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Science Fiction or Space Fantasy - what is Star Wars — Page 2

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Anchorhead said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:
Absolutely baffles me. Technology is of exactly zero importance in Star Wars. It’s there, that’s it. The films are not about that at all. They are modern myths, and very clearly so. You cannot with a straight face tell me that Star Wars is more similar to Shelly and Verne than to Tolkein and Arthurian legends.

I disagree with this statement. The original Star Wars trilogy was very much about technology. In fact the original Star Wars can be seen as a critique of the modern world, where technology supersedes spirituality punctuated by Motti´s remark “This space station is now the ultimate power in the universe!” This to me is one of the more interesting aspects of the first movie, namely that the Jedi and even Darth Vader himself are seen as relics of the past in a galaxy dominated by technology.

I’m not at all speaking for Dominic, so he should correct me if I’m off. I think he’s noting that technology doesn’t drive the story in-universe. Luke has a speeder because that’s how you get around, vaporators are how you get water, droids are the labor pool, space ships are how you travel from planet to planet, etc.

I had that in my original response as well, before I trimmed it. Technology, far superior to ours, is the world in which they live. The story at its roots is; old man enlists the help of a farm boy to go rescue the princess and fight the bad guys.

That story can be told in just about any timeline or setting.

I don’t agree. The entire concept of the Old Republic with its spiritual guardians tapping into a long forgotten energy field created by all living things vs an Empire with its technology wiping out the life of an entire planet in an instant is at the heart of the movie. It is one of its main themes. The destruction of the Death Star is the victory of spirituality over technology. The climax of the movie sees Luke reject a piece of technology in favour of trusting his instincts, and using the Force.

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It’s neither. Like I said, it’s science fantasy. 😄 It may sound like an oxymoron but it works. It has both elements, the science layer may be buried a little more.

But does anyone else besides me think that maybe the last 10 years (or even PT) are more fantasy than sci fi? Well, actually, R1 may fit into the science fantasy genre.

And in the time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as the Son of the Suns.

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DrDre said:

Anchorhead said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:
Absolutely baffles me. Technology is of exactly zero importance in Star Wars. It’s there, that’s it. The films are not about that at all. They are modern myths, and very clearly so. You cannot with a straight face tell me that Star Wars is more similar to Shelly and Verne than to Tolkein and Arthurian legends.

I disagree with this statement. The original Star Wars trilogy was very much about technology. In fact the original Star Wars can be seen as a critique of the modern world, where technology supersedes spirituality punctuated by Motti´s remark “This space station is now the ultimate power in the universe!” This to me is one of the more interesting aspects of the first movie, namely that the Jedi and even Darth Vader himself are seen as relics of the past in a galaxy dominated by technology.

I’m not at all speaking for Dominic, so he should correct me if I’m off. I think he’s noting that technology doesn’t drive the story in-universe. Luke has a speeder because that’s how you get around, vaporators are how you get water, droids are the labor pool, space ships are how you travel from planet to planet, etc.

I had that in my original response as well, before I trimmed it. Technology, far superior to ours, is the world in which they live. The story at its roots is; old man enlists the help of a farm boy to go rescue the princess and fight the bad guys.

That story can be told in just about any timeline or setting.

I don’t agree. The entire concept of the Old Republic with its spiritual guardians tapping into a long forgotten energy field created by all living things vs an Empire with its technology wiping out the life of an entire planet in an instant is at the heart of the movie. It is one of its main themes. The destruction of the Death Star is the victory of spirituality over technology. The climax of the movie sees Luke reject a piece of technology in favour of trusting his instincts, and using the Force.

That doesn’t make it not fantasy though. Look at Lord of the Rings, and you have a very similar story. It’s not exactly technology, but the creation of the Uruk-hai and the One Ring is in direct contrast to the unfettered and unsophisticated lives of the hobbits. Vader is “more machine than man,” but that runs in parallel to his corruption by the dark side. In Lord of the Rings, the analog is Gollum, once a hobbit, transformed into a monster with the evil ‘tech’ of the One Ring.

