Pixel Scroll 10/21 One Ink Cartel

(1) The Onion reports a major addition to the movie ratings scheme.

WASHINGTON—In an effort to provide moviegoers with the information they need to determine which films are appropriate for them to see, the Motion Picture Association of America announced Tuesday the addition of a new rating to alert audiences of movies that are not based on existing works.

According to MPAA officials, the new “O,” or “Original,” designation will inform viewers that a particular film contains characters with whom they are unfamiliar, previously unseen settings, and novel plots. The rating will also reportedly serve as a warning of the potentially disorienting effects associated with having to remember characters’ names for as many as two hours and the discomfort that can occur when one is forced to keep track of narrative arcs for an entire film.

The MPAA’s new O rating will appear on all movies containing explicitly original, unadapted, and unfamiliar material.

(2) In a day devoted to Back To The Future nostalgia, Bill Higgins would like to remind everyone that Ronald Reagan “smuggled a quote from the film into an important speech to Congress.” C-SPAN has the clip, from Reagan’s 1986 State of the Union address.

Reagan also liked the movie’s joke about him being president – according to the Wikipedia he ordered the projectionist of the theater to stop the reel, roll it back, and run it again.

(3) Here’s a link to BBC video of the Back To The Future day unveiling for a Belfast university’s electric-powered DeLorean project.

(4) And in (wind) breaking news — “Michael J. Fox arrested for insider sports betting”

Fox aroused suspicion after achieving a statistically-impossible, perfect record on the site under the username NoChicken.

Authorities found an unusually worn copy of a sports almanac which was just recently printed and which has markings cataloging winning bets Fox has placed since the late 80’s.

(5) Today’s Birthday Girls:

  • Born October 21, 1929 — Ursula K. Le Guin celebrates her 86th birthday today.
  • Born October 21, 1956 – Carrie Fisher, famous for portraying Princess Leia onscreen, and author of the bestselling novel Postcards from the Edge.

(6) New York Mets fan James H. Burns is flying high. He has some tales you’ve never heard before in “The Curious Case of Daniel Murphy” on the local CBS/New York website.

(7) Steven H Silver, on the other hand, is suffering and reminds people about his 2008 article for Challenger, ”I Call It Loyalty, Others Call It Futility”.

Several years ago, I spent two summers working at Wrigley Field. When most people say something like this, it means that they sold beer or peanuts during the games (which is what my brother-in-law did). I did something different.

On Sundays during the season, when the Cubs are playing on the road, Wrigley Field is open for tours for a minimal charitable donation (at the time $10, which goes to Cubs Care Charities). I spent two summers giving tours of the ballpark. The tours included the standard places open to the public, like the concourse under the stands, the stands, and the bleachers, but also non-public areas like the press box, the visitor and home team locker rooms, and the security office. Two of my more interesting memories were getting to watch a Cubs game on television from within the confines of the visitor’s locker room and escorting a woman out to the warning track in center field so she could scatter her husband’s ashes.

The tours, of course, included information and trivia about the Cubs’ history and the stadium’s history. The tour guides were pretty good on the whole and worked to debunk legends and stories about the field while presenting information in an interesting and memorable manner.

(8) Ken Marable says the 2016 Hugo recommendation seasons begins November 2 – at least on his blog, which is coincidentally named 2016 Hugo Recommendation Season: The Non-Slate: Just Fans Talking About What They Love. For the first week he’ll focus on the Best Semiprozine category.

(9) The Wall Street Journal’s “Dan Rather, Still Wrong After All These Years” opines —

The movie ‘Truth’ is as bogus as the original attempt to smear George W. Bush’s wartime service.

Seeing that brought to mind my article about Gary Farber in File 770 #144 [PDF file] where I mentioned Farber’s then-recent participation in outing that fraud:

Within hours of “60 Minutes” purported exposé of memos by George W. Bush’s old Air National Guard commander, people were blogging away with accusations that the documents were forged because the text could not have been produced on typewriter likely to have been in use at a Texas military office in 1971, if indeed it could have been produced by anything besides Microsoft Word. Gary’s analysis showed no one knows better than a fanzine fan about the capabilities of 1970s-era business typewriters.

