This might end up a great debate but I’m posting it here in Cafe Society because it deals with science fiction.
There was a recent discussion about Kubrick’s Napoleon. It got off topic when we started talking about the aliens (or robots) in Artificial Intelligence: AI by Stephen Speilberg, and the aliens making it fantasy. I am bringing that discussion over here.
Clearly the popular opinion is that anything with metal, plastic, space, and advanced machinery is science fiction. But what happens when you bring something important into the story that defies current knowledge, like aliens? I say that aliens as of today’s knowledge do not exist. Therefore stories that include aliens are fantasy. Stories based on science like Jurassic Park or Gattaca are Sci-Fi. Therefore, Star Wars is fantasy. Star Trek is Fantasy. Woah! Hold on there! Star Trek is fantasy??? Yes. Aliens are a very important element in the Star Trek universe. Perhaps the MOST important part of the Star Trek universe. So if you think that aliens = fantasy then Star Trek is fantasy.
I follow the teachings of one of the pre-eminent SCI-Fi writers living today: Orson Scott Card who wrote in his book: HOW TO WRITE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY Pagse 20-25 about the differences in Sci-Fi and fantasy. He says:
Clearly, following this set of rules, since there is no “force”, Star Wars is fantasy. But is Star Trek? I say yes because even though it is possible for aliens to exist, we have no scientific evidence as to what they look like or what they are capable of. We have to make guesses. And you can’t make an educated guess without any evidence to back it up. We have NO evidence of aliens existence. And the Klingon and Vulcan races are 100% creative fantasy. Most certainly the “Q” are.
Do I need to clarify that I am speaking of the separate sub-genre HARD sci-fi when I say aliens are fantasy? Can aliens exist in regular sci-fi? Or do you think that aliens can even exist in hard sci-fi? What are your opinions? Does anything with metal, plastic, space, and machinery automatically become science-fiction, even if an important part of the story contains something that is impossible in our universe, like the force? I’d like to hear some logical evidence about why you believe that aliens do or do not make the story sci-fi or fantasy.
Oddly enough, I’m actually somewhat qualified to answer this question.
I’m currently taking a course called “Modern Science Fiction: Alien Encounters.”
The first few weeks of the semester have been devoted to defining SF as a genre, especially in relation to Fantasy.
The difference lies largely in the presentation. SF asks you to accept the presented story as a possibility, while Fantasy does no such thing. A Fantasy novel is set in a universe where real-world laws simply do not apply. In a fantasy novel, the third son of a farmer can become a king, and carpets can fly.*
Aliens are a long accepted staple of SF literature. War of the Worlds, regarded as one of the earliest works of SF, set this standard more than a hundred years ago (along with flying saucers and, of course, the Death Ray).
Paraphrased from an essay which I do not currently have in front of me.
Crap. I just skimmed over that quote, which basically said the same thing I just did.
In any case, there are no “rules” in determining genre. They’re guidelines which establish a set of expected condition between the the author and the reader.
Sounds like an interesting course Johnny Bravo. If the school you attend happens to be in the Chicago area I’d be interested to know about it and maybe give it a shot just for fun…sounds like my kind of class.
I always thought of fantasy as a sub-genre of sci-fi. To my way of thinking they both create ‘un-real’ worlds. Whereas straight fiction uses the earth and what is already here or in our history sci-fi/fantasy extrapolate, bend reality and invent what hasn’t happened yet.
Sci-fi’s unreal worlds exist within the realm of possibility…our universe with science as a basis for what’s going on…even if sometimes often far fetched (ala Star Trek transporters). Fantasy takes it a step further away by creating a wholly made-up world with its own rules of how things work and no real necessity to support the mechanisms behind those workings…magic just works they way they say it does, don’t ask why (Star Trek transporters are equivalent to hocus-pocus but they try and use some science to support their operation and leave the rest to suspension of disbelief that it is just advanced technology we don’t know and we go with it cuz their cool and sparkly).