The thing is, the tech in Star Wars is just a method of delivery. The movie isn’t really about the evils of tech, because all the good guys use tech too (even when Luke gets a robotic hand, there’s nothing about the tech specifically that relates to badness and the dark side, it just shows a parallel with his father). The Death Star represents inhumanity, the cold calculating Empire represents an un-empathetic world. The story is about selfishness vs. selflessness. Spirituality vs. technology only naturally flows out of the larger philosophical picture it’s painting. It’s more about connecting with and helping others, vs. doing nothing.

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LexX said:

It’s neither.

I disagree. It’s both. Star Wars is a lot of things - fantasy, sci-fi, western, romance, swashbuckling, war film. The argument, I think, is what genre doesn’t it primarily operate in. At the end of the day, it’s a fairy tale. It’s a fantastical myth. The other things serve to make up that whole.

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DominicCobb said:

LexX said:

It’s neither.

I disagree. It’s both.

You cut the rest of the paragraph just to disagree. I meant it’s neither on its own as it is both.

But you can see it however you want it to see. Some people say it’s a western (well, at least the first one) while others think it’s some deep religious film which has some weird father-son psychology layers where a man needs to confront his father to become a man or something (I’ve heard this angle before and it’s a stretch - I mean, it has that element but the analysis of this went way deeper than I could explain here. Just pointing this out before someone says it’s exatly that.).

And in the time of greatest despair, there shall come a savior, and he shall be known as the Son of the Suns.

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LexX said:

DominicCobb said:

LexX said:

It’s neither.

I disagree. It’s both.

You cut the rest of the paragraph just to disagree. I meant it’s neither on its own as it is both.

Well, splitting hairs here but you’re statement was that it wasn’t either genre, but a third genre that was a combination of the two. I disagree, I think it’s both genres simultaneously, as well as many others.

But you can see it however you want it to see. Some people say it’s a western (well, at least the first one) while others think it’s some deep religious film which has some weird father-son psychology layers where a man needs to confront his father to become a man or something (I’ve heard this angle before and it’s a stretch - I mean, it has that element but the analysis of this went way deeper than I could explain here. Just pointing this out before someone says it’s exatly that.).

Obviously as with any film it is very open to interpretation, but it’s worth noting that the genre mashup was very much intentional on the part of Lucas. His inspirations were vast and varied - not just Flash Gordon space opera but John Ford westerns, WWII dogfight flicks, Kurosawa samurai pictures, Curtiz pirate movies, and various fantasy and mythological literature.

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SilverWook said:

Some movies straddle the genres. Is Alien a horror or a SF film?

Clearly the latter. I’ve always considered it a space fantasy film.

The Person in Question

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Anchorhead said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:
Absolutely baffles me. Technology is of exactly zero importance in Star Wars. It’s there, that’s it. The films are not about that at all. They are modern myths, and very clearly so. You cannot with a straight face tell me that Star Wars is more similar to Shelly and Verne than to Tolkein and Arthurian legends.

I disagree with this statement. The original Star Wars trilogy was very much about technology. In fact the original Star Wars can be seen as a critique of the modern world, where technology supersedes spirituality punctuated by Motti´s remark “This space station is now the ultimate power in the universe!” This to me is one of the more interesting aspects of the first movie, namely that the Jedi and even Darth Vader himself are seen as relics of the past in a galaxy dominated by technology.

I’m not at all speaking for Dominic, so he should correct me if I’m off. I think he’s noting that technology doesn’t drive the story in-universe. Luke has a speeder because that’s how you get around, vaporators are how you get water, droids are the labor pool, space ships are how you travel from planet to planet, etc.

I had that in my original response as well, before I trimmed it. Technology, far superior to ours, is the world in which they live. The story at its roots is; old man enlists the help of a farm boy to go rescue the princess and fight the bad guys.

That story can be told in just about any timeline or setting.

