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  1. FifthofAscalante

    FifthofAscalante Member

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    Can Fantasy turn into Sci-Fi?

    Discussion in 'Setting Development' started by FifthofAscalante, Feb 25, 2018.

    Hey good people!

    So... I’ve this fictional world that I’ve been constructing in my mind for the past seven or so years. I don’t believe that I’m ever going to complete any story set in this world, but that in and of itself is another story... This is truly an epic place with next level colossal creatures, wizards, and magical artifacts like boots of speed. I want this to be a science fiction thing.

    The question is, how far can I go into the fantastical territory, and still keep it science fiction? I could say that these colossal creatures were somehow artificially bred, or that the boots of speed are actually some sophisticated device. But how would one go about scientifically justifying voodoo? I suppose I could bend some laws of physics.

    However! I think that at some point, even if I say, “it’s cool guys, it’s tech, I promise”, people won’t be convinced that it could possibly be constructed in our real world, and will automatically derogate it to fantasy.

    I say “derogate” not to belittle fantasy, but because fantasy doesn’t have burden itself with consistency and justifications for things. Sci-fi is the complete opposite. This ultimately gives the genres different feels, and it’s the latter that I’m after.

    Here’s an interesting idea, could say Lord of the Rings be turned into a believable science fiction without altering the plot?
     
  2. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    To me, it's not science fiction even if you say those things, unless you provide some plausible scientific basis for it. More than mere hand-waving. Sounds like what you have might fit more into the "science fantasy" subgenre.
     
  3. FifthofAscalante

    FifthofAscalante Member

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    I don’t remember who it was, but some acclaimed sci-fi writer said that it’s okay to bend or even make up two or three physical phenomena to justify the story, because they will meld into the plot, and readers will accept that. But no more than these two or three.
     
  4. mashers

    mashers Contributor Contributor Community Volunteer

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    The distinction between science fiction and fantasy is down to natural vs. supernatural. Even the most implausible science fiction will have some grain of an attempt to make what is happening possible in the natural world. Fantasy can transcend the natural world and incorporate magic and other supernatural occurrences and beings which do not need to be explainable through science.

    You don't need to justify the presence of "colossal creatures". They already exist in the natural world, and there's no reason to think that other worlds might not have even larger creatures than those on Earth. Also, size is relative in this context - an elephant is pretty big, but not really "colossal" to humans. But to a mouse, it is colossal.

    Wizards are a problem if you want to classify your stories as science fiction. If you wanted to incorporate them and still stick to sci-fi, you could have characters who call themselves wizards, but who actually use advanced scientific techniques to alter the natural world in ways which appear magical. ("Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic" - Arthur C Clarke). This would obviously mean there would be limits to what they would be able to do, and their abilities would need to be explainable through natural means.

    If you insist that the wizards are able to do actual magic which is supernatural, then you have clearly crossed the line from sci-fi into fantasy.

    "Magical artefacts" are only a problem if you refer to them as "magical". "Boots of speed" would be a difficult example, as it would be hard to explain how they could possibly work using natural means. If they physically propel the wearer, then that's sci-fi. If they imbue the wearer's feet with the spirit of a deity increasing their nimbleness, then that's fantasy.

    Bending laws of physics is not ok in sci-fi. If you are able to do something which does not follow the laws of physics, then you're either doing something supernatural, or the laws of physics are wrong. And you'd have to do a lot of work if you wanted to argue the latter was the case (even in fiction).

    You're right, saying "it’s cool guys, it’s tech, I promise" isn't good enough. If I'm watching or reading sci-fi and there is a technology which appears mystical and unexplainable, then I lose faith that the writer knows what he/she is doing and assume that they are a) lazy b) lacking in understanding of science and technology c) unsure whether they want to write sci-fi or fantasy.


    A follow-up question: why not just classify your writing as fantasy? There's no reason why you can't incorporate sci-fi into fantasy. It's only the other way round that doesn't work.
     
  5. Steerpike

    Steerpike Felis amatus Contributor

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    I second the “why not just call it fantasy” question, and would add that if you go the traditional publishing route the genre categorization will likely be out of your hands. The publisher will decide it.
     
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  6. Justin Thyme

    Justin Thyme Active Member

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    Could you have your characters who live in a 'science fiction' world follow a plot in a virtual reality 'fantasy' world?
     
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  7. Robert Musil

    Robert Musil Comparativist Contributor

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    Do you really need to explain any of it? That's really what this is coming down to, explaining to the reader not how this world is different from what we're used to, but why it's different.

    I'm thinking of Arthur C. Clarke's dictum that any sufficiently advanced technology will seem like magic. Is it important, from the readers point of view, to parse out exactly what is technology and what is magic? Or if it all seems like magic, but the precise explanation isn't worth going into, maybe that would be OK? I mean maybe you're angling to make this identifiably sci-fi for some reason, but based on your post I'm not really sure why the genre is that important.
     
