I was having a conversation with my friend awhile ago. He dislikes playing in Sci-fi RPGs as a general rule. As a joke I prompted the idea of playing a Flash Gordon RPG. Surprisingly he was into the idea because to him Flash Gordon is basically fantasy.

At the time when Flash Gordon came out it was Sci-fi, and overtime it's been considered "pulpy Sci-fi" but does there come a point when the scientific assumptions a Sci-fi story bases itself are proven so untrue that the story morphs into Science Fantasy or straight up Fantasy? For example, in a thousand years will shows like Babylon 5 , Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, and The Expanse be considered fantasy stories about characters with primitive technology depending on magical artifacts to solve problems?

If people are intellectually honest with themselves, then yes. If they belong to some science cult, then no.

I like how you are assuming humans will be living in space a 1000 years from now though.

Well I think extremely soft SF can transition to fantasy. No one will ever see War of the Worlds as fantasy, though. Hard SF depends on scientific concepts (which may be wrong) and scientific thinking, it's not just a surface patina. So Flash Gordon & Star Wars that use their era's SF surface patina for pulp adventure may be considered fantasy, but not HG Wells or Arthur C Clarke I'd think.

Yes, absolutely. I was looking for a certain Russian artist's depictions that I remember of future technology in a sort of "here's what we will be capable of in x years" fashion, but couldn't find any (my google skills are not ideal). But suffice it to say during the earlier 20th century "hard" scifi could have been anything up to, and including, paperboys flying around on atomic jet cycles, all sorts of stuff (at least, according to speculative fiction writers). Then you've got zany predictions and tech that very-well-could-have-possibly-been-real ala Nicola Tesla, much of which we regard as fantasy today but serves as great inspiration for pulp novels and games. Then again, scientists and other people in well-regarded positions have a very wide margin of error in terms of prediction; some way overly optimistic, others saying things along the lines of 'computers will never be anything more than a useless curiosity'.

In any case, I would absolutely say that as our scientific knowledge grows certain things are pushed further into the realm of fantasy.

I also think the opposite is possible. Early Star Trek being a great example. There was an interesting documentary on it, I believe hosted by Shatner, which was about how Star Trek inspired new technological innovations to be created by scientists, pushing us further into Star Trek's "science fiction reality."

Anyway, here's an image just for fun: Gotta get to work on time!

I would not even now consider Flash Gordon Science Fantasy.

It has fantastical elements. But it is all presented as some form of super-science. Same with Buck Rogers.

Problem is. There are people who dismiss ANYTHING that is not hard SF as fantasy.
Got aliens? Fantasy!
Got ray guns? Fantasy!
Teleporters that dont kill you? Fantasy!
Teleporters at all? Fantasy!
Got mind powers, even as simple as hypnosis? Fantasy!
Got space travel that doent take decades or centuries? Fantasy!
Got space travel outside the solar system? Fantasy!
And on and on ad nausium.

Quote from: Omega;1106271Problem is. There are people who dismiss ANYTHING that is not hard SF as fantasy.

True, and I agree that just because something seems fantastical by our current technological and scientific understanding of the universe doesn't mean it's inherently impossible or "soft" scifi. I still think most of it comes down to individual perspective, even if there do exist some games or settings we can all agree on. As evidenced by the "sci fi v. sci fantasy" thread, it can be hard to reach an agreed-upon definition for either let alone agree where on the spectrum a given setting lies or when it has crossed the invisible genre threshold.

Hmm. As you say, Flash Gordon is presented as a sort of super-science setting; now, if by going by my individual tastes/interpretation I would absolutely say it's now become science fantasy just because it seems so... implausible, far-fetched (my brain is not doing articulation well today)? At least by today's metrics, it would be so incredibly advanced technologically that it would to me, indeed, be indistinguishable from magic (so, fantasy). But if as you say, the superscience presentation/explanation and "authorial intent" so to speak matters or is the metric with which something should be measured by, then that's a really interesting view.

Although from a literary perspective rather than a setting perspective, I would probably agree that Flash Gordon can still be considered sci-fi. From a gaming/setting standpoint, it's utterly fantasy to me(read: composed of fantastical/barely explainable elements).

Not sure what my point is exactly, I'm just rambling.

I could see "science fiction" based on completely erroneous science maybe becoming science fantasy - exploring a geocentric universe in an open flying ship that obeys Aristotelian physics. But maybe not; the line for me is mostly whether it feels like the science, right or wrong, exists in the made-up world and stuff happens, or whether it exists entirely for the convenience of the story or themes or moral (with stuff that doesn't even try for a veneer of science being very far on that side of the line). I expect that my judgement of this line could shift for a given work; The Time Machine might be an example - is it "what would you find if you had a time machine?" or is it that the time travel exists in the story just to bring someone from the present to a world of Eloi and Morlocks?

As there's no consensus on the dividing line between Science Fiction and Science Fantasy, its gonna be very subjective where a Science Fiction story or setting becomes Science Fantasy. As rawmna said, erroneous science will hasten that transition.

Rawma brings up another interesting point. The Time Machine might be very fantastical, but its the device to bring the character to the other world which is not fantastical, so where does that fall in the Science vs. Fantasy spectrum? AKA, does one Fantasy element invalidate your Science Fiction status?

As long as the game is fun (or the show is entertaining, or whatever), I don't care if it's "sci-fi" or "science-fantasy." The labels are fuzzy at the edges, in any case, so they're only useful for a kind of broad impression of what the game is like.

