Pro socilaist movies...

[Speaker to Animals]

And with respect to FTL drives, the Pournelle's future history novels were all relatively hard science fiction, and he did come up with a plausible explanation for how these things work. They became major plotpoints and sources of conflict in numerous novels (i.e. why the Moties were trapped in their system).

So then your main contention is that the Star Trek warp drive just doesn't feel real enough.

No. My contention (and actually fact) is that Star Trek is not science fiction because it does not operate within the constraints of science fiction but, rather, the constraints of fantasy literature. It's fantasy set in space.

What makes something science fiction is not that it was set in the future or that the events take place in space. Science fiction plots require plausible scientific explanations for the events, and where no such explanation is possible, they should compartmentalize that material away from sources of conflict.

If you don't know how to plausibly explain something, then you shouldn't, and if you can't plausibly explain it, then it shouldn't become a major source of conflict in your plot, since that would require explanation. The minute you start making up fake magic words, you strayed into fantasy. LOTS of would-be SF writers make the mistake of doing this and get rejected for it.

That doesn't mean your fantasy set in space is crap either. I absolutely love the Barsoom novels, which are considered space fantasy. That's what Star Trek and Star Wars are, by the way: space fantasy.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Star Trek is a fantasy. It has ZERO fidelity to any plausible science.

If a science fiction author is describing something that is so far advanced that he cannot explain it, then he typically does NOT explain it. He doesn't invent all this fake jargon to pretend like there is the fake science behind it all. He leaves that a mystery.

The further you get into unexplainable technology, the less central role that technology plays in actually creating the conflict.

And with respect to FTL drives, the Pournelle's future history novels were all relatively hard science fiction, and he did come up with a plausible explanation for how these things work. They became major plotpoints and sources of conflict in numerous novels

Do you even read what you're typing?

[Speaker to Animals]

Yeah, do YOU?

Pournelle actually came up with plausible explanations for how those drives worked.

The same thing was true when he wrote Footfall with Larry Niven. The Orion drive was established science around which they based the ship in the end of the book.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Yeah, do YOU?

Pournelle actually came up with plausible explanations for how those drives worked.

The same thing was true when he wrote Footfall with Larry Niven. The Orion drive was established science around which they based the ship in the end of the book.

How did he write a more "plausible explanation" for a completely fictional FTL engine??? Setting off nuclear explosions behind a magical non-vaporizable steel plate is more plausible than a warp bubble? Wtf are you even talking about?

[Speaker to Animals]

Yeah, do YOU?

Pournelle actually came up with plausible explanations for how those drives worked.

The same thing was true when he wrote Footfall with Larry Niven. The Orion drive was established science around which they based the ship in the end of the book.

How did he write a more "plausible explanation" for a completely fictional FTL engine??? Setting off nuclear explosions behind a magical non-vaporizable steel plate is more plausible than a warp bubble? Wtf are you even talking about?

Because it was a plausible explanation. That doesn't mean correct. Jules Verne wrote a plausible explanation for how the center of the Earth is organized in the 1860s, but as we learned more about geology, we learned he was wrong.

[DBTrek]

Does science fiction become space fantasy once the speculative science has been proven wrong?

[Speaker to Animals]

Does science fiction become space fantasy once the speculative science has been proven wrong?

That's a good question. Not sure how to answer that.

In one of my books on the matter, Orson Scott Card argues that they sort of change genre over time because science changes over time. He wrote that he still enjoys reading old SF, but he reads it as if it's a different speculative genre. Which makes sense. Nobody today reads Journey to the Center of the Earth like it's hard SF, even though it was hard SF when it was written.

A lot of the best SF is somewhat impervious to this effect within a single lifetime. You could read Asimov's Foundation novels today, and while some of the stuff might see dated, for the most part it still stands up pretty well since all the technology he describes that far in the future is not explained in detail. The further out you go, the more your plots has to turn around issues in sociology, psychology, spirituality, etc., which most SF does when set that far in the future.