Yes, but the genre of the story is tied to the setting. Set it in the 19th century in the southwest and you have a western. Set it in the 9th century in France and you have a historical fiction. Set it today and you have contemporary fiction. Set it in the future (or a long ago high tech society) and you have science fiction. The setting is where you find most of the tropes. If you can tie the tropes into the story in such a way that the story really isn’t the same without them, then you have something indisputable. But what Lucas did was tie Star Wars to Campbell. Campbell’s work is not tied to any genre - it is tied to story telling in general. So what Lucas did was to tie into science fiction tropes to tell his samurai story based on Campbell’s work. He pulled in space ships, robots, FTL, artificial gravity, ESP, and a galactic empire. He envisioned an series of full length movies in the spirit of Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, but left the camp behind. He kept the whimsy for the kids, but also crafted a serious story for all ages (that was the purpose of Cambell’s work). Outside of Campbell and the Samurai, his influences are all science fiction.

And the choice is not hard science fiction (based on real science and plausible futures) or fantasy. If you think that you are not much of a science fiction fan because you just dumped 3/4 of the genre into fantasy. Most science fiction is soft science fiction, meaning that you tell a plausible story and make it sound possible. Hard science fiction is just telling a possible story with little to no exploration of things that have not been proven to be possible. Fantasy on the other hand is telling stories of the impossible. Usually mysticism and magic provides the suspension of belief. Face it, we have no record of demon hoards ravaging the world or super demons breaking their bonds to endanger the world. We can conceive that FTL and artificial gravity could exist some day even though science currently says it is impossible (they once said going faster than sound was impossible). Older stories that explored our solar system before we really knew what it was like have not been rendered fantasy by new scientific discoveries. They are still science fiction, just outdated. Jules Verne’s works have not ceased to be science fiction just because some things have come to pass and others have proven impossible. They are still science fiction and always will be. The science is just outdated.

The force is 90% ESP and is a minor part of the story told. Luke’s journey is mostly to become a warrior to defeat Vader and the Emperor and then Luke makes a twist by sacrificing himself to save his father and his father kills the Emperor, sacrificing himself in the process. Luke’s main story is not dependent on the force, but on his own character. You could set Luke’s story in any genre, but Lucas chose to borrow from science fiction for the setting. Star Wars is as much science fiction as Foundation, Dune, Buck Rogers, and Flash Gordon.

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yotsuya said:

The force is 90% ESP and is a minor part of the story told. Luke’s journey is mostly to become a warrior to defeat Vader and the Emperor and then Luke makes a twist by sacrificing himself to save his father and his father kills the Emperor, sacrificing himself in the process. Luke’s main story is not dependent on the force, but on his own character.

Not true at all. The Force is integral to Luke and his story. It is at the philosophical core of the series. A power that connects every living thing on a deep and spiritual level. A power that can be used for good, to help others, or for evil. Luke’s story is about using that power with responsibility. By sacrificing himself, he’s trusting in the light side of the Force, in the belief that love and care for others will save the galaxy. When Vader makes his sacrifice, he’s choosing the Force, giving into something greater than him.

It’s telling that even in Rogue One, the film that’s possibly the most sci-fi of the series, the Force still plays an important role.

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I love the ‘tech’ speak of Star Wars. It’s so good and natural that it’s easy to take for granted - vaporators, restraining bolts, nav computers, protocol droids, sublight engines and so on. I remember Battlestar Galactica attempting the same thing in '78 with ‘daggits’ and a ‘languatron’, but it just didn’t flow like the SW stuff. Star Wars even managed to goof with parsecs and own it!

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DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

The force is 90% ESP and is a minor part of the story told. Luke’s journey is mostly to become a warrior to defeat Vader and the Emperor and then Luke makes a twist by sacrificing himself to save his father and his father kills the Emperor, sacrificing himself in the process. Luke’s main story is not dependent on the force, but on his own character.

