# Science Fiction --OR-- Fantasy **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [December 2, 2013, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264 "2013-12-02T03:33:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 15\ **Page:** 7
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 8:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/121 "2013-12-05T08:22:34Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > Verne, Hale, and others had written stories about using real means of getting into space decades earlier\*. Lots of people (many before Wells) had written stories about using the Imaginary Science of anti-gravity to get into space well before Smith. It might not be “hard” sf in that sense, but the contradictions weren’t obvious in those pre-relativity days. There were lots of options besides airy-fairy “Astral Projection” before Smith. That still doesn’t make Smith “damn hard sf”. That’s why I said “stars” not space. I was particularly thinking of “Voyage to Arcturus” which is from nearly the same time as Skylark of Space. From the Earth to the Moon is hard sf compared to going in a balloon. Verne certainly knew it was impossible. I just reread Journey to the Center of the Earth, where the heat problem was addressed directly. Verne could find a way around that impossibility - around massive acceleration, not so much, so he ignored it. Whether something is hard sf or not depends on when it was written. Stories in Astounding with slide rules in space are hardly hard sf today. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 8:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/122 "2013-12-05T08:25:54Z")
> [@Alessan](#): > > It’s a story about how society deals with complex technological systems. Hence, people. I’m not sure many who do character based fiction would consider stories about masses of humanity stories about people. In that case “Last and First Men” is about people also. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 8:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/123 "2013-12-05T08:32:48Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Perhaps I should have phrased it better. Epitome of a style of science fiction, maybe. But space opera is coterminous to science fiction in many peoples’ eyes. And after Star Wars and Star Trek destroyed the print field, it’s hard to disagree. How many times have we heard: It’s not science fiction, it’s about people! Space opera is the movies with big budgets. Syfy channel scifi is one thing changed done on the cheap. In any case, the movies based on Dick’s books are hardly space opera. From what I read in the general press, sf (sorry, scifi) is all about movies, and those who write about it seem to not really be aware that books exist, let alone be aware of the history of sf. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 8:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/124 "2013-12-05T08:57:52Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I’m not sure many who do character based fiction would consider stories about masses of humanity stories about people. In that case “Last and First Men” is about people also. “Characters” is not the same as “people” - literature can be about the human condition in general without delving too much into individuals. Take “Nineteen Eighty-Four” again. On one level, its the story of Winston Smith, but on another, more important level, it’s about life in a totalitarian society and how humanity deals with the absence of hope. If you’d ask Orwell, he’d tell you that the latter meaning is far more important than the story of any one person. That, however, doesn’t make it the book any less about people, rather than about technology. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/125 "2013-12-05T12:56:15Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > That’s why I said “stars” not space. I was particularly thinking of “Voyage to Arcturus” which is from nearly the same time as Skylark of Space. > From the Earth to the Moon is hard sf compared to going in a balloon. Verne certainly knew it was impossible. I just reread Journey to the Center of the Earth, where the heat problem was addressed directly. Verne could find a way around that impossibility - around massive acceleration, not so much, so he ignored it. > > Whether something is hard sf or not depends on when it was written. Stories in Astounding with slide rules in space are hardly hard sf today. Why not? Moore’s Law doesn’t invalidate logarithms. If you don’t have access to a computer, you might be glad to have a slide rule. In fact, Arthur C. Clarke wrote a story about precisely that (only with abaci instead of slide rules). The fact that technology advances doesn’t invalidate hard SF. It’s a question of understanding and attitude. By the way, there was star travel before Skylark and A Voyage to Arcturus. Voltaire had visitors from Sirius in _Micromegas_, written in 1752. Of course, he doesn’t give a believable method of propulsion, any more than Lindsay did. Or Smith, for that matter. None of them is “hard” sf in that regard, since none of them is trying to present a workable, in some sense bel;ievable, method of travel. ---
