Starker on 3/9/2018 at 08:25
And to me, it seems like an entirely arbitrary distinction to exclude things for no good reason. As far as I'm concerned, hard sci-fi is a subgenre of sci-fi, not the quintessential, "proper" sci-fi.
Sulphur on 3/9/2018 at 08:29
Heh, hard sci-fi is an entire other discussion, Starker. We haven't even gone there yet! (It's definitely a subgenre tho'.) But I think I'll spare everyone and get some coffee and gripe about games instead.
Starker on 3/9/2018 at 08:47
Well, it looked to me we were well on our way there, what with the "focus on science" and "scientific accuracy" and all.
And leaving the strict criteria of hard sci-fi aside, Star Wars does have a veneer of plausibility in its setting. Just because it has fantastical elements doesn't mean its sci-fi elements are therefore null and void. It's a bit like saying that Spaceballs is not science fiction, because it's a science comedy (a science parody?). Or the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, if you want a more... er... serious example.
Sulphur on 3/9/2018 at 08:49
Nah, Spaceballs is actually a documentary. Science comedy is the first The Nutty Professor. The reboots don't rate because lips simply don't behave like that.
icemann on 3/9/2018 at 12:20
I loved Spaceballs.
SD on 3/9/2018 at 15:49
Quote Posted by Gingerbread Man
I have concerns about the inclusion of well-known actors like Richard E Grant. Okay, the other one is not-well-known actor Keri Russell. But I'm worried that what little suspension of disbelief / sense of wonder / nostalgia for 1979 will be destroyed by the sudden appearance of Simon Marchmont / Withnail -- I didn't like it when he showed up in Game of Thrones, I didn't like it when he showed up on Frasier. He's far too iconic an actor to make me confident that the illusion of "Long ago" and "Galaxy far away" will continue to uphold for me. Maybe I'm being silly. I probably am. (I mean, I CERTAINLY am in the Grand Scheme, but on my own personal level I don't know)
Yes there are other Brand Names, but for me Mark Hamill, Carrie Fisher, Billy Dee Williams... these are all people I associate first and foremost with their Star Wars characters, so it's not an issue. But Richard E Grant in particular is like having Christopher Walken in it.
If Episode VIII could accommodate Eddie Hitler/Vyvyan Basterd, then Withnail in Episode IX shouldn't prove too jarring.
Gingerbread Man on 3/9/2018 at 17:08
Well, that's a turn up. I hadn't noticed Ade Edmondson. Although I suspect that he's far less visually obvious to me, considering that I really only know him as Eddie / Vyvyan, and he was a whole lot younger then. Huh.
(edit: also didn't know he was married to Jennifer Saunders... Wiki is teaching me many things this morning)
(edit 2) Okay, you know what? I remember being irritated by Laura Dern and Benicio del Toro in Last Jedi, but I've totally forgotten about them, as well. Maybe this is part and parcel of me finding TLJ eminently forgettable in its entirety, I dunno.
catbarf on 3/9/2018 at 19:24
Quote Posted by Starker
Indeed, for me, science fantasy, space opera, and cyberpunk is still science fiction, even if it's not all that serious and scientific.
Also, a lot of science fiction contains things that are nebulous and implausible. Star Trek has entities like Q that can pretty much perform miracles, Left Hand of Darkness and Babylon 5 have telepathy, and Asimov's robots with mind control powers are really no more explained than that. Not to mention a lot of the things that go on in Dune and the way psychohistory in Foundation is used as a little more than a plot device. Really, what such criteria accomplish is the exclusion of a lot of works that most people recognise as science fiction.
To use specifically Babylon 5 as an example, that show used telepathy as a means of exploring aspects of society, from the creation of telepathic secret police to the notion of privacy becoming obsolete to the idea of a new class of superhumans and how they might get along with the 'mundanes'. It explicitly stated both how telepathy originates (heritable genetic traits) and provided consistent limits on what telepaths can do.
It might be intrinsically implausible, but the show offers a consistent mechanism of action and then explores the consequences. It's essentially saying 'Assume telepathy is real, and has these rules- what happens next?'. That's the core of sci-fi to me, about using some form of technology or societal change (the plausibility of which determines whether we're talking 'hard' or 'soft' sci-fi) and then exploring the consequences in the form of a story. That was Star Trek's shtick, when it wasn't being contemporary social allegory.
Star Wars never really uses technology this way. The technology and society in Star Wars are strictly in service to a Campbellian monomyth, and are never described beyond what is needed to advance the plot. I don't think there's anything
wrong with that approach, but it's not the same. Whether you choose to differentiate by calling Star Wars 'space fantasy' or 'space opera' or something else is just a matter of semantics, but I think there's a significant difference in style that makes it similar to stuff like Firefly and different from what I could call soft sci-fi like Star Trek. It's not about being exclusionary, just descriptive and accurate.
Part of the problem, I think, is that 'sci-fi' is typically treated more like an aesthetic description than a genre. You said yourself that robots = sci-fi, but I think it makes a huge difference whether those robots are being used to explore the nature of consciousness, or are just fancy costumes for ordinary characters. I can't think of any other mainstream genres that are so heavily defined by setting and appearance, except perhaps Westerns.
Nicker on 3/9/2018 at 20:02
I agree with catbarf about the distinction between sci-fi and space operas. Merely exporting a common narrative theme to an exotic environment doesn't make it sci-fi any more than reworking a samurai movie into a western would.
Firefly re-imagines a post Civil War USA on a galactic scale. The great plains become the "the Black". The settlers, bandits, evil sheriffs, hostile natives and whores with hearts of gold are more far flung. But the science just allows this expansion of the setting, it doesn't change the conflict. It is fantasy.
"Real" sci-fi and speculative fiction explore the implications of changing a few parameters on our reality.
Gingerbread Man on 3/9/2018 at 20:43
There's very little "sci" in Star Wars, especially when held up against the amount of "fantasy" -- spaceships and aliens do not sci-fi make, you're right.They may be typical elements of most mainstream sci-fi, but they are not codifiers by a long stretch.