Not true at all. The Force is integral to Luke and his story. It is at the philosophical core of the series. A power that connects every living thing on a deep and spiritual level. A power that can be used for good, to help others, or for evil. Luke’s story is about using that power with responsibility. By sacrificing himself, he’s trusting in the light side of the Force, in the belief that love and care for others will save the galaxy. When Vader makes his sacrifice, he’s choosing the Force, giving into something greater than him.

It’s telling that even in Rogue One, the film that’s possibly the most sci-fi of the series, the Force still plays an important role.

The Force is really the religion in Star Wars. It provides the moral compass for the characters. That is especially notable in Rogue One where it is a matter of faith, not special abilities. Tarkin even calls it a religion in ANH. Take away the ESP aspect and the core story remains unchanged. I’ll agree that the light and dark aspect of the force is integral to the story, but the powers used are not. Take away the powers and leave it as a religion and the story is little impacted.

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Shopping Maul said:

I love the ‘tech’ speak of Star Wars. It’s so good and natural that it’s easy to take for granted - vaporators, restraining bolts, nav computers, protocol droids, sublight engines and so on. I remember Battlestar Galactica attempting the same thing in '78 with ‘daggits’ and a ‘languatron’, but it just didn’t flow like the SW stuff. Star Wars even managed to goof with parsecs and own it!

Galactica was renaming things we Earthlings were very familiar with though. Animals, measurements of time, etc. And they got away with curse words you could never say in a Star Wars film, and that’s no fracking felgercarb. 😉

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yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

The force is 90% ESP and is a minor part of the story told. Luke’s journey is mostly to become a warrior to defeat Vader and the Emperor and then Luke makes a twist by sacrificing himself to save his father and his father kills the Emperor, sacrificing himself in the process. Luke’s main story is not dependent on the force, but on his own character.

Not true at all. The Force is integral to Luke and his story. It is at the philosophical core of the series. A power that connects every living thing on a deep and spiritual level. A power that can be used for good, to help others, or for evil. Luke’s story is about using that power with responsibility. By sacrificing himself, he’s trusting in the light side of the Force, in the belief that love and care for others will save the galaxy. When Vader makes his sacrifice, he’s choosing the Force, giving into something greater than him.

It’s telling that even in Rogue One, the film that’s possibly the most sci-fi of the series, the Force still plays an important role.

The Force is really the religion in Star Wars. It provides the moral compass for the characters. That is especially notable in Rogue One where it is a matter of faith, not special abilities. Tarkin even calls it a religion in ANH. Take away the ESP aspect and the core story remains unchanged. I’ll agree that the light and dark aspect of the force is integral to the story, but the powers used are not. Take away the powers and leave it as a religion and the story is little impacted.

“The Force is not a power you have. It’s not about lifting rocks. It’s the energy between all things, a tension, a balance, that binds the universe together”

The Force isn’t a religion, the Jedi are. The Force is more akin to a deity - a supernatural entity - that actually exists in universe. The Force is not simply a matter of faith, it is a matter of fact. Saying the Force is nothing more than ESP is a fundamental misunderstanding of it. Take away the “powers,” and it’s still a driving, uh, force in the universe.

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DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

The force is 90% ESP and is a minor part of the story told. Luke’s journey is mostly to become a warrior to defeat Vader and the Emperor and then Luke makes a twist by sacrificing himself to save his father and his father kills the Emperor, sacrificing himself in the process. Luke’s main story is not dependent on the force, but on his own character.

Not true at all. The Force is integral to Luke and his story. It is at the philosophical core of the series. A power that connects every living thing on a deep and spiritual level. A power that can be used for good, to help others, or for evil. Luke’s story is about using that power with responsibility. By sacrificing himself, he’s trusting in the light side of the Force, in the belief that love and care for others will save the galaxy. When Vader makes his sacrifice, he’s choosing the Force, giving into something greater than him.

It’s telling that even in Rogue One, the film that’s possibly the most sci-fi of the series, the Force still plays an important role.

