Red Mars

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What is the difference between "sf" and "sci-fi"?

Nothing really, except 'sf' can also stand for 'speculative fiction', which is basically a fancy term for science fiction and fantasy.

If a good sci-fi novel is an oxymoron, Ambivalence, what about Dune or Lungbarrow, or A Scanner Darkly? Only the latter could remotely be called hard science fiction.

I didn't know there was a genre called speculative fiction, thanks Quatermass. BTW, the books which I had considered to be good sci-fi were Caves Of Steel and Tambu. I tried reading Aspirin's Starship Troopers, but I preferred the CGI cartoon Roughnecks over it. I think I had liked Ender's Game also.

Starship Troopers was written by Robert Heinlein who wrote much better stuff in his earlier years.

Okay, I confused the authors above then.... I think Aspirin wrote Tambu... but now I'm not sure.... too tired to check... need caffeine... must eat brains.... I am not a zombie only a somnambulist.

Sci-fi is a euphemism for "fantasy masquerading as science fiction." Star Trek, Who, that sort of thing. For the most part written by people with no understanding of either the scientific method or our current understanding of the shape of the universe.

Some famous author once said something like: "you don't need to be a ghost to write a ghost story, so you must not need to understand science to write science fiction." This betrays a fundamental failure to understand what science fiction is. It is not a set of trappings and dressings, like old castles and clanking chains or gumshoes and revolvers. Science fiction involves an exploration of the difference that would result from a change to science, technology, or society. It is a different form of story. It doesn't have to be hard - you can black-box things - but it does have to be logically consistent, or it is not science fiction. It doesn't have to follow our current understanding of science to the letter - you can posit the existence of warp space, or something like that - but it does have to know what our current understanding is, or it is not science fiction.

Fah. Sorry. My rant. My point was that the Mars trilogy is science fiction (reasonably hard sf at that), not meaningless fantasy, and has inherent value on that account. I thought the sex bits were extremely tame, and didn't think the books were especially unfair to religion (though I'm very much with Arkady rather than Phyllis); I did find the social bits extremely tedious (the Dorsa Brevia declaration; that might be in Green Mars, I don't remember.) I tried to reread them fairly recently but didn't get very far. I kinda need to reread a lot of things to look for the influence of Atlas Shrugged.

Quatermass - I'll beg off for the meantime, lemme try and write a better response. I've not read Lungbarrow, though it'd need to reboot the Whoniverse; PKD I couldn't give you a neutral comment on, and Dune's primary purpose is allegory, but he did try with the ecology; the book is heavily black-boxed, but not inconsistent.


(edit) Realised I used black-box several times there; in the context of sf / space opera, to black-box something is to posit a science or technology without explaining the details. This is not necessarily bad.

In general I agree with you. I have been reading science fiction since I was a kid back in 1937 and found H.G.Wells fascinating and well founded. It does help for an author to be involved in real science. Asimov. Heinlein, Clarke, Hoyle, Forward, Clement, had deep roots in science. Greg Bear and LeGuin also are well science based.

Hoyle? Frederick Hoyle? Did he write science fiction also?

I think the 4th book is called Children of Mars, or something like that...too busy to google it, but it probably should have his collected works out there somewhere....

Yes. The Black Cloud and A for Andromeda. But Hoyle was still an imbecile for believing in the Steady State Theory...

Hoyle's books are outstanding science fiction. "The Fifth Planet" is a very good story. On the basis of your comment there are quite a few imbeciles at this site although I also disagree with Hoyle about the Big Bang.

Quatermass, you say he's an imbecile for believing in the Steady State Theory, but if the Steady State Theory were accepted by the majority of cosmologists and astrophysicists at this present time, then would you still consider Hoyle to be an imbecile? People look back on the past with what they believe presently, whatever the currently accepted teachings of the day are, and they make judgments based upon conformity to current thought. People who's views conform are considered wise and intelligent and people who's views do not conform are considered fools to some degree or another.

Thank you for the book titles though.

Did you know that it was Hoyle who named the Big Bang? Of course, the crowning irony was that he was being sarcastic. Hoyle refused to believe in anything else but the Steady State theory, in spite of evidence to the contrary. He may have pioneered the idea of nucleosynthesis, but for being so bloody dogmatic in the face of proper evidence, I think he well deserves the title of imbecile, along with many other scientists I could mention, like a certain Richard Owen.

That being said, A for Andromeda was one of the pioneering science fiction serials, second only to the Quatermass serials (and I detest Nigel Kneale's attitude to Blake's 7 and Doctor Who) in terms of influence on later shows.

I actually have a copy of Red Mars here at home, but I've never got around to reading it, really. I picked it up at a Lifeline Bookfest.

I read the whole trilogy last year, i think it was. i thought it was interesting how Robinson tries to bring a big picture perspective to issues of colonisation - it's not just cool shiny tech and spaceships that determine the success of his plots. interpersonal relations, sex (gasp oh my) political wranglings, ideology, religion, tech, landscape... all plays a meaningful role. I thought it was an interesting work. much more realistic than the average hardsf wannabe-asimov tech-wank.

my 2 cents,

-L.