Science Fiction or Space Fantasy - what is Star Wars — Page 8

chyron8472 said:

So you’re not looking for a debate; you’re looking for validation.

This. Which begs the question, why are people still engaging?

No, I’m trying to figure out why people put George’s made up genre higher than established genres. Why people are stuck on a definition for all SF that only applies to hard SF. For me to ever apply the word fantasy to it, someone is going to have to find something about it that is uniquely fantasy and not found in SF. So far no one has managed to point out a single thing that is not commonly found in science fiction.

The proper term for what Jedi do is psychokinesis. It is labeled psudoscience, not magic and is common to SF. It is not really something found in fantasy without referencing spells, wands, or a talisman. Lucas based Star Wars on Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, both science fiction. You don’t have to go very far in science fiction before you encounter force-like powers (I have given many many examples).

Star Wars specifically belongs to the Space Opera subgenre and here is what Wikipedia has to say about it:
Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, and risk-taking. Set mainly or entirely in outer space, it usually involves conflict between opponents possessing advanced abilities, futuristic weapons, and other sophisticated technology. The term has no relation to music, but is instead a play on the terms “soap opera” and “horse opera”, the latter of which was coined during the 1930s to indicate clichéd and formulaic Western movies. Space operas emerged in the 1930s and continue to be produced in literature, film, comics, television and video games.

An early film which was based on space opera comic strips was Flash Gordon (1936) created by Alex Raymond. In the late 1970s, the Star Wars franchise (1977–present) created by George Lucas brought a great deal of attention to the subgenre.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_opera

All genres are made up.

Okay you win we lose.

/thread

snooker said:

All genres are made up.

They exist for marketing so they kind of are, but they also tend to be well defined, except on the edges.

Possessed said:

Okay you win we lose.

/thread

A valiant effort.

Possessed said:

Okay you win we lose.

/thread

That’s too bad, I rather like the discussion. I really don’t consider this something to win.

And as I’ve thought about what the best classification for Star Wars as a film should be, I don’t think it is science fiction. I think Star Wars is an epic. It has more in common with all the great epic films - Gone With the Wind, Ben-Hur, The Ten Commandments, Spartacus, Cleopatra, and that type of film than it does with anything else. It should be a space epic. I realize that is making up a new sub-genre, but it fits in the overall genre. And I think that is where the similarity to LOTR comes in as well. It also is an epic type story. The historical epic was big in the 50’s and Star Wars has that same feel, but set in space. It even has its own chariot race. This is a uniquely movie genre. It isn’t in print. In print they are just historical fiction, epic fantasy, or space opera, but in movies, it fits better calling them all epics. Historical epics, space epics, and fantasy epics. Long movies with huge casts (modern ones use a lot of CG rather than extras) and grand stories of pivotal times.

I still maintain that Star Wars is science fiction, especially in book form. The novelizations read like science fiction and the old and new EU books have been written mostly by science fiction authors. But if the purpose of genres is to group films with like films, it fits better with the other epics. From wikipedia: Epic films are a style of filmmaking with large scale, sweeping scope, and spectacle. The usage of the term has shifted over time, sometimes designating a film genre and at other times simply synonymous with big budget filmmaking. Like epics in the classical literary sense it is often focused on a heroic character. An epic’s ambitious nature helps to set it apart from other types of film such as the period piece or adventure film. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_film

yotsuya said:

No, I’m trying to figure out why people put George’s made up genre higher than established genres.

Because for most people I don’t think it matters much. You can call it whatever genre you want and so will others. The reason being is that the subject of genres are quite fluid.

screams in the void said:

“I knew at the beginning that I was not doing science fiction. I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece, a fairy tale. I really thought I needed to establish from the start that this was a completely made up world so that I could do anything I wanted.”
-George Lucas from Star Wars the annotated screenplays by Laurent Bouzereau

And there’s the answer

screams in the void said:

“I knew at the beginning that I was not doing science fiction. I was doing a space opera, a fantasy film, a mythological piece, a fairy tale. I really thought I needed to establish from the start that this was a completely made up world so that I could do anything I wanted.”
-George Lucas from Star Wars the annotated screenplays by Laurent Bouzereau

Yes, there is the answer in the first line - “A Space Opera”. That has been my point from the beginning. Lucas, like so many, has this false image that science fiction has to be real. Yet he correctly labels Star Wars as a space opera - one of the subgenre’s of science fiction where everything he wanted to do was normal. And he only seems to use the word fantasy in terms of things aren’t based on solid science rather than the Tolkienesque type of fantasy. Making up worlds is the first step to creating any space opera universe.

“Space opera is a subgenre of science fiction that emphasizes space warfare, melodramatic adventure, interplanetary battles, chivalric romance, and risk-taking.”