Quote from: rawma;1106304The Time Machine might be an example - is it "what would you find if you had a time machine?" or is it that the time travel exists in the story just to bring someone from the present to a world of Eloi and Morlocks?

For me HG Wells' Time Machine is notably more sciencey than almost any subsequent version, since almost all future versions simply open magic portals to a convenient time & place, whereas HG Wells' machine *remains where it is* and simply has time pass (forward or back) at a quicker rate for the machine, and the effects of this are discussed. This deals with a lot of issues time travel stories rarely address.

Wells' science may not be possible, but he definitely addresses the questions of time travel & evolution in scientific terms.

Flash Gordon was never really "science fiction" in the way you mean.  Physics and astronomy hasn't really changed much since the 1930s, it was just as breaking the laws of what was understood then as it now.  

By contrast, When Worlds Collide, the novel from which he stole the basic idea from, was science fiction.  Only in that the Earth was destroyed and a few rockets landed on rogue planet that entered a stable orbit, not a fantastical world with hawkmen and lion people and all sorts of silly things.

Quote from: Rhedyn;1106249I was having a conversation with my friend awhile ago. He dislikes playing in Sci-fi RPGs as a general rule. As a joke I prompted the idea of playing a Flash Gordon RPG. Surprisingly he was into the idea because to him Flash Gordon is basically fantasy.

At the time when Flash Gordon came out it was Sci-fi, and overtime it's been considered "pulpy Sci-fi" but does there come a point when the scientific assumptions a Sci-fi story bases itself are proven so untrue that the story morphs into Science Fantasy or straight up Fantasy? For example, in a thousand years will shows like Babylon 5 , Star Trek, Stargate SG-1, and The Expanse be considered fantasy stories about characters with primitive technology depending on magical artifacts to solve problems?

Yes, it is possible. Asimov's robot stories are great, but the depictions of the other planets in our solar system are horribly dated. Same with Heinlein's future history stories. Although, they are awesome sources of ideas for current games, I've lifted Asimov's Mercury from Runaround whole cloth for several Traveller games.

Some times though, the science fiction can be modified before technological advancement or the error finding capabilities of millions of fans catches up to it. Larry Niven originally created his famous Ringworld without attitude jets (which was pointed out at the 1971 World Science Fiction Convention by MIT students chanting "The Ringworld Is Unstable" in the hotel hallways) and was able to add those and other necessary systems to the Ringworld in his sequel The Ringworld Engineers.

Sometimes science that has been disproven gives the material needed flavor. Space: 1889 wouldn't be nearly as fun if it was scientifically accurate and did not have ships travelling through the ether.

Quote from: JeremyR;1106341Flash Gordon was never really "science fiction" in the way you mean.  Physics and astronomy hasn't really changed much since the 1930s, it was just as breaking the laws of what was understood then as it now.  

Yeah, I would tend to class FG and Star Wars as science fantasy, whether space opera or planetary romance. They are 'romances' (in the older sense) using SF trappings. I'd put John Carter in there too.

I think these are fundamentally different from SF in attitude.

Quote from: jeff37923;1106347Sometimes science that has been disproven gives the material needed flavor. Space: 1889 wouldn't be nearly as fun if it was scientifically accurate and did not have ships travelling through the ether.

Yes. I would say Space:1889 is not SF, but it uses the early SF material of the era for inspiration. This is pretty common these days. A bit like how the Superhero genre is not SF but frequently takes stuff/patina from SF.

Soft SF tends to raise questions about the human condition, in relation to new technology & scientific concepts, rather than hard SF's primary focus on the tech itself. So TOS Star Trek is very much SF, as is ST The Next Generation. It's hard to see Abrams-Trek as much different from Star Wars, though, being pulpy adventure with an SF patina.

In general RPGs tend to the same approach as Abrams, being more about the patina than the questions raised by the original works. So eg Cyberpunk RPGs rarely raise any questions about the nature of humanity the way something like Neuromancer or Blade Runner does.

Quote from: S'mon;1106353Yes. I would say Space:1889 is not SF, but it uses the early SF material of the era for inspiration. This is pretty common these days. A bit like how the Superhero genre is not SF but frequently takes stuff/patina from SF.

Soft SF tends to raise questions about the human condition, in relation to new technology & scientific concepts, rather than hard SF's primary focus on the tech itself. So TOS Star Trek is very much SF, as is ST The Next Generation. It's hard to see Abrams-Trek as much different from Star Wars, though, being pulpy adventure with an SF patina.

In general RPGs tend to the same approach as Abrams, being more about the patina than the questions raised by the original works. So eg Cyberpunk RPGs rarely raise any questions about the nature of humanity the way something like Neuromancer or Blade Runner does.

I agree that soft SF like Star Trek is more amenable to questions of ethics or morality and technology, but hard SF has many "cautionary tales" as well, just not as many. For RPGs, while you can do hard SF and gaming, the number of people who will engage in that kind of play is definitely smaller than the number that will engage in soft SF gaming. The morality play type of adventure is an even smaller number of people playing than those doing hard SF gaming.

The games I run with my fiance and her sons illustrates this. She loves questions of ethics and morality in RPG form, but she is also finishing up her Masters degree in Psychiatric Counseling and is in her 40s. Her two sons are ages 11 and 12, and get bored to tears at those kinds of thought problems, but love to go murderhoboing. Our Far Trek games have been a hoot because their ship plays like it is crewed by Spock, Harry Mudd, and Gowron.