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  8. FifthofAscalante

    FifthofAscalante Member

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    To answer the follow-up question: genre dictates expectations. I want the reader to assume that something is tech, even if it isn't, rather than assume that it's magic.

    When I said colossal, I had in mind a size that would never be sustainable or able to be achieved by any creature living on the same planet as plain humans. Sea monsters that can swallow entire islands, and humanoids so big that when they stand in the sea, they don't get their knees wet. Besides that, you're spot on about the wizards.

    Like I said, I doubt that I will ever actually finish anything set in this world, so the issues of publishing could not be of any less concern.

    I despise this premise. I think it's lazy. And it's a plague. Be gone, destroyer of plots! <throws stones at the screen, while making the sign of the cross>

    Well... The crux of this world is technology and science vs magic and myth, which in the context of the story turns out to also be technology and science. This goes beyond writing, but I think that we've reached a point or are on the threshold, at least in the west, where even if magic actually really existed, we would call it tech and try to explain it through science.
     
  9. Azuresun

    Azuresun Senior Member

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    Actually, fantasy does have to concern itself with consistency and justifications. Fantasy novels where the author pulls random plot twists out of nowhere because "magic lol" are usually unsatisfying to read. Fantasy needs a consistent setting and rules of the world that can't be broken without a good reason (for example, if an established fact of the setting is "dragons are on the verge of extinction, only a couple of dozen remain in the world", then the hero showing up with a never-before-mentioned army of dragons in the final act without a really good explanation is likely to cause a high speed novel-wall collision).

    It's the same for sci-fi--the freedom to develop an all-new setting is balanced by the need for that setting to be convincing and to have internal logic, meaning the author has to do the work. Sci-fi has a bit more of the work done for it, given that it has a basis in scientific and technological possibilities, but the line can still get a lot hazier than many sci-fi fans are willing to admit. For some nominally sci-fi novels, you could almost find-and-replace "nanotech" with "magic", or "god" with "strong AI".

    If you can't get the world you want under the umbrella of sci-fi, then so what? It's fantasy, and that's not a problem. Develop your setting and make it convincing like you would for any novel, it's just that you have to do some more work making the setting convincing and establishing the rules.
     
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  10. FifthofAscalante

    FifthofAscalante Member

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    Ultimately, perhaps you are right. The thing is disagree with is that fantasy has to be be consistent with it's internal logic on the meta-behind the scenes-plot cogs-level. If there be dragons, then the be dragons. End of story. There could be some lore explanation, but there doesn't need to be. Science fiction has to shove consistency and justifications right in the face. It has to be specified, where exactly those dragons are, what size are they, how do people deal with them, which likely involves tech that has to be plausible. All that has to be in the story, not between the lines. At least that's how I feel about it.

    Perhaps I'm spinning my wheels here. Maybe my world is science-fantasy and that's that.
     
  11. mashers

    mashers Contributor Contributor Community Volunteer

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    That assumption will require suspension of disbelief, which depends on the tech being believable. If the tech looks like magic, it won't be believable. So you'll either have to make it believable somehow, or at least acknowledge that it is unbelievable to keep the reader on your side. Have some characters comment on how it appears to be magic--maybe even have one of them quote Arthur C Clarke's rule--and have another dismiss this, saying that there's no such thing as magic, but that the tech is just poorly understood. Stargate did this well - nobody really knew how the Stargates worked, and this was fine. It was understood that it was ancient technology which was discovered by humans, not invented by them; there was never, at any point, the implication or inkling that they might be magical. Even the supposed 'gods' were exposed as frauds who were simply using advanced technology to appear supernatural.

    That's not necessarily a problem. The only things stopping animals on Earth getting that big are a lack of resources, and gravity. If they lived on a planet with massively abundant food (or if they didn't need it), and if gravity was lower so they didn't have as much weight to support, then they could definitely be much, much bigger than on Earth. And life existing on other planets is absolutely supported by science - there's no magic there at all.
     
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  12. Azuresun

    Azuresun Senior Member

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    Honestly, I still can't see a firm distinction. Fantasy has to be internally consistent most of the time because fiction has to be internally consistent most of the time. The only difference is that fantasy can't borrow that consistency from a common frame of reference (like a novel set in the mundane modern world could), it must be created by the author. Not having consistency and having things randomly happening "because magic, I dunno" is usually going to frustrate the reader because they justly feel the author is making stuff up as they go along and can't bother to remember how their own world works. I can't think of anything you listed for your hypothetical sci-fi dragons that I wouldn't also need to specify in a fantasy novel about dragons--where are they, how big are they, how do they relate to people? If those questions are important to the novel, then they need answers in a fantasy novel just like they would in any other genre. And then you've got works like Star Wars, which have the sci-fi trappings of robots, energy guns and spacecraft, but spend pretty much no time explaining how these things work, because that's not the focus of the story.