So yeah, space opera does mean science fiction. And while I won’t claim to know the story better than the author, I do know genres. That quote from Lucas really put all his references to fantasy in perspective. He is using that word to distinguish from 2001 type science fiction which is near future, real world, and possible (aka Hard Science Fiction sub genre). He is making it clear that his tale has no relationship to the real world. Well, all he needed was space opera, but that doesn’t work for the common person who has no idea what that is. However, for those of us familiar with all the genres and sub-genres of fiction, space opera automatically places it in a fantastical world where technology isn’t clearly defined and my not actually be possible even if they make it sound plausible. Hyperspace, while sounding logical and setup with some clearly defined rules, is about a real and scientifically possible as Yoda levitating an X-Wing. That is space opera (yes, even Yoda levitating an X-Wing). It is a direct successor to the old planetary romance sub-genre (like John Carter of Mars). It has been a staple of science fiction for over a century. So saying it isn’t science fiction is quite inaccurate. And that quote from Lucas shows he knew exactly what genre he was doing and he was doing a PR spin to make sure it was clear to the general public. Space Opera has never let accurate physics get in the way of a good story.

OutboundFlight said:

Personally, I view Space Opera more as fantasy within space, but I suppose it is up to multiple interpretations. I’ll accept Wikipedia’s term.

So if Space Opera is indeed Science Fiction, why didn’t Lucas say so? Why did he say a sentence earlier that it was not Science Fiction. Perhaps Lucas (like me) misinterpreted Space Opera and meant to say fantasy (which is what he went on to explain later in the sentence).

Well, we know he was influenced by Dune, a space opera. And both Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers would be considered space opera in modern genre classification. And I believe he was also influenced by Foundation (galactic empire, a corrupt emperor, and quite a few other things), probably the most significant space opera of the mid 20th century. So I think he knew what he was doing, but he also knew that when a lot of people think science fiction, they think 2001. He was being clear that his creation is more fanciful. More of a classic adventure that only lightly adheres to physics. And he drew from mythic source for his story concepts. He didn’t want movie goers to think boring science fiction. But to publish the story who did he go to? Del Rey, the biggest science fiction imprint in the industry. He wanted the wider audience, but he wanted the science fiction fans as well.

I consider Lucas using the word fantasy as accurate as I do his claim that Vader was always going to be Luke’s father and Luke and Leia were always brother and sister. We know he plays loose with the facts to suit his needs. I think he knew fully that he created an iconic science fiction franchise, but he didn’t want it confused with 2001, the last great science fiction movie that came out. He wanted it to appeal to a wider audience than a typical science fiction movie. Just look at the difference between Star Wars in 1977 and Star Trek The Motion Picture in 1979 in terms of budget an box office. Star Trek had a larger budget but took in a fraction of what Star Wars did.

But George wanted to actually copy 2001 and use existing classical music.

Does that make it any closer to being sci-fi? Nope.

screams in the void said:

https://simondillonbooks.wordpress.com/2014/03/11/why-star-wars-is-not-science-fiction-and-related-matters/?fbclid=IwAR0zjxR1DTl1DmydEZ0Z9Hch9ZR6CFcwmfxPoJFfOuJU826lVLYUPc56ouQ

That’s based on Clarke’s interpretation of genre. His interpretation is a minority opinion that does not match the labeling of most of the science fiction genre. Most of it is things that cannot happen. He would have placed the entirety of Space Opera in fantasy while his colleague Isaac Asimov (a writer and scientist) is one of the big three of Science Fiction (along with Clarke) and a lot of what he wrote falls in Space Opera. Clarke wrote Hard Science Fiction. That is not the entirety of the science fiction genre, just a small corner. Anyone basing the distinction between the science fiction and fantasy genres on what Clarke says is wrong. Robert Heinlein, the other member of the big three of 20th century science fiction, also wrote a lot of space opera and other things that took science pretty loosely. He loved time travel and most scientists will tell you that isn’t possible. So by Clarke’s definition he was the only true great science fiction writer of the 20th century. By reader’s views, he was but one.

There are three levels to science fiction. Possible science, plausible science, and pseudo science. After that there is the rest of the speculative fiction overarching genre and you get into magic and it becomes either something in the tiny cross over area or fantasy. If you get too far over you get into horror. Star War is a mix of plausible science (hyperdrives, blasters, bacta tanks, droids, etc) and pseudo science (where the Force is an extension of nature much as the mental abilities of the Robots and citizens of Gaia were in Asimov’s Robot/Empire/Foundation universe). ESP has long been a staple of science fiction even though it is pseudo science. Some believe it really exists while other think it is illusion. I don’t know anyone who thinks magic is real. That possibility that such things are real is why the Force is firmly on the sf side of the divide between sf and fantasy. That is why Star Trek is hailed as great science fiction even though it is full of the same pseudo science mental abilities and energy being as Star Wars. If you stick to Clarke’s definition, only hard science fiction can be called science fiction and that is not what the readers, writers, agents or publisher limit it too. You have to stretch science fiction to the plausible and near impossible to accurately describe what science fiction is. The entire science fiction genre is based on what science can predict or imagine being real, not just on what is possible now. That’s how writers before space flight had ever happened were able to predict what micro-gravity is like. Just because modern science poops on the ideas of telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation does not mean that we can’t imagine that at some point we unlock a new door in science that makes it possible.

screams in the void said:

^ I still disagree

OutboundFlight said:

By that logic, is Lord of the Rings pseudo-Science Fiction? Isengard is shown to master genetic manipulation while the wizards seems to use some sort of energy manipulation.

No, because the genetic manipulation is done by magic, not science. The tech at Isengard is not high tech, but appropriate for the setting of the story. There is no science to the tale, only magic.