excellent "B" movie that owns itself 100%.
The first time I watched it I was away from work, sick, by myself in a dark room with no other distractions. Watching it like that left an indelible mark on me too. I lived it.
If the distinction that we're after is Science Fiction vs Science Fantasy, then I think it should focus less on how the science is handled (since that appears in both labels anyhow) and more on whether the Fiction is Fantasy.
The soul of scifi, science aside, is that it's a commentary on the present. 1984 feels like sci-fi despite not really having much to do with the science that appears in it because its a cautionary tale about where we're going if we don't change our ways.
So yes it's about whether elements of the story are connected to reality somehow, but I don't think the relevant elements are the scientific ones.
The way I like to think about this is Rick Altman's Sementic/Syntactic approach to genre. (a short summary here: https://introfilmgenres.wordpress.com/2014/09/09/the-semanti... )
Basically there are stock elements like space, lasers, aliens, etc. and there are thematic elements like themes of futurism, exploration, paradoxes, what is live? (these are just the ones I came up with off the top of my head) and just because a work has one of these doesn't make it part of that genre. Apollo 13 is set (largely) in space but I don't think people would call it science fiction. Star Wars is set in space but I have seen it argued thematically it is a western.
(I think in the book Film/Genre Altman added a third category but I don't remember it and thought the book was pretty confusing compared to the initial article he wrote.)
> Soft science fiction takes scientific concepts and theories and bases itelf on their practical applications. Things such as warp drive, hyperspace / subspace and jump drive are all based in Einstein’s timespace and related concepts. Specifically, warp drive and jump drive are all based around gravitational bending of timespace being used to move the space ship is part of instead of the ship itself – the ship thus travels faster than light without moving faster than light. Hyperspace is based on moving from realspace into theoretical dimension where distances are significantly reduced, and then popping back up.
I don't consider warp drive or hyperspace travel "soft" sci-fi at all. These things are still in the domain of mere speculation, however much "theory" you throw at them. On the other hand, laser weapons can be considered "soft", since we already have working prototypes. Albeit, they still aren't practical in the sense that laser weaponry is portraited in movies.
I believe it's hard to write convincing science fiction. There are many required know-hows to write quality works based on futuristic science. Writers often jump into pit-falls trying to incorporate speculative theories and pseudo-science into their work.
Laser weapons as such would be "hard" sci-fi precisely because we have working prototypes.
Basically:
hard sci-fi: we have concepts and understand how to apply them, but it may not be practical (e.g. Orion drive)
soft sci-fi: we have concepts but no idea how to apply them (e.g. antimatter power plants)
science fantasy: anything goes, technobabble as a veeneer for lack of science
But yes, writing convincing science fiction is hard.
I’ve personally come to the conclusion that the vast majority of sci-fi is sci-fantasy for the simple reason that I can’t convince myself fleshy humans have any meaningful place in the exploratory parts of the future. Novels featuring human crews of spaceships doing more than maintenance, let alone humans in combat scenarios are increasingly laughable. It’s 2023 and humans on crewed SpaceX flights already don’t do anything. Humans 100 years from now will be even less necessary, not more.
Any sci-fi recommendations where the fleshy meat bags are mostly useless? I enjoyed the earlier Murderbot novels, thought the Bobiverse was interesting, and have already read all the Culture and Polity universe books.
Children of Time/Ruin handles the "what are the living things for?" decently well, although does skate towards the "maybe nothing?" conclusion over time. Haven't gotten the third book so will see.
One of the three manifold books (Baxter), I forget which one, has a very beginning with your exact conclusion (no meat bags at all), and later a subsection/ending that at least doesnt have human fleshy meat bags.
I think there are two axis there. An axis of "hardness" and an axis of realness. With hardness being how scientific the approach is, and the other axis is how close the world is to the real world.
For example:
- Hard science fiction: The Martian
Mars is real, the laws of physics are the same as in the real world and are followed as closely as possible.
- Soft science fiction (here called science fantasy): Star Wars
The setting is presented like an unexplored part of the world we live in rather than something completely made up. The difference with the real world is that there are no strict rules, the laws of physics can be broken at any time if the story calls for it instead of making the laws of physics a plot point.
- Soft fantasy: The Lord of the Rings
Not only the world is made up, there is unexplained magic, but it doesn't have consistent rules. You are free to do as you like, to tell a good story is the only thing that matters.
- Hard fantasy: Mistborn series
The world is made up, there is magic, but the magic is essentially alternate laws of physics. A dragon may be present, but expect its anatomy, biology and "power source" to be explained in great detail.
The limitation in the case of science fiction is that something could be hard, we just don't understand the underlying rules of the universe that would make it possible.
The authors of course don't know this, as they are limited by current human understanding, but they could inadvertently be writing hard fiction that sounds soft to us.
It is a scale, not a pigeonhole. It seems that Mistborn is veering towards sci-fi, so I guess it will become fantasy-ish sci-fi compared to the more pure fantasy of the first book. I didn't read the latter books, but I guess it will never be pure, since it involves a magic system that is taken as an axiom, and I don't think there is any intention to tie it to the real world.
As someone who writes both science fiction and fantasy, I find this to be a good high-level review of the differences.
You could do a lot of quibbling and no-true-Scotsman arguments but it’s ultimately a fuzzy line where each work is categorized by preponderance of evidence.
star trek vs star wars is the clear distinction for me.
Not sure I agree with the premise that star trek has elements of science fantasy because the idea of humanity working together flawlessly is unrealistic. I mean he is right it is unrealistic, but by that token any fiction piece is technically "fantasy".
Star Trek is science fantasy with technobabble. It’s kind of like Rick and Morty really. The writers yell “science!” from time, but nothing that can actually be confused for it appears.
