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The problem with Dark Eden's opening is there are quite a few items named here that I have to either remember (until they're properly defined) or gloss over and forget. It wouldn't be until a second read of the novel that I could fully understand the above lines. Not a great opening, in my opinion.
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.
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Yes, that is what I said.
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.
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Anything vs. fantasy is an orderly universe, governed by understandable natural laws versus fantasy which isn't.
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.
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.
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.
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."
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.
Bart said, "There's been a little problem in the cockpit."
Homer walked to the front of spacecraft to see for himself. When he got there, he slid into one of two side-by-side seats. The other was occupied by Marge, who drooled as she slept. Homer looked around. The cockpit had two large viewports, one in front of each seat. Homer felt overwhelmed by the dozens of switches and guages all about him. That's when he remembered he had no clue how to fly. "Doh!"
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.
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.
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.
Not QM, ordinary boundary-condition waves.
Not QM, ordinary boundary-condition waves.
Oh. I don't guess I read that into your chapter, too.
But you did me the honor of examining the chapter. Thank you.
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