Limits in Science-Fiction.

II2

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Softscience is fun. It gives us explosions in space.

That said, I'm in favor of things that have been proven false still being used as plot devices. I can't remember what it was, but I watched some 2010 release that brought up the whole "it's said we only use 10% of our brain... [what's the rest doing?]" thing and it was just painful and embarrassing.
 

Sam Ronin

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Surely it depends on which forms of Sci-Fi you are writing for.

Now a so called Hard Sci Fi show should keep as much as possible plausible within current scientific thinking. Although this can then seem rather boring to others. This rule also depends on the time frames involved. Near future or far future.
To quote the late Arthur C Clarke. "Any technology significant advanced beyond us would be indistinguishable from magic."

Now on the other hand you have Sci Fantasy. Stories which have a more scientific basis but play a lot looser with known rules. Star Trek would fit this. Asd half the stuff is made up to fit convenience or story devices. Although enough fans of the show working hard on real day tech make leaps towards some of what we see in it.

My point here being that it depends on the story you want to tell and how you want to tell it. If you make something which is mostly realistic but then sideline the laws of physics then many will not like the end result. On the other hand if you have a off beat television show, lets say with a 900 year old lead then you can create just about anything to make for fun television...

TL:DR. It depends on the story. The closer to realism and the here and now, the more realistic you should be.
The further into the future or alternate reality, the looser the rules become. But you also risk losing people over stuff that seems too implausible.
 

More Fun To Compute

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There are different sorts of standards applied to science fiction. The goals of the genre as a whole are not fixed as different people have very different ideals of what they should be.

Some people say that the important thing is transplanting current "human condition" situations into different sphere where they can be played with in a different way using stylised "sci-fi" elements that give themes a magical "other world" feeling. Other people say the same but replace human condition with mythology or whatever. But the harder science fiction people reject this and say that the root of science fiction is a new idea that can be speculated on in a plausible way. I would say that futuristic fantasies that don't have at least one or two ideas that seem plausibility enough to make you think about possibilities differently at least for a while are not great science fiction, just fantasies with a scientific theme instead of spiritual one. Although it's rare for authors of this sort of sci-fi to have the discipline to exclude things like spiritualist themes or themes that are not credible based on current scientific knowledge. But authors are normally allowed a couple of free passes for ideas that don't seem possible like faster than light space ships.

One reason for science fiction existing in the first place is the problem that older themes like fairies and ghosts stopped feeling so credible in a new era where people were more educated. The feeling of wonder could be regained by speculating on things that seemed plausible based on a better understanding of reality. If science fiction itself just becomes a new collection of unbelievable cliches then it loses power and needs to be replaced by something else.

Frankenstein's Monster seemed plausible when it was first created because of experiments with electricity doing things like animating frogs legs. Now that we know stitching corpses together and animating them with electricity is nonsense the monster is reduced to a camp comic horror character.
 

AlkalineGamer

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RivFader86 said:
AlkalineGamer said:
Science FICTION
That says it all imo....although it should supply some sort of explenation of how something works...doesn't matter if it would be possible in the foreseeable future as long as it isn't "A wizard did it" ;P
SCIENCE fiction. see i can do that too.

People i'm not talking about things like teleportation, time travel or deathstars.
I mean where IS the line between science fiction and fantasy, where does one become the other.
When they start changing basic things?
 

w00tage

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Fantasy. Just because bookstores put sci-fi and fantasy together under "Fiction" does not mean they're the same thing. Sci-fi is an exploration of what could happen in the future when advancements in knowledge have changed our setting and capabilities, and how people would deal with the changes. Fantasy is an exploration of what could happen if the existing physical laws of the universe were different and how people would deal with those conditions.

The Star Wars setting is the only successful example of combining sci-fi and fantasy that I can think of, and it has exactly 1 fantastic element (the Force). And that only worked because Lucas set the entire setting "Long long ago, in a galaxy far, far away" which created the necessary distance for acceptance.