The point, Whack-a-Mole, is that Star Trek’s effort to give us scientific reasons for the transporters working is the difference between Sci-Fi and Fantasy.
In a Fantasy universe, there wouldn’t be any bother. It would be hocus pocus and abra cadabra. You’re somewhere new.
And the course is at UF, so it’d be quite a commute for you.
**Actually both sci-fi and fantasy are sub-genres of the genre Speculative Fiction. Horror is another sub-genre. Alternative History is a sub-genre of sci-fi. Interested? Harry Turtledove. What would happen if time-travelers gave AK-47 rifles to the rebels of the Civil War? Read The Guns of the South: A Novel of the Civil War **
Okay then, should stories that include strangely evolved aliens with no explanation about how they evolved be fantasy?
Only if their evolution is deliberately counter to what is known, or they’re stated to have not evolved but sprung fully formed into the universe.
Assumption of evolution, with no explaination of the mechanism is SF. Description of the evolution is complicated SF. Non-workable description of the evolution is badly thought out SF.
Magical creation is fantasy. Although, actually, a fantasy setting could assume natural evolution as well.
Apparently that depends on the definition of fantasy and science-fiction. If you stick to your definition, then it is fantasy. However, I think that the explanations in Starwars and the likes are of a scientific nature, so they are science-fiction. Since stuff like Heisenberg-Compensators circumvents currently accepted scientific theories, I´d say Startrek is heavy on the fiction part, yet it still is not fantasy. Fantasy needs (imho, ymmv) supernatural aspects.
Why would there be an explanation of how they evolved? That might be germane to very small percentage of stories, but an explanation of their specialization hardly seems necessary just because they have a different physiology as humans.
Science fiction is fantasy fiction that assumes that the explanation behind the fantastic events is based on science – our current and potential future knowledge of the way the uniververse works.
Fantasy assumes the explanation is not scientific.
Since aliens are assumed to have a scientific background (usually evolution), they are science fiction.
In addition, certain tropes are automatically put in one genre or the other, whether they’re truly scientific or not. Thus, space ships, aliens, time travel, telekenesis, teleportation (using a machine), etc. are markers of science fiction while ghosts, witches, wizards, magic, vampires, etc. mark a work as fantasy.
Ultimately, though the differentiation is extremely unimportant.
As a fellow pro I have to agree with Chuck. Pros generally don’t care one whit about the distinction. They see the whole fantasy/sf business as a continuum, with a messy gray area in the middle. In fact, the good ones see it in multiple dimensions, adding in magic realism, alternate history, horror, surrealism, modernism and post-modernism, utopias and dystopias, and all the other varieties of non-mimetic fiction.
The people who care are the marketing types, who have to know whether to slap a unicorn or a spaceship on the cover along with the big-breasted cleavage-baring female.
Some fans get very persnickety about this too: about any editor of a “science fiction” magazine what happens when a “fantasy” story is published. Or when a “fantasy” wins a Hugo Award as “Best SF”.
Definitions in the field have been argued about for decades, but mostly the way things are argued here on this Board: because people like to argue.
Bah. Both supposed “sub-genres” were invented by people who wanted to mock one story of a genre while supporting another. “Speculative Fiction” is an utterly unnecessary nomenclature… it simply adds another level of specificity where none is needed. Leave it at “fantasy” and “sci-fi”… and dump this “hard” sci-fi crap.
It’s really simple: Science fiction deals with fictional science. It doesn’t need to follow known laws of physics… it’s free to invent its own fictional laws. However, the difference between sci-fi and fantasy is that the fictional laws in sci-fi need to jive with known laws, AND remain internally consistent (that’s science for ya). In fantasy, no such restriction exists… the author is free to do whatever the hell he or she damn well pleases.
I’ll start off by saying that I am beginning to change my mind. But it needs to be clear that the aliens’ evolution was based on science. They don’t necessarily need to give the family tree or even any scientific evidence. But if the aliens are too far removed from reality, like in E.T. or Aliens, it seems more like fantasy to me.