Incidentally when Star Wars started inserting technobabble explanations for fantasy elements like the Force (“midi-chlorians”) it was jarring. Nevertheless we can’t really say there is a difference in kind anymore and maybe never really was.
> Nevertheless we can’t really say there is a difference in kind anymore and maybe never really was.
There is a basic difference between Star Trek and Star Wars; but you're right, the level of technobabble deployed before using FTL is not it.
The difference is that whereas Star Wars is basically about a "hero's journey" - a young hero rises from obscurity, travels, learns, trains up and defeats the bad through their courage and skill, and lone derring-do (and inborn hero-quality).
Star Trek is basically about a Team. They might have a strong leader, but (almost always, leaving Michael Burnham plots aside) the victory is not achieved until they pull together as a crew, relying on each other, combining their talents and respecting each other's skills.
Star Wars has a single "evil empire" as the easy-to-spot antagonist.
Star Trek has many political factions, each with their own outlook and self-interests.
The second is IMHO a little more "grown up" than the first.
Both Star Trek and Star Wars treat high technology instrumentally as a source of excuses to cause, allow and embellish the desired plot. Exploration of science and technology is rarely important compared to exploration of characters and adventures.
In both settings artificial gravity reduces visual weirdness and special effects costs; ST replicators minimize boring and challenging starship logistics; SW mass cloning allows uniform, socially rootless and irrelevant armies in an absurdly varied universe; ST dilithium crystals are always available as something crucial to repair and acquire whenever a complication is needed or the Enterprise needs to be immobilized; SW hyperspace travel allows hopping between planets rather casually with enough flight time to offer interludes, while the "technically" similar ST warp drive is used more often to meet other ships in deep space and never to land on planets; and so on as the writers find convenient.
In science fiction, on the other hand, the story follows from a coherent and usually simple speculative premise: what if ants went to war with humans? What if someone had a submarine? What if a man became invisible, or extraordinarily fast? What would it be like to fly to the moon? What would it be like to spend generations of subjective time in a generation ship? Given the empirically proven forbidden magical knowledge contained in the Necronomicon, who might be interested enough in it to break into the Miskatonic University library? What kind of trouble would the Three Laws of Robotics prevent or not, and what alternatives to them might be considered?
Soft science fiction mixes rigorous speculation with other priorities but still takes it seriously. For example, long-range balloon travel in Mary Shelley's The Last Man is an atrophic and naive earnest extrapolation of the bleeding edge technology of the time that is clearly meant to establish that the tragic story is a vision of a far future (which, despite this little touch, still looks exactly like the 1820's); the balloon flights in Verne are much harder science fiction because technology is the main subject.
On the other hand fantasy makes the speculative elements arbitrary and therefore magical, hopefully compensating this sin of bullshitting with symbolism and consistency, a good story, etc.
I tried to be general enough to cover all of both sagas, even if the fit is approximately 90%.
I suspect that where Star Trek falls down (in the eyes of fans) is also where it does not adhere to the expected "success as a team" template, notably in ST:Discovery. When Trek tries to be more like Wars, it doesn't work.
>Not sure I agree with the premise that star trek has elements of science fantasy because the idea of humanity working together flawlessly is unrealistic.
It is, but the author didn't base their argument on that entirely. More so, Star Trek has never cared about science except as set-dressing for drama. People say Star Trek's warp drives are based on the Alcubierre drive but they really aren't - they don't behave the way an Alcubierre drive should. Along with all other Trek technology it's basically magic, nothing is bound by realistic physics. You have immortal, godlike beings like the Q, you have people coming back from the dead, psychic phenomena, time travel whose rules change with each episode. In the last episode of SNW, you had a weird space anomaly that made people sing like a musical.
I mean, you could put that in a D&D campaign and call it magic and it would work.
Really, all science fiction is a subset of fantasy. "science fantasy" is just science fiction that isn't actually about the science, which is the bulk of the genre.
"Really, all science fiction is a subset of fantasy. "science fantasy" is just science fiction that isn't actually about the science, which is the bulk of the genre."
All fiction is fantasy. Fantasy is the root of all fiction. As soon as one starts to change reality, by lying about what someone said or thinking about what you could have said, that's fantasy.
All labels are either useful fuzzy groupings or non-useful groupings. "High fantasy" is a label that gets you works closer in some conceptual space to The Lord of the Rings than to The Manchurian Candidate. "Isekai" is a very definite label that applies to The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe and does not apply to Space Quest, but it applies more to Space Quest than to most episodes of Star Trek (except The City On The Edge of Forever, which is definitely isekai, and some similar episodes.)
"Science fiction" is a marketing promise that if there are elves, there will be an evolutionary heritage for them and a reason that you don't notice them walking to your local pub (no guarantees about the walk back.) Spock is a kind of half-space-elf. The space elves split into two groups a long time ago -- the ones who subscribed to a rationalist approach, and the ones who had a religion based on passion.
There's no hard boundary between the two categories, since nearly every sci-fi is going to have fantastical elements to them. For example The Expanse authors have paid careful attention to the physics of space-flight, which they then use create their vision of "realistic" space battles. But they also have interdimensional stargates that instantly transport you across the universe. So hard sci-fi or fantasy? People can argue endlessly about which category a book belongs in.
Personally I think the most useful metric is "would my non-science geek fans like this?". Or to put it another way, is one of the primary appeals of this novel the extrapolation of realistic science. An appreciation that may be lost on someone who isn't as interested in that subject. My fantasy loving friend has been an interesting barometer in this way.
Didn't like The Martian therefore, it's Hard SciFi.
> Expanse authors have paid careful attention to the physics of space-flight, which they then use create their vision of "realistic" space battles
Yes and no. I'm told that if you do the math on the "Epstein Drive" fusion rockets that are in use throughout The Expanse, they are actually _impossibly_ effective regarding reaction mass.
