Sci-fi done by outsiders, better or worse?

POSTED BY: reginaroadie
UPDATED: Sunday, January 6, 2008 17:15
VIEWED: 3368
PAGE 2 of 2

PREV PAGE 1 2

CHRISTHECYNIC

Saturday, January 5, 2008 6:08 PM

I'm not sure that's true. There are, to my knowledge, two kinds of hard sci fi.

One is where the plot emerges from speculation about science or technology, while this does require that the author is capable of either speculating about, or understanding speculation about, science or technology the actual skill of creating a plot from speculation is something that is used in historical and contemporary fiction as well as fantasy.

The other is where the story essentially is speculation about science and technology. In that case the skill used isn't creating a plot from speculation, the skill is making speculation worth reading. That is a skill used in many other genres. The truth is it that it seems in every genre there is always someone who can craft pure speculation into a good story.

IMNOTHERE

Sunday, January 6, 2008 5:15 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by christhecynic:
In that case the skill used isn't creating a plot from speculation, the skill is making speculation worth reading. That is a skill used in many other genres. The truth is it that it seems in every genre there is always someone who can craft pure speculation into a good story.

Except that in other genres the "speculation" is usually about people, politics and events. A hard SF writer not only needs to know the science, but to understand it deeply enough to apply artistic license to it.

Case in point would be the later Star Treks vs. Babylon 5. Trek - because of the infleuntial nature of the original - has delusions of "hardness" and often tried to tech-centric SciFi by committee. B5 was a classical tragedy which happened to be set in space - in much the same way as Macbeth can be "done" in medieaval Scotland, ancient Japan, 1930s Germany or a modern 3-star London restaurant (I kid you not).

In Trek, an implacable enemy would be defeated primarily because Geordi/Torres/O'Brien "invented something" on the spot - and the problem of which particle of the week to re-route via which bit of hardware was left blank for the technical advisors in the geek enclosure to fill in.

In B5, inplacable enemies got defeated because, effectively, Sheridan led the injuns into the canyon and then dynamited the walls. The final battle was not won by some superweapon, but by tricking the two "puppet master" superpowers into a direct confrontation. The technobabble there, but always just stage dressing. Someone was smart enough to see that "hard" SF is hard to do on screen, and took care not to try.

For the sake of provocation I'd propose that the only credible (big) screen *hard* SciFi flick is "Apollo 13" - and then only because the Sci- was factual and the Fi- could concentrate on storytelling. Maybe "2001" (first attempt at non-Flash-Gordon space travel) but they removed most of the hard SF from the sequel "2010" (the book was mainly a celebration of the "Voyager" data and speculation about life on Europa ans Jupiter).

PREV PAGE 1 2