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Post by dragon on Sept 7, 2019 18:54:42 GMT
"Science-fantasy" would be an oxymoron. Soft-sci-fi involves fantastical technology, not fantastical science, because there is no such thing as "fantastical science". Except that there very much is such a thing as fantastical science. In-universe science doesn't have to correspond to real world to be science. Star Wars also works that way (while also having actual magic, in form of the Force). Characters in SW understand how blasters work, for instance. They wouldn't work that way in the real world, but in their universe, they do, and they can be explained explicitly (explanations of this kind are known as "technobabble"). "Science fantasy" is a perfectly valid classification. It's used pretty often by those who want to distance works like SW from actual science fiction. Techno-fantasy I would associate more with "magitek" settings.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Sept 7, 2019 20:41:43 GMT
In a world where widely used terminology made sense, science fantasy would mean fantasy-like or otherwise incompatible with known science environments constructed with the same amount of rigour as proper sci-fi.
SW and such are not science fantasy. They are (techno)fantasy in space.
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Post by cipherpunks on Sept 8, 2019 8:45:42 GMT
SW and such are not science fantasy. They are (techno)fantasy in space. ...except "the force" component IMO - " MIDI-chlorians" and their "implications" are dreamt-up, fantasized 'science', especially in Jedi "after-life" apparitions/manifestations in movies. But then again - I'm not a native speaker, so it might be that I just can not parse some particular shade of words in 'science fantasy' phrase. (shrugs)
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on Sept 8, 2019 12:41:34 GMT
SW and such are not science fantasy. They are (techno)fantasy in space. ...except "the force" component IMO - " MIDI-chlorians" and their "implications" are dreamt-up, fantasized 'science', especially in Jedi "after-life" apparitions/manifestations in movies. It does not become science fiction, because merely moving supernatural voodoo abilities from human to intracellular alien symbiote is not an explanation, scientific or otherwise. It merely degrades okay space fantasy to garbage space fantasy, because while mysticism fits fantasy tonally, mystical alien mitochondria are just plain silly.
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Post by dragon on Sept 13, 2019 0:13:34 GMT
In a world where widely used terminology made sense, science fantasy would mean fantasy-like or otherwise incompatible with known science environments constructed with the same amount of rigour as proper sci-fi. SW and such are not science fantasy. They are (techno)fantasy in space. In SW, we should separate the Force from fantastic technology like blasters, because the former is clearly mysticism, and the latter is fictional science. It stands to reason that a scientific society would try to find a scientific explanation for things that would normally be considered mysticism. However, it doesn't really make a good story for them to succeed in that, as the prequels showed. Star Trek is, perhaps, a cleaner example of science fantasy. Transporters, phasers, replicators and the like are clearly understood technology in universe, but they would not work IRL. It is fictional science built on top of fictional physics. And that's fine, as long as nobody tries too hard to relate it to real world physics. The key difference between actual magic and fantastic technology is, ultimately, how well it is understood in-universe. Also, Star Trek makes its fictional technology central to the plot (both solving and creating problems) much more often than SW does. How rigorously the universe is constructed does not really enter into equation. It is certainly nice if the fantastic science is clearly planned out, but it is not necessary for it to be counted as part of a genre. Note that proper science fiction isn't necessarily well researched, it just has to try. Anne McCaffrey's non-Pern books, for instance, are a good example of science fiction that isn't nearly as accurate as Heinlein and Lem, but it's still science fiction. The line can be very blurry at times.
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gabd
New Member
Posts: 7
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Post by gabd on Jun 8, 2020 19:26:38 GMT
In a world where widely used terminology made sense, science fantasy would mean fantasy-like or otherwise incompatible with known science environments constructed with the same amount of rigour as proper sci-fi. SW and such are not science fantasy. They are (techno)fantasy in space. In SW, we should separate the Force from fantastic technology like blasters, because the former is clearly mysticism, and the latter is fictional science. It stands to reason that a scientific society would try to find a scientific explanation for things that would normally be considered mysticism. However, it doesn't really make a good story for them to succeed in that, as the prequels showed. Star Trek is, perhaps, a cleaner example of science fantasy. Transporters, phasers, replicators and the like are clearly understood technology in universe, but they would not work IRL. It is fictional science built on top of fictional physics. And that's fine, as long as nobody tries too hard to relate it to real world physics. The key difference between actual magic and fantastic technology is, ultimately, how well it is understood in-universe. Also, Star Trek makes its fictional technology central to the plot (both solving and creating problems) much more often than SW does. How rigorously the universe is constructed does not really enter into equation. It is certainly nice if the fantastic science is clearly planned out, but it is not necessary for it to be counted as part of a genre. Note that proper science fiction isn't necessarily well researched, it just has to try. Anne McCaffrey's non-Pern books, for instance, are a good example of science fiction that isn't nearly as accurate as Heinlein and Lem, but it's still science fiction. The line can be very blurry at times. Again, there can be no such thing as fictional science, it's an oxymoron. Science is knowledge about the world. Fiction necessarily cannot be knowledge, since it is fiction. Technology is merely the knowledge of how to do things with stuff. You can have fantastical ways of doing things with stuff; because technology is not inherently dependant on explanation or true knowledge about the world, it is know-how. There is such a thing as techno-fantasy; it's how people thought fire worked for millenia, and it's how people thought that "ki techniques" worked in stuff like Aikido. People didn't need to know how it works in order to make it work; it's technè without science. Fictional knowledge about a fictional world can't be called "science" either. It may be called so in-universe by the fictional people if they do have true knowledge of how their fictional universe works, but it cannot be called science outside of it (such as in reality), where we hold no knowledge nor explanation about how said stuff would actually work, usually because it couldn't work in reality. Science-fiction is fiction based on science, not fictional science. Fictional knowledge about the world is either one of two things; either fantasy or pseudoscience. The difference between the two is whether or not they are presented as being scientific. At best, stuff like Star Wars or Trek is fantasy, more precisely techno-fantasy (fantasy about how things would work differently than in reality). At worst, it is pseudoscience when people present fiction as being scientific. Obviously, fiction is on a spectrum most of the time, somewhere between the poles of Scientificity and Fantasy. But there's no way for anything to claim scientificity unless they're very darn close to the Scientificity pole, making it science-fiction. I'd put something like The Expanse somewhere down the middle of the spectrum, at the demarcation between science-fiction and fantasy; having only one or two exceptions to scientificity but at least exploring thoroughly the actual implications of those exceptions. Unlike Stuff like grav-plating that could often kill entire crews in Star Trek but is somehow never a problem unless a hull breach happens.