Well you are a pretty rare breed. Card is a highly respected teacher of Sci-Fi and Fantasy. http://www.hatrack.com/ is his official site, which he maintains very well. If you don’t know, and you might not since you are not a fan, he is working on the conclusion to the Alvin series… finally. You will be able to read the first third of “The Crystal City” on his website. He has 6 of the 14 parts available now.
Anyway, he teaches several classes. I’ll quote his website if I’m allowed:
Sure, being a teacher doesn’t mean you aren’t a hack. But he is respected. I mean, he broke the Hugo/Nebula award barrier. And he won the Hugo award for the How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy book I am referencing.
**I respectfully disagree. Time travel and interstellar war I think could be possible. I don’t recall mental telepathy in Ender’s Game. Oh. I remember… between the aliens. Well, of course since I think the aliens in EG are works of fantasy and the book is entirely based on their existence, the book “must” be fantasy. But I am beginning to change my mind, since his aliens are supposed to have been evolved from a hive-like species. This is that educated guess thing in action. Telepathy is another story. But it wasn’t an essential aspect of the alien species. They could have conquered the humans without it. Of course they invented the ansible starting with that technology so maybe it is important. Anyway, I’ve always thought of Ender’s Game as a fantasy anyway, even though it’s labeled Sci-Fi. Card would probably disagree with me about it though. I can see that while re-reading that part of his book. So I am thinking about it more and this is why I created a new discussion about it. I’m not too closed minded to change my mind. But I don’t think I can completely allow aliens enough to say that the movies in the alien series and E.T. are science fiction. They are 100% fantasy. But I think I’m starting to be convinced about Star Trek.
BTW. Even if Ender’s Game is fantasy, that doesn’t mean he hasn’t written sci-fi. Homecoming is pure sci-fi. And I loved it BTW. He also wrote a time travel book about some people keeping Christopher Columbus from discovering America. Pastwatch. Granted, it had more history than science, but he did have some rules about the time machine that made sense in his universe. So, yes I do say he deserves the status based on his other books. And I am not the only person who thinks of Card as a great writer because of his writing style and ability. You are the odd man out in that respect. I respect your opinion. But you are wrong anyway. And anyway, just because you don’t like his sci-fi doesn’t mean it isn’t sci-fi.**
The key words there are popularly accepted definition. Hard sci-fi has always stuck to scientific possibility. Granted, Larry Niven is one of the great hard sci-fi writers and he deals with aliens all the time. Furthermore, you are probably right about Card disagreeing with me. The point he makes in his book is that the writer needs to set up the rules of the universe early on. And he seems to generally agree with the popular opinion.
I didn’t know that you could be educated on aliens. Sorry, I just couldn’t resist. There is a difference between “educated guess” and fantasizing. Most space aliens, like in the Alien series, are 100% fantasy. Some, like in certain species of Star Trek, have some scientific foundation. But not many.
Will do. But calling “bullshit” doesn’t disprove my argument. It’s true that some grounding in science lends some credibility to the aliens existence, but how many authors do this in reality? I’ll check out the authors you suggested. And they might fill the bill. But most “sci-fi” writers just dream up the alien. So I’ll say that it might be that the aliens presence itself doesn’t necessarily make it a fantasy story. But the lack of scientific explanation, if they are too far fetched, does.
Thanks for the confidence. Chewbacca is among the reasons, but so is the force. The new “scientific” reasons for the stupid little creatures (midycloreans or whatever) that make up the force are too late in the storyline to make the difference. The force in the first movie was a rule that explained a magical presence in this otherwise popular-sci-fi movie. The first movie set the genre: fantasy.
Read below.