Another paragraph in my article praised Gary for a quality still missing from most political discourse today:

Amygdala shows how disagreement can be handled without loathing, and that evidence is more important than orthodoxy, two notions practically extinguished from the rest of the Internet in 2004. I’ve always been more conservative than a lot of fannish friends and favorite sf writers, finding the contrast informative and fascinating. Yet in 2004, I had to drop off two fannish e-mail lists to escape the constant spew of venomous political nonsense, and tell two individuals to quit sending me their mass-copied clippings. So not sharing too many of Gary’s political views, one of the pleasures I find in reading Amygdala is how his provocative viewpoints are expressed in a way that values the reader’s humanity regardless of agreement.

(10) Bob Milne reviews Larry Correias’s new Son of the Black Sword at Speculative Herald.

Larry Correia is an author best known for his guns-and-monsters, no-holds barred, testosterone-soaked urban fantasy sagas, Monster Hunter International and the Grimnoir Chronicles. For those who were curious as to how he’d make the transition from guns to swords, Son of the Black Sword is pretty much everything you’d expect, with his macho sense of almost superhuman bravado slipping well into a pulpy heroic fantasy world.

(11) What a wonderful alternate universe it could be…

(12) Mayim Biyalik on “My Sort-Of Acting Method”.

I’m not a real actor. Well, actually, I guess that’s not fair – what I mean is I’m not a trained actor. Many actors you love and see on TV and in movies studied acting for real. Like, some of them even have degrees in acting and stuff. I call those people “real actors.”

I have never studied acting in a class or in school or in college. I don’t know Stanislavsky from Uta Hagen or method acting from acting that isn’t method. It’s all Greek to me. But I do have a method of my own, from my almost 30 years being employed as an actor, and trained actors I know tell me my ‘method’ actually is a sort of method. So there you have it.

The scene I had with Jim Parsons in this past week’s episode of “The Big Bang Theory” (Season 9, Episode 5, “The Perspiration Implementation”) was a very emotional one. I cried the first time we rehearsed it and each time we showed it to our writers and producers. (Spoilers ahead if you haven’t seen it.)

(13) “You too can learn to farm on Mars” promises the article.

“Congratulations! You are leaving Earth forever,” the case study begins. “You are selected to be part of a mining colony of 100 people located on the planet Mars. Before you head to Mars, however, you need to figure out how to feed yourself and your colleagues once you are there.”

The task is similar to that of Watney, who has to grow food in an artificial habitat after he is separated from his mission crew in a Martian windstorm. “Mars will come to fear my botany powers,” he boasts.

“Farming In Space? Developing a Sustainable Food Supply on Mars” can be found here. Teaching notes and the answer key are password protected and require a paid subscription to access.

(14) NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars photographed Earth on January 31 using the left-eye camera on its science mast. See a video of Curiosity’s Earth-from-Mars images here.

(15) Makes yourself clean and shiny before lining up to see the new Star Wars movie with the help of these Darth Vader and R2-D2 showerheads.

star-wars-showerhead-darth-vader-r2-d2-gif-1 COMP

What are the major differences between the Vader and R2 model? Aside from the price, the lowest setting on the Darth Vader showerhead makes water run from the mask’s eye sockets, allowing you to bathe in Sith Lord remorse. This model also provides a handle, leaving less of your bathing up to the Force.

Darth Vader has a handle, but I don’t know that I would want to aim Darth’s tears at any vulnerable body parts….

(16) Last night Camestros Felapton staked out his spot in comments with this video is about fours waking.

[Thanks to Mark-kitteh, Bill Higgins, Will R., and John King Tarpinian for some of these stories. Title credit goes to File 770 contributing editor of the day Camestros Felapton.]

212 thoughts on “Pixel Scroll 10/21 One Ink Cartel

  1. I think it was Maureen McHugh who came up with an interesting take on the distinction between SF and Fantasy – it wasn’t anything to do with the props or the settings (laser swords versus magic swords, that kind of thing), it was about the way the stories worked.

