Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> Bill Pragnell wrote:
> > While I agree in principle, I think there is too much variation in what is
> > considered 'proper' SF.
>
> Sure. But they're all WRONG!

:)

> > I personally would classify Niven & co's "Lucifer's
> > Hammer" as SF, even though there is absolutely no science or tech extrapolation.
> > Likewise, Harris' "Fatherland", or McCauley's "Pasquale's Angel". These latter
> > are both extrapolations of a real society given a single small difference in
> > recorded history, again without any novel tech or science.
>
> I'm happy calling such "speculative fiction" without calling it "science
> fiction."  I don't call Harry Potter "science fiction" either even tho it's
> speculative and couldn't tell *quite* the same story without the magic. (At
> least in some of the novels.)

I tend to think of speculative fiction as an umbrella that covers all of the
above. I wouldn't put my examples alongside Harry Potter (or any 'fantasy' for
that matter) in their particular sub-genre because my examples could all occur
in the world we inhabit, as far as we know, whereas fantasy fiction creates
worlds that couldn't, as far as we know, exist. This is a dangerous game,
however, because then where do I put authors like Roger Zelazny? Hmm. Thinks. I
reckon the best I can do is a Venn Diagram :)

> Yup.  Star Gate would be hard to tell without the science, for example. (By
> which I mean the original movie.)

Hehe, you mean technology, surely? ;-)

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
> Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
>> I don't call Harry Potter "science fiction" either even tho it's 
>> speculative and couldn't tell *quite* the same story without the magic.
> 
>   I thought Harry Potter falls into the genre of fantasy, not the genre of
> science fiction.

Correct.

I was making an analogy.  Bill said

 > These latter are both extrapolations of a real society given a single 
small difference in recorded history, again without any novel tech or science.

I wouldn't call that SciFi, but I would call it speculative fiction. I 
wouldn't call HP SciFi, but I might call it "speculative fiction", 
speculating on what it might be like if some people could do magic. But we 
already have a name for "speculative fiction about magic", and that's 
Fantasy. We already have a name for "speculative fiction about science and 
technology", and we call that "sci fi". :-)

I've also read speculative fiction like "Hopscotch", where the basic premise 
is that you can swap bodies with anyone who you touch, given their 
permission. Sort of like the "surrogates" movie only swapping between 
bodies. A group of kids grow up in the society, and this is about how their 
lives go. The artist hops into homeless bums, crippled people, etc to 
experience how they life and feel so he can make art depicting that. The kid 
who grows up to be a cop chases down the little old lady who won't give back 
the young healthy body she only contracted for an hour. The young girl gets 
sucked into a cult where everybody switches bodies about so much nobody 
knows who is in what body any more, etc.  Is that fantasy or sci fi or 
something else? They never explain how the swapping works, just that one day 
people started to be able to do it.

I don't rave about the terminology. I would just prefer people not put 
"alternative histories" and crap like that in the Sci Fi section. :-) It 
would be nice if bookstores actually distinguished the different kinds of 
fiction, so I could better focus on what I wanted to read.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message

Bill Pragnell wrote:
> that matter) in their particular sub-genre because my examples could all occur
> in the world we inhabit, as far as we know, whereas fantasy fiction creates
> worlds that couldn't, as far as we know, exist. 

That's an interesting distinction too.

>> Yup.  Star Gate would be hard to tell without the science, for example. (By
>> which I mean the original movie.)
> 
> Hehe, you mean technology, surely? ;-)

LOL!

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message

Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I wouldn't call that SciFi, but I would call it speculative fiction. I 
> wouldn't call HP SciFi, but I might call it "speculative fiction", 
> speculating on what it might be like if some people could do magic. But we 
> already have a name for "speculative fiction about magic", and that's 
> Fantasy. We already have a name for "speculative fiction about science and 
> technology", and we call that "sci fi". :-)

  Isn't *all* fiction speculative? If a piece of art is not speculative
fiction, then it's a documentary (if not outright a historical account).
Kind of makes the word "speculative" a bit obsolete. Or is there some type
of fiction other than speculative?

  (Of course there are other types of art than just fiction or documentary,
such as philosophical writings or poetry, but I'm not sure I would call them
"fiction", as they fall quite outside the domain.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

Post a reply to this message

Warp wrote:
>   Isn't *all* fiction speculative? 

People generally don't call historical (for example) fiction "speculative". 
E.g., the movie Titanic wouldn't be "speculative" even if it was 
fictionalized. Neither would the movie "Die Hard" or "Basterds". They're 
merely fiction.

