Quote from: Scott Anderson;760126All I have is semantic quibbles. Your take on it is as good as mine or better.

Well, how about the referee, that's first I've heard of that one and certainly points more towards the RPG side of things.  Where did you find that one out, I'd like to read more about it.

"Referee" in the sense that the Charlotte (I think? I get them mixed up)  was in charge, and adjudicated the action. That could just have been being bossy.

Quote from: Scott Anderson;760151"Referee" in the sense that the Charlotte (I think? I get them mixed up)  was in charge, and adjudicated the action. That could just have been being bossy.

Still, if she was the final voice, then it wasn't storygaming, because there was no contest to determine authorial voice, the final say was always Charlotte's.

I'd say for classification purposes, it might be hard to call it a game in the sense of "game theory".  An RPG by GM fiat probably doesn't fit most modern definitions of an RPG, but since there was a GM in some sense, I'd say that does move it from pure simming or simply communal shared storytelling into a proto-RPG storytelling activity.  

If Charlotte was the final arbiter, then the other participants wouldn't have true or complete authorship, which would lend itself to a more immersive environment into individual characters, but that's just my take.  I haven't read enough about them outside of their general history and their literature to make that determination.

Yeah, I just saw that the original setting was Angria but the older siblings (Charlotte & her brother Branwell) lorded it over the younger ones too much so they did their own, which was Gondal. Perhaps an early instance of Brain Damage inflicted by tyrannical referees?

The idea though that this was RPGing may be traced to this blog post: http://cavalorn.livejournal.com/256668.html I would like to know if anyone made the connection earlier. Outside the hobby, the stories seem to be portrayed often as "science fiction" which seems even less supportable--apparently based only on the wholly-made up world and the similarity to fanfic in structure, without any clear examples presented of SF or even fantasy content. (You know, at least a spell or a monster or an elf.) "Speculative fiction," maybe.

Science fiction as a genre was still in their future.  At least as far as Anthony Trollope's The Fixed Period in 1882. That's where I mark SF as a different genre from fiction in the West.

But why do we now consider science fiction different from fantasy?  Even as a book-lover and RPG lover, I see many more similarities than differences between the two. Maybe I'm just not erudite enough to perform the proper taxonomy.

Quote from: Scott Anderson;760177But why do we now consider science fiction different from fantasy?  Even as a book-lover and RPG lover, I see many more similarities than differences between the two. Maybe I'm just not erudite enough to perform the proper taxonomy.

I believe the difference lies in the speculative nature of Sci-fi.

Quote from: dragoner;760002What's old is new again, eventually.

Oh dear...

So are we all ready for the cycle to turn again in a few years, for the OSR to be derided and buried once more, for a game like Vampire: The Maquerade to rise to prominence and for the then-upcoming edition of D&D to ape it, shunning most of what 5th ed was?

Quote from: Shipyard Locked;760189Oh dear...

So are we all ready for the cycle to turn again in a few years, for the OSR to be derided and buried once more, for a game like Vampire: The Maquerade to rise to prominence and for the then-upcoming edition of D&D to ape it, shunning most of what 5th ed was?

Then I will be the Beethoven Beetle, and roll the stone in front of my burrow.

lol j/k

But who knows? Stranger things have happened; I sort of missed things last time around, maybe I'll catch that train. Maybe Rifts style kitchen sink gonzo will come back in style again.

Quote from: Scott Anderson;760177Science fiction as a genre was still in their future.  At least as far as Anthony Trollope's The Fixed Period in 1882. That's where I mark SF as a different genre from fiction in the West.

But why do we now consider science fiction different from fantasy?  Even as a book-lover and RPG lover, I see many more similarities than differences between the two. Maybe I'm just not erudite enough to perform the proper taxonomy.

I don't know about The Fixed Period. Okay, googled it, sounds very interesting, and yes, in the same strain as "obvious" SF such as We or Brave New World. Surely Frankenstein belongs in there somewhere, though? (I haven't read it; I know most or all of the movies have diverged from the book quite a bit.) Maybe Gulliver's Travels? (ditto) There's also Cyrano de Bergerac's stories about travels to the moon & sun, in the 17th century.

