r/mildlyinfuriating • u/Alextral • 1d ago

I really hate this

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Fantasy and science fiction being cramped in the same section, which is already so small :(

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u/ButterscotchLow7330 1d ago

Where is the "Science" in the science fiction? Maybe the droids/space ships? But everything is related to this magic power called the force. There is no "science" for it to be science fiction.

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u/PlagiT 1d ago

That's exactly the "fiction" in science fiction. It's not explained, they never went in-depth into it, but the whole universe is highly technologically advanced with interplanetary travel. The force is a big story point to be sure, but the whole world of star wars is mostly based around these technologically advanced weapons, starships and other stuff with the force being just a single factor.

I guess one could argue that the force is a really big factor in the story, but personally I'd say sci-fi / fantasy should be classified based on the universe and its world building rather than the story itself.

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u/clumsydope 1d ago

Because it Soft SF, deeper explanation would be brought up in Hard SF. The vaguer it is the closer to fantasy. It certainly a spectrum and drawing a line is difficult but not impossible

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u/BrocoLee 1d ago

Couldn't you say the same about some peak SciFi space operas like The Culture saga? Hell, even the foundation trilogy is mostly magical prediction powers disguised as a science AND later it even has psychic powers! Yet it's a cornerstone of SF.

Honestly, the "star wars is fantasy" trope is just a troll argument at this point, and pretty played out.

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u/alang 1d ago

It really isn’t a troll argument. It is just a different definition of “science fiction” than the one you use, which seems to be largely intuitive.

Foundation actually spends time trying to justify and explain its science. The Culture certainly does. And both take the premise of this science and tries to extrapolate what a culture could look like that uses that science.

Star Wars says “what if magic and princesses but in space?”

Star Trek at least used to pretend to justify the cultural basis technologies (especially the limited ship speed/effectively unlimited communications speed, the replicators/post scarcity science, etc) and pretty much turned into science fantasy when it stopped being about things like “what does morality look like in a post-scarcity culture” and “what does it mean to be ‘human’ in a multi-species Federation” and started looking at “what can we make be the giant threat that is going to magically blow up the galaxy today and how can we make there be ONE UBERMENCH that can stop it!!?!!1!elevendy!”

Really, it is possible for people to disagree with your definitions without being trolls.

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u/Bardmedicine 1d ago

I mean Star Wars literally was just a fantasy remake set in space.

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u/alang 19h ago

As I said, 'what if magic and princesses but in space'.

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u/ButterscotchLow7330 1d ago

This is more proving my point than arguing against it. This is just a really fancy way to say you disagree because you think that those series are more strongly classified as science fiction than I presumably would. (I am not familiar with them so I can't say)

That said, there are other books, like the expanse which are far more rooted into the science part of the science fiction. Once you delineate down between series like the expanse and star wars, then star wars starts to look way more like futuristic fantasy instead of science fiction. The key point is that this distinction is subjective, so different people with different preferences will draw that line at different point.

I personally think that there are 3 categories, there is Science Fiction, Fantasy, and a hybrid of the two which doesn't fit nicely with the purest forms of the two categories. This is why the two are constantly conflated, because for those hybrid series, its hard to create an objective metric that most people will agree with to classify them together.

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u/Bardmedicine 1d ago

Space Opera is Fantasy with Spaceships.

Hence the name Space Opera.

It's all in how you define things and there is no clear line that people will agree upon. Because you disagree does not make it a troll argument.