I think the "speculative" part is "if you're in a different society 
altogether..." It's hard to quantify, of course, but I'd say speculative 
fiction says "how would people react if their environment was something we 
never considered before", rather than "show me an example of someone 
reacting to a fairly normal situation."

In speculative fiction, you get relatively normal people (normal for their 
culture, of course) reacting to unusual (unusual for us) events.  In other 
fiction, you get exceptional people (like Bruce Willis plays) reacting to 
relatively normal events. The former is about the culture and society, while 
the latter is about the individuals.

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message

"Captain Jack" <Cap### [at] comcastnet> wrote:room there.
>
> Also, I'm not sure "Devil In The Dark" is the best example of the point...
> the only important technology to the plot were A) what the miners were
> digging for, and B) the silicon cement used to bandage the Horta. If the
> creature were found in a Welsh coal mine in 1872 and one of the government
> folks sent in to investigate were a telepath, you could tell the same story.
> I think if you gave a logical enough explanation for how a silicon based
> life form could exist (and in Wales, no less) and let the telepathy go as an
> unexplained-but-taken-for-granted miracle (as it is in Star Trek) it would
> be still be science fiction. No gadgets, but still scientific.



Or you'd have the same theme if they went on a sailing ship to a faraway island,
found strange beastly apparitions that later turned out to be sentient men, and
then the ship's doctor's tobacco miraculously cured the chieftain of some
disease.

Post a reply to this message

Darren New schrieb:
> 
> I've also read speculative fiction like "Hopscotch", where the basic 
> premise is that you can swap bodies with anyone who you touch, given 
> their permission. Sort of like the "surrogates" movie only swapping 
> between bodies. A group of kids grow up in the society, and this is 
> about how their lives go. The artist hops into homeless bums, crippled 
> people, etc to experience how they life and feel so he can make art 
> depicting that. The kid who grows up to be a cop chases down the little 
> old lady who won't give back the young healthy body she only contracted 
> for an hour. The young girl gets sucked into a cult where everybody 
> switches bodies about so much nobody knows who is in what body any more, 
> etc.  Is that fantasy or sci fi or something else? They never explain 
> how the swapping works, just that one day people started to be able to 
> do it.

Reminds me of the movies "Jumper", and also of "Being John Malcovich" - 
both of which could fit in either Fantasy or Science Fiction; it is only 
through the actual depiction of some details that I would tend to file 
"Jumper" as SciFi (the equipment of the Paladins - nothing else) while 
filing "Being John Malcovich" as Fantasy (the "Alice in 
Wonderland"-esque secret floor and door - again nothing else).

I guess referring to this as "alternate reality" would be most fitting. 
Fantasy could, in this sense, be considered a sub-genre, while Science 
Fiction would partially overlap with it.

Post a reply to this message

Warp schrieb:

>   Isn't *all* fiction speculative? If a piece of art is not speculative
> fiction, then it's a documentary (if not outright a historical account).
> Kind of makes the word "speculative" a bit obsolete. Or is there some type
> of fiction other than speculative?

I wouldn't call most pulp fiction "speculative". It usually just tries 
to entertain, typically being set in a familiar world, without raising 
any questions of "what-if" (i.e. speculate) - unless of course you 
include trivial speculations such as "what if this guy now falls in love 
with that girl" in that definition.

I wouldn't even consider most whodunits as "speculative", even though 
there's inevitably a lot of speculation going on, as those are no 
/fundamental/ "what-ifs", and the aim of the story is not to have the 
reader /speculate/, but /discover/.

Post a reply to this message

gregjohn wrote:
> Or you'd have the same theme if they went on a sailing ship to a faraway island,
> found strange beastly apparitions that later turned out to be sentient men, and
> then the ship's doctor's tobacco miraculously cured the chieftain of some
> disease.

Indeed. And I think most people would rate both the Illiad and the Island of 
Dr Moureau as speculative fiction if not sci fi in the latter case. :-)

-- 
   Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
   I ordered stamps from Zazzle that read "Place Stamp Here".

Post a reply to this message

clipka <ano### [at] anonymousorg> wrote:
> I wouldn't even consider most whodunits as "speculative", even though
> there's inevitably a lot of speculation going on, as those are no
> /fundamental/ "what-ifs", and the aim of the story is not to have the
> reader /speculate/, but /discover/.

The speculation part is by the author, not the reader. ;)

Post a reply to this message