The Limits of Sci-fi

[M. J. Young]

When we hear Science Fiction, we tend to think SPACE.

Well, in fairness,

Well its not always about Space.

That's important. There's a lot of SF that has little or nothing to do with space. I'm going to attempt to capture a few possibilities.

[*]The Time Machine, Seven Days, Time Tunnel, 12 Monkeys, Back to the Future all involve time travel as a scientific achievement. Of these, only Seven Days has any space element at all--a silly backstory about Roswell technology, and a functional element that the sphere is shot to orbital altitude and returned to earth as part of its operation (which, presumably, provides its spatial shift).
[*]20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Seaquest DSV, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, are all underwater adventures. Seaquest touched on the space program a couple times, as technology from the two areas related, but when it started to get involved in alien visitations and travel to another planet it really started falling apart.
[*]Farenheit 451, Blade Runner, Tekwar, and Logan's Run are all about future earth cultures. Blade Runner has a strong space element in the backstory, in that the androids aren't supposed to be permitted on earth, but the story never goes to space. I've read a fair amount of Niven that dealt with teleporters and paper clothes as part of the future on earth, with no space references at all, although these were collected short stories, and the collection did contain some space-based stories.
[*]Alas Babylon and On the Beach are sort of alternate present aftermaths of nuclear war. Space isn't contemplated at all in either.
[*]Gamma World, Twilight 2000, and to some degree The Time Machine (in the book) are about the future collapse of society and technology, by catastrophe in the first two, evolution in the third. Space is notably absent.
[*]Alien Nation and Starman obviously involve space, but again in this case as backstory, the place from which the aliens came, and not part of the story. Men in Black also fits this category, as the MIB people never leave earth but only deal with visitors from other world. (I guess Superman is in that group, too.)
[*]Frankenstein, The Invisible Man, The Fly, Jurassic Park, are about science trying to go too far.
[/list:u]
Perhaps Sean thinks primarily of space when he thinks of science fiction. I wanted to broaden horizons on this, to remind of some of the non-space versions of the materials.

Fundamentally I think all "Science Fiction" is about Humanity and Human [beings], along the lines of what others have said.  Even Alternate History can fit into the catagory.

The big problem, as someone has observered, as that this really defines not science fiction but literature. Good stories are stories that tell us something about ourselves, whether they are fantastic, realistic, futuristic, or something else.

The lesser problem is that it seems inherently to imply that science fiction can only be done as a narrativist concern. Worlds like Dune and Star Wars and Blade Runner certainly offer great narrativist possibilities, but they don't cease to be SF if we use them for simulationist or gamist settings.

(It could be objected that there are science fiction stories in which there are no humans. Particularly in the short story field, we find examples of aliens interacting with aliens, and of advanced machines, and of evolved animals. Bradbury's There Will Come Soft Rains (hope I've got the title right; it's been a quarter century since I read it) has no people--the automated house, the dying dog, and the silhouettes charred on the back wall of the picnickers caught in the explosion. But even these are really about us, just as the elves and dwarfs and other fantasy races are really about us. We're just disguised in the tropes of the genre.)

--M. J. Young

[greyorm]

what can science fiction do that hasn't been done, from a setting and technology perspective?

I was asking myself the same question recently, and then I happened to finish reading "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweiler.
So to answer your question: Lots.

Actually, after reading that book, I've begun to watch the usual sci-fi shows and similar with a certain amount of disgruntlement...because, honestly, it gets it all wrong.

Now I'm not saying that I know the future specifically, but the book got me thinking about the rate of technological developments and the various time-frames involved in most sci-fi.

As well, it got me thinking about stories, human stories and what those stories would be given certain assumptions about the capability of technology, but back to the former first...

There will not be interplanetary spaceships carrying hundreds of colonists, or even small crews -- not flesh-human ones, at any rate. No laser battles, no first contact situations where a man steps off a ship and shakes appendages with the locals, no galaxy-spanning empires.

The future is weirder than you can imagine.

Ok, that's all "space" stuff...but my point here is really about the human condition encased in all this, no matter if we're talking Star Trek or GammaWorld.

So, the answer again: Lots. But you have to do your research.

Fundamentally, sci-fi is about putting humans into situations -- accompanied by plausible technology. And yes, sci-fi often or almost solely explores the issue of the use that technology has upon mankind.