To answer your second question: SF & fantasy were more closely related until the 1970s. Certainly fans & authors ranged freely across topics, I think probably more than they might range to and from, say, detective novels or westerns. For one thing there just wasn't that much modern fantasy so it was practically a subgenre, arguably moreso because a fair amount of "fantasy" was post-apocalyptic, planetary romance, or sword & planet. I've seen it argued that The Sword of Shannara was really the birth of fantasy as distinct genre--in the sense of audience recognition and marketing. Henceforth the genre was "books that are kind of like The Lord of the Rings". (And possibly: "books that are read by people who play D&D".)

However, I have a sense that modern fantasy really has two major strands. One more associated with SF and including the types I just mentioned along with sword & sorcery; the other, more associated with historical pastiche and myth, including Dunsany & Tolkien. (I'm guessing George MacDonald & Eddison may fall into this category, but I haven't read them yet.) These latter had roots in 19th century Romanticism & nationalism akin to Pre-Raphaelitism, and in the wake of Tolkien, with Brookes establishing the pattern, they became ascendant as the genre was defined.

So in broad generalities, you have science fiction which is concerned with progress and regress, questions about society, its organization, and the effect of technology. On the other hand you have fantasy which is more about evoking a certain nostalgic feeling, or wish-fulfilment, or personal drama.

According to this taxonomy Star Wars is more fantasy than science fiction, while Star Trek is more science fiction even though its technology is no less improbable.

But if you'd like you could also say that fantasy has magic while SF has lasers and spaceships.

Quote from: Arminius;760210So in broad generalities, you have science fiction which is concerned with progress and regress, questions about society, its organization, and the effect of technology. On the other hand you have fantasy which is more about evoking a certain nostalgic feeling, or wish-fulfilment, or personal drama.

According to this taxonomy Star Wars is more fantasy than science fiction, while Star Trek is more science fiction even though its technology is no less improbable.

I'd agree with that. I think the problem is that there is a broad 'lasers & starships' genre of adventure fiction, begun by EE Doc Smith's 'The Skylark of Space', which is very little about the things sf is concerned with, but uses sf tropes. Star Wars is in that lineage.
The Sword & Planet genre of adventure fiction begun with Burrough's 'A Princess of Mars' also doesn't fit well within the sf genre. Star Trek by contrast is clearly sf, no matter how silly the technology.

I think we can identify central cases of sf - Arthur C Clark and Isaac Asimov clearly wrote sf. And central cases of fantasy - JRR Tolkien clearly wrote fantasy. But there's plenty of adventure fiction with futuristic and fantastic tropes that does not fit comfortably in either genre, and is probably best discussed in terms of genres like Sword & Planet and Space Opera that are related to but different from both.

Quote from: Scott Anderson;760177But why do we now consider science fiction different from fantasy?  Even as a book-lover and RPG lover, I see many more similarities than differences between the two. Maybe I'm just not erudite enough to perform the proper taxonomy.

Back in university we've had - and still have - an ongoing sci-fi lit. seminar that's also compiling and updating what is possibly the only academic catalogue of Hungarian science fiction. There, we use the following definition for sci-fi:

"Science fiction is a work of narrative fiction that addresses a nonexistent or unrecognised problem and offers a ratonal answer, or - the opposite - addresses an existent and recognised problem and offers a nonexistant but rational answer."

The key concepts are that A, either the problem or the answer must be fictional ('nonexistent'), and B, there must a rational relationship between the two. For instance, consider Frederik Pohl's Gateway:
- Real, recognised problem (overpopulation, mass poverty, humanity using up Earth's natural resources).
- Nonexistent solution (humanity finds a bunch of abandoned alien spaceships and uses them to seek out technology or colonisable planets that could save it.
- Rational link between the two: if we WERE facing the problem in real life and if we DID find a depot of alien spaceships, it's quite believable that we'd act largely the same.

The opposite case could be Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama:
- Nonexistent, unrecognised problem (it doesn't look like any giant aliens paceships are going to drift into our solar system any time soon; and I don't think any of the space agencies are actually making plans for just such an event)
- Existent solution: send a bunch of scientist to investigate. (Existent because HAVE encountered unknown things before and we HAVE sent scientists to investigate, so we know that this is what humanity does in a case like this.)
- Rational link: IF a spaceship were to show up, it would be a rational reply on humanity's part to send some scientist.
Fantasy literature doesn't really have this. The Lord of the Rings has neither an existent problem (in real life, we do not and never will have an evil fallen angel trying to take over the world), nor an existent solution (in real life, we cannot kill the above-mention [and nonexistent, anyway] fallen angel by dropping a magic ring in a volcano). Also, the link between the problem and the solution isn't rational: there's no logical or psychological necessity (that we understand in the real world) demanding that Sauron must create an Achilles heel ring, enabling some guys to kill him many generations later.