Still, unlike the star gates, they don't take you across light-years in less than actual years, so they're "harder" than the later books. There is indeed no hard boundary.
Sure the engine tech is fantastical, but the "realism" is in the attention paid to g-loading, momentum, the vast expanse (heh) of space, etc. The authors have chosen strategically which aspects of their story to be fantastical and which parts to keep hard. And of course, every good sci-fi has to do this. Which is why I personally like the metric of "does part of the enjoyment of this story come from a (somewhat) realistic portrayal of real science". Conveniently categorized by my non-sciencey reading buddy. The more it does this, the "harder" it is. However that means the location of the fuzzy boundary is subjective, but we can probably rank different stories relative to each other. The Martian is harder than The Expanse is hard than Star Wars. Pretty clear I'd say. The Expanse may have unrealistic engine tech, but at least the spaceships aren't dogfighting Second World War style.
My opinion is that "star trek has strong elements of science fantasy" because everyone cruises around the galaxy at many multiples of the Speed of Light. There is routine FTL, with not even a nod to the effects on causality known since 1907 (1)
The shows plots are optimistic, promoting teamwork and an utopian social structure, IMHO that is far secondary to the "easy FTL" issue.
I love how “science fantasy” has shifted to the point where it is anything that includes FTL. Really shows what happens when we give nerds the internet.
Well, to put the above more compactly: my opinion is that FTL is a fantasy.
Not only does FTL ignore physics established since 1910, it is lazy to pretend that it's the same only faster: the truth of relativistic physics is far more complex, interesting and just plain weirder than that. If you're aiming at "sci-fi" not a horse opera in space, why not embrace that?
Because it’s not that deep and the realm of the possible shifts differently for scientists and writers and the general public. For a lot of people science fiction is defined by tropes and trappings but not so much the possibilities. For instance when I was a kid Star Wars was still considered sci-fi because it had lasers and spaceships. For a lot of people that’s all sci-fi means. But language evolves and so does our understanding of what a genre should include.
Like my favorite novel accelerando is about the singularity, a concept many nerds were interested in about 20 years ago. These days we’ve all kind of accepted it’s a silly thing that doesn’t make sense but does that mean we should reclassify all of the fiction written around it as a concept as science fantasy? At one point tech has advanced to the point where they’re cloning humans so cheaply that politicians are cloning multiple versions of themselves to go campaigning. Does this impossible scenario make those books science fantasy, even though they get a lot of the science right elsewhere? Because if the answer is yes then we’d probably need to rename all sci-fi sections in bookstores to science fantasy because that’s the majority of what’s in them: fun shit with a veneer of science behind it.
FTL between two planets with minimal relative velocity doesn't have any effects on causality. It's pretty much how Star Trek depicts.
Of course there are other scenarios where you can get backwards signaling. But some recent papers showed that in these cases, were they possible, then events would arrange themselves to be consistent overall, even though some events have causes from their futures.
I have no idea why you think that being able to warp from here to another star in a day would be somewhat useless. It is unlikely to be possible, but it would be very useful.
As for not having privileged frames of reference, that doesn't stop interactions with your environment from mattering.
For a trivial example, "at rest" is a privileged frame of reference for you. If you start moving in a different frame of reference you'll encounter weird things like "wind".
For a non-trivial example, the Standard Model says that there is no privileged ratio of masses between the electron and the proton in the laws of physics. The actual ratio of masses is set by an interaction with the part of the environment known as the Higgs field.
Astronomy shows that the fixed reference frame of the distant stars is environmentally privileged. It is also somewhat privileged physically as well. For example Mach's principle (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mach%27s_principle if you don't know it) says that we notice we are rotating when we are rotating relative to that reference frame.
We know of no way to react to this feature of our environment and get from here to there faster than the speed of light. But there is no fundamental principle of physics that we know of which says it is not possible - we just have no clue how it might happen.
The phrase "warp drive" is based on the idea of warping the structure of space-time around the ship such that it is now there when it was here. But in some sense it did not move.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive shows that this is, in principle, not a violation of general relativity. But that drive depends on finding something with negative mass. Most physicists don't think that that can be done. (But the phenomena of extracting zero point energy with the Casimir effect holds out a slender ray of hope for cranks who think that they have done it.)
So it isn't that I didn't notice that something was moving fast. It is that I know that the idea is to get from here to there by doing something other than moving.
> So it isn't that I didn't notice that something was moving fast. It is that I know that the idea is to get from here to there by doing something other than moving.
I think that this is a semantic distinction without any practical difference whatever. It would get you there before light would: you are outside of your light-cone, the end, game over. Word-games won't help with that.
I think that this is a semantic distinction without any practical difference whatever.
What you think doesn't matter.
General Relativity says that the Alcubierre drive would work if you could find a source of negative mass. It can get a vehicle from here to there, outside of its light cone. And yet that's not game over.
That's not a word game. That's mathematics applied to our best model of how space-time works.
If you want to imagine it, imagine ants crawling on a balloon. Motion is their crawling. But now start blowing up the balloon as it crawls. Distances are changing, and it isn't the ant doing it! Think this is unrealistic? The current model of the Big Bang says that things we see from 13.7 billion year old light are now 47 billion light years away from us. Our naive ideas of motion can't explain that. But general relativity does, and it is exactly parallel to the ants on a balloon image.
Now imagine coming along, pinching the balloon, having the ant walk over the fold, then unpinching the balloon. The ant got from here to there faster than it could possibly walk! That's the idea of a warp drive.
Is it possible? Probably not. But we know of nothing that forbids it other than the fact that we can't figure out how to do it.
It's time travel, so game over for causality. You're fixated on the details of how you get there, and it is irreverent.
No, it isn't necessarily time travel.