What most sci-fi does is take modern-like people and give them "cool gadgets" and other technology. But ultimately, this is a fantasy, because the story is implausible at a basic level. The stories assume humanity's technology does not change the essence of the human experience between now and the distant future (and it will).

You can set up social, cultural or historical reasons why humanity doesn't change, but that is just that: a reason.

So, what does sci-fi do? It's a Color coating on stories, like fantasy is Color. You have to set people as we understand them and know them in the stories or there's nothing to relate to...nothing to enjoy or learn from. The communication is meaningless on a personal level...the human experience has to be similar or there's nothing grasp.

And ultimately, that's what stories are...communication about the human condition. Sci-fi just uses a technologically-advanced (and often scientificaly supportable) universe, not necessarily an externally consistent one to talk about things.

[Bankuei]

Hi, I've been following this one on and off, and I think there's something very interesting to be said...

Rod quoted:

"Stories about the effects of science on people, or conversely, the effect of people on science."

and Raven said:

Fundamentally, sci-fi is about putting humans into situations -- accompanied by plausible technology.
<big snip>
And ultimately, that's what stories are...communication about the human condition.

I'd make the concept a little broader and say that science fiction is about putting people into alien situations.  Whether the science or the society is plausible or not, its about exploration given that idea, as well as the commentary upon human nature with the setting/technolgy used as a catalyst to make it happen.

Chris

[Alan]

I want to expand on what Greyorm said about humanity, the future, and SF.

Our best evidence indicates humanity has not changed since the species emerged.  Archeology indicates that the basic concerns of humanity: sustinence, social rewards, sex, and death have been consistent for at least 30,000 years.  History indicates the same for the past 5,000.  The basic experience of being human has not changed.

Now, of course, humanity has changed it's ways of of living, thinking, and organizing, usually based on innovation in technology of production.  These are changes in society and culture.  The most enormous of these have been the agricultural revolution 10,000 years ago, and the industrio-information revolution of the past half millenia.  Still, the nature of humanity has remained the same; the experience of being human endures.  What has changed is system - new needs and rewards encourage different kinds of behavior.

Given the endurance of the nature of humanity, one might not expect SF to explore what humanity is, but it has.  SF literature has explored changes to the species, through evolution, genetic engineering and selective breeding. (Early examples include Slan by A.E. Van Vogt, and "Gulf" by Heinlein.)   SF literature has explored fundimental changes resulting from technology (my favorite example is A is for Anything by Alfred Bester, but Gibson's Neuromancer is also an example).  There's also a literature of social change, which often comes from mainstream authors: Handmaid's Tale by Atwood or 1984 by Orwell.

So one might conlude that SF literature has explored the limits of humanity much more than the species itself has in reality.

That said, I want to pull my discussion in to one point.  SF isn't about predicting the future - it's about considering the consequence of our choices in the present.  The audience is the present and the ultimate subject is the nature of humanity now.

[Ron Edwards]

Hello,

OK, I was going to do this before Paul's post about Blue Planet et al., but his post and the responses changed my mind. However, posts since then have moved it back.

The Forge is not a forum for debating or even musing about the definition of science fiction. Please note that my first post in this thread was not presenting such a definition, but a personal limitation on the contributions I'd be able to make.

Quit the "what SF means to me" stuff, folks. That's it, no more. If the purpose of this thread's first post has been served (M. J., speak up), then it needs to be closed.

Best,
Ron

[Alan]

M.J.'s originaly question was:

"what can science fiction do that hasn't been done, from a setting and technology perspective?"

I read Greyorm's post to read that SF had not covered certain areas that I thought it had, so I responded.  After rereading my post, I realize the last line sounds like a definition.  It wasn't intended as such.  Rather I meant to point out that SF can always address something new because it addresses the present.

In other words my answer to MJ's question is "SF has already done everything, but you can do it again if you make it relevant to your current audience."

[clehrich]

Getting back to RPGs, I'd like to respond to Harlequin's "Big Idea" concept for gaming.

If I understand you correctly, you're proposing a style of gaming (let's ignore system and GNS and whatnot here) in which the GM comes up with a Big Idea, such as the Budapest Zoo.  The players and PCs do not know what the Big Idea is.  Then they explore the world, the plot, and so forth, until the Big Idea is discovered or revealed.  It doesn't really have to be a surprise, but that would be the dominant mode.

