Science Fiction Categories: A Proposal

[KatG]

How do anyone insist that someone do something over the Internet?

You want to have a conversation about this on the forum. In order to have the conversation with you, you are insisting that the other person first download and read three stories instead of simply explaining the rating system you are using yourself. If you're going to make the conversation difficult for people to participate in, you can't be surprised that they don't think it's a very interesting conversation and don't want to download the stories you insist they read first.

The issue is not the download,

Yes, the issue is the download. If the stories are simply on-line, then more people are likely to read them. People have to pay their servers for how much bandwidth they are using in downloading material. For some people, that's difficult. I don't want to have to download anything, print or audio, in order to have a conversation here, and most people will feel the same.

I did give short descriptions of the differences in how the science is presented between the three works but how can I do a better job of that than pointing out the actual works?

Fair use quotes from the stories to show what you mean.

As far as I can tell I am just getting objections to any kind of system for a quick evaluation of any aspect of SF.

Nope, you're getting objections for a particular system where you seem to them contemptuous of any other form of evaluating stories and critical of them if they don't see things the way that you do.

I would assume that anybody that did not give a damn just would not respond. If people don't care about what I am saying why are they responding to this thread at all? Nobody can make anyone pay attention to what they don't care about over the net. I do wonder why they waste their time telling me they don't care about any rating system.

Because you are constantly talking about this topic in this forum. First off, people try to understand what you are saying. Then they will respond, especially because it seems to them that you're belittling them for not using the same criteria that you use, not simply that you are talking about different criteria. So they are responding in a testy manner, because they think you're trying to provoke them and make fun of them. (And on that front, folks, please do not engage in personal attacks towards psikey. If you have an argument, make an argument.)

I'll show you obsession. :lol:

That's got nothing to do with written SF. Star Wars are movies that have a strong cultural presence. There are tie-in books, but they've had minimal effect on the written SF field. So Star Wars really has no serious role in an evaluating system for written SF. We get that you hate that people refer to Star Wars as SF; we just get tired of hearing you say it all the time.

I understand that you have the view that sci-fi media displanted written SF. A lot of older SF fans have that view and it's led to what I consider some unfortunate choices, like dumping most media from WorldCon and making people less and less aware of written SF. But if you truly are evaluating written fiction and not movies, it doesn't seem particularly accurate or fair to current writers, in my view, to keep dragging in movies and t.v. shows when talking about comparing print fiction writers.

I already said that those stories are used as examples for different treatments of the science in SF and that OTHER CHARACTERISTICS would have to be rated separately and quite likely with different stories as examples.

The treatments of science in SF seem to be the only component you are interested in. I don't think I've seen you ever much talk about anything else. So the assumption was that you were not interested in any other component except the science and for many of us, that's an incomplete method of analysis. Evaluating characterization and such separately from science and setting for many of us does not work, and therefore, we find the rating system that deals with each component separately of limited utility. They aren't complaining that you are rating things. They're criticizing the system you've set up.

You have raised an objection: people don't talk about SF stories always in terms of the science or separate the science from the rest of the story, particularly in reviews. You would like people to change this behavior. We're saying, we don't see this as a problem and we don't find it useful to isolate science components off in their own separate corner. I was saying that I think the science of a story is too intertwined with the story to separate it out well. I was further saying that in most SF stories, including in the past, the amount of detail given to the science information is very limited. Therefore ranking the tiny amounts of difference in how limited the detail is on the science information from story to story doesn't seem, for me, personally, to be worth doing. Nor does it make much sense when dealing with sociological SF and thriller SF. I know it's the key thing for you, and I don't argue against it for you. But your ranking system is liable to elicit mostly a shrug from others. That doesn't mean that they aren't interested in science, though.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Yes, the issue is the download. If the stories are simply on-line, then more people are likely to read them. People have to pay their servers for how much bandwidth they are using in downloading material. For some people, that's difficult. I don't want to have to download anything, print or audio, in order to have a conversation here, and most people will feel the same.

Of course the stories are on-line where do you think they are coming from? They aren't being downloaded from me. I said they were public domain.

The Servant Problem is 87K in HTML on Project Gutenberg.

This page on this website is 88K. Your avatar is 1.7K. I saved the page just to check and see.

Cat and Mouse is 80K and All Day September is 56K.

