Date: Fri, 01 Apr 2005 16:50:31 -0500
To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>
From: "Mike B." <omni at omniphile.com>
Subject: [WSFA] Re: Who said: SF is fantasy with nuts and bolts painted on?
Reply-To: WSFA members <WSFAlist at WSFA.org>

At 03:48 PM 4/1/05 EST, MarkLFischer at aol.com wrote:

>Arguing that something "might happen someday" or "may be happening
somewhere
>else" does not alter the fact that for the story's audience, US, HERE,  and
>NOW, with the knowledge we have available to us, these things do not and
>cannot exist, and are therefore fantasy elements.

I disagree.  You may not, but I do see a difference between a laser in the
30's ("heat/death rays") and a fairy godmother's magic wand in the 30's.
As we know now, and suspected then, the lasers are possible, and happened
within the lifetimes of many who read about the SF version years before
they were real.  The magic wand violates known physical laws and so will
never happen.

Extrapolating that to today, I see a big difference between a mature
nanotechnology and a magic wand.  The nanotechnology doesn't yet exist, but
it's nearly certain that it will eventually, perhaps in my lifetime.  It's
a matter of learning, not new science...we know nanomachines can exist
because they occur naturally (we call them "viruses" and "cell machinery").
 The only trick is figuring out how to design our own and how to build
them.  The magic wand is still fantasy and always will be unless and until
everything we've learned about the universe and use on a daily basis is
shown to be almost completely wrong.

Extrapolating that to the future, I'd say that unless something violates
natural laws, it's possible and if it's also desireable, it will probably
happen at some point.  Even if it doesn't, it could, and so is of far more
relevance than total fantasy that can never actually occur.  I see a very
distinct difference there...you really don't?

Things that rely on science that is currently unknown ("subspace",
"hyperspace", "wormholes", etc.) but which does not actually violate any
known laws are far less likely to happen, but aren't ruled out the way
magic is.  They are, however, farther into that "gray area" that I
mentioned than, say, nanotechnology is and are thus closer to "fantasy"
than SF based on nanotech is.

To take another run at the "gray areas" I picture the SF/Fantasy continuum
like a big room with two poles in it (for current purposes two is enough).
One pole is "SF" the other is "Fantasy"  (there could be others for
"Horror", "Mystery", etc., but I'm going to ignore that as it adds nothing
to the analogy).  Stories are grains of sand lying on the floor.  Their
position is dependent on what genre they are.  If they are SF, they are
against the SF pole.  If they are Fantasy they are against the Fantasy
pole.  If they are about halfway between, then they are halfway between.
If they are mostly SF, but have fantasy characteristics, they are closer to
the SF pole, but not right up next to it. There's a pile of sand against,
or very near, each of the poles...but there isn't any part of the floor
that isn't gritty with at least some sand.  The farther you get from any
pole, the fewer grains there are, but there are all kinds of stories at all
distances from the labeled genres.  There may even be a ridge of sand
between the SF and Fantasy poles, and the ridge may have its own little
peaks, but there's no pole there, so those peaks don't get their own name.

Make any sense?  I find I sometimes like stories that are clearly SF (by my
definition), and sometimes the pure fantasy is OK, but I really like ones
that are halfway in between...ones that are Fantasy settings with a
technology bent or with SF aspects brutally transplanted into the middle of
them (_The Wiz Biz_, _Doomfarers of Coremond_, _Magic, Inc._, some of the
MYTH books, etc.).  In fact, when I try to improve my ability to write
fiction I usually work on stories like that, not pure SF or pure Fantasy,
but a fun mixture of the two.

>>Magic, as it's portrayed in Fantasy, won't (violations of a number  of
>>physical laws).
>
>Physical laws as we understand them today.