The Force is really the religion in Star Wars. It provides the moral compass for the characters. That is especially notable in Rogue One where it is a matter of faith, not special abilities. Tarkin even calls it a religion in ANH. Take away the ESP aspect and the core story remains unchanged. I’ll agree that the light and dark aspect of the force is integral to the story, but the powers used are not. Take away the powers and leave it as a religion and the story is little impacted.

“The Force is not a power you have. It’s not about lifting rocks. It’s the energy between all things, a tension, a balance, that binds the universe together”

The Force isn’t a religion, the Jedi are. The Force is more akin to a deity - a supernatural entity - that actually exists in universe. The Force is not simply a matter of faith, it is a matter of fact. Saying the Force is nothing more than ESP is a fundamental misunderstanding of it. Take away the “powers,” and it’s still a driving, uh, force in the universe.

No, I’m not misunderstanding. This is what genre analysis is. If you question if something is genre related you see if you can cut it and keep the core story intact. Cut out the force powers and you would get essentially the same story. So the force powers are not a genre determiner (even though the are an expanded ESP which is a standard science fiction trope).

So if you can cut out the mystic force power and the story is solidly space opera and every other aspect is space opera (including the first TESB script being written by the queen of space opera), then the argument that Star Wars is closer to fantasy falls apart. It isn’t fantasy and Lucas calling it space fantasy doesn’t make that a valid genre and doesn’t make it closer to The Hobbit than to the pillars of classic science fiction. the pillars of classic science fiction are either hard sci-fi or space opera and if you quiz people, they will know the space operas better. The early ones were called planetary romances, but the style of storytelling expanded with the addition of FTL to span the galaxy instead of planets and took on the name space opera. That is exactly what Star Wars is, space opera.

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Core story A: Hero’s Journey, Old Sage, Damsel in Distress, yada yada
Genre Flavour B: Outlaws and Killers of the Wild West, Escape from the Fortress of Ultimate Darkness, The Dam Busters
Other ingredients C: A Touch of Zen, The Fall of the Roman Empire, Kurosawa Bits and Pieces
Absent Entirely D: The mathematics of space travel, the future of the human race, gravity centrifuges and oxygen supplies, AKA science-fiction.

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I’m not saying either side is right or wrong, but I do get yotsuya’s perspective.

If you worked at a bookstore, for example, and you had to choose whether to put Star Wars books in the fantasy section or the science fiction section, which section would you put them in?

Obviously you would put it in the science fiction section. That’s where Star Wars books are in most book stores (unless it has it’s own section). Yes, it is not traditional science fiction, because the science really doesn’t matter, it’s just set decoration. But because of that it is like a science fiction setting, but in the subgenre of space opera, because the sci-fi aspect is more about the aesthetic. I think that’s what you’re getting at, right?

I agree with that, but if I had to describe to someone who had never seen Star Wars before, I wouldn’t want to describe it as science fiction. I think that is sort of misleading, because it leads people to have a certain assumption about it’s content and themes. So space opera or space fantasy are definitely more accurate descriptors.

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SilverWook said:

Shopping Maul said:

I love the ‘tech’ speak of Star Wars. It’s so good and natural that it’s easy to take for granted - vaporators, restraining bolts, nav computers, protocol droids, sublight engines and so on. I remember Battlestar Galactica attempting the same thing in '78 with ‘daggits’ and a ‘languatron’, but it just didn’t flow like the SW stuff. Star Wars even managed to goof with parsecs and own it!

Galactica was renaming things we Earthlings were very familiar with though. Animals, measurements of time, etc. And they got away with curse words you could never say in a Star Wars film, and that’s no fracking felgercarb. 😉

Ha ha so true! And don’t get me wrong - I love BG. I just think it hasn’t aged nearly as well as SW, and this is down to Lucas’/Kurtz’ etc wonderful way of grounding the SW universe and making it feel so natural (sound was a huge part of this too).

