Did "Star Wars" ruin science fiction?

Discussion in 'Science Fiction' started by minstrel, May 3, 2014.

  1. ChickenFreak

    ChickenFreak Contributor Contributor

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    That's just somebody's definition--and I'd bet that even the somebody would agree that the "future" part is usual, not mandatory.
     
  2. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Yes

    Of course this true. We are each unique paradigms. In the broad strokes, similar, but in detail as different one from another as a puppy is from a pogo-stick.

    It absolutely can be, in the same way that both Scooby Doo and Dostoyevsky inhabit the same world of available media to consume.

    Sure, and I've read my fair share of "fluffy" Sci-Fi across the decades, but the fluffy stuff is ephemeral, as it is in any genre. Here for a moment and then gone into the mouldering stacks of some secondhand bookstore to slowly (or quickly) turn brown and fall apart. I don't begrudge anyone their enjoyment of that kind of Sci-Fi. What I begrudge is the tendency for Sci-Fi to be defined by the fluff. Every genre has its fluff, but for some reason only Sci-Fi and Fantasy seem to be stigmatized as being only the fluff, which is myopic.
     
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  3. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Almost correct, but I don't know how many more adaptations like this I could take.

    I agree that Star Wars is basically fantasy, but the futuristic is the key. Except for one single line in the crawl, Star Wars takes place in a potential human future. There are self-aware robots, both humanoid and other. There is FTL travel that defies relativity. There is even a (misguided) attempt in the prequel trilogy to assign a somewhat fuzzy biological explanation to "the Force". All of these things have been used in other works regarded as SF, and I don't think that the four words "A long time ago" are sufficient to exclude Star Wars from the SF canon.
     
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  4. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Oh, yeah... forgot about that. o_O I had Mona Lise Overdrive in my head when I made that statement. But yeah, terrible adaptation.
     
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  5. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I would love/hate to see more William Gibson on the screen. Which is pretty much how I feel about him now, didn't like the last one at all, but he did give birth to Paolo Bacigalupi, which is good.
     
  6. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    Also, this idea presents the issue of Science Fiction aging out of the genre by dint of a date presented in a story as its setting finally coming to pass and then sliding into our actual, temporal past. Following this thought process Bladerunner would have three-ish more years as Science Fiction because the incept dates for Priss and Roy were Jan of last year, and Nexus 6 models last only 4 years, so.... yeah.
     
  7. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    The Windup Girl, so awesome. Supposedly Ship Breaker is slated for the big screen.
     
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  8. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    Yup, I read somewhere that Utopia, by Thomas More, is considered to be the first SF story. Streets ten feet wide!
     
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  9. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    Star Wars mainstreamed sci fi faster than it would have otherwise. Star Trek had been cancelled but was starting to snowball in syndication. Star Wars and Close Encounters showed the movie producers that the population was still interested in space beyond just the Trekkies. There would have been no god awful Star Trek motion picture without Star Wars which would mean no Wrath of Khan which was one of the greatest sci fi movies ever made imho. I don't think we'd have the great sci fi writers that we have now if they hadn't been inspired by these movies as children.
     
  10. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    @newjerseyrunner What about Jules Vern? Or the Sci-fi writers that predate the television?

    So it is not because of Star Wars and Star Trek, and other similar movies. There still would
    have been an influence from those authors. So I would say we would still have these great
    writers today. If you are simply crediting movies/shows for the great Sci-fi writers of today,
    they creators of those things got their inspiration from someone else's works in the genre.
     
  11. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    No, I was only saying that in the context of this thread. My personal favorite sci-fi writer was Isaac Asimov. Sci-fi always existed, Roddenbury and Lucas just brought it to mainstream and exposed a much wider audience to it.
     
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  12. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Fair enough.
     
  13. Zadocfish

    Zadocfish Member

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    Eh. I think the notion that pulp sci-fi isn't "real" sci-fi is kinda silly. So, I can't agree that SW isn't science fiction at all; I've listened to too many 20s-50s era sci-fi stories on Librivox to buy that in the least.
     
  14. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Well as long as you don't try and apply science or logic to some aspects of Star Wars, then I would agree.
    It seems it does not feel the need to try and mcguffin its way of explaining how most of the tech works.

    Turns out the carbine blasters the Stormtroopers use is more of a kinetic energy weapon, than a laser.
    And if it was portrayed as such, getting hit with such an immensely powerful amount of kinetic energy
    would make the target a can of organ soup.

    Or the rifle, which fires bolts of plasma. This would boil the target from the inside out, and pretty much
    anywhere a target is hit they will most likely die. Either from being cooked on the inside (including the
    bones), or from the shock of the extreme pain caused from the effects when exp. 20,000-30,000
    degrees on the body. It would be slightly more humane to simply throw enemies into the sun. :p
     
  15. Phil Mitchell

    Phil Mitchell Banned Contributor

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    This. Go outside, people.

    Star Wars in particular didn't ruin cerebral fantasy. That's a ludicrous allegation to make. The problem across modern storytelling is that the writer has to balance mindless spectacle with cerebral storytelling. Cerebral storytelling in the past held it down because the special effects technology was lacking. But now CGI can create wondrous visuals, the sci fi novel writers of tommorow are being exposed to more Transformers than 2001 : a Space Odyssey type stories. Star Trek has become a Michael Bay like action thriller. That's naturally going to up the mindless spectacle across genres and across mediums.
     
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  16. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    In which case you may as well remove the word "science" from the name of the genre.
     