    To be clear, I don't view the distinction as particularly important. Sci-fi and fantasy are probably the two genres that have the biggest degree of cross-genre blurring in any case. Write what you want, and don't mind the genre snobs. :)
     
    Last edited: Feb 25, 2018
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  13. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    The safest way to convince readers your work is science fiction, without resorting to technical exposition, is to stick to commonly trusted sciences and authorities and make sure you don't break any obvious principles within those subjects. For example, if you honestly could say, "my fictional technology is well within the speculations of Hawking," I assume you won't offend the sensibility of a lot of readers. The further you start deviating away from credible theories, the more you will have to be able to explain yourself.

    Lately I've been thinking of a hypothetical expert test. If a bunch of experts from various fields--physics, biology, history, sociology, psychology, etc--were to read your work, how credible would they find elements in your story that could be judged according to their expertise (for example a linguist judging a fictional language)? The less convinced the experts are, the more it becomes fantasy. The more convinced the experts are, the more it becomes science fiction or historical fiction.
     
  14. FifthofAscalante

    FifthofAscalante Member

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    Interesting take.
     
  15. Iain Aschendale

    Iain Aschendale Lying, dog-faced pony Marine Supporter Contributor

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    I read a book, or series of books, twenty or thirty years ago that started out as a fantasy, but we later learned was SF. The MC lived in a typical medieval setting, farmers, herders, nobles, but there were some wizards with limited powers and big reputations. A major exclamation in the book was "Avatars of the Spirit" or something close to that, and I'm pretty sure there were some sort of Forbidden Lands with evil spirits that cursed people who violated the taboo.

    While out wandering, the MC fell into/found a cave or something, and woke up the ancient battle computer AI that had fought the Last War, the one with all the nukes that had created the forbidden areas. The AI was very smart, conversational level, and wanted to use the young man to set things right. The wizards were just guys with a very sketchy handle on some old tech, but they were holding society back or something, don't remember.

    I don't think you need to go full-on hard science; there are ways to incorporate tech into what looks like magic, but bending physical laws should be restricted, IMHO, to FTL travel, maybe the odd force-field or tractor beam. However, genetic engineering or no, something that could wade the oceans would be far too heavy to support itself, and seven-league boots would be better cast as a horseless chariot powered by sunlight. You could get some mileage out of nanotech, as also mentioned above, a "wizard" might have access to a nano-powered 3D printer that he knew how to run, but most magic is going to have to remain just that.
     
  16. Justin Thyme

    Justin Thyme Active Member

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    Well, at least I'm not a superstitious luddite with tendencies to self destructive vandalism.
    It would only be lazy if you are, and a plague upon what exactly?
    You might try to open your mind a little, it's what writing is about.
     
  17. Azuresun

    Azuresun Senior Member

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    Or the less an author will have to explain themselves. Sometimes the focus of a sci-fi novel isn't on the technical details of how a certain thing is possible, it's on assuming that thing is possible and exploring the implications. We don't get a plausible breakdown of the theories behind the time travel in H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. The narrator simply found out how to travel to the distant future, so Wells can use the Eloi and Morlocks as a social analogy. Or sometimes there's a mix of the grounded and highly speculative, like Dune, which has a very detailed and convincing fictional ecology for a desert world, alongside wonder drugs that let you see the future.

    The question of "is it really sci-fi if it's not entirely based in currently plausible and explainable science?" is a pretty old and well-worn debate, but if you do limit the genre that way, you're excluding a lot of works widely considered sci-fi classics. Not to mention how yesterday's hard sci-fi can become tomorrow's amusingly misguided retro-history, as science rolls on. Again, the line is going to blur unless you use a very purist definition of "science fiction". In the end, does it really matter?

    Don't tell Tolkein (and his fleshed-out fictional languages) that! Or indeed, George R.R. Martin with the well-developed political intrigue and psychological dramas of his characters. And there's any number of sci-fi novels that are poorly written (or good, but unconcerned with technical accuracy) where an expert in the thing it's talking about would wince. That test falls apart on closer inspection, unless you start getting into no-true-Scotsman justifications. It's okay just to admit "I'm not a fan of fantasy.", without needing to invent reasons why it's an objectively inferior genre.
     
  18. OB1

    OB1 Active Member

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    Like most have said here you are describing fantasy and not sci-fi.

    Without sarting a mass debate, in my opinion Sci-fi in a lot of cases is mis-used. For example I don't believe Starwars is Sci-Fi but more fantasy. For a number of reasons but namely.

    1. If you removed all space ships, replaced light sabres with swords etc. You'd still be left with a pretty decent story.
    2. Starwars is set in a galaxy far away IN THE PAST.... Sci-fi is mostly written about our future.
    3. Most of the themes in Star wars are fantastical in nature.

