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To Boldly Go Where No One Has Gone Before
kryptoknight:
Sci-Fi can be applied to a wide variety of stories. Heck, technically Knight Rider can be termed Science Fiction. Dragonriders of Pern is Science Fiction even though it can be mistaken for Fantasy easily.
Kugai:
Pern is a mixed bag really, you might best describe it as Science Fantasy/Romance.
Akima:
--- Quote from: Gareth on 17 Nov 2014, 01:08 ---A quick Google suggests that the definition of sci-fi is murky as hell anyway.
--- End quote ---
Indeed it is. My personal standard for good science-fiction is that the imaginary world should be as full of sharp corners for its inhabitants to bang their shins on as our own, or any historical world of the past. The world should work consistently, and technology should work the same way in every episode of a multi-part work. Imaginary engineering principles should be applied rigorously, not wand-waved away to get the writers out of corners they've written themselves into.
At this point someone usually says, "But it's just a story!" I reply that, if you wouldn't let Philip Marlowe reverse the polarity of his fedora to make himself bullet-proof, you shouldn't let Scotty reverse the polarity of the deflector to solve problems. Science, technology and engineering fill be background of Raymond Chandler's work. Cars, telephones and guns all work in a consistent way, and we would not accept the story if, for example, Marlowe could suddenly teleport down a phone line to rescue a dame. We need to feel that characters face real challenges, and we cannot measure those challenges unless we know how the challenges work. The operation of, for example, the transporter in Star Trek should be as consistent and predictable as the working of a phone in a Philip Marlowe novel.
J:
i've got some thoughts on this topic, but no time to write them out right now.
so instead i'll just post this:
//www.youtube.com/watch?v=xwhAq3F8NCE
jwhouk:
Seriously - if you look at some of the older ST fiction stuff - the "official" stuff that was published by Pocket Books after ST:TMP/ST:TWOK came out - you see some pretty decent sci-fi writing. A lot of it is a far sight better than most modern fanfic (which tends to fall into the Marigold-level).
And, if you look close enough, you may even find that a very well thought-of sci-fi author managed to work his way into one of them...
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