[SuburbanFarmer]

Future science in detail = "fantasy"
Future science vaguely presented w/hand waving = "hard fiction"

:face palm:

[katarn]

And with respect to FTL drives, the Pournelle's future history novels were all relatively hard science fiction, and he did come up with a plausible explanation for how these things work. They became major plotpoints and sources of conflict in numerous novels (i.e. why the Moties were trapped in their system).

So then your main contention is that the Star Trek warp drive just doesn't feel real enough.

No. My contention (and actually fact) is that Star Trek is not science fiction because it does not operate within the constraints of science fiction but, rather, the constraints of fantasy literature. It's fantasy set in space.

What makes something science fiction is not that it was set in the future or that the events take place in space. Science fiction plots require plausible scientific explanations for the events, and where no such explanation is possible, they should compartmentalize that material away from sources of conflict.

If you don't know how to plausibly explain something, then you shouldn't, and if you can't plausibly explain it, then it shouldn't become a major source of conflict in your plot, since that would require explanation. The minute you start making up fake magic words, you strayed into fantasy. LOTS of would-be SF writers make the mistake of doing this and get rejected for it.

That doesn't mean your fantasy set in space is crap either. I absolutely love the Barsoom novels, which are considered space fantasy. That's what Star Trek and Star Wars are, by the way: space fantasy.

I see what you're saying. I would highlight though; the Expanded Universe books for Star Wars were sometimes within your definition of sci-fi, especially the X-Wing series under Stackpole or Thrawn under Zahn. Those are Star Wars at its best, the normal stuff in the universe was more fantasy.

I find that, for space stories, I usually like sci-fi over fantasy. To continue with the Star Wars example, X-Wing was good because Stackpole studied historical dogfighting and cast it in space- the books barely mentioned the Force for a long while- and Zahn used physics degrees to essentially reboot Star Wars with Thrawn.

[Speaker to Animals]

So then your main contention is that the Star Trek warp drive just doesn't feel real enough.

No. My contention (and actually fact) is that Star Trek is not science fiction because it does not operate within the constraints of science fiction but, rather, the constraints of fantasy literature. It's fantasy set in space.

What makes something science fiction is not that it was set in the future or that the events take place in space. Science fiction plots require plausible scientific explanations for the events, and where no such explanation is possible, they should compartmentalize that material away from sources of conflict.

If you don't know how to plausibly explain something, then you shouldn't, and if you can't plausibly explain it, then it shouldn't become a major source of conflict in your plot, since that would require explanation. The minute you start making up fake magic words, you strayed into fantasy. LOTS of would-be SF writers make the mistake of doing this and get rejected for it.

That doesn't mean your fantasy set in space is crap either. I absolutely love the Barsoom novels, which are considered space fantasy. That's what Star Trek and Star Wars are, by the way: space fantasy.

I see what you're saying. I would highlight though; the Expanded Universe books for Star Wars were sometimes within your definition of sci-fi, especially the X-Wing series under Stackpole or Thrawn under Zahn. Those are Star Wars at its best, the normal stuff in the universe was more fantasy.

I find that, for space stories, I usually like sci-fi over fantasy. To continue with the Star Wars example, X-Wing was good because Stackpole studied historical dogfighting and cast it in space- the books barely mentioned the Force for a long while- and Zahn used physics degrees to essentially reboot Star Wars with Thrawn.

Well, like I said, it's totally possible to write a novel or screenplay within these franchises within the actual science fiction genre. You just have to leave out all the fake techno-babble. You still have transporters and warp drives, since you are stuck with them by adopting the franchise, but you don't need to make their inner workings a part of the plot. More importantly, the solutions to conflict have to be easily explainable. If your solutions involve making up fake sciency words, then you are just engaging in fantasy which, again, is fine, but don't call that science fiction when it's actually space fantasy at best, and just pure fantasy set in space more probably.