So that's the line for me. Get your fantasy in my sci-fi or vice versa, and I'll throw it in the rubbish and order again.
 

AlkalineGamer

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GrizzlerBorno said:
AlkalineGamer said:
I was more concerned with basic fundemental things, such as the eyes, people where also wondering wether the charcter viewed the answeres in 1st or 3rd person, well he is basically looking trough the eyes of his ancestor, and our eyes are in the front of our heads, so he seas 1st person. stuff like that i don't think can be changed.
I presume you're talking about Assassin's Creed (By "ansers", did you mean Ancestors?) Well there's a perfectly logical explanation for that. Wanna hear it? It's a doozy!

Ready: Assassin's creed would have been a pain in the ass to play from the first person. That's it. There IS no "scientific reason", and I didn't think anyone really WANTS one. Would you like AC to be "Half-Life 2's Annoying platforming section where you can't see where you're fucking standing" the game?

OT: The central tenet of Star Wars is Space Magic. But no-one gives a shit about that because A) They named it after a fundamental aspect of Physics and B) Well, even if it IS just Space Magic. So what?
Yeah i did mean Ancestors, sorry i'm being pretty consistent with my illiteracy at the moment.

And that was pretty much my argument, that Desmond sees it in first, but because it's easier for US we see it in third.
 

JJMUG

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Titan Buttons said:
Well I disagree with you for 2 reasons
1: It is Fiction, as such it is only limited by the imagenation of te writer
2: It is Literature and to put a boundry on it is to put a boundry on a persons speech or opinion or the limits to which anyone can express themselves through words and thoughts and also the limit to which topics can be explored and the perspectives exploring them.
To limit one form of expression gives permission to limit many more.
"fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible." Rod Serling
The word fiction does not mean it gets to be Science Fantasy. In science fiction there is no magic as that would be fantasy.

w00tage said:
The Star Wars setting is the only successful example of combining sci-fi and fantasy that I can think of, and it has exactly 1 fantastic element (the Force). And that only worked because Lucas set the entire setting "Long long ago, in a galaxy far, far away" which created the necessary distance for acceptance.
Being that Star Wars is a Space Opera it can do what ever it wants to. A lot of people like to put Star Wars in one or the other in categories when really it is neither. Also it would no longer fit in the Science Fiction genre because of the force. That would make it Science Fantasy.

Wiki articles on Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Space Opera

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fiction

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fantasy

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera#History
 

GrinningManiac

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I think it's like this

It's fiction and thus you can do ANYTHING

HOWEVER

If you do something you are generally expected to explain or acknowledge it. If in your story or film everyone has three eyes for no reason you'd be best to explain why the human race decided suddenly they needed a third one. This is for the main stuff, you don't need to explain why everyone's wearing lyrca or how ships maintain oxygen supplies.

But the BIG problem is when writers try to explain things and get it HORRIBLY wrong. Like, for example, the third eye is explained as "genetics 'deciding' a third eye would allow one to rest an eye one at a time without losing depth perception". We all know this is not how evolution works and thus the explanation is nonsense.

Basically, you can get away with anything and you don't really have to explain any of it BUT if you DO explain it then you'd be best to get the explanation right.
 

The_Evermind

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Science fiction doesn't need limits, just look at hitchhikers guide. Planets almost randomly turn in giant pieces of fruitcake, there is a robot that time travels so much he becomes several times older than the universe itself, languages are translated by fish you put in your ear. However, I will agree that 1. Consistency is nice and 2. Explanations are nicer, if you are going to do something utterly impossible at least point at something in your story and blame it on that even if the explanation is nothing more than "Good thing [x] was invented, otherwise we wouldn't have been able to breathe in space just now"
 

iNsAnEHAV0C

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I think any limits in sci-fi would be bad. With boundaries you are also limiting a writer's imagination. A lot of technology today comes from people reading a sci fi novel and thinks "I wonder if I could make that real. Imposing boundaries might ruin future imaginations. I know that seems a little far fetched, but who knows?
 

