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Science Fiction or Space Fantasy - what is Star Wars — Page 4

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Does something like Watchmen count as both Science Fiction and Alternate History?

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Where were you in '77?

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Saying that Star Wars is space opera isn’t answering the question whether it’s science fiction. It just leads to the question whether space opera really is science fiction.

Ceci n’est pas une signature.

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I always thought Space Opera was just the scale of the stakes, the amount of melodrama, the amount of swashbuckling romantic adventure stuff included. The more it has the more operatic, i.e Death Stars and Galactic Empires. However Science Fiction can be all of these things while still being full of real ideas about people, culture, technology, warnings about the future, the decline of society or the impact of higher learning. i.e. Not Star Wars. In fact SW is more of a fairy tale than anything else. There are obvious disconnects between the content in SW and the content in Blade Runner, Star Trek or Planet of the Apes.

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Yeah, seriously. It starts with a reworded version of “Once upon a time;” an evil wizard-knight who’s also a Lord kidnaps a princess while the princess tries to contact a good wizard-knight to help fight evil; the good wizard takes a lowly farmboy yearning for adventure under his wing and starts training him to be a knight; the pair recruit a rogue and his beastly sidekick to help them on their journey; the group infiltrates the evil castle to rescue the princess; the wizard-knights duel with swords…

…yep, no fantasy whatsoever in there.

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But Ash, they obviously aren’t wizards because the Force is just ESP. Everyone knows that.

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Also:

yotsuya said:

There is no genre of space fantasy. It doesn’t exist.

Says who? Is there an official list of genres that is set in stone for all eternity? Who made the list and why did they decide to add cyberpunk to it in the 1980s, but space fantasy is apparently strictly forbidden?

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The way I see it, Star Wars simply did what rock bands have been doing for years. Someone mentioned that heavy metal didn’t exist when Black Sabbath emerged. That’s true of so many bands. What the hell was KISS? Glam? Metal? Neither - they were just KISS. What were the Chili Peppers? Funk? Nope. Punk? Nope. Rap? Uh-uh. Just a weird mix of lots of stuff. I’m pretty sure Kurt Cobain didn’t say one morning “let’s invent a thing called ‘grunge’ - I’ll call up Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder and we’ll start a movement”. Nirvana didn’t do anything new, but they certainly were unique.

Star Wars is Star Wars.

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ChainsawAsh said:

Yeah, seriously. It starts with a reworded version of “Once upon a time;” an evil wizard-knight who’s also a Lord kidnaps a princess while the princess tries to contact a good wizard-knight to help fight evil; the good wizard takes a lowly farmboy yearning for adventure under his wing and starts training him to be a knight; the pair recruit a rogue and his beastly sidekick to help them on their journey; the group infiltrates the evil castle to rescue the princess; the wizard-knights duel with swords…

…yep, no fantasy whatsoever in there.

^ and this

https://screamsinthevoid.deviantart.com/

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Ash predicted someone would quote that I wasn’t about to let my boy look silly.

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I just remembered that Irvin Kershner called Star Wars a fairy tale while directing The Empire Strikes Back .It is in the Michael Parbot documentary and I think it is a very apt description . Also looking at the titles of the tracks on the OST album such as …The little people work , rescue of the princess,etc .

https://screamsinthevoid.deviantart.com/

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Frank your Majesty said:

Saying that Star Wars is space opera isn’t answering the question whether it’s science fiction. It just leads to the question whether space opera really is science fiction.

Well, according to the people who write it, publish it, and read it, it is science fiction… so that question has been answered.

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Mocata said:

I always thought Space Opera was just the scale of the stakes, the amount of melodrama, the amount of swashbuckling romantic adventure stuff included. The more it has the more operatic, i.e Death Stars and Galactic Empires. However Science Fiction can be all of these things while still being full of real ideas about people, culture, technology, warnings about the future, the decline of society or the impact of higher learning. i.e. Not Star Wars. In fact SW is more of a fairy tale than anything else. There are obvious disconnects between the content in SW and the content in Blade Runner, Star Trek or Planet of the Apes.

Well, Star Wars some pretty good warnings about fascism. It has its own technology. It is a fully fleshed out universe from religion to politics to technology and more. And you named two dystopian settings and a space opera series full of morality tales so there is bound to be a disconnect between them and Star Wars.

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DominicCobb said:

yotsuya said:

(and Star Wars has no aspects or tropes of fantasy)

Blatantly untrue.

Name one trope that is fantasy that isn’t better fit with a space opera trope?

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ChainsawAsh said:

Yeah, seriously. It starts with a reworded version of “Once upon a time;” an evil wizard-knight who’s also a Lord kidnaps a princess while the princess tries to contact a good wizard-knight to help fight evil; the good wizard takes a lowly farmboy yearning for adventure under his wing and starts training him to be a knight; the pair recruit a rogue and his beastly sidekick to help them on their journey; the group infiltrates the evil castle to rescue the princess; the wizard-knights duel with swords…

…yep, no fantasy whatsoever in there.

