Not QM, ordinary boundary-condition waves.

Oh.  I don't guess I read that into your chapter, too.

Charles_F_Bell wrote:

rhiannon wrote:

I agree with Fred Miller's definition of science fiction vs. fantasy.  SF is in an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws.  Fantasy isn't.

Anything vs. fantasy is an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws versus fantasy which isn't.

I'm not really eager to come into this debate, but I disagree with this point.  Tolkien wrote Fantasy, but his world has its laws.  They are rooted in myth rather than in modern physical science, but there are laws.

Of the distinction that there may be two sorts of fantasy (1) with its laws; (2) without laws, I think it is not possible to discuss on the merits of any facts because there is no research (and who would fund such research, military psy-ops?) of the believability-enjoyment level for the reader (Tolkien note below) for one or the other. Nevertheless, the distinction between sci-fi and fantasy still holds - fantasy, even with internal logic of its "laws", if any, does not follow natural law, and genuine sci-fi does. It is the blurring of the distinction that does not just effect my enjoyment level but I believe signifies a cultural rot/reversal within Western civilization. Tolkien, in fact, was one who might see the reversal as a good thing (his work taken as truth-containing fable) by identifying the 'rot' as a necessary reversal into RCC medievalism.

At a young age, and in a time where I held strongly onto English Protestant values, in strong contrast to RCC anti-liberalism and theological buffoonery, I reacted to The Hobbit unfavorably without knowing why, inasmuch as it was well written and fascinating, so it might be said that fantasy without "laws" would not have that factor acting on the intellect. However, there is no possible discussion on the facts.

The introduction of QM into sci-fi was a boon for sci-fi writers because it spread the range of possibilities beyond the neatly deterministic causal. I do, to a degree, find displeasure in taking that as license to introduce 'magic' into sci-fi as I do in taking AI into sci-fi to create 'androids' who are really supermen without any scientific underpinnings. From original ST to ST-TNG people in only a generation went from a healthy skepticism to an unhealthy acceptance of things  that we do not know to be possible, so it is a matter of ars gratia artis for such sci-fi, and, in any case, there is a majority of people who find sci-fi just as silly as fantasy and don't read or watch it.

rhiannon wrote:

I agree with Fred Miller's definition of science fiction vs. fantasy.  SF is in an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws.  Fantasy isn't.

Anything vs. fantasy is an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws versus fantasy which isn't.

I'm not really eager to come into this debate, but I disagree with this point.  Tolkien wrote Fantasy, but his world has its laws.  They are rooted in myth rather than in modern physical science, but there are laws.

I would argue (and don't want to argue at length!) that Science Fiction is characterized by differences from our world that are expressed through the physical sciences, whereas Fantasy is characterized by differences from our world that are expressed as myth or craft.

Consider my recent chapter A Lesson with Kirsey (sitting, for convenience, as ch 94 of The Sorcerer's Progress, Book 1: Children and Beasts).  Does the introduction of wave functions turn it from magic into science?  I don't think so, but you might.

Charles:  I disagree that you need a narrative as a prologue to what is happening in a fantasy or science fiction, unless you define the genres in such a way as, indeed, you have to have such a narration.

[...]

Yes, that is what I said.

Anything vs. fantasy is an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws versus fantasy which isn't.

That is not the point of citing ST as an analogy. Too many people were turned off by what was poorly explicated and thus was hard to understand. There was the initial Wow! factor of just being in color (and that was what RCA which owned NBC wanted in the year of conversion to color of many shows),   and it generally was action and not cerebral.  So, once families that could afford to do so (the engineers, professionals. etc.) had bought their new color TVs, it was over.  Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea when it went color tanked because it plotlines got goofier to compete with ST weirdness.

And I advise him to do otherwise if he goes omniscient POV as I think he should. {and by "long" I suppose you mean two paragraph, right?) There is no such thing as sprinkling explanations in the dialogue in a natural way.

"There's been a little problem in the cockpit."
"What is it?"
"It's a little room in the front of the plane."

Yes, indeed.

"    THUD, THUD, THUD. Old Roger was banging a stick on our group log to get us up and out of our shelters.
     "Wake up, you lazy newhairs. If you don't hurry up, the dip will be over before we even get there, and all the bucks will have gone back up dark"
     Hmmph, hmmph, hmmph, went the trees all around us, pumping and pumping hot sap from underground. Hmmmmmmm, went forest. And from over Peckhamway came the sound of axes from Batwing group. They were starting their wakings a couple of hours ahead of us, and they were already busy cutting down a tree.... "

Less than 200 words in and I already know I'm in a completely alien world, filled with strange sights and sounds. The author doesn't info dump about how this colony was founded by a handful of humans -- hence the inbreeding of "Batwing" group, which we come to learn is so named because their cleft lips give them "bat-like" faces. Nor does he explain that - in a world with no sun - waking and sleeping cycles would be governed by some other system of "wakings." Rather, we're plunged right into this unique and brilliantly creative universe.

I agree with Fred Miller's definition of science fiction vs. fantasy.  SF is in an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws.  Fantasy isn't.  It is a squishier context, but a world where there is sorcery, one has to be careful not to run afoul of witches, mind manipulation, and one that has medieval knights, castles, and context surely counts.  If not, then I'm content with calling it "adventure," "historical romance," or just WTF (which is why I contemplate self-publication).  But I've read stories labeled "fantasy" by conventional publishers (like Tor) that take place in 1st person or limited 3rd person). 