HardkorSB

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AlkalineGamer said:
Science fiction, basically taking massive liberties with theoretical or even certain science.
But what lines can science fiction not cross? What scientific facts just cannot be changed?

I thought of this after having a little debate with someone on the AC forums over the way Genetic inheritance works, a constant argument was that "it's science fiction, they can do what they want" But i think Sci-Fi needs some boundaries, it's the only thing stopping it from becoming utterly insane nonsense.

So where should the line between Reality and imagination be drawn?
All sci-fi needs is consistency.
As long as the story is consistent within it's own universe, it's all good.
You can change the rules, laws of physics, whatever you want, as long as you don't change them DURING THE STORY.
 

Agayek

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Togs said:
Im currently training to be a biochemist- as my training has gone on my tolerance for bad science in media has gone.

I prefer it when they just handwave it, I loved how they did FTL travel in Firefly- there's an engine, it spins and makes you go through space- simple, elegant and with minimal stupidity or exasperating signs of a media student failing to get their head around high level physics.
Actually, there isn't any FTL movement in Firefly, according to the commentaries I watched the other day. That little spin and explosion thing is just a fusion explosion going off to propel the ship to wherever they're going.

The whole show is supposed to take place in 1 solar system, so FTL drives are unnecessary.

Edit: And now that my random nerd knowledge quota has been met, time to get back to work.
 

Celtic_Kerr

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GrizzlerBorno said:
OT: The central tenet of Star Wars is Space Magic. But no-one gives a shit about that because A) They named it after a fundamental aspect of Physics and B) Well, even if it IS just Space Magic. So what?
Interestingly alot, most people don't see it as space magic. People are already trying to see what the mind can unlock right?

CAN we move shit with our minds?!
CAN we read thoughts?
CAN we do all this shit?!

Star Wars is set "A long time ago" and yet they are far more advanced than we are, so I guess the space magic part of it all would simply be that certain people are capableof unlocking a second of their mind that can manipulate shit! What should they call this? Psiwave? Psibeam? The force!
 

BabySinclair

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I invoke Clarke's Third Law "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." It doesn't matter if we understand it or not, it works and we probably just have it wrong. That's the fun of science fiction, it's fiction and you can do crazy shit with it. If we brought a gun to a non-industrial society and used it, they would think it was magic... this sounds familiar.
 

Zakarath

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You can write/make up whatever you want, but if it's utter absurdity i.e. ships and robots the size of planets or whatever, I probably won't be interested.
 

GrizzlerBorno

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Celtic_Kerr said:
Star Wars is set "A long time ago" and yet they are far more advanced than we are, so I guess the space magic part of it all would simply be that certain people are capableof unlocking a second of their mind that can manipulate shit! What should they call this? Psiwave? Psibeam? The force!
Uhh....you DO realise that "A long long time ago, in a Galaxy far far away!"......is just a play on a "A long long time ago, in a kingdom far far away!" which is how Fairy tales start, traditionally.

It isn't supposed to be taken literally. It's just a pun.
 

Lectori Salutem

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Trolldor said:
Science Fiction does not and never will take liberties with science.

Science Fantasy can do what it wants, but the whole point of science fiction is to explore possibilities of plausabilities we just can't achieve yet.
This.
Fiction merely implies it's not a true story, the fact that it's called science-fiction does not mean anything the writer can come up with can actually happen.
That's where the fantasy genre kicks in.
 

Wintermoot

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limiting it would make it boring (for example would gurren langann still be fun if they limited them selfs to the laws of nature?)
 

Lectori Salutem

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henritje said:
limiting it would make it boring (for example would gurren langann still be fun if they limited them selfs to the laws of nature?)
They can do whatever they want, but if it's not scientific in any way whatsoever, it's not science fiction.