: Remus Shepherd <remus@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
: 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.
Yes, but what you *said* was, the tropes are left unexplained. Further,
even if you take it to mean "tropes obviously not intended to be taken
the least bit seriously", calling that "fantasy" is far too coarse,
since it includes lensmen, skylark, zones of thought, positronic brains,
warshawski sails, and lots of other things, which are certainly not
reasonably "fantasy" in any normal sense. Nor, really, intended to be
"soft" in any normal sense connected with how much elaboration and
consistency hygene is done on the setting.
Which is why I'd both divorce the hard/soft axis from the
fantasy/sciencefiction axis, as well as from any plausibility issues.
Which represent consistency/elaboration, tropes, and realscience(tm)
respectively. Because it seems a more useful way to think about it.
( I realize I said "two axes" before. Our *three*, *three* axes...
amongst our many axes... wait, I'll come in again. )
: 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.
Hm. That's not quite what I meant. But still, yes, one possible
way of looking at it, even if I find it less useful.
: 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?
The tropes. Within science fiction, there's also a plausibility spectrum.
Well... there's also one in fantasy, having to do with how realistically
people act given the asserted background, and similar issues.
: How would you classify Perdido Street Station, or Star Wars, knowing
: that every publisher on the planet considers them both sci-fi?
I bounced on PSS, sorry. Star Wars has mixed science fiction and fantasy
tropes, without much plausibility to either of them, and without much
elaboration/consistency (though of course, consistency can always be
retconned by adding an elaborate enough justification after the fact).
: My classification system sometimes mixes up hard and soft. The
: Williams classification system tends to mix up science and fantasy. I
: prefer mine.
Good point. That's why I prefer not to mix up those two axes.
Nor mix them with plausibility.
Long roads the Sword of Fury makes
Hard walls it builds around the soft
The fighter who Townsaver takes
Can bid farewell to home and croft.
--- Saberhagen, Song of Swords
Wayne Throop throopw@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
http://sheol.org/throopw
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