**Author:** ![vislor](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/vislor/32/5933_2.png) [@vislor](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/vislor)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 1:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/126 "2013-12-05T13:17:07Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](#): > > Dang, but that’s splitting a mighty fine hair. And for me that’s the point. The more I have learned about science, the more I realize that “science fiction” has the emphasis on fiction, not science. To me, as soon as you bring in “fantastic science” it’s fantasy. FTL, transporters, shields, artificial gravity, etc. are not science as we understand it at this point. If you use those ideas, how is it any different than magic? But I also understand I’m picking nits. Again, it does seem to be a fine line to me. Thanks! vislor ---
**Author:** ![DrFidelius](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/drfidelius/32/3447_2.png) [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 1:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/127 "2013-12-05T13:32:34Z")
Any sufficiently described magic is indistinguishable from science. ---
**Author:** ![Alessan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alessan/32/465_2.png) [@Alessan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Alessan)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 1:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/128 "2013-12-05T13:34:49Z")
> [@vislor](#): > > FTL, transporters, shields, artificial gravity, etc. are not science as we understand it at this point. But the could be science as we understand it at some point in the future, right? We have no way of knowing what we don’t know. ---
**Author:** ![JohnT](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/johnt/32/15048_2.png) [@JohnT](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnT)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 1:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/129 "2013-12-05T13:41:07Z")
I might not be able to define the break between science fiction and fantasy, but I know it when I see it. 😉 ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 1:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/130 "2013-12-05T13:44:30Z")
> [@vislor](#): > > And for me that’s the point. The more I have learned about science, the more I realize that “science fiction” has the emphasis on fiction, not science. To me, as soon as you bring in “fantastic science” it’s fantasy. FTL, transporters, shields, artificial gravity, etc. are not science as we understand it at this point. If you use those ideas, how is it any different than magic? > > But I also understand I’m picking nits. Again, it does seem to be a fine line to me. > > Thanks! > > vislor indeed. Jules Verne generally tried to keep within the realm of proven science and engineering, plus a little extrapolation (and the occasional ignoring of inconvenient facts that would prevent the story). so his _20,000 Leagues Under the Sea_ concerns a huge and elaborate submarine, at a time when submarines were already being built. His _Robur the Conqueror_ was about a heavier-than-air flying ship, but it was not that long before heavier than air craft carrying people were built. And it followed the successful flight of heavier than air unmanned machines, which Verne cites at length. Verne always gives his sources, often at great length. There were occasionally cases where he went off these stolid rails (As in _The Secret of Wilhelm Storitz_, Verne’s “Invisible Man” story, where he gives even less detail and justification than wells had), but he went on record as saying that he tried to keep within the bounds of probability. He took wells to task, for instance, for using Anti-Gravity metal to get his characters to the moon, while he had used ballistics and (to a minor degree) rockets. When his _the Meteor Hunt_ (“La Chase au meteore”) came out after his death, it included the “neutral helicoidal ray”, what we today would call a Tractor Beam. As far as I know, it was the first use of that science fiction device. It was also a startling change for Verne – it went way out on a limb, beyond mere extrapolation of existing science. It was, to use modern terminology, “Imaginary Science”. Only a decade or so ago, they published Verne’s original manuscript, written in 1901. All trace of the Neutral Helicoidal ray and its inventor, Xirphan Xirdal, is gone. The chapters including the tractor and pressor beams were entire the work of his son, Michel Verne, who added to the manuscript after his father’s death. The pared-down novel has been translated into English and published. The kicker is this – tractor beams now ARE possible. They’ve been writing theory and constructing them at places like CREOL in recent years. Tractor beams now ARE “hard sf”, although they weren’t in Verne’s day. This is an example of how changing knowledge can take something from mere speculation to “hard sf” ---
