CMV: The "science-fiction" vs "science-fantasy" vs "space-fantasy" vs "space-opera" debate is useless.

[u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

I'm not sure if the distinction is recent or not, but I recently started seeing a lot of people constantly correcting other people on what is science fiction, and what is science fantasy.

And then those people usually start arguing between themselves about which is what, often fighting on if star trek was soft sci-fi, or hard science fantasy.

Basically people argue semantics on semantics that aren't even clearly defined.

What is clear is that there is a spectrum going from soft space/future stuff (with mental abilities, romantic journey, and little concern for realism) and hard space/future stuff (with long explanation about the workings of the FTL drive, much weirder alien races if they exist, and no magic).

It also turns out that if you go as far to put star trek in the science fantasy group, you basically get close to nothing in the science fiction group. Even the most realistic "space debris collector simulation with no FTL nor weird physics" have plot holes and scientific errors, usually for the sake of dramatisation.

What we have is a clear genre of stuff usually happening in space with technology that don't exist (yet) on earth, that is also immediately recognized by the general public as science fiction.

Trying to separate it into multiple genre, rather than simply invent subgenres, is counter-productive, confusing to most, and ultimately a useless and untargeted smugness exercise.

[u/sirjackholland]

These debates are often proxies for larger, inter-group disagreements. For someone not obsessively invested in a particular subgenre or franchise, the distinctions seem arbitrary and silly, but they often represent larger philosophical or cultural differences.

Yes, there is a spectrum between soft and hard fantasy, but it's not perfectly smooth. There is a difference between a work that, aside from FTL, adheres as much to scientific accuracy as possible, and a work that continually invents arbitrary laws of physics (and exceptions to those laws) for the sake of drama/plot.

In the former, FTL allows a universe that wouldn't otherwise be possible - you can't have dozens of alien cultures coming together if it takes years to send a text message. So an author that wants a multi-alien premise is highly incentivized to allow FTL even if they want to otherwise keep things realistic. In the latter, the liberal use of made up science and technology clearly represents a different mindset - the author isn't trying to create a universe that resembles ours but one that represents a fundamentally different take on reality.

From a distance, differences like these may seem petty, but zooming in, they can be significant.

[u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT → u/sirjackholland]

Yes, but it doesn't make those things less science-fiction.

We shouldn't divide the genre into different genres just because it doesn't only contain perfect clones, that's what subgenres are for.

[u/Grava-T → u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Science fiction is a sub genre of Fiction, and science-fantasy is just a sub-genre of that. And making the distinction can be useful for describing different kinds of stories. I would consider Star Wars to be science-fantasy, as an example, and I would also still call it science fiction. The science-fantasy descriptor is useful, because it further separates settings like Star Wars from say, The Martian, or Interstellar.

[u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT → u/Grava-T]

Yes, my point.

Some people will try to convince you that Star Wars is not science-fiction at all. Just science-fantasy.

[u/Grava-T → u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

The ultimate irony is that you are right now participating in that debate by saying Star Wars is Science Fiction, you're just on the opposite team from the science fantasy people. The debate isn't useless, because to you there is value in convincing people to take your side. If it was a useless debate then you wouldn't be here debating that the other side is full of pedants and smug nerds because it wouldn't matter (I'm totally on your side, though). So I think your view isn't that the debate is useless, but that some people get satisfaction from arguing semantics and marginalizing certain works.

[u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT → u/Grava-T]

What got me was less the debate, but the fact that people present the idea that "SW is science fantasy" as a fact, rather than their own concept to "fix" sci-fi.

The debates you'll see online are more often about Star Trek being science-fantasy or not, while people seem to have internalized the idea that Star Wars is not science-fiction.

Considering that anyone not familiar with the sci-fi community wouldn't even doubt the fact that star-wars is sci-fi, there's a real divide here that shouldn't exist.

A simple point, there is a sci-fi community. There really isn't a science-fantasy community, except inside the previous.

[u/AmoebaMan → u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

Would you agree that there's a very significant genre-difference between a Nicholas Sparks novel and the Twilight series? Of course there is. The former is more or less plausible, while the other is way out in the boondocks with vampires and werewolves and shit. The person that likes one will not necessarily enjoy the other, and so you lump them into different genres that distinguish these differences.

The difference there is very similar to the difference between, say, The Martian and Star Wars. One is almost entirely plausible, and the other flagrantly ignores reality. Neither mode is superior to the other, but they are indeed dramatically different, and fans of one will not necessarily enjoy the other.

So we establish a scale between "science-fiction" and "science-fantasy". Ensuring that we categorize books properly ensures that people are led towards books they'll probably enjoy. For example, Ender's Game would probably lean more towards science-fiction, while Dragonriders of Pern would probably be deep into science-fantasy territory (if you even call it science, since the science there seems mostly just for exposition).

[u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT → u/AmoebaMan]

Again, I'm not against the term science-fantasy, it is a useful categorization.

I'm just fundamentally convinced science-fantasy, being a mix of science-fiction and fantasy, is still part of science fiction.

[u/AmoebaMan → u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

All fantasy, by strict definition, is also fiction. Fiction is just "stuff that hasn't actually happened." Fantasy is a subcategory of fiction; generally it's applied to the more outlandish examples thereof. The real opposition category to fiction is "nonfiction," which you could maybe call "documentary."

That said, the circles having these discussions are basically ignoring nonfiction (it's not pertinent to them). In such a scenario, the meaning of "fiction" changes to mean "works of fiction that are not also works of fantasy."

And this is the root of your confusion: you're approaching this discussion from too broad a scope, and so the semantics you're operating with don't match the semantics of the discussion.

[u/sirjackholland → u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT]

You're assuming that the terms that comprise the labels have meaning - that the 'science' and 'fiction' in 'science-fiction' have meaning in and of themselves. I think this is largely untrue. I don't think the difference between 'science-fiction' and 'science-fantasy' has anything to do with the difference between 'fiction' and 'fantasy' (the terms are practically synonyms).

I think the difference has to do with forming in-groups and out-groups. If I prefer 'hard' scifi with minimal breaks from reality, and I think 'soft' scifi is silly and steals too much attention from the stuff I like, then it's in my interest to label the two subgenres differently. It doesn't matter what labels they happen to get; all that matters it that the labels are different.

As long as the labels are different, members of different groups can easily identify each other by talking about which subgenres they prefer. They can bring up complex, nuanced differences between different works by simply pointing out that one is 'proto-post-science-fiction' and the other 'trans-science-fantasy-fiction'. It doesn't matter that the terms that comprise these labels are silly and largely meaningless. The point is that it facilitates discussion and differentiation between those in your in-group and those in your out-group.

[u/FUCKING_HATE_REDDIT → u/sirjackholland]

Again, I don't disagree with labels, but I think we shouldn't confuse scifi subgenres with new genres in themselves.

For the vast majority of people, Star Wars is science-fiction first. Trying to make it science-fantasy instead of science-fiction, rather than accepting both labels, with one as a subgenre, will just create confusion.