Let’s see, Vader exhibits a total of one force power in the entire film (force choking Admiral Motti) so not really very wizard like. Princesses about in science fiction so that means nothing. So do farm boys. So those mean nothing. Ben is more mystic than magician and all he does in ANH is use a mind trick on some storm troopers twice (telepathy). Han has his origins in Northwest Smith and Hobar Mallow and space opera abouds with beastly alien creatures. And castle is your word. Fortress would be more apt - something that was very common on Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon. And bladed energy weapons appeared long before Star Wars. So everything you try to pin to fantasy is a stable of space opera.

In Foundation and Empire and Second Foundation, the Mule performs much nastier tricks, actually killing people with his mental power. I can’t even remember what all Frank Herbert had Paul do. And list is larger of space opera good guys and villains who used the same, similar, or more powerful tricks. So… the wizard aspect is pretty well entrenched in science fiction. Some even get called wizards. Telepathy and telekinesis are normal science fiction tropes, especially in space opera.

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ChainsawAsh said:

Also:

yotsuya said:

There is no genre of space fantasy. It doesn’t exist.

Says who? Is there an official list of genres that is set in stone for all eternity? Who made the list and why did they decide to add cyberpunk to it in the 1980s, but space fantasy is apparently strictly forbidden?

The people who write it, publish it, review it, and read it. Why create a new genre for something that already exists? Why create space fantasy when the object being called that fits in Space Opera. They create a new genre when there is something new and Star Wars wasn’t.

Yes, Lucas based on Campbell’s work, but that is just a compilation of myths and legends. Those myths and legends had already been used in other science fiction stories. Telepathy, telekinesis, and other ESP powers are so common that you can’t truly call yourself a fan of science fiction without knowing all the times they pop up. Isaac Asimov even wrote a story about a computer that became sentient and so powerful that it became God. His work is full of what you are calling magic and he is considered one of the three greats of mid 20th century science fiction, along with Clarke and Heinlein. I am not familiar with Clarke, but Heinlein didn’t shy away from what is typically called ESP either. And Star Trek and to a greater extent Space 1999 had beings with mental powers that put a Jedi to shame.

You are using the very things the science fiction has incorporated for decades to prove that it is not science fiction. That doesn’t really work.

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Shopping Maul said:

The way I see it, Star Wars simply did what rock bands have been doing for years. Someone mentioned that heavy metal didn’t exist when Black Sabbath emerged. That’s true of so many bands. What the hell was KISS? Glam? Metal? Neither - they were just KISS. What were the Chili Peppers? Funk? Nope. Punk? Nope. Rap? Uh-uh. Just a weird mix of lots of stuff. I’m pretty sure Kurt Cobain didn’t say one morning “let’s invent a thing called ‘grunge’ - I’ll call up Chris Cornell and Eddie Vedder and we’ll start a movement”. Nirvana didn’t do anything new, but they certainly were unique.

Star Wars is Star Wars.

Except Lucas copied more than 5 established science fiction properties, all space opera, to base Star Wars on. Complete with sword fights, other primitive weapons, blasters, space ships, evil tyrants, advanced mental powers, stories of good vs. evil. characters you could call wizards, princesses, emperors, evil henchmen, aliens, and pretty much everything in Star Wars. He brought in Campbell and the samurai code, but that wasn’t all that unique, only how he did it. Heinlein would call Lucas an engineer - taking things that already exist and putting them together in a new way. The genius lies not in pure originality, but how well it resonated and became so popular. So Star Wars wasn’t doing something new and different. The comparison to something that was new and different doesn’t apply. It’s more like Star Wars is the 57 Chevy of movies. From a long line, but something was different and unique that made it extra special - just not something truly new.

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Just pure lunacy. It is one thing to disagree about what the primary genre is, but to pretend like it is only one genre, with no elements of any other genre present is just ridiculous. Either you’re being willfully ignorant/obtuse, or you seriously need educate yourself better on Lucas’s influences. He wasn’t just taking from “space operas,” and I think you know it.

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DominicCobb said:

Just pure lunacy. It is one thing to disagree about what the primary genre is, but to pretend like it is only one genre, with no elements of any other genre present is just ridiculous. Either you’re being willfully ignorant/obtuse, or you seriously need educate yourself better on Lucas’s influences. He wasn’t just taking from “space operas,” and I think you know it.

It’s true. All of it.

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yotsuya said:

Time setting is immaterial. Steampunk is science fiction set in the past. And you can have Space Opera set in the past (it has been done many times). Just the typical convention is to set it in our future when we have higher tech (or lower in the case of post apocalyptic SF).

I’m actually not sure if I would consider Steampunk science fiction either. But as someone else has stated, I guess it’s all about what definition of science fiction you subscribe too.

Another way to look at this question though. If you were to make seperate lists of the greatest sci-fi movies ever and the greatest fantasy movies ever, which list would you put Star Wars on?

Looking at this way I realize that I would actually put it on the sci-fi list. So even though I initially felt it was more fantasy, I now realize that the sci-fi elements are actually stronger for me.

Wow. I actually changed my mind about this whole thing just now while typing this post. Well… they say a mind that can change is a healthy one! 😃

<span style=“font-size: 12px;”><span>We seem to be made to suffer. It’s our lot in life.</span></span>