What is sci-fi/spec-fic/sf?
Mar. 13th, 2009 01:17 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kickahaFor some reason this has been bouncing around in my head recently, and I finally came up with a decent answer for my own satisfaction, interested in hearing other peoples' take on it.
Science fiction is not spaceships. It isn't lasers. It isn't robots. It isn't clones, telepathy, mutants, nuclear apocalypse, AI dystopias, AI utopias, teleportation, FTL travel, or any of the other trappings that people associate with it.
SF is not fiction about science. SF is applying the methodology of science to fiction.
At least, good SF is. Throwing in (pseudo-)scientific elements into otherwise standard fiction genres leads to a piece that may appear to be SF on the surface, but doesn't *feel* like SF to me.
Good SF observes; it observes cultures, technology, demographics, psychology, behavior, and all the elements we have at our disposal in real life, to create models of interaction and history.
Good SF hypothesizes; it asks 'what if *this* aspect were changed?'.
Good SF predicts; it extrapolates, based on the observational model, and the change, what would happen next.
The testing comes in fandom... "Did it feel 'real'? Did it capture your imagination and hook into that innate sense of an underlying set of mechanisms to our reality, both physical and psychological, that we can toy with, at least here, in ways that feel like they are possible?"
Good SF passes the test of perceived validity and sets another stake in the ground for a benchmark for others to follow and aspire to in their own hypothesizing, prediction, and writing.
Science fiction isn't fiction with science, it's the science *of* fiction... and that's what makes it unique.
Science fiction is not spaceships. It isn't lasers. It isn't robots. It isn't clones, telepathy, mutants, nuclear apocalypse, AI dystopias, AI utopias, teleportation, FTL travel, or any of the other trappings that people associate with it.
SF is not fiction about science. SF is applying the methodology of science to fiction.
At least, good SF is. Throwing in (pseudo-)scientific elements into otherwise standard fiction genres leads to a piece that may appear to be SF on the surface, but doesn't *feel* like SF to me.
Good SF observes; it observes cultures, technology, demographics, psychology, behavior, and all the elements we have at our disposal in real life, to create models of interaction and history.
Good SF hypothesizes; it asks 'what if *this* aspect were changed?'.
Good SF predicts; it extrapolates, based on the observational model, and the change, what would happen next.
The testing comes in fandom... "Did it feel 'real'? Did it capture your imagination and hook into that innate sense of an underlying set of mechanisms to our reality, both physical and psychological, that we can toy with, at least here, in ways that feel like they are possible?"
Good SF passes the test of perceived validity and sets another stake in the ground for a benchmark for others to follow and aspire to in their own hypothesizing, prediction, and writing.
Science fiction isn't fiction with science, it's the science *of* fiction... and that's what makes it unique.
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Date: 2009-03-13 06:33 pm (UTC)A counterpoint...
Date: 2009-03-13 06:45 pm (UTC)Continuing to refine and argue about the definition of SF contributes (in however small a way) to the continued marginalization of the genre, and all "genre" fiction. Which in turn allows the "mainstream" to get away with disparaging quality literature based on its inclusion of robots and/or elves, rather on its, you know, literary merit.
PS You can't answer the question "what is SF" by defining "good SF"--two different questions, dude. :)
Re: A counterpoint...
Date: 2009-03-13 09:48 pm (UTC)In fact... my feeling, from reading a lot of early SF, is that the scientific topics were an after-effect of the interests of the audience who were primarily drawn to the mode of thinking. Look at Harry Turtledove's alternate history fiction - it's the same mode of thinking, but with damned little 'traditional' sf elements in it. Or look at Churchill's lovely "If Lee had Won the Battle of Gettysburg", an essay that many consider solid SF, even though it hasn't got a lick of technological extrapolation in it.
But, for folks who, particularly in the early 20th century, were drawn to the scientific method, the technologies were the most obvious common interest they shared, and the easiest to write about by authors who, likewise, were often trained in science and engineering. So that's where this writing style led.
I actually hate to call it a genre - it's not the plots, it's not the trappings, it's a mode of thinking and writing that works in many traditionally defined genres.
And if you're not going to define a subject by starting with its most precise examples, how on earth are you going to define it? ;)
Actually, I think this gets to the heart of the matter nicely. The mode of thinking behind SF (I actually kind of prefer speculative fiction as a term for this reason, but it's so... vague... isn't all fiction 'speculative'? It's like calling evolution a lower-case 't' theory, instead of scientific Theory) doesn't fit into the method for defining genres that most literature is categorized by: plot themes, character types, settings, and so on. Sure, there are the stereotypical examples of that in SF, but that's what the mainstream uses to define SF/non-SF... what I'm saying is that there is a more subtle shift that happened, and one that will continue to cause consternation.
The major contribution of SF isn't the surface, it's the way of approaching the art of creative writing from a fundamentally different starting position of thought processes.
Re: A counterpoint...
Date: 2009-03-14 02:09 am (UTC)Anyway, that's a bunch more different questions; let's see if I can do justice to some of them.