And yeah, just got the theatrical version of BG '78 on Blu Ray and couldn’t be happier…

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The original header on the splash page of the original Marvel Star Wars comic read …Long ago in a galaxy far far way …there exists a state of cosmic civil war . A brave alliance of underground freedom fighters has challenged the tyranny and oppression of the awesome galactic empire .This is their story ! Stan Lee presents :Star Wars the greatest SPACE FANTASY of all ! so there’s that . and the whole a long time ago in a galaxy far far away is inherently suggestive of the whole long ago and far away trope of fantasy as well .

https://screamsinthevoid.deviantart.com/

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DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:
Absolutely baffles me. Technology is of exactly zero importance in Star Wars. It’s there, that’s it. The films are not about that at all. They are modern myths, and very clearly so. You cannot with a straight face tell me that Star Wars is more similar to Shelly and Verne than to Tolkein and Arthurian legends.

I disagree with this statement. The original Star Wars trilogy was very much about technology.

No. Just because it includes technology, that doesn’t make the story about technology.

TV’s Frink said:

chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.

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RogueLeader said:

I’m not saying either side is right or wrong, but I do get yotsuya’s perspective.

If you worked at a bookstore, for example, and you had to choose whether to put Star Wars books in the fantasy section or the science fiction section, which section would you put them in?

But Star Wars books treat the science of the SW universe differently than the movies do. The TFA novel actually explains how Starkiller Base’s primary weapon works and how it can destroy planets while on the other side of the galaxy. The movies don’t do that. In the movies, the science takes a backseat and is almost never explained.

TV’s Frink said:

chyron just put a big Ric pic in your sig and be done with it.

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I think the question we need to answer is what is science fiction. That is the part there seems to be a lot of confusion over. Everyone here seems to agree what Star Wars is about, but not where it fits.

Let’s go back to the beginning… well, sort of. Science Fiction goes back a long way, but for practical purposes, it really became something different with Jules Verne. He is the father of modern science fiction. What are his stories about? Adventure. That is the type of story he was telling. He took current technology and extrapolated where it might go and found new stories to tell. Not everything he wrote about was even plausible at the time. He dreamed of how technology could make our future better and wrote about it.

Now, the next big name in science fiction was H.G. Wells. He also was very science minded, but he didn’t write adventures. His stories are warnings of what not to do. Instead of imagining how technology could help, he tended to write about how it could harm. He was not against technology, but against abusing it. His stories are darker.

The next big name I know of is Edar Rice Burroughs. He created John Carter and Tarzan, among others. With John Carter and the Barsoom series he created what became known as planetary romance.

There are lots of writers in between. Some well known in their day, some still known. C.L Moore’s Northwest Smith stories (or similar ones) where a clear inspiration for many Star Trek writers as well as those writing about traders, smugglers, and pirates. She was one of many writers who also dabbled in Fantasy.

Then in the middle of the 20th century you have the big three, Asimov, Clarke, and Heinlein. Some of their stories about with science. But Asimov was inspired to craft the Foundation stories (originally short stories and novellas and later compiled into 3 novel length books) which are pure Space Opera. There are so many famous names, but some of the ones I know are Andre Norton, Anne McCaffrey, James Blish, Philip K. Dick, Frederik Pohl, Frank Herbert and Poul Anderson. Today one of my favorites is Jack McDevitt. And when you examine the stories and what they are about, it is not just science. Science often takes a back seat. Sometimes science underlies the story and drives it, sometimes it is along for the ride. What is consistent across the genre of science fiction is technology. One branch of science fiction even goes back in time to the 19th century and explores what kind of inventions could have been created with that level of technology (its called Steampunk as a play on Cyberpunk).

So how does this relate to Star Wars? Well, when you examine the scope of what science fiction covers, is very broad. This idea that the story has to focus on science is false. That concept is confined to hard science fiction - one of the smaller branches of the genre. Most tend to stick to the roots of the genre and tell stories of adventure and excitement. The Honor Harrington universe by David Weber is a fairly blatant reworking of Horratio Hornblower. Jack McDevitt’s Alex Benedict series is about a future antiquities dealer and his assistant who keep getting caught up in mysteries. His Academy Series is about space exploration. Isaac Asimov’s Robot/Empire/Foundation series (he eventually merged them all together) is about a civilization that grows from earth and 50 colonies to a galaxy spanning Empire that collapses and one man’s plan to shorten the interim to a new civilization. It is full of technology, but light on science. Heinlein brilliantly described micro gravity in the 1940’s. His ideas ranged from requiring military service for citizenship to inventors. Clarke gave us the story behind 2001 and then took it further in 3 sequels.