    If I’m remembering this rightly, she reckoned that fantasy stories were normalizing, which is to say that they ended with things being set right and a status quo restored – the evil force dispelled, the land returned to peace and plenty, the rightful king seated once more upon the throne. Whereas SF stories were transformative, leading to revolutions and new horizons – new worlds to explore, new cultures to discover, new states of human consciousness, and so forth.

    I’m not too sure how much I buy this, but it’s certainly an interesting notion to consider. (It certainly seems to me that Star Wars, at least the original trilogy, which finishes with the overthrow of the tyrant and the “Return of the Jedi”, would be fantasy by this definition.)

  2. My personal working definition of fantasy vs. science fiction is that science fiction assumes a world where the rules of science govern (even in cases where, as in McCaffrey’s Pern, the author gets some important bits wrong), while fantasy assumes that the rules of magic (e.g., sympathy and contagion) govern. Science fantasy is where the two meet, or the trappings of science fiction are used in a world where the rules of magic govern. My favorite science fantasy other than Star Wars is Melissa Scott’s trilogy starting with Five Twelfths of Heaven.

    This scheme may or may not work for others. Here in 7182, the Literature Wars have left us exhausted and open-minded by default on this.

  3. The “normalizing” versus “transformative” contrast certainly makes an interesting starting point for discussion, but it would be trivially easy to show that it’s either simply wrong-headed or divorces the terms “fantasy” and “science fiction” from any sort of semantic origins.

    That is, I think it would be a fascinating literary analysis to examine stories in terms of their location on a normalizing-transformative axis. But I think that to label the ends of that axis as “fantasy” and “science fiction” is, to put it mildly, inherently provocative.

    Regarding the genre categorization of properties like Star Wars, I’d lean towards “space fantasy” rather than “science fantasy”. It seems to me that the essential properties of the setting and story arc (and the ones from which an identifiable sub-genre emerge) are “a fantastic adventure story set in space” rather than “a story about scientific principles with fantastic elements”.

  4. There are always counter-examples to any given definition. I’ve also seen the “normalizing” versus “transformative” definitions discussed by Charles Stross so the idea has its fans, but well, so how long has this particular conversation been going? Decades?

    [Posted from the year 8492 where we still haven’t definitively defined Science Fiction.]

  5. @JJ
    re: Natasha Pulley

    Good, looks like you couldn’t find any earlier fiction either. So I’m penciling her in on my Campbell list.

    Interesting article she had about fantasy, though. She may have a point about needing more room for world-building, but that can also be true in straight SF. With far future and/or aliens in a story extensive world explaining is also necessary. Food for thought.

  6. “Bring home one dismembered body part, once, mind you, once, and people get twitchy about checking your luggage ever after.”

    Ahhhh….. 🙂

  7. Just got the October Booklist here at the library and there looks to be a couple SFF novels coming out in English translation that piqued my interest:

    An Estonian novel, The Man Who Spoke Snakish by Andrus Kivirähk available November 3rd (and 2016 Hugo eligible), and a Finnish novel, The Core of the Sun by Johanna Sinisalo available January 5th (2017 eligible).

    Emmi Itäranta also has a novel in English translation, The City of Woven Streets, coming out in April, so that makes at least two Finnish novels that will be eligible for Helsinki.

  8. The questions around SF as transformative have certainly been raised in the context of writers like Crichton, who use the tropes of SF but leave the state of the world as in the status quo ante, and who are hostile towards those elements of the new, which are seen as dangerous and disruptive: did Crichton write “real SF” or merely a thriller category that lies nearby?

    On the question of fantasy as normalizing, I think that it assumes too limited a field of fantasy. I see no reason for slotting much urban fantasy into that niche, or many military fantasy works, for example. (Can The March North be considered “normalizing”?)

    This is getting very close to the cliché that SF is progressive and Fantasy conservative, and that’s an argument that has been pretty thoroughly exploded.

  9. I just read the first chapter of Lois McMaster Bujold’s new book, and all I have to say is that the woman is a damn genius.

    The plot twist was (to me at least) simultaneously totally unforeseen and out of left field and ‘whoa didn’t see THAT one coming!’, and yet totally logical with everything that had gone before. That’s quite the feat of storytelling to pull off.

    But I have always liked Lois’ writing. She is worth the time, effort and money to enjoy.