First, "science fiction is not spaceships. It isn't lasers. It isn't robots. It isn't clones, telepathy, mutants, nuclear apocalypse, AI dystopias, AI utopias, teleportation, FTL travel, or any of the other trappings that people associate with it" is not the same as, "spaceships, lasers, robots, clones, telepathy, mutants, nuclear apocalypse, AI dystopias, AI utopias, teleportation, FTL travel are not science fiction", and while I can certainly agree with you on the first point, I emphatically disagree on the second.
I also disagree that your term "good" SF is correct; you are describing "hard" SF, which has its share of bad writing, and softer SF has plenty of good writing. Bujold's Vorkosigan saga is about as soft as you can get, having absolutely no technical explanation of the spaceships, lasers, robots, clones, telepathy, utopias, dystopias, and FTL travel, but it is both very good and very much SF.
So now I've gotten the me-disagreeing-with-you out of the way; let's see if I can give you something whereby you can disagree with me.
Yes, all fic is spec. :) But what makes a work SF or not has to do with the topic and/or setting of speculation, not the method of approaching the speculation. It is just as valid to assume robots and FTL travel, and then speculate how humans would change with the changed environment, as it is to speculate how the environment might generate robots and FTL. Two very different approaches, both SF.
Allow me to suggest that what makes a work SF or not is the importance and integrality of the SF elements to the plot. _The Caves of Steel_ (which is SF by your *and* my definitions, I am sure) absolutely requires robots and space travel; without them, the story just can't happen. But _The Time Machine_ is, I'd argue, just as much SF as _The Caves of Steel_, even though there is absolutely no rigor in the "science" that produces the Machine, and thus would not fall under your definition as I understand it. For without the Machine, there is, again, no story.
Pern, on the other hand, is not SF, no matter how many spaceships and genetic engineers she threw at it after the fact. I submit that Star Wars is similarly a fantasy with SF trappings, though I know this opinion is likely to get me lynched in many of the communities we frequent. :)
Re: A counterpoint...
Date: 2009-03-14 03:18 am (UTC)And I think we're in violent agreement here. That's exactly my point - it doesn't take the technical discussion (ie, 'hard SF') to make SF... it takes the speculation based on a hypothesis of "if we start here, with these inputs, given what we theorize of cultural/technological/psychological trends based on our own observations, then we predict that it would look like..." There's no need to discuss the trends, only make them self-consistent within the piece, and provide a mental model for the reader that fits that scientific methodology thinking style - even if they don't realize it.
Much 'hard SF' is actually pretty poor SF IMO - and I don't mean as per the quality of the writing, I mean that while it discusses technological trappings, it doesn't do much on the speculation end of things other than that. (For instance, while I quite enjoyed the hard science aspects of Twistor, I found that there was little speculation as the effects of the technology, other than immediately on the protagonists in the very immediate short term. I would have loved to have seen a sequel set a couple decades later exploring these ideas.)
But most of the mainstream defines SF as whenever they see the trappings, without noticing the underlying process of methodology behind it.
"Yes, all fic is spec. :) But what makes a work SF or not has to do with the topic and/or setting of speculation, not the method of approaching the speculation. It is just as valid to assume robots and FTL travel, and then speculate how humans would change with the changed environment, as it is to speculate how the environment might generate robots and FTL. Two very different approaches, both SF."
And I agree. Both have an underlying method though: insert a change into a model based on observation and experience, then hypothesize what the outcome will be. Whether the change comes from the technology, or comes from a culture first is almost immaterial, as I see it.
"Allow me to suggest that what makes a work SF or not is the importance and integrality of the SF elements to the plot. _The Caves of Steel_ (which is SF by your *and* my definitions, I am sure) absolutely requires robots and space travel; without them, the story just can't happen. But _The Time Machine_ is, I'd argue, just as much SF as _The Caves of Steel_, even though there is absolutely no rigor in the "science" that produces the Machine, and thus would not fall under your definition as I understand it. For without the Machine, there is, again, no story."
Again, agreed. Because neither of them can happen without hypothesis. Caves of Steel: what are the effect of robots on human society, what is the effect of arcologies on human society, how would these affect police procedure, etc; The Time Machine: given what we know about evolution, human capacity for subjugation of other cultures (quite relevant at the time it was written), what is the logical outcome? This has less injected change, and more prediction of observed trends, but as one of the early examples of SF, I think it gets a mild pass for at least getting the basics right. :) The Machine is... I hate to say ancillary, but it almost is - it's a vehicle (literally) for allowing the narrator to move to the points the author wanted to describe - The Machine itself has no other effects to speak of in the story.
"Pern, on the other hand, is not SF, no matter how many spaceships and genetic engineers she threw at it after the fact. I submit that Star Wars is similarly a fantasy with SF trappings, though I know this opinion is likely to get me lynched in many of the communities we frequent. :)"
And yet again, agreed wholeheartedly. Again, trying to rephrase this... as I see it, fiction about science is just fiction, but the scientific principle applied to fiction is science fiction.
Re: A counterpoint...
Date: 2009-03-14 03:48 am (UTC)Re: A counterpoint...
Date: 2009-03-14 04:10 am (UTC)Re: A counterpoint...
Date: 2009-03-14 04:45 am (UTC)