I don’t know about the science being the same as Star Trek. We can clone animals now. We can’t even imagine a way to transport anything so far. Still, transporters and warp travel have been explained in great depth in ST so they aren’t the reasons I said that ST is fantasy. It’s the aliens. There are some evolutionary examples of how certain species evolved, but they are still guesses, and the guesses aren’t based on science rather than creativity. Again, ST is more about the interraction between alien races than the scientific principles of the transporter and faster than light travel. Still, just because we don’t have the evolutionary proof of the Klingon’s existence, their evolution is implied. So maybe ST is sci-fi after all.
** That only works if they were robots. These beings just appeared with absolutely no explanation whatsoever. Granted that gives evidence that they were robots, but they sure did look a whole lot like tall greys. That’s why I thought they were aliens at first. They were too “perfect”. They were so far removed from what we recognize as human or robot and there was no “bridge” between them and the robots we saw throughout the movie that they appeared alien to me. Sure it was a movie about robot intelligence so it made sense to make them robots. But I needed to see the evolution to make that connection. I’m sure when (if) you ever see the movie you will see them as robots, simply because of this discussion. Sorry for ruining this sappy movie for you.
Conclusion: It might me that aliens per-se don’t make the story fantasy. And their presence and evolution don’t necessarily need to be explained to make the story sci-fi. But there needs to be something that keeps them from being fantastical. The Ferengi, Vulcans, and Klingons do this. I can see each of them evolving into the beings they are. I’m not exactly 100% changing my mind. The aliens in the alien series are pretty outrageous. I’m sure the rest of you “experts” agree that their evolution is implied. Shoot, maybe it was explained in the series. I didn’t really like the movies all that much so I only saw them once. But they are the only examples I can think of, besides “Q” and other god-like races in Star Trek. But then again, they are supposed to be super-highly evolved.
I don’t know. Maybe I am totally wrong after all. I’ll have to sleep on it.
Maybe I should ask to change my username to “back-pedal.”
Assuming the dichotomy asserted in the OP (and provided the caveat that “SF” vs. “fantasy” is more of a continuum as described by Exapno Mapcase with lots of gray area in the middle), I would say that aliens can be either SF or fantasy depending on how they’re handled by the author.
Examples: The cheela in Robert L. Forward’s Dragon’s Egg and Starquake? SF, without question. He extrapolates from modern knowledge about high-energy astrophysics to create a species that could be, and he is extremely careful about staying consistent and never violating either his rules or what is presently known in the scientific field. By contrast, the singing blue lawn mower in Piers Anthony’s… uh… don’t remember which book… anyway, that’s pretty much fantasy, as far as I’m concerned, because it doesn’t seem to be based on much of anything, and is invented out of whole cloth so Anthony can explore whatever ideas have come to mind.
If aliens are from other planets, then it’s science fiction. If they’re from other planes of existance, then it’s fantasy and they’re referred to as demons.
Star Wars is a fantasy story in a science fiction setting, just as Blazing Saddles is a comedy in a Western setting.
Only in the worst fantasy novels do characters say “abra cadabra” and things happen. In the rest, characters spend manna, tap into the energies of the universe, manipulate the four Elements, make deals with powerful entities, shape contingencies, unlease chaos and rip holes in the fabric of the universe. Good fantasy has as much logic, science and internal consistency as science fiction - except the logic is deliciously twisted, the “science” is made up (and thus will never be proven obsolete) and the writers don’t have to worry about that pesky external consistancy, whoich is why, while most science fiction dates itself hoplessly within a decade or three, good fantasy lasts forever.
Fantasy is the genre for writers with poor research skills and excellent imaginations.
This bit about evolution makes me think back to a high school teacher (giving us extra writing conferences outside of class) who insisted we offer explanation for why animals could talk in the fairytales we wrote for another teacher’s assignment… In order to enjoy anything other than non-fiction you at some point have to accept that certain things are the way they are because the author say so. If you need a detailed “why?” for everything, fiction isn’t going to be very satisfying.
As you’ve pointed out yourself, we have absolutely no knowledge about how life might evolve on an alien planet. Considering that, how can you say that the xenomorphs from Alien it “too far removed from reality?” What about the xenomorphs, specifically, is not “based on science”?
