Wayne Throop <throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> : To summarize: Hard science fiction earns every ounce of disbelief
it
> : gets. Fantasy relies on the readers to be willing participants in the
> : suspension of disbelief. And soft science fiction falls in between,
relying
> : on the fact that previous sci-fi stories have recognizable components
that
> : readers will latch onto if given the chance.
> That's an interesting model, but it doesn't seem to cover some very
> important areas. Such as Brian Sanderson's "Mistborn" setting, where
he's
> not relying on common tropes, or things like the 30s superscience epics,
> or even, say, Vinge's Zones of Thought, or even Asimov's positronic
> brains, where the sometimes-fairly-extensive explanations that are
> given aren't based on "scientific principles we know are true today".
> Or cases like Niven's Magic Goes Away, or Swann's Broken Crescent, or
> Cook's Wizard's Bane, where lots of explanation goes into supporting
> relatively traditional tropes.
You left out L. Sprague de Camp's Compleat Enchanter series, where
magic
is explained with well-defined rules and logical outcomes. In my opinion
it
doesn't matter. It's still magic, still 'soft', no matter how detailed
and
baroque the description, if it is based on principals that are provably
absent in our universe.
(Note, however, that Asimov was writing based on the science known in
his day. What was 'hard' back then became 'soft' only after science
advanced ahead of it. Note also that they were inventing the tropes back
then -- what was 'hard' became 'soft' when everyone accepted it as
standard
procedure in many stories.)
You'll probably be happy to hear that Sheila Williams agrees with you.
:)
In an editorial she wrote after becoming editor of Asimov's, Ms. Williams
opined (if I recall her position correctly) that any story where the
author
took such lengths to describe a logical, well-defined universe qualified
as science fiction. Worlds with fuzzier rules were fantasy. The method
of storytelling was the important distinction, for her. I disagreed,
as her definition paints a lot of blatantly fantasy works as sci-fi --
like Compleat Enchanter, Magic Goes Away, and Perdido Street Station --
while
a lot of obviously science fiction stories end up being binned as fantasy
-- like Vinge's Zone stories.
The Williams method of sorting stories does have advantages. For one,
the definitions of hard and soft sci-fi do not drift over time. And it
can
be argued that it's better for classifying readers by what they want --
readers who want overloaded descriptions of complex rules might be equally
happy with Robert Forward or L. Sprague de Camp, and people who like
stories
with fuzzier physics might enjoy both Star Wars and Watership Down.
That's
handy for editors and publishers who need to categorize stories. Of
course,
it also leads them to do stupid things like put 'Sci-Fi Essential Book' on
the cover of things like Steven Brust's _Dzur_. (Love the series, Steven,
but sci-fi it is *not*.)
The Williams rules do not work for me. When I read, I want the author
to
convince me their premise works. If they don't try then I can accept the
story on its dramatic merits as fantasy. If they try and succeed then I
can
admire the skillful worldbuilding. But if they try and they fail, I throw
the book at the wall. It's hard to measure the skill by which a story is
told if you have no expectations by which to begin. I expect science
fiction
authors to make some effort to convince me their world could be real. I
do not expect that of fantasy, and I usually find it tedious when they do.
(I disliked _Perdido Street Station_, frex. Spare me another fifty pages
of
bullshit about how that impossible thing works, please.)
So that's how I classify the genres. Everyone is free to disagree with
me. :)
> In some ways, for some purposes, a two-dimentional surface may be a
better
> approximation, where "hardness" refers to how much thought (though not
> necessarily exposition) goes into keeping things recognizably
consistent,
> and oh, call it "rational", and "fantasy/SF" refers to choice of tropes.
> Hence, Sanderson and/or Swann's works mentioned above could be
> termed "hard fantasy".
Sure, let's equate 'rational' and 'hard'. So there's 'rational
fantasy',
'rational science fiction', 'soft fantasy' and 'soft science fiction'.
Now, what's the difference between 'rational fantasy' and 'rational
science
fiction' in this scheme? Or between either of the 'soft' genres? How
would
you classify Perdido Street Station, or Star Wars, knowing that every
publisher on the planet considers them both sci-fi?
My classification system sometimes mixes up hard and soft. The
Williams
classification system tends to mix up science and fantasy. I prefer mine.
.... ...
Remus Shepherd <remus@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/remus_shepherd/
Comic: http://indepos.comicgenesis.com/
|