See https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37013305 for my presentation of the standard argument that FTL leads to causality violations. Note that you need it to be FTL in more than one reference frame to do it. That's why, as I pointed out in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37012594, FTL only in the fixed reference frame of the distant stars does NOT lead to causality violations.
Again, we have no reason to believe that this is possible. But if it were possible, the standard objections would not apply.
Word games with imaginary numbers.
No, that's tachyons. This one was just negative numbers.
Ok, so I'm watching myself watching myself leave. And so what? My "past selves" are just reflections of myself, I am not there anymore, it's just light that looks like me. The light is not going to change anything about the past, it's going to follow me to my next location until I stop and let it catch up.
Maybe I'm completely misunderstanding you or the problem - feel free to correct me, please. I'd really like to understand how causality is broken by FTL but could never grok it.
Yeah, that explanation was dead wrong. Here is the real one.
The phrase "at the same time" means different things in different inertial reference frames. So what is FTL to one observer, is traveling backwards in time to another. If you can warp from any reference frame, you can therefore travel backwards in time.
As for why "at the same time" changes meanings, let's adapt Einstein's example.
I'm in the middle of a moving train. You're on the train station. As we pass, lightning strikes right between us. Will the light from the lightning arrive at both ends of the train at the same time?
According to me, obviously. In my reference frame the train is not moving. Light has a constant speed. It will reach both ends at the same time.
According to you, obviously not. Light travels at constant speed, but the train is moving. Therefore the back of the train is moving towards the light, and the front is moving away. So the light gets to the back of the train before the front.
So when the person on the train says that an event in front and behind happened at the same time, the person not on the train says that the event behind happened before the event in front.
Now consider this. I'm on a spaceship with a warp drive. This is a great warp drive, travels instantly in whatever reference frame I'm in.. I warp forward a long distance - like a light year. I accelerate forward. I warp backwards and arrive back a bit behind where I started at. I decelerate, and I'm in my own past!
You left out the "accelerate forward" bit. That changes your reference frame. Without changing your reference frame, you don't get FTL to turn into time travel.
If you have FTL but on a time scale determined by one reference frame, then as I pointed out in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=37012594, no causality issues exist. You need FTL in 2 reference frames to create a closed time-like loop.
When you bring in gravity, you bring in general relativity. And now the phrase "at the same time as" becomes an entirely arbitrary choice of coordinate systems.
So it becomes complicated. But as long as FTL goes forward in time by some unique global definition of time, there is no causality problem.
It sure was fantasy to believe star trek universe wouldn’t have currency. It’s the one thing that irked me about the st universe, and part of why I loved Quark. He allowed the show to explore some of the ramifications of a universe that clearly still has scarce resources that need to be allocated. He almost managed to convince me that the federation could exist as a centrally planned militocracy without money, by showing where economics breaks down at the edges of the federation.
IMHO the premise of Star Trek economy is that all needs of an ordinary person can be fulfilled so cheaply it doesn't make sense to meter. The replicator uses a relatively minimal amount of energy. They still need to allocate resources - and even trade them among themselves and with others - but there's no need for an internal currency, they can power entire planets with their antimatter reactors using just a very small amount of fuel. Even the starships that are bending spacetime itself all the time are refueled only very occasionally, synthesizing some food and houses is nothing compared to that.
The only time when their economy breaks is when they're in an active warzone - and frankly, currency as we know it breaks down in a warzone too, you better have some cigarettes, food or weapons if you want to trade.
It's weird that so many other species in Star Trek also have replicators, antimatter, transporters, warp drive, etc. But somehow only humans managed to create a post-scarcity utopia out of it.
At least all the other species within Federation did the same, many of them before the Federation even existed or before humans did it, though many of them got Federation help after they developed the warp drive, thus eliminating the Prime Directive limit.
Then you have the species whose backstory is imperialism or fascism, that control many other species that only have lesser technology. In some episodes, but especially in the books that are considered canon, you can see them influencing (slowing or outright destroying) the development of sufficient technology of their vassals so they remain dependent on the masters.
But the masters themselves (Romulans, Cardassians, Klingons...) have the same post-scarcity economy as the Federation for their "full citizens".
What's interesting is the case of Bajor in DS9, which is developing the post-scarcity utopia after the Cardassians left them in ruins; with Federation help but not too much of it because they want to be independent.
I'd assume almost all Star Trek civilizations have their own "post-scarcity utopia", but it could be incomplete and/or not quite an utopia because of racism (e.g. Romulans), slavery, problematic culture (e.g. Klingon expected lifespan), villains, catastrophes and other Enterprise-level trouble.
Good guys like the Vulcans seem to have only personal and psychological problems, not material ones.
> He allowed the show to explore some of the ramifications of a universe that clearly still has scarce resources that need to be allocated.
I always thought it was interesting that the scarce resources you could get at Quark's were non-material (companionship, holodeck experiences, games, etc). The only defining characteristic of the substance the Ferengi use as currency is that it can't be produced by a replicator, which implies that everything else (including all the expensive bottles behind Quark's bar) could be.
How did Quark get the prime retail location on the promenade though? Why is plain simple Garak back in the corner?
The dirty secret is that Starfleet is actually a totalitarian military dictatorship, on the ground and in the air. That's how they got to take over the Palace of Fine Arts.
> How did Quark get the prime retail location on the promenade though?
Sisko asked Quark just before he left to remain where he was since the Cardassian occupation so there was some life on the promenade.
> The dirty secret is that Starfleet is actually a totalitarian military dictatorship, on the ground and in the air. That's how they got to take over the Palace of Fine Arts.
Starfleet is a paramilitary organization and Deep Space 9 is a military installation under their control (it has sufficient firepower to defend itself against many of the strongest warships), just like the starships - that's no secret nor is it dirty. There can be civilian elements on military bases. IRL there are civilians living within military areas in some countries - governed/commanded by the military.
