John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
> The movie industry's attitude towards the genre indicates that they have 
> absolutely no appreciation of its potential, but merely use it to entice 
> money out of people who will pay to watch anything that features a 
> technological future.

  It all comes down to one's *definition* of "sci-fi". Basically sci-fi
has a wide scale of "hardness", and where people put the line between
"real" sci-fi depends on personal opinion.

  On the "softest" end of sci-fi we have products which take immense amount
of liberties and go absolutely to extremes with everything. We may have
spaceships routinely traveling between *galaxies* in short periods of time,
thousands of alien species (all of which inexplicably speak English as a
common lingua franca), time travel (with or without any regard to any kind
of consistency) and often a varied amount of supernatural phenomena, such
as telepathy. Don't expect even regular physics to be very accurate in these
products.

  On the "hardest" end we have products which take place just a few decades
in the future, and where there's very little, if anything, that current
science wouldn't take for granted or at least very possible. For example
no faster-than-light travel (which means the story is located entirely
inside the Solar system), no aliens, no artificial gravity (unless you
count centrifugal gravity, which of course is completely ok), realistic
spaceships, realistic traveling times, and not even exotic modes of
propulsion (unless it has been seriously proposed by scientists).

  Of course we have all kinds of nuances in-between those two extremes.

  So where is the line between "real" sci-fi and "a bad joke"?

  For example, some people consider the Terminator series to be sci-fi,
even if slightly on the softer half of the scale. Others don't.

  Maybe the definition of "sci-fi" is not so much about the science part,
but about the fiction part, in other words, the storytelling. But that
becomes even harder to define accurately.

  Sometimes I get the feeling that "sci-fi purists" consider "true sci-fi"
only those stories which are really obscure and next to incomprehensible,
a bit like an artist who thinks that "true art" is something that a regular
person cannot understand. Of course the problem with this that this kind of
abstract storytelling doesn't sell, so why would movie companies even bother
to try making them?

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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I kinda enjoyed it even though it was pretty predictable, perhaps because of
"2001" heritage:  lone guy on space with an AI, something's gonna break.  The
main point of tension was that for the most part it was not known if the AI was
evil or not.

It also draws from "Blade Runner":  the older clone seems to deteriorate
rapidly, which suggests they got a short time limit to their lives akin to those
of the replicants.  This was never explained in the movie though.  Another
possible explanation:  radiation from being out there for too much time?  But he
was on his gear...

It was kinda obvious he was a clone even from before he met the other guy:
edited recordings, memory issues akin to memory implants.  At first I thought
it'd be another horror-in-space like in "Event Horizon", but it rapidly became
obvious it was all about clones and evil corporations.  Even the AI showed up
less...

For some reason it was still enjoyable though.  Perhaps low expectations?

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Warp wrote:
>   Maybe the definition of "sci-fi" is not so much about the science part,
> but about the fiction part, in other words, the storytelling. But that
> becomes even harder to define accurately.

I know I've said this before, but I usually define sci-fi as needing to be 
about the science and technology rather than the personalities. An 
exploration of "what would the world be like if this science were 
available." If you can tell essentially the same story without the science 
element, it isn't sci-fi.

In the case of Moon, you would have a very hard time telling the story 
without the cloning aspect. Avatar, on the other hand, is Pocohantas in 
space, so it doesn't really count as sci-fi in my book.

It's a little easier to figure out with books and such than it is with 
movies, unless it's really extreme.

I haven't decided how I feel about fantasy that's consistent and the story 
is about the fantastic element. Something like "Master of the Five Magics" 
seemed very sci-fi'ish to me, even though the story was about the apprentice 
learning the "technologies" of all five types of magic.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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Darren New <dne### [at] sanrrcom> wrote:
> I know I've said this before, but I usually define sci-fi as needing to be 
> about the science and technology rather than the personalities. An 
> exploration of "what would the world be like if this science were 
> available." If you can tell essentially the same story without the science 
> element, it isn't sci-fi.

  There's a difference between not being good sci-fi and not being sci-fi
at all. Just because the storytelling doesn't rely heavily on the sci-fi
elements doesn't mean that story is not sci-fi. You might argue it's poor
sci-fi (because the sci-fi part is more or less just decoration), but it's
quite a stretch to say that it's not sci-fi at all.