    One line, out of context:

    “I’ve been doing this since I was thirteen. It shouldn’t be hard” Which, in fact, it wasn’t—he’d never been more limp in his life.

    p.s. I suspect exploding puppy heads in 3, 2, ….

  10. A fairly long time ago*, George Martin used the term “furniture” to distinguish SF from fantasy from gothic horror–what I would call various distinctive elements of setting, kin to what Gary K. Wolfe calls “icons.” (Also kin to motif and convention, though not quite one or the other.) Using these yardsticks, Star Wars is SF because, despite all the woo-woo stuff and quasi-mythic archetypal patterns, it is populated by robots and aliens, with transport supplied by spacecraft and conflicts settled with engery-beam weapons. It is, in Martinian terms, furnished as SF.

    Of course, it’s not very satisfying SF for the audience segment that wants the furnishings to make sense, to add up to a coherent world metaphysically and epistemologically contiguous with the one outside the narrative frame (where spacecraft do not go whoosh in vacuum). And I think it’s fair to describe Star Wars as a pastiche of SF, and not the most rigorously constructed SF at that. (The hard-SF-is-the-only-true-SF argument is lurking in there, but that would start a long and long-winded expedition deep into literary-taxonomy territory.)

    Dying is easy; taxonomy is hard.

    * Chased it down: Dreamsongs: Vol. II, the introductory remarks to “The Heart in Conflict” section.

  11. The first four chapters of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold are up at Baen. And you can then purchase the e-ARC if you wish.

    So . . . does this mean Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen is eligible for the 2016 Hugos? Because the book, in its entirety, is now being sold in the Baen ebookstore. Only in a single format, and only from a single vendor . . . but wouldn’t that count? They call it an “eArc” rather than an ebook, but it’s the full text of the novel. Baen’s “eARCs” seem to me to be essentially the same thing as their ebooks, just released earlier on an exclusive basis (and at a higher price). ARCs generally don’t count as “publication”, but . . . ARCs generally aren’t put up for sale to the general public. Every ARC I’ve ever seen had a disclaimer to that effect prominently displayed. And more importantly, ARCs generally aren’t made available by the publisher to literally anyone in the US who decides they want to obtain one.

    I guess my question is . . . if Lois McMaster Bujold had self-published this book on Amazon this month, it would definitely be eligible for next year’s Hugos. So how is it any different, eligibility-wise, that her publisher released the full book through their website? Realistically, there won’t be a substantial enough difference (if there’s any at all) between an ARC and the final product for that to be relevant.

    There don’t seem to be any “limited quantities” issues here. And it’s not like the vendors have released the book a week or two before the street date—the publisher itself is the source of the book’s “early” release.

    Or is there some special provision for this sort of instance I’m not aware of? I know Baen usually lets you buy their ebooks (sorry, “eARCs”) early on their website, but I don’t know how often the “eARC” release and the official date have fallen in different years.

  12. Emma on October 22, 2015 at 12:22 pm said:
    The first four chapters of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold are up at Baen. And you can then purchase the e-ARC if you wish.

    So . . . does this mean Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen is eligible for the 2016 Hugos? Because the book, in its entirety, is now being sold in the Baen ebookstore. Only in a single format, and only from a single vendor . . . but wouldn’t that count?

    I don’t know how the rest of the book will go (I will be purchasing and downloading the eARC tonight after I get back from dinner with friends) but just the first two chapters are dripping with so many cool ideas that I CAN’T WAIT and if I buy a supporting membership just to nominate Lois, I’ll do it.

  13. Quick jump in to say I finished Sorcerer to the Crown by Zen Cho last night and enjoyed it very much. I especially loved Prunella and the world that had so much familiar to me and yet so different. Very vivid imagery as well.

    I’m also cautiously optimistic on the job front, and will hopefully have good news to share soon. Because a Real Job will mean that I might actually be able to attend a Boston area convention next year! And of course get more BOOKS!

  14. As Nicholas (not Nick) once said in another memorable exchange: “I’ll let you have the last word, you seem to need it much more than I do.”

    Did I really say that? It’s rather good!

  15. Rochita’s GoFundMe is fully funded but if you still want to donate, and want to use PayPal, please email xthestorides at gmail dot com for a paypal address.