I don’t need Card’s resume, thanks. I know he’s highly respected. I said as much in my last post. It doesn’t change the fact that his reputation rests entirely on the popularity of Ender’s Game. Nothing else he’s ever written, not even (or especially) its direct sequels, has had the sort of impact EG did. If you want to find someone to support your idea that aliens aren’t sf, you’d do better to find someone who’s entire reputation as an sf writer doesn’t come from a novel he wrote about humans fighting BEMs.
Most physicists would disagree with you.
How does the aliens evolving from a hive-like species make them more realistic? How is that more grounded in science than any other sf alien?
How are the xenomorphs from Alien any more or less grounded in real science than Q from Star Trek?
No, it just means he hasn’t written any good science fiction.
You might think he deserves that status based on his other books, but I assure you that he would not have that status, were it not for Ender’s Game.
No, I’m not. Card has no particular reputation as a stylist. He’s not a bad writer: he has a good, clear prose that doesn’t interfere with the ideas he is trying to communicate, but he doesn’t have any particularly unique authorial voice. Stylisticly, he’s indistinguishable from the thousand other post-Hemmingway modernists. It’s his ideas and especially his characters that propelled Ender’s Game to its place in the sf canon.
I never said it wasn’t sf. You’re the one making that argument.
Definitions are meaningless unless they’re widely accepted. If you want to define science fiction so as to exclude aliens, that’s your perogative, but no one, and I mean no one is going to know what the hell you’re talking about.
There’s nothing particularly outrageous about the xenomorphs. They’ve got a radically different physiology, but an alien should be radically different. Star Trek is a perfect example of how not to do aliens in science fiction: they’re all humanoid, they all speak English (you want to talk fantasy? Two words: universal translator), they tend to be two-dimensional representations of a human trait (Vulcans are logical, Klingons are angry, etc.) and, of course, they can all interbreed with each other.
At any rate, no you can’t study aliens directly, but you can study biology, to get an understanding of how life works on a basic level. You can study sociology, to understand how human society works. You can combine those studies with geology and astronomy, and start forming hypotheses on how life might develop under radically different circumstances than those found on Earth. This is what science fiction is all about: what if? What if life arose on a planet with a methane atmosphere? How would creatures who’s primary interactions are based on pack dominance create a modern society? On one level, science fiction is an attempt to guess what the future will be like, including what sort of life we might meet out in the galaxy. Just because the authors are mostly likely going to guess wrong doesn’t mean they aren’t writing science fiction.
No, my reasoning disproves your argument. Calling it bullshit just emphasizes how wrong I think you are.
Define “too far-fetched.” Do you think “real” science fiction should have aliens that are very humanlike? Isn’t it pretty unlikely that two life forms evolving of the course of billions of years, in totally different enviroments, on planets thousands of lightyears apart, would both end up with the same number of limbs?
Well, you aren’t totally mistaken. There is a limit to what you can get away with before you’ve crossed irrevocable into fantasy. It’s just that you’re raising the bar ridiculously high. True, most authors don’t put a lot of thought into the science behind their aliens. But most authors don’t need to. There are still enough unknowns in science to allow them a lot of wiggle room when it comes to creating alien spiecies. In this case, out ignorance works in their favor. As you’ve pointed out, we don’t know anything about “real” aliens. Rather than limiting authors, this frees them up considerably, because there are fewer contraints. Aliens with acid for blood? Could be possible: we don’t know enough to say one way or the other.
Into the rejection pile, because the marketing gurus wouldn’t know how to place it.
[This, sadly, is exactly how it would happen in real life unless you are already a superstar.]
[How do I know this? Because I have, literally, explicitly, had a {non-fiction} proposal that had already been accepted by the editor rejected after the marketing meeting members decided they didn’t know what area of the bookstore it should be shelved in. This is extremely common in the publishing world these days -fiction and non-fiction.]
And anyway, just because you don’t like his sci-fi doesn’t mean it isn’t sci-fi.**