Now that I do understand and currently know about but the fact remains that the reason we do not have wwII fights is because we do not have WWII type wars. if there was an interglactic war on the scale of WWII where a single fighter my possible take out a frigate with a high yield pay load there will be other fighters patroling to make sure that does not happen
You gotta check out this link. It's funny, but amazing how much thought people have put into this. http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tactics/Naval-Tactics.html
yeah that was pretty crazy, but it lets me know science took two very different paths in those worlds and star wars ships would decimate the federation. Where do battlestar which has fighter pilots and babylon 5 fit in
I've been looking throught the site more. It's dang hilarious. Completely on the side of star wars of course. (They'd win anyway, how many times do you hear the empire telling it's soldiers to set for stun? Only once that I know of.) They propose a plan for the galactic empire to invade the Federation. Flame wars are expected and encouraged. It's probably the funniest site I've found yet, other than redvsblue.com of course. This is one of the best I've seen so far
Fantasy and Science Fiction are different. Science fiction involves future events or about Space shuttles or time machines. Fantasy is in a mystical realm.
I'm sorry, I'm in a flaming mood from reading the starwars forum. Suffice it to say, authors do not pay attention to arbitrary rules like you just posted, it interfears with creativity. I have read books that I consider science fiction that took place in a mystical realm that is inferior to or technology, and fantasy that takes place in our own world, in the present and future. The story I am writing right now does not define whether it is our world or a different one, but it is a "past time" and could be considered either fantasy or sci-fi. I won't say anymore for fear of getting into trouble.
I've always loved Orson Scott Cards definition of SF, found here. Basically, "science fiction [book covers have] sheet metal and rivets."
I've never actually watched Babylon 5, but Battlestar Galactica (the new series at least) is mostly based on carier-type combat from the 50s. Take the facts: it's a large ship, carrying a large number of superiority fighters, with its own armament focused on anti-aircraft. Also the whole concept of the Battlestar Group (which isn't actually seen on-screen, but is mentioned on numerous occasions) seems to me to be almost a carbon copy of the carrier group concept; a number or support ships opperating around a battlestar as the main ship. The use of missiles are also featured, for capital ship to capital ship combat, but the ranges seem to be fairly short in terms of what that site believes would be possible ranges, and ships are generally required to be visual range before engaging. However, due to the prominence of electronic countermeasures on the show, it could be due to the potential for guidance systems being jammed, etc (which has, itself, been seen in the show). I also like the use of the battlestar's FTL capability (which is a bit of a misnomer in itself, as it's more of an instantaneous teleportation) as a tactical weapon. Watch this if you're interested. it also demonstrates a fairly effective ramming technique.
I've got a few complaints with the Star Wars section. "Ramming is not a useful combat tactic, and is never used or even attempted in any of the canon films." He must have missed the part in Episode 6 when the doomed A-wing pilot flew his ship right into bridge of Executor (the Super Star Destroyer). It took the whole ship out. Pretty effective, isn't it? "The Rebel and Imperial fleets began exchanging long-range fire without any regard for formation" I've seen a book that gave detailed descriptions and diagrams of the battle plans for every major battle in the movies. It may not have been obvious when the fighting was going on, but there were formations. "Capital ships simply exchange fire with enemy capital ships, without regard for formations or "flanking", "encirclement", or "breakthrough" maneuvers." This is true in the movies only. Bolder tactics are rampant in the novels and such "Starfighters, by virtue of their weak armament, cannot successfully attack capital ships without capship support." On the contrary, there is a fighter, the B-wing, that appeared in Episode 6 and was capable of taking out capital ships. In fact, that's what it was designed for. I know, I'm prbably straying from the thread topic, but I just wanted to point out flaws I saw. This person (or people) didn't do their homework well enough.
I've just had a thought... With all this talk of greater scales of space warfare, with theoretically infinite distances, surely a very long range, and precise method of IFF and target acquisition would be required? Otherwise you'd just be huffing missiles randomly into space, trying to hit a very small target in a very large space. And that's straying close to the "magical" sensors of Star Trek and co, and further away from realism.
Or smart missiles that can lock onto a target and make course corrections to home in on the target. Oh wait, we already have those.
