Quote from: Bren;1102070A continuum, not a definition with strict categories that is something like this.

   Star Wars < Star Trek < Babylon 5 < Traveller < The Expanse < the ship and orbital station in 2001

   I might quibble about the placement of Star Trek and B5, if only because B5 has reliable precognition and soul-trapping, which I don't think we get in Trek.

Is "Science" the in-universe explanation for the fantastic elements? If yes, then sci-fi.

Is "Magic" (or the Force, the Gods, the Unknown, etc.) the in-universe explanation for the fantastic elements? If yes, then fantasy.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1102323I might quibble about the placement of Star Trek and B5, if only because B5 has reliable precognition and soul-trapping, which I don't think we get in Trek.

In fairness, Straczynski was usually pretty careful when writing B5 to leave open the possibility that any given in-character interpretation of certain events could be incomplete or even flatly wrong.  We don't know, for example, that the Minbari are actually discovering Minbari souls in human bodies (to drop one minor spoiler), or that the Soul Hunters are actually trapping a dying person's actual soul rather than just making an extremely convincing simulacrum of it; we only know that that's what those people think they're finding/doing, based on their own philosophy and technology.

Quote from: Armchair Gamer;1102323I might quibble about the placement of Star Trek and B5, if only because B5 has reliable precognition and soul-trapping, which I don't think we get in Trek.

Certainly there is room for argument. We see consciousness trapping in those glowing balls in Return to Tomorrow. I'm not sure how one would prove that what Sargon and his people did was any different than what the Soul Hunters did. And  Star Trek has the Q, the Organians, those wormhole dwelling Bajorran prophets, and several other aliens with scientifically unexplained, godlike powers that seem more like magic than anything else. One reason I placed the two series as I did was that B5 has human tech still using rotation to simulate gravity vs. Star Trek's readily and easily available to everyone artificial gravity.

Quote from: Bren;1102489One reason I placed the two series as I did was that B5 has human tech still using rotation to simulate gravity vs. Star Trek's readily and easily available to everyone artificial gravity.

If there is artificial gravity, but just humans aren't using it yet, is that really changing the category?

I have a hard time seeing even the spectrum view as anything other than just arbitrary territory marking. I think genre labels are rough markers at best, and any subtle distinctions aren't really important. Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Doctor Who are all science fiction, because that's how they're generally shelved. Science fantasy would be something like Starfinder or Tekumel. Mostly based on casual look and feel of the covers.

Quote from: Antiquation!;1102053Science fiction, ships, pew-pew guns, politics.

Science fantasy, murdering Martians with a sword from the back of my giant Venusian salamander (also a hot and slightly confused-looking blonde hoisted over my shoulder).

Possibly somewhere in-between. I'll know it when I see it...

I agree with the attitude - though I think John Carter is still most likely classified as science fiction. And really, it's more scientifically plausible than plenty of pew-pew spaceship films/books. I think to most people, the term "science fantasy" evokes a picture of stuff like Starfinder or Shadowrun -- mixing magic wands and rayguns.

Quote from: jhkim;1102497If there is artificial gravity, but just humans aren't using it yet, is that really changing the category?

I have a hard time seeing even the spectrum view as anything other than just arbitrary territory marking. I think genre labels are rough markers at best, and any subtle distinctions aren't really important. Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Doctor Who are all science fiction, because that's how they're generally shelved. Science fantasy would be something like Starfinder or Tekumel. Mostly based on casual look and feel of the covers.


I agree with the attitude - though I think John Carter is still most likely classified as science fiction. And really, it's more scientifically plausible than plenty of pew-pew spaceship films/books. I think to most people, the term "science fantasy" evokes a picture of stuff like Starfinder or Shadowrun -- mixing magic wands and rayguns.

Hm, there may have been some evolution of terms, if Science Fantasy now means "Science Fiction + Fantasy Mashup" as in Shadowrun & Starfinder. It used to be used for pulp space opera fantasies like Star Wars, and Planetary Romance like John Carter.

Quote from: jhkim;1102497If there is artificial gravity, but just humans aren't using it yet, is that really changing the category?

I have a hard time seeing even the spectrum view as anything other than just arbitrary territory marking. I think genre labels are rough markers at best, and any subtle distinctions aren't really important. Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Doctor Who are all science fiction, because that's how they're generally shelved. Science fantasy would be something like Starfinder or Tekumel. Mostly based on casual look and feel of the covers.

Yea, there's a lot of territory marking. Folk dismiss things as "not science fiction" because of some aspect that they find offensive to the idea of "science fiction", while there are fewer on the other side, I think there are folks who dismiss things as "fantasy" because they have some kind of "modern" or "future" tech in them. Personally, I think the bookstores have had it right for as long as I've been perusing (since the mid 70s) the "science fiction" section in the bookstore which also includes fantasy. Since then, I have heard the term "speculative fiction" and I like that. There's some common element to most everything that's shelved in that section in the bookstore. Of course the authors in that section follow a chain of influence back to the pulps, though some genres have definitely split off (I know horror was intermixed with the "sf" of the pulps, how much crossover with westerns? Burroughs of course also wrote Tarzan which I don't think I've ever seen shelved in the SF section of the bookstore). I think some of the acceptance that speculative fiction really is as single genre has come from the understanding that faster than light travel is pretty much pure fantasy, and considering the amount of SF that leans on FTL travel, how can you be dismissive of some other "fantasy" in your science fiction if you accept FTL travel in your science fiction?