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Post by dragon on May 10, 2021 9:41:31 GMT
Fictional knowledge about a fictional world can't be called "science" either. It may be called so in-universe by the fictional people if they do have true knowledge of how their fictional universe works, but it cannot be called science outside of it (such as in reality), where we hold no knowledge nor explanation about how said stuff would actually work, usually because it couldn't work in reality. Except that from the perspective inside universe, it is science, and this is the only thing that counts for the purpose of distinguishing a genre. It has rules, which were be discovered by scientific method, it probably has mathematical models (the rarely come up, though). It's fictional science, science fantasy is a genre that uses fantastical laws of nature. Those laws, just like our own, are consistent and apply to the fictional universe. Our own universe doesn't enter into play at all, that's the "fantasy" part. Pseudoscience is a different thing entirely. It's a misinterpretation or outright fabrication pretending to be science. The difference between science fantasy and pseudoscience is that the former doesn't pretend it's fake. It's like "this is a work of fiction, any resemblance to real world science is coincidental" disclaimer. Techno-fantasy is a different thing as well, it's things like ki techniques being used in technological devices, without understanding it on a deeper level. If you think one can't invent an entirely new field of science, without pretending it applies to the real world, then you've got a serious shortage of imagination. Rule of thumb: if we understand it, as well as the characters, and it would work in reality (or we thought it'd work by the time the work was written), it's science fiction. If we don't understand it, or know it wouldn't work for us, but characters understand and it works for them, it's science fantasy. If neither we nor the characters understand it, but that doesn't stop them from using it, it's techno-fantasy. In fact, Star Wars is a funny example because it actually mixes all three. Some elements are plausible, like ion engines or droids (one book in the old EU even had someone fly a rocketship). Some elements are fantastic science, like blasters. They work for them, but not for us. There are also devices that rely on The Force, which are techno-fantasy. Science fantasy dominates, with the vast majority of tech being of this nature, but it shows how fluid this divide is.
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Post by AtomHeartDragon on May 11, 2021 0:16:03 GMT
Naming something "ion engine" doesn't make it an ion engine. On occasions when SW technobabble happens to align with real life, it's most of the time still a gobbledygook - arguably more egregiously so, because just asspulling new words and concepts is ultimately more honest.
As for the topic:
RailgunModule _DCA 'Jotunn' 300km/s 45MJ 10.68mm Spinal Capacitor Railgun (920 MW) Description Massive railgun with enormous exit velocity requiring an entire ship to be built around its 123m long barrel. UsesCustomName true PowerConsumption_W 9.2e+08 Capacitor Count 1 DielectricComposition Hafnia Dimensions_m 3.33 0.098 Separation_m 2.5e-05 Rails Composition Vanadium Chromium Steel Thickness_m 0.29 Length_m 123 BarrelArmor Composition Graphite Aerogel Thickness_m 6.69 Armature Composition Vanadium Chromium Steel BoreRadius_m 0.00534 Mass_kg 0.001 Tracer Hafnium Carbide Payload null Loader PowerConsumption_W 50000 ExternalMount false InternalMount true AttachedAmmoBay Capacity 100000 Stacks 1 TargetsShips true TargetsShots true Note that it's an absolute beast of a railgun and a spinal weapon, totaling at 740t with just the barrel ( + bracing), capacitor and magazine.
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Post by dragon on May 11, 2021 14:29:29 GMT
Naming something "ion engine" doesn't make it an ion engine. But what do we know about the "ion engines" in SW? I mentioned them, because nobody actually explained them (the ones that were explained weren't ion engines, since multiple types exist in SW, though they all seem to be electric), and they even have that nice blue glow of the real thing. Absent any further information, there's nothing really wrong with SW's ion engines. And yeah, you can build them quite big, in fact that's the only way of getting decent-ish thrust out of them. I'd say, this type of drive is probably the most realistic piece of technology in that universe. SW mostly makes plot-important concepts out of wholecloth (usually it doesn't even steal physics terminology like Star Trek does), but plot-unimportant ones aren't always made up. A "moisture vaporator" (actually called "atmospheric water generator") is a real thing, for example, even though current examples are mostly good for making drinking water and not for farming. It depends on who's doing the writing, but real concepts do show up on occasion, especially in the background. Also, funnily enough, the hyperspace jump visuals are surprisingly "realistic" - were you to go FTL by just speeding up past the speed of light, stars would first appear heavily blueshifted, and then collapse into a point in front from which they'd zip by the canopy one by one as you pass. It's likely a coincidence, but a cool one nonetheless. Another (that sadly got undone in the new canon by clueless writers) is that the FX department had half a mind to put pretty hefty radiators on the TIE fighters. Pity that it's just a one-off, and that some dork made them into solar panels later on, but it's something even otherwise hard SF usually misses.
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