But SF doesn't control the Federation, nor Earth or other civilian settlements. There is an episode where Sisko and Odo thwart the attempt of a rogue Starfleet admiral to get Earth under SF/his control.
I never had too much trouble with this because money has high overhead. If you only have a small number of items that are scarce enough to be rival goods (planets, starships, artisinal labor, concert tickets, whatever) then you will probably barter for them, often in favors and debt.
Ian M. Banks does a good bit on this in one of the Culture books (Look to Windward, I think) where the Culture "reinvents money" in the form of IOUs over access to a particularly popular live event.
I did have a problem with the retconning where the Federation was never even partially capitalist at all, because The Original Series is full of allusions to the fact that it is: An immortal being (Flynt) who buys his planet outright, miners who make more profits once they start working with the Horta, etc., etc.
Where I've landed on this one is that the difference is whether the characters understand the plot device (or investigate if they don't understand), not whether I understand it or whether it comports with my notion of what is possible. In Star Trek, the characters understand the unrealistic elements (warp drive, Heisenberg compensators, space communism, etc). In Lord of the Rings, they don't. In Star Wars, they understand some of the unrealistic elements (FTL travel, lightsabers, etc) but not others (everything Jedi or Jedi-adjacent).
DS9's first episode has a space alien organism living inside a permanent wormhole and it speaks to you through mind visions, exists at all points in time and can read your mind, put you in your own memories, etc. That happens in the first episode, the whole Star Trek universe is full of absolute fantasy.
Technically DS9 never say they exist at all points in time. DS9 says that they don't experience linear time.
One way I thought you could interpret that is that the wormhole aliens in fact only exist when the wormhole is open - their existence is only in those blinks of reality that they perceive, and as a result to handle the universe they have a vast predictive ability that looks like future-knowledge.
A robot with an advanced electromagnetic mind-control device... Or just a hacker hooked to Picard's Borg implants/bio-receivers. Or mental illness.
> DS9's first episode has a space alien organism living inside a permanent wormhole and it speaks to you through mind visions, exists at all points in time and can read your mind, put you in your own memories, etc.
They might be lying, or just think it's true. Or again, mental illness. Perhaps we're just seeing Sisko tripping balls.
For me personally, "The Andromeda Strain" (1971) feels like science fiction that is true to the term itself, especially in its adherence to scientific principles.
There are also other ways to slice science fiction besides the tired trope of hard/soft, like naturalistic/expressionistic which I write about here [1]. I find that viewing different axises like this can help question our assumptions about fiction.
This is like the intro philosophy exercise of trying to define a chair. You inevitably lose something when you boil things down. I think using multiple axis definitely gets you closer.
Its also why the politcal compass memes subreddit is popular. Simply adding a authoritarian/libertarian axis to the traditional left/right axis accounts for a lot more nuance in the political spectrum.
I like going into sub genres of Sci Fi (and liked when it was referred to as speculative fiction to cover the gamut, including Fantasy).
In particular, I love Military Sci fiction is a close cousin of Space Opera, but with a harder core emphasis on military logistics, strategy and tactics in a sci fi setting.
Time Travel Sci fiction.
Hard science fiction.
Hybrid worlds - think Proton / Phaze in Piers Anthony’s Split Infinity series, or his Incarnations of Immortality.
Social science fiction (think Stranger in a Strange Land).
Ditto. Speculative Fiction is a better label. It seems authors these days like to write to a specific set of sub genres and tropes. Narrowing their vision. I want cool space stuff, cool fantasy stuff, cool science stuff.
Tom Clancy's Hunt for Red October and Red Storm Rising.
I think most people usually don't consider Tom Clancy to be a science fiction writer, but these two books (his best two by far, FWIW) both feature speculative technology central to the story. Red October features a magneto-hydrodynamic drive for a submarine; MHD drives work for real in the small scale but without great superconductors it doesn't scale well to work for a full scale military submarine. In Red Storm Rising there are F-19 stealth jets based off rumors of the F-117. They get a few things wrong (smooth continuous curves instead of flat facets, poor stealth from below, armed with anti-aircraft missiles, etc) but on the whole they were reasonably grounded speculation.
If you're not convinced, here is a longer argument for Red October (the film) being hard science fiction: https://qntm.org/october
Not the parent but The Forever War by Joe Haldemann is a classic. (As is Starship Troopers).
For something different, think "navel warfare in space", the Lost Fleet series from Jack Campbell dealt with relativistic effects in space, with regard to combat, and the difficulties of predicting where/when people were.
2. I hereby authorize every hard scifi author to 1 (one) background impossibility per publication for the sake of plot development. Lack of FTL limits what stories can be told, and I'd rather have exploratory stories than 100% sticking to the rulebook. Break one rule to enable exploring the implications of all the others. Scifi is meant to be "what if" in nature.
See also: Technothriller (1) which is on the edge between thriller and sci-fi - e.g. An action movie with a computer virus bouncing off satellites to hack a moon mission could have little or no "fictional science".
James Bond in "Moonraker" 1979 fits this category.
IMO you can have fictional science without going into the fantasy realm, simply by keeping it consistent with our current understanding of the Universe. Alistair Reynolds has written some truly epic space opera that completely omits FTL travel, much to the benefit of the story.
Yea I'm being a bit cheeky. I just want to push back a bit against hard sci-fi. It can be really interesting to come up with new science as opposed to just coming up with new engineering given known science. Greg Egan books made me realize that.
>> Science fantasy stories tend to be space operas: focus on characters and their adventures rather than technology
Now I'd like to see a definition of 'space opera'. Here's Brian Aldiss' take on it: "Science Fiction is a big muscular horny creature, with a mass of bristling antenna and proprioceptors on its skull. It has a smaller sister, a gentle creature with red lips and a dash of stardust in her hair. Her name is Space Opera".