  16. Re: Lis Carey

    My personal working definition of fantasy vs. science fiction is that science fiction assumes a world where the rules of science govern (even in cases where, as in McCaffrey’s Pern, the author gets some important bits wrong), while fantasy assumes that the rules of magic (e.g., sympathy and contagion) govern.

    Admitting my ignorance here: what do you mean by sympathy and contagion?

  17. ARCs generally aren’t put up for sale to the general public. Every ARC I’ve ever seen had a disclaimer to that effect prominently displayed.

    I really have no clue why Baen releases these – it’s not like a software beta where they want feedback (they made *that* very clear when I told them about typos in the previous Bujold eArc), and the only disclamer is that there may be copyediting errors – which makes it different from the released version of a Baen book how?

  18. Sympathy in the magical sense means that things that look alike (or smell alike or sound alike) will have similar or related effects. Werewolves are triggered by the silvery moon, so a silver knife will kill them, etc. Contagion means that things that formerly touched, will still be connected: pouring a potion on the knife that caused a wound will cure the wound even though the knife is now distant from the wound.

  19. Huh, interesting – first time commenting on this computer and I don’t get the edit function. Or maybe because time is jumping not just in years but in hours? It’s 2:45 in 4150 now, but it’s 1:05 by the clock.

    So ETA – maybe they just want to double the profits? Because I am likely to buy the released book even though I just spent $15 on this one…

  20. IIRC, Baen releases eARCs because it destroys the eBay market for hardcopy ARCs (you’d be amazed how much those things used to go for with anticipated titles), and lets the money go back to Baen and the writer instead.

  21. Little Valkyrie on October 22, 2015 at 1:09 pm said:
    IIRC, Baen releases eARCs because it destroys the eBay market for hardcopy ARCs (you’d be amazed how much those things used to go for with anticipated titles), and lets the money go back to Baen and the writer instead.

    And at $15 a copy, that’s a nice piece to both. Glad to pay it, then buy the real actual book, usually (now) as an audible and kindle version.

  22. what do you mean by sympathy and contagion?

    The Law of Contagion says that when people come in contact with people or objects with important or powerful characteristics, they become connected to and affected by those characteristics. In (relatively) mundane terms, it’s why saints’ relics are valued, and sane, rational, ordinary people don’t want to wear the sweater of a serial killer.

    The Law of Sympathy, or Similarity, says that like produces like, that the effect resembles the cause. One extremely common manifestation of this is in folk remedies, such as the idea that walnuts strengthen the brain, herbs with yellow sap can cure jaundice, and phallic-shaped roots will cure male impotence.

    Taken together, they’ref the basis of many systems of magic.

  23. Re Bujold:

    I very much enjoyed the content of the first four chapters up on Baen’s site, but it’s incredibly hard to read because of the way it’s presented; I don’t think I could stand reading an entire book formatted in that way.

    And I too am a tad worried about when it’s deemed to be published for Hugo purposes…

  24. Emma on October 22, 2015 at 12:22 pm said:

    The first four chapters of Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen by Lois McMaster Bujold are up at Baen. And you can then purchase the e-ARC if you wish.

    So . . . does this mean Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen is eligible for the 2016 Hugos?

    Very interesting question. Baen has been releasing e-ARCs the year before the official publication year of the book for donkeys years.

    However, assuming Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen gets nominated for a Hugo, this would appear to be the first time this century Baen had a nominated book where the e-ARC came out in a different year than the publication date of the actual book.

    A Civil Campaign, Cryoburn, Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance and Warbound all had their e-ARCs come out the same year as publication date.

    The WSFS Constitution says

    3.2.1: Unless otherwise specified, Hugo Awards are given for work in the field of science fiction or fantasy appearing for the first time during the previous calendar year.

    And it also says

    3.2.3: Publication date, or cover date in the case of a dated periodical, takes precedence over copyright date.

    Gentleman Jole and the Red Queen was certainly available and actually for sale by a publisher, in its entirety, in 2015. Publication date of the e-ARC is 2015.

    I suppose if it doesn’t get enough votes to be nominated in 2016 Bujold or Baen could ask for an extension at MAC2 under 3.4.3.