**Author:** ![OurLordPeace](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/e8c25b/32.png) [@OurLordPeace](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OurLordPeace)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/131 "2013-12-05T16:06:31Z")
There can even be divisions within a franchise. I’m part of the minority of Star Wars fans who appreciate it as a hard-edged war story, with much less interest in Lucas’s fairy-tale elements. I loved the 80s-90s West End Games RPG stuff, for instance, and I’m quite excited about the Star Wars Rebels animated series that should arrive next autumn. It (and the live-action series, should it ever happen) should be quite a departure from all the Clone Wars kid-stuff. So, in this context, the science elements are pretty important, thus making it a Sci-Fi story. There are plenty of explanations to use for the films, anyway. Indeed, there’s no sound in space; it’s in the pilots’ headphones, and the ships’ computer speakers, etc. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/132 "2013-12-05T16:27:43Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > From the Earth to the Moon is hard sf compared to going in a balloon. Verne certainly knew it was impossible. I just reread Journey to the Center of the Earth, where the heat problem was addressed directly. Verne could find a way around that impossibility - around massive acceleration, not so much, so he ignored it. Reminds me of Asimov, in _Caves of Steel/Naked Sun/Robots of Dawn_ mode. (Spoilers, of course.) The first one builds on his long series of Three Laws stories, and the high-powered computer brains of those humaniform robots are obviously extrapolations and exaggerations of what was already here. And then the second book is built around an ending that handwaves an out-of-left field new idea: _oh, yeah, by the way, the robot you’ve been reading about can manipulate people’s emotions and selectively erase their memories._ (And the third runs with it without even soft sci-fi technobabble – which really stands out, given how much time he spends laying down the physics and chemistry and biology underpinning the doomsday weapon; he’s still science-ing it up, but he’s got nothing up his sleeve for mind control and so glosses over it with a shrug; it happens because the plot calls for it.) ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 4:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/133 "2013-12-05T16:47:11Z")
> [@](#): > > Quoth **CalMeacham** : > > By the way, there was star travel before Skylark and A Voyage to Arcturus. Voltaire had visitors from Sirius in Micromegas, written in 1752. Of course, he doesn’t give a believable method of propulsion, any more than Lindsay did. Or Smith, for that matter. None of them is “hard” sf in that regard, since none of them is trying to present a workable, in some sense bel;ievable, method of travel. What does Voltaire say about how the visitors got here? Was it stated to be technological, some machine that humans, with enough ingenuity and development of knowledge, could duplicate? Was it metaphysical? Was it left completely unexplained? Smith’s _Skylark_ isn’t hard science fiction, since his space drive isn’t remotely plausible, but it _is_ science fiction, since it’s presented as being technological. ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/134 "2013-12-05T17:41:21Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > What does Voltaire say about how the visitors got here? Was it stated to be technological, some machine that humans, with enough ingenuity and development of knowledge, could duplicate? Was it metaphysical? Was it left completely unexplained? Smith’s _Skylark_ isn’t hard science fiction, since his space drive isn’t remotely plausible, but it _is_ science fiction, since it’s presented as being technological. [From a website discussing it:](http://wondersmith.com/scifi/micro.htm) Those who travel only in coaches will doubtless be astonished at the sort of conveyance adopted up there; for we, on our little mound of mud, can imagine nothing beyond our own experience. **Our traveler had such a marvelous acquaintance with the laws of gravitation, and all the forces of attraction and repulsion, and made such good use of his knowledge, that, sometimes by means of a sunbeam, and sometimes with the help of a comet, he went from one world to another as a bird hops from bough to bough.** He traversed the Milky Way in a short time; and I am obliged to confess that he never saw, beyond the stars with which it is thickly sown, that beautiful celestial empyrean which the illustrious parson, Derham, boasts of having discovered at the end of his telescope. Not that I would for a moment suggest Mr. Derham mistook what he saw; Heaven forbid! But Micromegas was on the spot, he is an accurate observer, and I have no wish to contradict anybody. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [December 5, 2013, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264/135 "2013-12-05T19:41:58Z")
OK, I’ll buy that as science fiction. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/science-fiction-or-fantasy/675264.md?page=6)