Yet, I still lump RPGs into either science fiction or fantasy (with "historical" like Westerns or Spy games being in the middle). We would actually be better off settling on some less expansive labels, but it's easy to make the broad lumpings that then make some games really hard to categorize.

And hey, considering the statement that caused this thread to start, is Metamorphosis Alpha any less science fantasy and opposed to "harder" science fiction than Empire of the Petal Throne?

Frank

Quote from: jhkim;1102497I agree with the attitude - though I think John Carter is still most likely classified as science fiction. And really, it's more scientifically plausible than plenty of pew-pew spaceship films/books. I think to most people, the term "science fantasy" evokes a picture of stuff like Starfinder or Shadowrun -- mixing magic wands and rayguns.

Yeah, I suppose I could see that at least with the average RPG player. I'm of the opinion that, outside of literal textbook definitions, the dividing line pretty much just comes down to how you view and interpret certain aesthetics. And I can think of multiple ways to draw such a line, more-or-less anyplace between either extreme... take any post in this thread, for instance!

I gave up trying to draw the lines along time of go.  What works for me in game:  If the engineers, biologists, and other such people in your game consider it close enough, it's sci/fi.  How "soft" that is depends on what their reactions are, and how many areas cause a "it's fantasy" reaction.  An otherwise hard-ish sci/fi game with 1-3 very clearly delineated departures into fantasy for "what if" can get such players happily extrapolating what that means.  It's when the truly fantastical or fairy tale logic enters into it that they've got to completely switch mental gears or remain very unsatisfied.  

But I'm not enough of an enthusiast for hard sci/fi to make such players happy for very long, unless they can so switch gears.  Hell, even some super hero logic leaves me cold after awhile.

Quote from: S'mon;1102508Hm, there may have been some evolution of terms, if Science Fantasy now means "Science Fiction + Fantasy Mashup" as in Shadowrun & Starfinder. It used to be used for pulp space opera fantasies like Star Wars, and Planetary Romance like John Carter.

The label "science fantasy" has never been commonly used in my experience. Certainly Star Wars has always been classified as "science fiction" in every outlet and mainstream discussion that I've seen. There are some purists who say that it's really science fantasy rather than science fiction, but they're a small minority.

According to Wikipedia, "The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction points out that as a genre, science fantasy "has never been clearly defined", and was most commonly used in the period 1950–1966."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fantasy

Even during that period, it apparently was often used to refer to works that mixed fantasy tropes like spells and spirits with scientific explanations - such as works like Heinlein's "Magic, Inc." (1940) or the Harold Shea stories (1940-1954).

Quote from: jhkim;1102594Even during that period, it apparently was often used to refer to works that mixed fantasy tropes like spells and spirits with scientific explanations - such as works like Heinlein's "Magic, Inc." (1940) or the Harold Shea stories (1940-1954).

If science fantasy is a thing, then Warhammer 40K is its posterchild.

Quote from: jhkim;1102497If there is artificial gravity, but just humans aren't using it yet, is that really changing the category?

It's a spectrum, not a category.

QuoteI have a hard time seeing even the spectrum view as anything other than just arbitrary territory marking.

When I read sci-fi by Isaac Asimov or Larry Niven I'm expecting a significantly different reading experience than when I pick up a Lensman (E.E. "Doc" Smith) or Star Wars novel. I see that as placing the former two and the latter two in some distance apart on a spectrum. Those experiential reading experiences don't seem like "arbitrary" differences to me, though of course the reading experience is subjective.

QuoteI think genre labels are rough markers at best, and any subtle distinctions aren't really important. Star Wars, Star Trek, Babylon 5, and Doctor Who are all science fiction, because that's how they're generally shelved.

So you aren't drawing a line; you're using the line someone else drew.

Quote from: Bren;1102650It's a spectrum, not a category.

It's a cluster. There are data points that are near the center of the cluster and other data points which are at the border to a neighboring cluster. That's why definition wars are pointless; there are no clearly defined boundaries but there are typical elements and core entries.

Quote from: Bren;1102650So you aren't drawing a line; you're using the line someone else drew.

I could be wrong but it seems me that he's saying that the aforementioned pieces of fiction are data points that all but certainly belong to the cluster we call "Sci-Fi"

Quote from: Alexander Kalinowski;1102711It's a cluster. There are data points that are near the center of the cluster and other data points which are at the border to a neighboring cluster. That's why definition wars are pointless; there are no clearly defined boundaries but there are typical elements and core entries.

There is no discrete boundary that forms a category, hence it is a spectrum not a category or bucket.

The discussion is about whether something is sci-fi or fantasy. That is one dimension of measurement. So your cluster maps to a single dimension, i.e. a line. Points may cluster in one spot or another on the line, but they are still on the line.

Quote from: jhkimI have a hard time seeing even the spectrum view as anything other than just arbitrary territory marking.

Quote from: Bren;1102650It's a spectrum, not a category.

When I read sci-fi by Isaac Asimov or Larry Niven I'm expecting a significantly different reading experience than when I pick up a Lensman (E.E. "Doc" Smith) or Star Wars novel. I see that as placing the former two and the latter two in some distance apart on a spectrum. Those experiential reading experiences don't seem like "arbitrary" differences to me, though of course the reading experience is subjective.

OK, I may have been going too far there. Yes, there are many real distinctions between sci-fi works that can be described by a spectrum like this.

Mostly, I'm just put off by attempted redefinition of commonly-used terms -- like saying "Star Wars isn't science fiction". It seems to me that this clearly doesn't improve communication.