I was thinking you could perhaps expand the concept for a different sort of result.  You take a sort of "basic SF backdrop setting," or at any rate one that doesn't require much thought on everyone's part to "get."  It could be right now, just as easily as the future.  Now you propose the Big Idea, and tell everyone about it.  After musing briefly together to be sure everyone has the Big Idea down pat, you let 'er rip, and have the group mutually explore the implications of the Big Idea on areas of the setting.

For example, the Big Idea is Fang's mLife=Borg.  The GM does the sort of run-through Fang did, and makes sure everyone gets the basic idea; you also make sure everyone's agreed on just how far this technology has gone (i.e. has it reached the full potential Fang eventually described, or are we just starting to have the jacks in our heads, or what).  Now you have an explorative game in which everyone together thinks through versions and applications of mLife Borg-tech.  If player X comes up with a nifty idea about how laundry-machines are going to work, and player Y is fascinated by the possiblity of using this tech for criminal purposes, that's all part of the show.

Among other things, this means that the GM doesn't have to think it all through herself.  My sense of some SF problems (gaming, TV, whatever) is that if I the audience feel that you the GM/author/etc. have not thought it through, because I can see that your idea isn't "going to work that way" in whatever sense, then I get annoyed.  Here it's my problem to write it into the world; I can't blame the GM.

[M. J. Young]

If the purpose of this thread's first post has been served (M. J., speak up), then it needs to be closed.

I guess that's my cue.

I'm going to make what I think might be a couple of summary comments, and suggest that indeed the thread has accomplished what I'd hoped, I think. I'll also suggest that if my summary comments spark new thoughts or ideas, they should probably go to new threads.

Reverend Daegmorgan and Alan seem to be at odds regarding the nature of humanity. The Reverend suggests that humanity has changed, and will continue to do so; Alan objects that humanity has remained essentially the same as far back as we can identify it. The truth, I think, lies between the two. There are core elements of what it is to be human that remain the same; and age to age human thought is altered. At the end of the nineteenth century, we lived in a world in which most people assumed that if there was anything beyond the natural world it was unknowable and thus unimportant. At the end of the twentieth, there is a growing interest in spiritual things, and a much smaller contingent of those holding other views. Going back, the end of the eighteenth century was marked by the belief that reason would somehow enable us to find the ultimate answers to everything. One of my favorite authors, C. S. Lewis, has recommended reading books from previous centuries precisely because the people who wrote them had very different views of reality than we have, and so made very different mistakes from those we are apt to make. In the future, we should expect that technology and culture will change the way people think; but they will still be people, and in fundamental ways will be like us. It is interesting to explore how they might be, but we can only guess at that. Thus the most interesting aspects of what science fiction might reveal--how will people change--are the most difficult even in fiction, more so in play.

The Big Idea game catches my attention. I hesitated to say anything sooner, because I definitely wanted to see more on that (and I have, although the idea might not have been fully explored yet). But you see, this is very much the way we game with Multiverser: the player is suddenly dropped in a new universe where he knows nothing, and he must discover what there is. Sometimes that's a science fiction world with some sort of core idea. Immediately I think of The Industrial Complex in The Second Book of Worlds, a sort of post-apocalyptic in which it is prosperity, not disaster, that brings down the world. The machines run everything, and the humans over generations, having by and large nothing to do and no need to do it, have reverted to primitive tribalism. Unbeknownst to the player characters, the machines are on the edge of failure, and the people won't know how to survive without them. All of this is something of a "big idea" approach. Because the game moves player characters from universe to universe, you can always launch another big idea. I hesitated to speak to this, because I do it with fantasy and alternate history (probably more than I do with sci-fi) and I wanted to see what the sci-fi ramifications of it were.

I really like the zoo; I'm going to have to consider what player to drop there, although I'm going to have to read up on it.

So perhaps we've found these points:

There are a lot of possibilities for science fiction; technology is part of the backdrop, but what you really need is a good unique situation. Metamorphosis Alpha might actually be a good example of this, as the technology and the creatures are not significantly different from Gamma World, but placing the whole on a lost colony spaceship on which no one knows anything makes it entirely different (although either you have to keep the players from knowing this, or you have to have that peculiar player/character knowledge separation that is not very common in gamist games).

Humans remain human, but they change according to the ways their worlds work, and it's important to reflect both that they are the same and that they are different.

Not all technology needs to be explainable, as long as the players can accept that there is some science behind it that explains it.

Thanks for the thoughts.

--M. J. Young