This is a great definition although arguably not as useful when you have to classify actual stories.
To me Space Opera is more about the plot (large scale, the main characters being important movers in the setting) while the Science Fiction vs Science Fantasy debate is more about the setting.
That is, I think it's possible to have Space Opera Science Fiction (imagine if you removed the protomolecule and its tech from the Expanse and just had the Earth/Mars/Belts political story) or Space Opera Science Fantasy (Star Wars of course is the most prominent example).
I think of Science Fiction as a very broad field with lots of sub genres like hard science fiction where the science is front-and-center and obeys our current understanding of physics to space opera that has a grandiose storytelling component and is epic in scale. I don't think any of these are firm categories and many books have aspects of many sub-genres
> I don't think any of these are firm categories and many books have aspects of many sub-genres
Agree. Some also vary as they progress. E.g. the Charles Stross 'Merchant Princes' sequence that starts out looking like a portal fantasy (people can jump to parallel worlds by looking at a special pattern) but (mild spoiler) becomes quite hard SF as the mechanisms behind the jumping become understood by the protagonists.
As a 90's kid, I used to be a sci-fi sort of nerd, when I read Asimov it was as if a prophet foretold of the future, I could not wait to earn enough money to buy my own robot.
That a robot would exist in my adulthood was presumed to be certain; I just needed to study to get a job good enough to afford one, like one would dream of a car they would buy when they would grow up.
I distinctly recall a memory from childhood, watching a report in CNN I think, around the year 2000, making predictions of the future, and they mentioned 2015 as the date when everyone would have personal robots. They had something earmarked for year 2005 and 2010 too that i don't remember, but 15 years later was the key moment for me.
And yet....
And I think that's when I came to the realisation that robots, and my sci-fi dreams aren't going to be.
Some how I stop reading Scifi and shifted to Fantasy; Harry Potter becoming popular globally (even in my corner of the world), around that time only sped up matters.
At least with dragons, I don't have any expectations of reality, only entertainment.
It irks me to read "real" Sci-fi now, my Doyle-ist mind refused to shut up about the Watson-ian explanations provided for various scientific phenomena.
I would much rather the mechanism behind a "portal" be from a spell rather than from a dark hole, or whatever, I just can't accept it now.
I had a different take on Asimov, in that his future was so far fetched and ahead that it seemed like just a different form of fantasy. Too much was hand waved away or just ignored that it might as well have been about magic.
I still enjoyed it, and I enjoy lots of fantasy books, but I drifted to more "hard" sci fi pretty quickly.
TFA uses 20 000 Leagues Under the Sea as a prototypical example of science fiction. I'm not sure that's a good example, because Jules Verne took his science and technology very seriously. As I recall, he didn't put fictional technology in his stories, but only things he had actually seen demonstrated at industrial expos. Verne used his plots more as support for descriptions of new technologies and scientific discoveries rather than the other way around.
The submarine he was inspired by never went deeper than 10 meters: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_submarine_Plongeur. It's still science fiction even if the speculative technology is based on very solid real-world evidence - that just makes it hard sci-fi.
As I understand the term, hard sci-fi is based on careful use of current scientific knowledge to propose plausible future technologies. Verne tried to use only technologies that had actually been implemented. So, under this definition, Verne's works were no more sci-fi than Tom Clancy.
> Verne tried to use only technologies that had actually been implemented.
No he didn't. The technology to build the submarine he imagined had not been implemented. Additionally, a cannon that could fire humans into space had not been implemented in 1865 when he wrote From the Earth to the Moon, and the interior of volcanos and the Earth's core had not been explored when he wrote Journey to the Center of the Earth.
I really think you're selling him short - he used cutting-edge scientific theories as inspiration for imaginative, speculative stories, he didn't limit himself to existing inventions. I have plenty of respect for Tom Clancy as well but they are very different writers with very different approaches.
The Nautilus said to be powered by Bunsen cell batteries in which the zinc is replaced by a sodium/mercury amalgam. The sodium is consumed in the reaction and replenished with sodium extracted from sea water (using coal power.)
As far as I can tell, this sodium/mercury modification to Bunsen cells is science fiction. Bunsen cells were real but not powerful enough to plausibly drive a ship so Verne spiced them up. Great book though.
That is what makes it hard science fiction. Everything that didn't exist could have existed if someone rich tried to build it. Or at least it seems reasonable, it is possible that they didn't know something then and so it wouldn't work. In 20000 leagues under the sea he may not have correctly accounted for water pressure, and it seems like there was more space on the sub than is reasonable.
Strict genre taxonomy is an unsolvable problem in my opinion. Take this business about being scientific as an example: sorry gang, but a functioning FTL drive is not one bit less magical than a wizard casting a fireball out of a magic wand while riding on a dragon. Even if you use the language of science to talk about it. Both are violations of the laws of physics, and I do not believe it's helpful to say that one impossible thing is less impossible than another impossible thing.
When it gets down to it, science fiction, and fantasy, and science fantasy, and urban fantasy, and every other genre is defined by this: where in the store can we put the book so that customers buy it? What tropes should we tell the artist to paint on the cover, so the customers who like that stuff know they should buy it? Stuff like that. In other words, think of genres only as artificial marketing concepts, it's the only thing that makes sense.
Science fiction is usually differentiated between hard sci-fi and space opera. The line is blurry. Hard sci-fi is, or tries to be, rooted in actual science. The science can be speculative (eg FTL travel, FTL communication, wormholes) that really have no basis in any actual theory but these still count as "science". The focus of the work is to explore the implications of some technology or science.
Space opera, on the other hand, doesn't focus on the science (speculative or otherwise). It's just "there". The focus is more on traditional melodramatic elements of narrative.