  If the story told by an action movie could be quite well told in a story
belonging to a different genre (such as film noir), that doesn't make the
movie less of an action movie. It might make the story more detached from
the genre, but it doesn't destroy the genre per se. Likewise with sci-fi:
Just because the story doesn't rely on the science fiction elements doesn't
mean there are no science fiction elements. If there are, then it can be
considered a sci-fi story. (Whether it's a *good* story of that genre is
a matter of opinion.)

-- 
                                                          - Warp

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"Warp" <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> wrote in message
news:4c150d75@news.povray.org...
> John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:

>   For example, some people consider the Terminator series to be sci-fi,
> even if slightly on the softer half of the scale. Others don't.

I don't mind speculative sci-fi, where science and technology goes
explicitly far beyond present and even the plausible. Terminator may be soft
on the sci part in that respect, but it's at least not horribly wrong. I
don't have a problem with time travel, FTL... etc. But communicating FTL,
when such technology is not explicitly given or deducible, is simply wrong.
Not accounting differences between moon and earth gravity, when artificial
gravity is not explicitly specified and really infeasible given the
timeline, is plain wrong. I can live with sound in space, for it's not hard
to imagine an observer shift, but how do we explain away these other obvious
and lazy blunders? Further, making people and corporations behave contrary
to common sense in order to introduce a plot, is lazy and wrong.

>   Sometimes I get the feeling that "sci-fi purists" consider "true sci-fi"
> only those stories which are really obscure and next to incomprehensible,

I don't have a problem with Dali's clocks. It's a different premise,
different context than realism. I can buy that. But if some artist is
claiming to be drawing a realistic clock but fumbles and places both the
hour and minute hand at exactly 6 o'clock, for no good artistic reason, that
would ruin the painting.

> a bit like an artist who thinks that "true art" is something that a
regular
> person cannot understand. Of course the problem with this that this kind
of
> abstract storytelling doesn't sell, so why would movie companies even
bother
> to try making them?

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Well done you.

-- 

Best Regards,
	Stephen

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On 2010-06-13 16:21, somebody wrote:
> claiming to be drawing a realistic clock but fumbles and places both the
> hour and minute hand at exactly 6 o'clock, for no good artistic reason, that
> would ruin the painting.

...what?

--
Tim Cook
http://empyrean.freesitespace.net

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Warp wrote:
> but it's quite a stretch to say that it's not sci-fi at all.

True. I wasn't insisting everyone agree. :-)

> Just because the story doesn't rely on the science fiction elements doesn't
> mean there are no science fiction elements. If there are, then it can be
> considered a sci-fi story. (Whether it's a *good* story of that genre is
> a matter of opinion.)

Yes, that's what most people think. That's why "sci fi" and "fantasy" both 
wind up on the same bookshelf here.

I just like making the distinction between "science fiction" and "fantasy 
set in the future".   Fifth Element is fantasy set in the future, not 
science fiction.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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Darren New wrote:
> I just like making the distinction between "science fiction" and 
> "fantasy set in the future".   Fifth Element is fantasy set in the 
> future, not science fiction.

I think there are genres where the name actually makes a distinction. A 
murder mystery isn't a murder mystery if there's no murder and no mystery. 
Even a murder mystery revealed at the beginning (like Colombo, for example) 
isn't a murder mystery but rather a police procedural.

I prefer reserving "science fiction" for those stories that are about the 
affect of science on people rather than merely stories about people in the 
future.

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
    Eiffel - The language that lets you specify exactly
    that the code does what you think it does, even if
    it doesn't do what you wanted.

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Warp <war### [at] tagpovrayorg> writes:

> John VanSickle <evi### [at] hotmailcom> wrote:
>> The movie industry's attitude towards the genre indicates that they
>> have absolutely no appreciation of its potential, but merely use it
>> to entice bla money out of people who will pay to watch anything that
>> features a technological future.
>
>   It all comes down to one's *definition* of "sci-fi". Basically sci-fi
> has a wide scale of "hardness", and where people put the line between
> "real" sci-fi depends on personal opinion.

I do, however, have to agree with John that compared to sci-fi
stories/novels, the sci-fi movie business is hopelessly behind (with
only very few exceptions).

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