Given how we are conversing, and some of the medical treatments some of us
have received, and where humans have reached already, and a few other
facts, I'd say that we understand a fair number of laws pretty well.  It's
unlikely that we are going to find that the laws of thermodynamics are
completely wrong, or that Newton's laws of motion are going to get tossed
out.  Einstein only refined them such that they became an approximation
that is more than close enough for everyday use.  I'm hoping Einstein's
ideas turn out to be a similar "special case"...it's unlikely that they are
totally wrong given how much they've predicted already that turned out to
be true, but they are confoundedly inconvenient and I want loopholes! ;-)

>Magic is not effect  without
>cause, it's effect without observable or clearly-understood cause.
Clarke's >Law applies.

If Clarke's Law applies, then it isn't "magic"...it's a sufficiently
advanced technology.  He didn't say they were the same...he said they were
indistinguishable.  The same can be said about a rigged demo.

>The same applies to Science-fictional things such as  warp drives or
>time travel as generally portrayed in stories.  Physical  law, as we
>understand it, does not allow such things, and yet we accept them as  more
"possible"
>than the Sorcerer's Apprentice and his mops.

Actually, there are physics theories that allow both of those things, and
these are taken seriously by theoretical physicists.  What we don't have is
experimental evidence to back them up.  Yet.  They may turn out to be
fantasy, but at the moment they are not clearly impossible.

>Many technological titans have been inspired by SF, it is true.   Fantasy
>also inspires, although not usually to build rockets.

Or magic carpets or wands.  Another difference. ;-)

>>Her aliens are some of the most alien aliens I've
>>read about  so far.  Some, like the Kif, are nothing at all like  people.
>>(snip)when she goes for alien, she goes the whole distance and  does it
very
>well.
>
>That's why I chose her.  The Kif are very alien, BUT...accept and
understand
>the postulates, and they're human as hell.

Only if you define "human" as "behaving for the most part in a logical way
so as to maximize survival of the species".  I think any species that
survives long would fit that definition, making it a bit "over-broad" to be
very useful.

You can understand why the Kif have the social setup they have once you
understand their biology, but you can't really identify with them.  Not if
you are human anyway.  Humans consider children valuable, Kif do not.  We
kill humans who treat them as pests to be casually exterminated...for the
Kif that would be really hard to get a grip on...though they might
understand it intellectually.

>As we come to  understand how Kif
>differ from us, the underlying common factors become very  clear.

Yeah, that we live in the same universe and are subject to the same natural
laws.  Both need to eat, need some space to exist in, and therefore are
competitive for resources.  Both have seen that cooperation is a useful
technique in achieving this, but the methods of implementing it
differ...though both methods appear to work.

>Hani are the same way, regarding their social  structure.

They are much easier to identify with, since their biology is a lot closer
to ours, and is nearly identical to mammals we've evolved alongside (social
cats).
The only things on Earth with biology like the Kif are "lower" organisms,
such as oysters, fish, insects, etc..

>I notice that Cherryh never tried to tell a story from a Knnn point of
view.
> That might prove impossible to read, and almost as hard to  write.

I doubt she tried to work out their setup...it wasn't necessary for her
stories.  They were the aliens that made the ones she was concentrating on
look like siblings by comparison.  The "common enemy" thing, without the
conflict.  If she had decided to do it, their environment and biology would
have had to be detailed.  Their behavior and social structures would flow
from that as much as ours does.  You buck that sort of thing at your peril.

>>Fantasy postulates are, in good writing, internally consistent, but
>applicable only
>>to that world, not the real world.
>
>True, but "Rendezvous with Rama" and "Ringworld" are not set in this world,
>either.

The difference is that for the most part they could be.  That means they
might be.   We can be fairly certain that Hobbits trying to destroy a ring
of power with the help of elves and dwarves can't and won't ever
be...outside of Fantasy imagination.

>All the stories we tell happen in worlds that exist between our
>ears.  They may be more or less similar to ours, but they are equally
unreal.

The same can be said about "reality", but let's not get into the
subjective/objective universe thing...

-- Mike B.
--
Never forget: 2 + 2 = 5 for sufficiently large values of 2.