It makes me wonder if you understand how the Internet works. If you read something on-line the bytes are all still copied down to your computer. They are just stored in a temporary file in the cache of you web browser. So you are talking about a total of 223K bytes. The time it takes to read the stories is more important than that.

Here are the links at Project Gutenberg:

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24392
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/23232
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/24161

You can search for the same books at dozens of places. I just picked something at random. It is the stories that matter not where they come from.

http://manybooks.net/titles/williamsralph2439224392.html

http://www.magick7.com/1/MoonlightStories/1/71/1856.htm

psik

 

[kennychaffin]

Aiiieeee!!! AIIIEEEE!!!

You Blinded me with Science!

 

[Seli]

This mention and the ranking in the other thread "Top 50 Sci-Fi"

lead me to check this book out on Amazon. After no more than 2 minutes reading the publisher blurb and the reviews I immediately knew it was not for me, regardless of the science content or not (which I'm guessing is pretty minimal, nonexistent or hand-waving/magic/fantasy).

P.S. similar reviews on Goodreads.

This is actually a good example of why psik's system won't easily work. Hamilton actually makes extensive use of quite accurate physics, but in addition uses some reasonably well worked out handwavium as well as some more interesting handwavium that might or might not make sense.

He is showing some of his work and understanding in his scenes, but mostly uses this mixture of real and imaginary physics in the background to tell a story. How successful he is in that of course depends on the reader.

 

[psikeyhackr]

And this "rating system" would not do that unfortunately because it is only one-dimensional.

This is what I wrote in the first version of the OP.

I think #1 and #2 are both better written than #3 and #2 somewhat better in that respect than #1 but those are not the characteristics I am referring to for the categories. This is just about how they treat the science empowering the story.

Quality of the writing should be a separate issue from the treatment of the science but most science fiction reviews don't do that and may even ignore the science. They try to treat SF as just another form of literature.

So I admitted that I was evaluating only one characteristic here and that others would need to be added.

So you WIN by accusing me of what I admitted in the first place. I have never said entire works should be evaluated on this one characteristic, just that these stories might be used as reference archetypes for that one characteristic.

psik

 

[psikeyhackr]

This is actually a good example of why psik's system won't easily work. Hamilton actually makes extensive use of quite accurate physics, but in addition uses some reasonably well worked out handwavium as well as some more interesting handwavium that might or might not make sense.

He is showing some of his work and understanding in his scenes, but mostly uses this mixture of real and imaginary physics in the background to tell a story. How successful he is in that of course depends on the reader.

Since it is only dealing with one characteristic so far I would not call it a system. See previous post. It looks like the criticism is based on ignoring what I say and choosing one thing to pick on. So I conclude most respondents do not want any system.

psik

 

[Chuffalump]

The science in Greg Egan's The Clockwork Rocket is fascinating and (I think) has equal shares with the story. Mind you, this is because his book is postulating a universe with timelike instead of spacelike spacial dimensions (I think!??) so your 'timelike' relationship with other people depends on which direction you are travelling in. You're expected to pick most of this up on your own too.

Anyway, I found it interesting and I'll definitely be reading the other books in the series but it won't appeal to everyone.

 

[psikeyhackr]

The science in Greg Egan's The Clockwork Rocket is fascinating and (I think) has equal shares with the story. Mind you, this is because his book is postulating a universe with timelike instead of spacelike spacial dimensions (I think!??) so your 'timelike' relationship with other people depends on which direction you are travelling in. You're expected to pick most of this up on your own too.

It sounds like Davi Brin's Practice Effect where he came up with an impossible physics and then created a story showing how physics is so integral to reality it changed how culture worked to conform to the physics.

psik

 

[Seli]

Since it is only dealing with one characteristic so far I would not call it a system. See previous post. It looks like the criticism is based on ignoring what I say and choosing one thing to pick on. So I conclude most respondents do not want any system.

psik

Why not? As far as I can tell you proposed to use one of your labels for adherence to physics, and one how it is explained it properly. For this Hamilton book I'd say that while the adherence to physics as we know it is not that good, the bits that are actually meant to adhere to the rules we know are impeccable. And the explanations of invented physics are so-so. That would already use up at least 3 values in your system as far as I can tell. And that is before getting into Chemistry, biology, engineering, sociology etc etc. and ignoring other important properties of written works.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Why not? As far as I can tell you proposed to use one of your labels for adherence to physics, and one how it is explained it properly. For this Hamilton book I'd say that while the adherence to physics as we know it is not that good, the bits that are actually meant to adhere to the rules we know are impeccable. And the explanations of invented physics are so-so. That would already use up at least 3 values in your system as far as I can tell. And that is before getting into Chemistry, biology, engineering, sociology etc etc. and ignoring other important properties of written works.