Premier, S'mon--general agreement on my part.

I'll also acknowledge that the binary taxonomy works best on central cases, which of course raises problems of selection bias for objective analysis. The taxonomies are more useful I think when it comes to observing how people have approached and produced these works--from marketing categories to communities of fans, critics, and writers. Over the past I don't know how many years there's been a canonization of the core SF principles toward "problems". I don't know who is responsible for that. Hugo Gernsback? John W. Campbell Larry Niven? Asimov? (Pure shots in the dark.) And also some effort to centralize SF around "hard SF", I think in reaction to the ascendancy of fantasy aesthetics.

On the fantasy side I don't know when critical awareness starts. CAS and Howard I think were consciously writing to a genre that mixed horror and historical pastiche, which I believe Leiber later dubbed S&S. Moorcock had something to say about fantasy with "Epic Pooh", Le Guin wrote about the importance of language in fantasy in "From Elfland to Poughkeepsie." My impression is that the connection to history and myth was all weakened in the 80s & 90s as fantasy came to be about magic + good v. evil + vague wish fulfillment. (And SF headed in the same direction as I mentioned.)

Anyway I've rambled a lot, but even though genres are pretty arbitrary and fluid over time I don't see the SFness of just having an imaginary country. Maybe if there are specific speculative social issues like 1984 or Fight Club, and perhaps the Brontës had that? But fanfic <> SF or fantasy, contrary to some of blurbs I've seen about the Brontës.

Quote from: Arminius;760293And also some effort to centralize SF around "hard SF", I think in reaction to the ascendancy of fantasy aesthetics.

I guess soft sf is 'interesting characters, silly tech' and hard sf is 'bland characters, plausible tech'? Soft sf explores the human condition, hard sf explores the ramifications of technology? I'm not sure it's a very useful distinction, since it tends to slough off a lot of stuff like Trek, as you say. A genre structure that puts Star Trek and Star Wars in the same genre seems less useful than one which explains their differences (although I guess maybe in recent years Star Trek has tended away from anything that the sf genre traditionally cares about, towards more of a straight action-adventure thing).

Thinking back to early SF, I can't really characterise HG Wells' works as either 'hard' or 'soft' SF - The War of the Worlds, The War in the Air, The Time Machine et al - they seem to be just as concerned about technology's impact on the human condition as with the technology itself. The War in the Air seems like super-hard sf since all the posited technology (tanks, planes, aerial bombardment) actually came into existence within a decade, it's a pretty brutal straight prediction of the Great War.  Whereas The Time Machine is uninterested in the technology of the machine itself, its concern with social-physical evolution of future humanity looks like a 'soft sf' concern. But I don't think this distinction is particularly illuminating - both are clearly kindred works, and their concerns have nothing to do with the likes of A Princess of Mars.

I think the "hard SF" canonizers are more about defining "hard SF" than they are about filling in the other box in the matrix. It's just like in fantasy, "high fantasy" was coined so people assumed that there must be "low fantasy" too. While there have been some attempts to define low fantasy (mentioned on this board by Daniel Ream) I don't find them particularly credible or useful.

So I don't think hard SF would be related to the quality or interest of the characters. It's mainly: is the science accurate, plausible, rigorous? I have to say I take the concept more as a defensive measure than a goal in itself--a way to exclude the worst offenders, that not only use counterfactual premises as background to the story (e.g. FTL) but then repeatedly make them lynchpins of the plot, often violating not only current knowledge but also logical consequences of the initial premise. I think "hard sf" was also an attempt to justify why a particular story ought to be written as SF rather than fantasy or surreal fiction.

Wells seems pretty "hard SF" because the science specifically enables the theme of the stories rather than just being a vehicle for the action.

While searching for info on this I came across a collection of references that may be of interest: http://www.jessesword.com/sf/view/1674

Quote from: Scott Anderson;760177But why do we now consider science fiction different from fantasy?  Even as a book-lover and RPG lover, I see many more similarities than differences between the two. Maybe I'm just not erudite enough to perform the proper taxonomy.

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