Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

[james_davis_nicoll]

SF or fantasy? Why?

Comments

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I agree with you on the magical martial arts point, except if you're also going to say that super-james-bond spyness is possible if you study tradecraft really, really hard.

But it's not uber-competence really that's the signifier of the fantasy/SF divide, I think; I think it's the assumed position of the story-teller with respect to the current world and the imagined on. Fantasy worlds are de facto impossible, and this is part of the understood context for the fantasy story. Science Fiction worlds are de facto not impossible, and this is part of the understood context for the SF story.

The reason that FTL is still a part of SF is that in many people's minds, creator and listener/reader, they can still say the thing "FTL" and wholly engage in the narrative on the underlying assumption that it describes a world that is de facto possible, even though, really, it's not.

[graydon saunders (from livejournal.com)]

I don't by that.

Very little about classic SF is possible at all. (Positronic brain? it works via antimatter electrons? what? The various atrocities against biology, it's not a long list of stuff that's even vaguely possible.)

The point isn't that it's possible; the point is that it feels a certain kind of plausible with respect to one's pre-existing biases.

You can maybe distinguish between SF and fantasy on the basis of which sheaf of biases this is supposed to work well with when considered as story-building instructions. Actual possibility is much, much tougher.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

Yes, I agree that it's not important if the future is actually possible; what's important is that the reader be able to approach the story with the understanding that it's a story about a possible future. It's a "what if" tale in the sense of "if we develop technology x or social conventions y, then look what a wonderful future it will be", instead of an "if only" tale in the sense of "if only we all lived in a magical land where brave young hobbits could defeat the avatar of evil by bravery and fortitude leading to the destruction of his locus of power: then all would be right with the world".

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

The hobbits' bravery and fortitude does not defeat the avatar of evil, it fails at the last minute and is rescued by blind luck/divine grace.

Sorry to be pedantic, but this misconception about Lord of the Rings seems to have been directly responsible for a lot of the most dumbed-down school of pseudomedieval genre fantasy.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

That is a fair point. Mind you, divine grace is also something science fiction isn't all that keen on.

[seawasp]

Super-James-Bond Spyness is often seen as BEING reality by those who don't think about it much, and certainly isn't understood as being as ludicrous as it really is, so yes, I'd say that in fictional context Super James Bond Spyness IS possible if you study spy-things very hard, just like being a Super-Scientist is possible if you're just amazingly smart.