    3.4.3: In the event that a potential Hugo Award nominee receives extremely limited distribution in the year of its first publication or presentation, its eligibility may be extended for an additional year by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of the intervening Business Meeting of WSFS.

    Allowing GJ&RQ onto the 2016 ballot if it gets enough nominations would be up to the MAC2 Hugo Administrators. Allowing an extension for 2017 would be up to the business meeting attendees. Allowing it on the 2017 ballot if it doesn’t make 2016 and no one asks for an extension would be up to the 2017 Hugo Administrators and there’s a fine kettle of fish.

  25. And I too am a tad worried about when it’s deemed to be published for Hugo purposes…

    If it’s generally available for sale to the public, then it sounds to me that it has been published.

  26. Ann, the gofundme was for €3000 originaly, but since that was raised in less than a day, the target has been raised.

    It’s heartwarming to see how Rochita is so well thought of and supported.

  27. Speaking from personal experience, people might well low-ball their initial asks on a GoFundMe drive out of embarrassment and caution. I certainly did. So it’s very likely Rochita needs more money than she asked for, or will come to need it.

  28. As Jim has pointed out, the combination of embarrassment and caution is pretty potent when it comes to setting a figure; I’m very glad to see that people are rallying around Rochita.

    Aliette de Bodard’s Xuya short story collection, available to all those making a contribution, is a very welcome addition to my library; there are all sorts of other goodies lined up which people are donating. It’s at times like these when we can feel that fandom really is a community in which lending a helping hand is valued…

  29. <i.The Law of Sympathy, or Similarity, says that like produces like, that the effect resembles the cause.

    Usually seen, any more, as ‘the hair of the dog that bit you’.

  30. Nicholas Whyte on October 22, 2015 at 12:44 pm said:
    As Nicholas (not Nick) once said in another memorable exchange: “I’ll let you have the last word, you seem to need it much more than I do.”

    Did I really say that? It’s rather good!

    I quote from memory but I believe so. During a discussion with The Other Nick.

  31. There are a significant number of people, even among those who are aware of them, who do not buy e-Arcs. Treating 2015 as the year of eligibility for GJatRQ would have a severe impact in the number of potential nominators.

    The copyright date rule was designed to handle border conditions where a physical book has a January copyright date but ships in December – not a four-month gap between a “rough draft” made available electronically and a final version made available in print as well as electronically.

  32. Emma: Realistically, there won’t be a substantial enough difference (if there’s any at all) between an ARC and the final product for that to be relevant.

    That may or may not be the case. I got an eARC of Asaro’s Undercity through NetGalley, and it was so rife with spelling and grammar errors as to be nearly unreadable. I don’t know if the final publication was better; I didn’t bother getting a copy from the library to compare.

    I hope they do more justice to Bujold’s new book.

  33. Steve Wright: If I’m remembering this rightly, she [McHugh] reckoned that fantasy stories were normalizing, which is to say that they ended with things being set right and a status quo restored – the evil force dispelled, the land returned to peace and plenty, the rightful king seated once more upon the throne. Whereas SF stories were transformative, leading to revolutions and new horizons – new worlds to explore, new cultures to discover, new states of human consciousness, and so forth.

    Huh. Well, now. I’d never run across McHugh’s definition before; do you have a reference so I can look it up? (Not a link–I can find the paper, if that’s where it comes from.) Thing is, it sounds to me like it might be sort of parallel to Northrop Frye’s discussion of Shakespearean comedy and romance, and that–well, it’s interesting, that’s all. I’ll have to haul out A Natural Perspective and see if I’m remembering accurately enough to argue a parallel . . .

  34. Soon Lee: Apropos Amazon reviews, Harriet Klausner has died.

    I’m sorry that she’s died, especially at such a young age. But I have to say that I read some of her reviews on Amazon, for books I had read and reviewed myself, and I invariably thought, “Holy shit, did she and I actually read the same book?”. I figured out pretty quickly to ignore her reviews when using Amazon reviews for my own purchasing / reading decisions.

  35. ULTRAGOTHA asks:

    I suppose if it doesn’t get enough votes to be nominated in 2016 Bujold or Baen could ask for an extension at MAC2 under 3.4.3.