Hard sci-fi examples: pretty much anything by Larry Niven, Archur C. Clarke or Alastair Reynolds.
Space opera: Star Trek, Star Wars.
I see science fantasy as the mixing of sci-fi and traditional fantasy elements (eg wizards in spaceships) or where technology takes on the appearance of fantasy elements (eg mental powers that are essentially "magic").
There is some counter examples. Like Honorverse, which is clearly Space Opera on large scale, but at the same time at least started as rather hard sci-fi. At least if the consistency and realism inside acceptable technology is considered.
The Expanse is very much space opera. Don't get me wrong: I love the show. But the only real difference between it and Star Trek (science-wise) is that The Expanse has zero-gravity. It still has the inertialess movement common in space opera.
I didn't notice anything in The Expanse that contradicts the laws of motion, and it is the only fiction TV show I can think of that is careful in that way.
For example, more than once or twice a space ship is shown firing opposite the ship's direction of travel during the second half of the ship's trajectory. And I seem to recall a scene showing a ship (with only one large engine, which of course is the sensible way to do it) doing a flip at the half-way point to point the engine directly opposite to the direction of travel.
Accusing Paolini of "stealing" dragonriding from Mcaffrey made me dump all the limited credibility this post had for me. I love both series and have the capacity to comprehend very few ideas spontaneously appear in a vacuum without external influence.
There were also a large number of dragonriding stories written in between Dragonquest and Eragon. Did they steal from Anne, too? Is the omnipresence of elves and dwarves in modern fantasy all theft from Tolkien?
Did Anne steal dragons from $GeneralEuropeanMythology?
Did she steal the idea of colonizing other planets from early scifi writers?
Did she steal the idea of aliens causing a galactic war early scifi writers?
Dumb take, bad opinion. All writing is derivative. The tone of Pern and the tone of Inheritance are substantively different.
Tolkienesque elves and dwarves are only superficially similar to those mythological creatures which inspired them, with the subsequent prevailing forms used throughout fantasy being clearly derivative if not outright copies of his work (or as close as possible without violation of IP).
Your whole position seems to be born of the same "dumb take" behavior you're supposedly decrying, no?
> Your whole position seems to be born of the same "dumb take" behavior you're supposedly decrying, no?
It's not stealing, so no. Figure it out.
Writers synthesize ideas based on the ones they already experienced and their own personality. To suggest that yes, it is stealing, is to have a fundamental misconception about the function of the creative process.
The form is explicitly that defined by tolkien, with so many elements not found in the traditional forms and elements missing that are found in the traditional forms to be viewed as explicitly copied from Tolkien.
Your position is like saying that it wouldn't be any form of IP theft to use all the elements of Diablo IP including names, culture, historical features and other aspects so long as it wasn't actually in the world of Diablo... and I'm pretty sure the IP law is settled on that matter, isn't it?
There are definitely cases where I've seen elves ripped off so thoroughly that it was clear the author put zero thought into them as a race/species, lifting them straight out of Rivendel. That's obviously not cool.
However, I don't think most instances of elves as Tall Fair Folk hit that bar of being straight-up lifted. I don't see very many instances of "names, culture, historical features" being taken from Middle Earth, and that would OBVIOUSLY be unacceptable.
> I'm pretty sure the IP law is settled on that matter, isn't it?
Yeah, it sure is! The owners of the Tolkien empire are quite active about pursuing litigation against those who infringe upon their rights. They even win a lot of cases! However, I've yet to hear of a storm of litigation sweeping through the fantasy writing industry involving them going after theft of species in peoples' stories. I'd be super, super interested to see some cases where this has happened, if you believe it's been settled some other way.
Elves were not tall folk, that came from an interpretation of icelandic folklore where he lumped that variant in with Giants... in almost all traditional lore elves were either diminutive like Gnomes or were at most the dame size as humans. Many other features are also from specific variants that he amalgamated in but most would not consider to be in the "main" folklore.
I had a longer response but accidentally refreshed the page and have no interest in typing that much again on my phone.
As for cases, DnD changed thier "races" in response to violations raised in court iirc. They pushed right to the line as close as possible and that was long before we reached modern IP law which is exceedingly more stringent than back in the 80s, right?
> As for cases, DnD changed thier "races" in response to violations raised in court iirc. They pushed right to the line as close as possible and that was long before we reached modern IP law which is exceedingly more stringent than back in the 80s, right?
Yes. They also go after orgs that were printing commemorative coins and succeeded. In this instance, they went after TSR for straight ripping things for their game.
That still doesn't address what I was referring to, however. I haven't seen any push by the Tolkien Society to go after this alleged "stealing" of Tolkien's ideas through the inclusion of Tolkien-distinct elves (and they are very distinct from their source, as you pointed out) or other species.
Which is interesting, because they Tolkien Society actually has the audacity to claim you're not allowed to write fanfiction:
"[...]This means that you cannot copy any part of Tolkien’s writings or images, nor can you create materials which refer to the characters, stories, places, events or other elements contained in any of Tolkien’s works."
Aside from being so absolutely full of themselves, they still aren't engaging in attempting to stop authors from "stealing".
Because they have no legal basis for it and know it.
Because it's not actually "stealing" when authors adopt them into their worlds if they're not, as you said, taking names, culture, [and] historical features. There's no legal grounds and they know it.
The Tolkien Estate recently rewrote their "rules" in the last couple years, reflecting a much-stronger stance on derivative works. And yet, I don't think you'll be able to show me many instances of them "protecting their IP" against authors.
Those operating the estate have a fiduciary duty to the stakeholders, meaning they can't pursue litigation where costs would exceed potential value nor when it would have a more significant negative impact on value than protections.