  17. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Unfortunately it is not that simple. Unless we have an alternate to fill in for 'science'.
    Granted it will not have quite the same ring as Sci-fi, but it might represent the genre
    better overall.

    Future Fiction/Future Fantasy
    Techno Fantasy
    Post Modern Fiction
    Xeno Fiction/Xeno Fantasy
    Chrono Fiction/ Chrono Fantasy

    Star Wars is a contradictory as it is based in the past, with high future advancement.
    Bit of a challenge based on the elements it portrays. Almost a Historical Future Fantasy,
    if you will. Which makes it come off as a breed all its own that cares little to explain
    how its world functions, but demands you to not ask the hard questions that govern it.
    In a way it is heavily reliant on plot demands, and grandiose elements to gloss over
    things that otherwise simply don't make any sense.
     
  18. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    Why not just call it fantasy. If the science element is removed, it is definitionally indistinguishable from fantasy, so keep it simple.
     
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  19. Cave Troll

    Cave Troll It's Coffee O'clock everywhere. Contributor

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    Well we do like our sub-genres. :p
    Though to be fair I have seen Fantasy lumped in with Sci-fi, at bookstores under Sci-fi.
    Not really sure what that says about the marketing aspect as to why they do this.

    Though based on your reasoning it should not even be given the title of Fantasy,
    but the more encompassing and less colorful (yet more direct and correct) Fiction
    plain and simple. Since it covers both sides of the aisle and everything in between.
     
  20. Wreybies

    Wreybies Thrice Retired Supporter Contributor

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    I agree with all of the above, but... I think the author of the original article is crossing wires as regards what is what, and I don't mean what's in and what's out of the genre. And so are we, in a way, in this discussion.
    It's that "people's notion" which is, to me, the crux of this matter. It would seem to me that he's referring to people who would not typically look for the SFF section at the local book-seller, people whose only contact with SFF is through the more readily consumable medium of film.

    Frankly, who cares what non-fans of the literary genre think?

    The writer of the article taps Octavia Butler's Kindred (freaking awesome) as a counter example to what he feels is the impression of "people". Any of us who are fans of the genre(s) and have explored the length and breadth know that film is just a tiny facet of what the genre offers. We know that the genre offers us writers like Butler, like Delany, like Vandermeer, MiƩville, M.J. Harrison, Tepper, Herbert, Asimov, Clarke, etc., etc., etc. The list of writers in the genre who ask the deep questions is long.

    I think the author of the article is more peeved by impression than actuality, than what is genuinely found between the covers of books on my shelf.
     
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  21. AustinFrom1995

    AustinFrom1995 Active Member

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    I think Star Wars "ruined" the Sci-Fi genre only in the sense that it "standardized" the genre, creating a template that a lot of writers feel they need to fit into. Sci-Fi traditionally is one of the most varied genre of fiction, but once Star Wars became uber-popular in the mainstream media/population ( it's no longer seen as a "geek/nerd" thing) other Sci-Fi books/movies seem to be having a hard time gaining a foothold without being compared to Star Wars.

    I'm in no way trying to hate on Star Wars, I like it (but no so much the post-Disney takeover stuff), I'm just saying that it has fallen into the trap of becoming the go-to thing to compare other Sci-Fi franchises to. Much in the way Call of Duty, and Halo have become the go-to model when comparing FPS games.
     
  22. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    I agree with everything you said. It's also worth noting that when big studios do anything, they do it safely for maximum market penetration. Small groups tend to be able to make whatever they want and target it to themselves.

    Halo was great, but it got less great as it got more and more sequels by bigger and bigger teams. The grandfather of all modern fps was DOOM (there were FPS before, but it set the bar,) and the thing about DOOM and DOOM II is that everything about it screams that it was made by and for a bunch of 20-something guys who stayed up late playing Dungeons and Dragons, drinking Mountain Dew, and blasting death metal. Then came The Plutonia Experiment and TNT, which were no where near as good because it wasn't a labor of love like the first two were.

    I think that's the problem, big budget movies just won't take risks on new or unique ideas. Studios simply won't allow directors and writers to have the freedom that would produce those types of works (unless you have the credentials of someone like Spielberg.)
     
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  23. AustinFrom1995

    AustinFrom1995 Active Member

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    Exactly, Halo was very innovative to the FPS genre, but now that everyone apes it's achievements, the Halo series comes off as generic nowadays. People have built off of what Halo founded, but Halo itself has begun to fall by the wayside (especially after Halo 4 and Bungie's departure).

    You have made an excellent point when it comes to movies, when you try to appeal to everyone, you appeal to no one. That's why a lot of my favorite works are more obscure or at most cult hits. Because you don't have to appeal to everyone, you can focus on appealing to a group of people who like the same things you do. Way too many movies these days have checklists that they feel they need to fulfill, and so they don't try to be creative, they just try and tick all the boxes. Some of the most creative Sci-Fi stories are novels, because you can write what you want without money-hungry corporate executives, with their charts and focus groups, breathing down your neck. That's why I would never want my stories to make it to modern day Hollywood, I would hate to have my work tarnished and changed because the bigwigs want "cute" aliens or want the main character to be a male Human.
     
  24. WaffleWhale

    WaffleWhale Active Member

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    I think saying it ruined it is a bit of a stretch.

    Others made clones of it for a few years, and then they stopped.

    It's a really good movie series, and I don't think you can really blame them for other people copying them.

    Plus, star wars is just a classic rebel vs. government story, just with a whole ton of really good world building, and good characters. That plot line existed really long before them, even if it wasn't as sci-fi then.
     

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