Mabey those huge distances would be too much for missiles, because it gives the enemy ship as much time as it wants to detect and shoot them down with a laser blast. That could turn missiles into a short range weapon (10's or 100's of miles instead of 1,000's) FMK: It's pretty apparent from the rest of the site and the flamewars in the forum that he has done an extreme amount of research. I can't really answer your statements, but I'm sure he would be happy to respond to an e-mail. One thing I do know is that the system they use says that if there is a contradiction between two sources of info the movie always wins. Edit: There's a short story I read, I think by Larry Niven, where a man murders his best friends family because he is medically predisposed to paranoia and wasn't taking his meds. Eventually he escapes the planet, but his friend comes after him in another ship. When that happens he is headed for outer space and can't turn any other way because it would give his friends ship a chance to catch up. His own ship is without weapons, untill he thinks of using the communication laser as a weapon. It is designed to cross the solar system and hit it's target without dissipating, so it is extremely powerful at close ranges. He melts through his friends ship and breaches the hull, but his friend has set the autopilot to ram him, so both ships head out into the void forever. I just thought you might find that interesting, it's got some really neat ideas to play with.
I agree with the poster who said sci-fi isn't dying, but changing. The new title Urban Fantasy seems to be more appropriate for the market these days. People want to read imaginative work that is based in the real world - something they can relate to. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was considered the first true sci-fi, but if it were published today, I imagine it would be classed along with all the other urban fantasy. Science fiction isn't necessarily future-based; Jurrasic Park is sci-fi because it involved modern science being used in the modern day setting to recreate a species that had died out long ago.
I have followed this discussion with great interest as I love science fiction and will be putting my book, The Last Human War, on the market in two weeks. As a young teenager with A.D.D. (long before there was a name for this problem), I struggled in school. Regular failure led to chronic depression and low self esteem. Reading was particularly difficult as I could not get through more than a couple pages without drifting away mentally. One weekend, a local church was having a "rummage" sale (for you young folks - better known today as a "yard or garage sale"). I was bored so I browsed the vast quantity of peoples' trash looking for an unwanted model airplane kit or baseball mit...anything of "real" value. I walked past a table with rows of abandoned books and one cover caught my attention. It showed a spaceship surrounded by primitive Earth creatures...a woolly mammoth was being attacked by a Saber-toothed Tiger while some Neanderthal looking men with spears watched from hiding. The juxtaposition of the spaceship in this primitive context was fascinating. I bought the book for $.25...my FIRST ever purchased book...Galactic Derelict by Andre Norton. I was thirteen. When I got home, I "met" the Apache descendant, Travis Fox as he rode a horse through his beloved desert. Soon, I was taken on a whirlwind journey as Travis stumbled onto a secret government time travel project and was inadvertently swept into the past...to the site of that spaceship. It turns out, the government found the remains of a trans-galactic spaceship and decided to go back in time to secure the original technology. (Yes, they were racing against the Russians who were after the same thing...Cold War era) As they brought the old wreck back to the twentieth century, with Travis and one technician caught inside the ship, the alien vessel became activated. Just as it materialized in the "present", it took off on a homing autopilot with its unintended passengers. The rest is a fabulous series of stops at ancient space ports and a final destination...the original civilization that built the spacecraft...only, it had collapsed and its "people" de-evolved into primitives. Travis provided the warrior-explorer for the story while the technician figured out how to get them home to Earth. My point is, much of that story was not even scientifically believable at that time, much less by today's standards. But, it was a compelling tale. I paid $.25 for that book and I still have it today, nearly fifty years later. Inside the cover, the name "Marty Borkhauer" is written in pencil and the price of $2.50, $1.50, $.75...each lined out until I surrendered my quarter to obtain it. Since then, I have purchased a copy of every book ever written by Andre Norton and they sit, yellowed by time, in my library. Today, when I hear claims that the science fiction "market" is shrinking or diminishing, the only people I hear complaining are hard-core, well-educated science buffs who narrowly define the genre. The average person still enjoys the fantasy of a great story, with good characters and strong plot. For them, "actual" science is secondary. The "plausibility test" sets a low bar and most buyers judge the story for its action. In fact, if an author barrages readers with technical babble or lengthy scientific explanation, his market will shrink as only a few MIT-educated "nerds" love it, and the rest of the buying public yawn. My point is, "sci-fi" as a genre, is not, and should not, be limited to current-day scientific scrutiny for "plausibility". Yes, there should be some reasonable "science" involved, but that does not require current day understanding of the mechanism. H G Wells wrote War of the Worlds in 1898. What would he think of cell phones, microwaves, the internet, personal computers and GPS...actually, GPS might make sense to him as he was obviously forward thinking about space. My point is, don't turn sci-fi into an MIT treatise on scientific almost-fact, or the result may be that you narrow your market substantially. Just my $.02 .....NaCl