From this most instances of infringement do not justify legal action as the parties in violation have little to no money (fan fictions etc. Can't get blood from a stone) and in many cases the pursuit of legal action would "harm the brand" in a fashion that would far exceed the value (a 1% reduction in consumer engagement is hundreds of thousands if not millions in value).
Copyright is not the same as trademarks, you don't have to pursue every single violation in order to maintain protections.
So what you're saying is you have no objective measure of theft occurring.
You're basing your entire position on an opinion that is very, very clearly not shared by most of reality.
As I said, there are very clear instances of "appropriation", but most occurrences I've seen aren't, in my opinion.
Example: Paolini's elves are clearly appropriation. I also hated the elves in Inheritance because of that, for what it's worth. The elves in The Elvenborn, as another example, aren't. Both instances resemble Tolkien elves visually, but one copies a large amount of cultural overtones and racial "personality", and the other's written by Andre Norton and Mercedes Lackey.
If I write a book with a creature I call trolls and they are giant blue hairy with small shark like teeth, a "design" with nearly no association to extant trolls, and that is then appropriated by damn near everyone your position is that they didn't engage in theft, right?
You could see how any author would find such an assertion absurd, right?
Just because it's legal doesn't change what it is. We have plenty of types of "theft" in the _colloquial_ sense that are not theft under law.
> Just because it's legal doesn't change what it is.
Purely opinion. It is well-acknowledged that authors build off ideas they have experienced. Tolkien was a brilliant and inspiring writer who inspired many other writers.
That's how it works. Humans take in ideas, add some twists, and share them.
The key difference to me in science fantasy vs pure fantasy is generally around whether mass production can be applied to its distinguishing superpowers.
The force in star wars can't be manufactured or welded in a manufactured manner.
Magic in dungeons and dragons must be wielded by wizard specialists because it's application can't be industrialized for (insert setting reason).
Because industry is about taking novel techniques and bringing them to the masses. The force and magic is about exclusivity in wielding the power, not being generally available to the public.
I get the impression that a significant percentage of people can't tell the difference between science fantasy and science fiction. Due to a lack of science education or understanding of technology or cognitive ability or who knows.
The problem is that near everything in 40k has been a part of a classic or hard scifi at some point.
Its a shit dichotomy. Authors should be able to play around with demons, philosophy, psychics etc etc, without being slapped in the face with some kind of demeaning label designed to lessen them.
The real point of comparison is shit vs good. 40k is largely terrible. Dan Abnett can string a yarn together, but Graham McNeil and most other authors coming up behind him are hot trash. This isnt just because Abnett can write, but because he has a lot of experience outside the Black Library can spread his wings and grow the thing in new directions without being hampered by some nard yelling "lore" like it means anything.
My touchstone is something like Dying Earth. If you can weave a story that contains unicorns, grues and wizards and still have it be an exploration, a what if, wizards controlled the world immediately before the explosion of our dying star, its legit. I really hate labels. But its legit scifi, its legit fantasy. Its legit critical mans thinking material.
But you can have all those same elements, write it poorly, and its at best popcorn trash.
I agree that it is definitely Science Fantasy. All of humanities memories somehow encoded in DNA and interstellar space travel from taking too many drugs. It also has force fields and anti gravity.
The fact it was a direct influence for Star Wars is more evidence that they belong in the same category.
> All of humanities memories somehow encoded in DNA
Why not? The Dune universe is in a very far future, the books are happening 10 thousand years after humanity has been practically completely replaced by AIs and mind-uploaded humans for another 10 thousand years. The factions in Dune perform extensive bioengineering, and that is after the anti-computer revolution.
Why couldn't the computers/people with computers/people-computers before the revolution bioengineer the genetic memory? Or the people who performed the transition back to biological life, perhaps as a way to ensure nobody ever forgets the 10 thousand years of slavery?
> interstellar space travel from taking too many drugs
Interstellar travel in Dune is done using the Holtzmann effect, basically a warp technology. The spice gives them precognition abilities that are necessary to not crash into something while warping.
There is some meta-level irony in that this sort of classification is scifi in itself; in reality 90% of stuff labeled as hard scifi is more like soft scifi, and the distinction between soft scifi and sci fantasy is somewhere between subjective, arbitrary, and contextual.
My sloppy distinction between hard sci Fi vs soft/fantasy sci Fi is how much attention is paid to artificial gravity, and how serious of a hazard the vacuum of space presents. In space at least.
I like this, although I feel like there is something missing. The Martian, for example, is fantasy in that it imagines a Mars climate that doesn't exist and can never exist.
I'm wrapping up the Expanse series and I would consider it soft science fiction, veering into sci-fi.
(mild spoiler? Maybe?)
On one hand, they have "epstein" drives which aren't FTL but constantly accelerate. Caring about gravity and physics is huge in the books, as are components of biology.
On the other hand, the protomolecule and its associated story elements are all completely made up. There is no plausible explanation for its existence in our universe.
The series is very much about humanity, the characters, and how the characters have developed in the incredible lifetime that occurs through the series. In that way, it is very much "Space Opera" and not sci-fi.
But when I'm telling my friends what I'm reading, I don't want to explain "space opera" so I just say sci-fi. I guess I'm not helping.
Likewise, Battlestar Galactica is definitely space fantasy (thanks season 4).
I think for layman (like me) a question to ask to make the distinction is just to ask "if we replace all the science element in the scifi with magic, would anything change?"
In star wars the force could simply be magic, light saber is the magic swords, space travel is portal between worlds, aliens is just magic species (yoda is a fairy), and almost nothing of the story or any core message would change.
Now can you say the same for say, Black Mirror? Not really, removing the "science / tech" from those stories will drastically change the meaning of the story and how the audience will relate to it.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" as Arthur C. Clarke said.
Core of good science fiction is to make that magic relatable and still somewhat convincing that "in the future, this might be something we would just call science"