    3.4.3: In the event that a potential Hugo Award nominee receives extremely limited distribution in the year of its first publication or presentation, its eligibility may be extended for an additional year by a two-thirds (2/3) vote of the intervening Business Meeting of WSFS.

    IMHO, the only way the distribution could be less limited than making it available for sale to all and sundry on the Internet would be to distribute it for free on the Internet.

  36. My personal distinction between SF and Fantasy is: SF deals with the effects of social or technological change, while Fantasy deals with the presence of the miraculous.

    It is of course, easy for people to argue with this definition, BECAUSE THEY’RE WRONG.

  37. And what do you do with books about technological change that also include the miraculous? (“He just walked through a wall?!”)

  38. The thing about trying to define the boundaries between science fiction and fantasy? Writers will take it as a challenge, and write something that deliberately messes with the definition, by playing with those boundaries.

    In fact, I might go so far as to say that any definition of the boundary that *doesn’t* have some stories deliberately written to challenge it probably is probably just too obscure (or widely ignored) to take seriously.

    Transformative? By that definition, wouldn’t Discworld count as science fiction? 🙂

    edit: And yes, I confess, Discworld does have a rather science-fictional feel at times, as Sir Pterry discusses the speed of light in a thaumic field and things like that. Still, I think it’s a bit much to actually classify it as science fiction.

  39. xftir: Transformative? By that definition, wouldn’t Discworld count as science fiction?

    That depends on how define we transformative . . . 🙂

    More seriously, I’ve never seen “the difference between sf and fantasy” as a boundary–more as a continuum, with a broad, oddly-shaped fuzzy area along what might be called the center (and like the Turtle, the Center moves). That’s always seemed more useful/interesting to me than trying to come up with a definition that deals in absolutes: this side of the line sf, that side–fantasy! So to speak.

  40. *waves*

    Been swamped with grading and prep (and trying not to think that if i’d spent a bit less time on File 770 this past summer, I might not have so much prep to do now, nope that cannot be it).

    Re the fantasy vs. sf definition quandry!

    Tossing in: Clarke’s law: Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

    Re: Star Wars. I spent a lot of time muttering darkly that it was a fairy take.

    Farm boy rescues princes with help of talking (non-human) companions (OK, they’re robots instead of animals, but still).

    Fairytale.

    (Clarke also defined sf as being based on extrapolation from scientific knowledge of the time so that STAR TREK was not sf but space opera because nobody believed FTL travel was possible.)

  41. The difference between Fantasy and Science Fiction is Fantasy uses magic, and Science Fiction uses Psionics.

    Or, as Phil Foglio put it

    More seriously, my definition would be: Science Fiction is a subset of the Fantasy genre, that uses the terminology of science and technology to give the feeling that the alternate world depicted in the story cold take place in the real world. An emphasis on plausibility, in other words.

    That’s why to me it’s a bit weird to ask if something is science fiction OR fantasy- it’s a bit like asking if that vehicle is a Mercedes-Benz OR an automobile.

    One thing that’s interesting is that the boundaries of science fiction have changed, and the limits of plausibility are more closely drawn than they were before- but SF fans have always insisted on those boundaries. Does anybody recall that ad for Galaxy magazine that criticized “space westerns”? Even back then that element of was important to some. Of course in those days the plausible “what-if” world include out starship travelling faster than light to another planet where speculative scientific phenomena causes the ship’s force field to break threatening the crew until speculative scientific explanation fixes the problem, and the ship captain makes love to the alien space babe.

    Science is a bit of a trap when it’s used to generate plausibility; as we learned more, the options have narrowed considerably- no more alien space babes, inhabitable planets in the solar system, FTL, etc. In fact, even space colonization at all seems more and more unlikely.

    Bottom line, Star Wars is really no less impossible than say Known Source our three Retief series. But the trappings are a bit more toward the fantasy side.

  42. @Stevie

    Regarding reading the Bujold chapters on the website… I used a current version of firefox and their built-in Readability plugin on the frame with the text to make it much, much, much easier to read.

    Here in the year 5193, we of course get these things downloaded directly to our brain.

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