What is accurate for most, is that the writer kept the story grounded in science, but the stories are not about science. It is about science and its effect on people and society and how no matter what level of technology, you can tell a good story about people. Science fiction writers have been inspired by anything from the dangers of the atomic bomb to a world low on resources would miniaturize everything. A great many writers focus on the setting and keep the science behind the scenes. Some just adopt a futuristic setting and tell a good story.

So science fiction isn’t about the future. It isn’t just about science or technology. It is about how those things affect the people and impact the story. Dune is a political drama set in a world where thinking machines are outlawed and powdered dead worms fuel the economy and space travel. Foundation is a mirror of the fall or the Roman Empire, but with a plan to save the knowledge and rebuild.

Most great science fiction series can be described without using any science or technology at all.

So science fiction is not just hard science fiction, but also space opera, dystopian, alien invasion, cyberpunk, steampunk, social science fiction, space western, alien contact, military, time travel, colonization, alternate history, and post-apocalyptic. None of this is considered fantasy. None of it. Very little of it focuses very much on science.

When you apply that knowledge to Star Wars, it is just another space opera. It is just like John Carter/Barsoom, Buck Rogers, Flash Gordon, Foundation, Dune, Star Trek, and so many others. What Lucas did was tie the story to our oldest mythic tales in how the story was constructed. He is not the first to do that. Greek myths have been the fodder of science fiction stories for over a century. While there was a genre called space fantasy for a brief time and there is a genre called science fantasy, Star Wars has its roots and firmly fits in space opera, probably the most prolific sub-genre of science fiction. Absolutely nothing Lucas did in his story telling for the saga deviates in the slightest from the space opera format. He put things together in a completely unique way, but he followed all the standard tropes of space opera and nothing he did was truly new or original. The force is a religion, the Jedi are a warrior order, light sabers are just a piece of technology (that appears in many stories going back to the 30’s). They are tropes common to space opera and other sub-genres of science fiction going back more than 80 years. And no one has cared to establish space fantasy as an official sub-genre. It is just an alternate name for something that already existed.

It is like saying Data in TNG is not a robot. All androids are robots.

Star Wars is in the the science fiction sub-genre of space opera.

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Yeah I kinda said that, but with more brevity.

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chyron8472 said:

DrDre said:

DominicCobb said:
Absolutely baffles me. Technology is of exactly zero importance in Star Wars. It’s there, that’s it. The films are not about that at all. They are modern myths, and very clearly so. You cannot with a straight face tell me that Star Wars is more similar to Shelly and Verne than to Tolkein and Arthurian legends.

I disagree with this statement. The original Star Wars trilogy was very much about technology.

No. Just because it includes technology, that doesn’t make the story about technology.

It is from a certain point of view. 😃
https://youtu.be/Ym7vAL_Gvqk

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chyron8472 said:

RogueLeader said:

I’m not saying either side is right or wrong, but I do get yotsuya’s perspective.

If you worked at a bookstore, for example, and you had to choose whether to put Star Wars books in the fantasy section or the science fiction section, which section would you put them in?

But Star Wars books treat the science of the SW universe differently than the movies do. The TFA novel actually explains how Starkiller Base’s primary weapon works and how it can destroy planets while on the other side of the galaxy. The movies don’t do that. In the movies, the science takes a backseat and is almost never explained.

That is the difference between movies and book and has nothing to do with genre. In a movie you only deliver what you absolutely have to in order to tell the story. In an book you have more room to flesh out the world. No movie is as detailed as the book.