I appreciate all the post and I am supprised by the number of resposes. I would like to think the person that dropped the lin k for the video of Orson Scott Card Speaking about Sci-Fi. That actually gives me hope that my story will be accepted for the Writer's of the future contest so wish me luck. While listening to Card speak of Sci-Fi I realized how true his statement was. Piers Anthony wrote a story called Kilobyte I read years ago about a man in a wheel chair and some chick falling in love after going into a virtual reality simulator that could create any world and facing off against some bad fuys there. They could go to any type of world but eventually they had the final confrontation in a world like Faerun from the forgotten realms. So what is that story? Is it Sci-Fi because of the tech or fantasy for the setting
Or...is it an old fashioned love story about two people kept apart by an insurmountable barrier? .....NaCl
I think this is whole discussion is probably demonstrative of just how varied everyone's individual tastes are! While i do like sci fi which appears plausible, I also like the really abstract and quirky stuff too. Farscape, for example, was great science fiction in my book. While there was some known science in it, the series was more concerned with exploring social and cultural ideas in an alien context, rather than the technical details. Sometimes its also fun to read stuff which is on the fantasy side of sci-fi. I.e. with advanced technology, but not necessarily known science. I guess that's at the more extreme end of "artistic licence." I think it comes down to how it's presented, in my opinion. Stuff like the new BStar series couldn't get away with being too unrealistic, because it's very gritty and "real." It creates the impression that its striving for realism. Whereas stuff like farscape is far more colourful and organic. Sets, props and costumes looked like they'd been designed for stylistic reasons, rather than practical ones. The problem for me is when there's a disconnect between the two. I take the point about the issue of silence, but i also think there are ways round that. People would be able to hear their own guns and engines inside their own ship, and the sounds of weapon impacts. You can also use music. I do agree that excessive technobable can leave people feeling confused and iritated, but i would like SOME reference to gravity generating technology, even if it's just in passing The weapon beam issue is probably one example where i'm prepared to suspend my critical thinking in favour of something more cinematic There's nothing quite like seeing huge, bright lances carving up the sky! I remember playing freespace 2 and flying between capital ships exchanging beam-cannon fire. It was awesome. Although i guess you can use particle beams instead of photonic weapons if you want those. At least with those there's an arguable source of light. You can talk about the beams losing energy over distance because particles change energy levels and emit photons. Maybe that's not 100% accurate, but it's got enough science in it to satisfy all but the expert readers. I think the scale thing might be about artistic licence again, although i can't speak for the producers of such sci-fi obviously. The more pragmatic stuff doesn't bother me TOO much though, unless it's really, really absurd. Out of interest, what did you make of Firefly/Serenity?
Pure genius. The same for Farscape. But if I recall correctly, Cog isn't a fan of either. The appeal to me of Farscape and Firefly is the comedy aspect. It was largely humour driven. Battlestar Galactica works well, I think, because the science sits neatly under the surface, is relatively fairly precise, and isn't called to attention in any and every scene *cough*star trek*cough*. In Farscape, they didn't call attention to every scientific and technological process either (though I do admit that it was less concrete there). Both were character and story driven entertainment, and that was more important than accuracy. Of course, I think the extra attention to detail in BSG is an outstanding touch, but it doesn't make me laugh quite as much as Farscape always did.
....And I always watched Star Trek as a comedy set in space with its time-worn cliches and simplistic attempts to address social issues like race prejudice, superiority of "democracy" over all other forms of governance and application of current-day military concepts to space battles. Great humor! Serenity was a very interesting sci-fi movie as it explored contemporary social-political issues in a future setting.
Take something Science Fictiony- bionics, spaceships,robots,etc- and put it into a story. Then take it out. Does the story still work? If not, then what you did have was Science Fiction. Taking a SF element and wrapping it within a story or an idea.
I loved both, too I think you're right about the humor element, although both firefly and farscape seemed to do drama just as well. Shows like BS can get a little heavy at times because they lack that comic relief. Oh tell me about it. All those episodes which were almost exclusively about Warf and the problems he faced raising a bi-species son - give me a break! I mean i don't particularly mind the idea, in principle, but it seemed to consist entirely of "KLINGONS ARE MOSTLY ANGRY AND DO NOT HAVE GIRLY EMOTIONS YET ALEXANDER LIKES TO CRY." It was just boring and poorly thought out.