    Sci-fi should be characterised as science possible. Do aliens exist? Possibly? It hasn't been proven either way. Is faster than light travel possible? Not with our CURRENT understanding of the laws of physics, doesn't mean that it isn't possible in the future.

    In the fantasy book I am writing, I refer to what we would call science as magic. Or what early science would have been like. It is set in a feudal world but slightly more technically advanced as what medieval times were (think medieval times if the dark ages never happened).

    My point is that what one culture or civilisation refers to as science, another may refer or consider it magic. Think about if a person from the dark ages was to travel forward in time, to today, they'd think that everything we have today is magic or witchcraft.

    Therefore if you want to keep your book Sci-Fi, i'd suggest making it seem like a perspective magic, rather than actual magic. If this makes sense.
     
  19. 123456789

    123456789 Contributor Contributor

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    Like I said, a panel of various experts. Linguist might be OK with Tolkien. If it's true about the War of the Roses research, maybe historians would be OK with ASOF. I don't think the biologists with either story. It's not an all or nothing thing.
     
  20. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    How many transgenders, how many black, how much space, or in wizards? It's never getting read, it's never getting written.
     
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  21. FifthofAscalante

    FifthofAscalante Member

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    The general idea is similar. Looks like fantasy, turns out to be scifi. I really don’t want to do the generic nanotech or flying cars.

    Well, at least I don’t take things personally :). In terms of anime and manga, characters in a virtual world is an entire and oversaturated genre. This is not the place to get into this discussion, and of course, you’re free to disagree, but I don’t like it. I think it’s a lazy way to shove whatever into one fictional world without restraint and consistency or explanation, then pretend that it’s all goverened by some grand laws that make the game or a virtual world. That’s that.

    I like fantasy, a lot. I also think that that approach has value, although I wouldn’t take it dead seriously. If we did accept it as an absolute then all we’d get is family dramas, because how many writers have actually murdered someone or have been in space? Still, there is value in assuming that the bare minimum is to be convincing enough that even though the expert can see through the falsity, he wants to entertain the ideas.

    Star Wars is clearly a science-fantasy story. Even if the way the tech works isn’t explained, the tech (Death Star) is in the foreground. Like I said, most things can be explained, but how does one scientifically explain voodoo? I’d have to go the roundabout way and invent some special powers that make it work.

    For a long time, I couldn’t distinguish between sci-fi and fantasy because of psionic powers. It’s an inherent sci-fi concept, but stripped from its setting, it’s plain fantasy. Yet, it’s generaly accepted as belonging in the former genre.

    I don’t understand.
     
  22. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    A lot of people posit 'what ifs' and 'whys' but they're not actually writing, they've got an idea in their head. And that's fine. Same ways people ask 'how to be inoffensive.'

    I don't want those people to write particularly, seems like they've got nothing to say, or they're not ready. You know, I can think tenderly in a moment's notice. That's one side of the brain only ;)

    ...

    I want you to build your world, and then answer for it, committee won't answer it. Don't hesitate, be strong, yeah, make a fool of yourself possibly...so what if you lack rigour, some people might like it?






    IRRESPONSIBLE POST SERIES
     
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  23. FifthofAscalante

    FifthofAscalante Member

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    Uhuh... That’s completely unrelated, but I wanted to write for a very long time, and have been writing a tiny bit, but ultimately decided that I shouldn’t. Personal issues...
     
  24. newjerseyrunner

    newjerseyrunner Contributor Contributor Contest Winner 2022

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    I see no reason that you can't translate any magic items into technological ones. The universe is old, there has been plenty of time for very advanced technology. Any technology sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic anyway.

    What do you mean by "next level colossal creatures?" Are you referring to simply very large creatures? That would require some strange evolutionary circumstances. There are reasons life is the size that it is. However, if you are referring to something more Lovecraftian, then I see no reason that such a thing should not exist. If we assume that we are not the first technological civilization and that development in AI is an inevitability, then given enough time, the universe should be flooded with powerful AIs. Now if even one of those was self-improving and lasted for billions of years, there is no reason that it shouldn't be able to be the size of a planet or even bigger. Logically though, once it's reach a sufficient size to defend itself and the passage of time becomes essentially meaningless on small scales, it should put itself to sleep until it can most efficiently use it's energy (which won't be for about a trillion years.) It would also likely want to migrate into intergalactic space where it's colder.
     
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  25. matwoolf

    matwoolf Banned Contributor

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    I'm sorry about that, I hope you get writing, and get pleasure from writing very soon. I wasn't being personal. I think it's my 'Writer Forum Psychosis,' - I've heard others, more experienced writers than myself refer to it. Some guy called @Swain.

    ..
    @prickjoke
     

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