Star Trek wasn't a critical or popular success because the critics and the sponsoring network hadn't done proper democraphics.  The year NBC canceled it, they did run such a demographic analysis, and although ST: TOS didn't have the 30% of the viewing audience they were looking for, the engineers, professionals, and college graduates who watched it bought an awful lot of really big ticket items.  So they lost money when they canceled it.  Kirk, to my memory, never explained what the Federation was, who Klingons were, or went iinto warp drive, teleportation beams that defied Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle (hence, why TNG introduced the notion, again w/o explanation, of "Heisenberg Compensators" (they figured those engineers, et. al. would know the contest and why transporter beams are more magic than technology).  Kirk just did things like say, "None of us realized that each was perceiving a different woman," which raised the question--how did he know it to put it in his log?  It was clearly an artificial device, and grated. I think an introduction risks the same thing.  Or an omniscient point of view that over-explains.  Tolkein, in the Hobbit, takes it for granted a hobbit would live in a hole in the ground--albeit, as mentioned, a really nice one.  No--"because of the economics of Middle Earth, the problem of scarcity was solved by a patronage system that put hobbits in holes in the ground."

Anyway, back to helping Akhere, I would advise him *not* to have a long introduction, to sprinkle explanations through the dialogue in a natural way.  He wondered whether there should be rings around the planet, to clue the reader into it's not being our world.  I told him one character could say, "ooh, the rings are beautiful tonight."  (Substitute for 'the moon.')  Heinlein, in Starship Troopers, had a Lt. Colonel run the Ethics class to point out some of the ways the world came into existence.  No introduction.  We're thrown into the middle of the Terran Army fighting an alien species.  We don't even know, until a flashback, how the war happened.  The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, another example.  Double Star.  Not as easy in fantasy, I concede, but the use of mythological traditions (like the Mabinogeon) help. 

Or you can go the Gormenghast way, and have 100 pages of intro before anything happens.

Why not show samples and then ask the same question?

Charles:  1st person limited doesn't limit the universe.  It's just that you encounter it through a character's POV.  If the character is used to the environment, it does present a challenge to present the universe, but think of detective novels set in a city that most people don't live in--like LA, London, or New York.  The detective glances at Big Ben.  He knows that it's the central clock in London, knows what the Tower of London is, or Buckingham Palace, but possibly the reader, who's a high school student in a US public school, doesn't.  How to convey it, without being ham-handed or over explaining it?  Our hero shakes his head as a bird lands on Big Ben as he tries to make out the time.  Wonders how the queen is doing as he walks by Buckingham Palace.  Pauses to think about the way criminals are treated in jails now as opposed to when they were stuck in the tower.  Has conveyed all the information needed about these structures w/o overexplaining and in 1st person.

I don't object to limited POV in contrast to omniscient, and you mention the detective/mystery/thriller story almost for which the limited 3rd style is designed. Doyle with Sherlock Holmes used Watson's tiny piece of the universe he inhabited and Holmes' role in it to weave his stories. But it is that tiny piece of the universe which every human being can himself experience and does not need much explaining other than Watson is a doctor and Homes is a deductive genius.  On the other hand, if there's magic or faster-than-light travel through space and sentient creatures which are not like us, that universe needs explanatory introduction and helpful explanatory addendums from time to time from the author because these things do not and probably cannot exist and are therefore out of possible human experience. There is a phoney jump out of reality (even if the "reality" is fake) when a limited 1st or 3rd character tries to do such explanation when it cannot be possible for him/her to do so. The Romance in which the MC finds out her lover is cheating because she happens to be at the right secretive spot at the right time - a Romance author can do that once in novel, but a fantasy or sci-fi author cannot - unless it is a Romance subplot.  Therefore when I say that "Sci-fi" when written outside of omniscient POV that cannot therefore be bothered to introduce through narration a universe outside of any human experience is not really writing about a universe outside of human experience but is using faster-than-light travel and such as theatrical tools to write a Romance or Mystery or whatever.

Star Trek the original aired for the first time fifty years ago this month, and it was not a critical or popular success because Kirk's short monologue at the beginning was not enough to overcome an ordinary what the hell is all this stuff. However, a generation later, with ST-TNG, all that "stuff" of Warp drive and Vulcans, etc. is a given as if real because those "facts" have been absorbed into a sort of urban legend.  For sci-fi originality it is harder and harder to be "original" and authors have given up trying to be good sci-fi writers and prefer being writers of other stuff using hand-me-down sci-fi originality as a backdrop. There are exceptions -  The Unincorporated Man - omniscient POV, with introduction, though tiny, and from 1962 Milton Friedman, of all things, and does go straight to characterization in modern style. Interesting, too, there isn't an MC who is likeable.

Asimov and Tolkien were very strong and skilled writers.  Not everyone can follow their paths.

Aspiring to the lame is acceptable?

3rd person limited is a style developed for the small-range, intimate story, but obviously broader than 1st person limited.  It makes no sense to limit a new universe created in sci-fi & fantasy, and only omniscient works for that, and unlike through 1st and 3rd limited, it is acceptable to step out of perspective into some other POV temporarily even if it takes a dialog tag or interstitial paragraph or chapter.