Obviously I am a really bad communicator. I thought I said the treatment of science. Maybe that should be treatment of hard sciences But I am not suggesting different rating for chemistry and physics. All treatment of all sciences and technology and engineering would just be represented by ONE letter. I would guess four more characteristics to not have too many but no one has suggested any others.

Some people complain about dialogue in stories, but can that be separated from characterization? I don't know what short stories to select for archetypes. But just because I care about the hard science characteristic does not mean I regard it as the ultimate determinant for the quality of the story. #3 is the hardest of my three examples but I think #2 it the best story of the three though it is #1 that got the Hugo nomination.

psik

 

[heretics fork]

Ok, I think we have established that science "hardness" is one of the criterion by which SF stories should be judged according to the Psik system. Why don't we figure out all the other categories needed and see what the system looks like as a whole. Then we can look at some books using the system and see if the system's judgement correlates to reality.

This might be cool.

 

[KatG]

Of course the stories are on-line where do you think they are coming from?

Sigh. I am not going to download an html or epub file of 80K to my computer just to read a story that you want to use as an example for a conversation. I might go read a story that is easily readable online on a site like this:

http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/05/existence-excerpt

That takes bandwidth to read, yes, but not as much as downloading the files from Guttenberg or the other site. It's also a lot easier to do. I don't have to worry about whether the file will successfully download or whether my old computer will have a problem opening and reading the file, etc., because the story is already there, on a site, readily accessible, such as in the very last link you've now offered. (And it is comments like "it makes me wonder if you know how the Internet works" that annoy people, psikey, because it's contemptuous.)

I am very well aware how the Internet works. The Internet works by trying to take as much cash out of my pocket as possible, as my server likes to remind me.

Hamilton actually makes extensive use of quite accurate physics,

Yes, but Hamilton is making use of quantum physics, which psikey doesn't like, so it gets down-rated.

I have never said entire works should be evaluated on this one characteristic

It's not the nature of the one characteristic that some of us are objecting to. It's the trying to separate out lone characteristics and use them separately from each other.

If you separate out the science content in terms of how realistic and accurate and explained in detail the science is, that component is simply a rating of how hard SF a SF story is. But that's an aspect that is pretty easy to determine. I don't know that it needs a further scale.

How hard the science is in an SF story isn't a component that has any relevancy for me whatsoever. I read hard SF, sociological SF, cyberpunk SF, military SF, thriller SF, time travel SF, space opera, etc., with equal welcome. So rating the hardness of the science content would be largely a waste of time for me. That's what a number of posters were saying -- not that they had no system for evaluating stories but that concentrating on the science content separately was not something they had a use for or having a rating for it as a component.

Mathematically, though, having four variables and graphing stories on them might look interesting. I'm not sure that I trust your grading on science content for accuracy, however.

 

[Seli]

Ok, I think we have established that science "hardness" is one of the criterion by which SF stories should be judged according to the Psik system. Why don't we figure out all the other categories needed and see what the system looks like as a whole. Then we can look at some books using the system and see if the system's judgement correlates to reality.

This might be cool.

But hardness is so ill defined. Going by memory adhering to known science would logically put near future romance novels, any K.J. Parker book, Vinge's Rainbows End, Charles Stross' Halting State in the top category. While works like Asimov's Robot novels, Clarke's Rama or Niven's ringworld would be a couple of categories down. Which I kind of assume is not something Psik actually wants.

...
Yes, but Hamilton is making use of quantum physics, which psikey doesn't like, so it gets down-rated.
...

You are probably right and I've found it usually is a good practice to mentally replace any mentions of 'science' or 'physics' by '(good old-fashioned) engineering'. But since that is not common practice for most people this time I wanted to try and use the more common inclusive definition.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Sigh. I am not going to download an html or epub file of 80K to my computer just to read a story that you want to use as an example for a conversation. I might go read a story that is easily readable online on a site like this:

http://www.tor.com/stories/2012/05/existence-excerpt

That takes bandwidth to read, yes, but not as much as downloading the files from Guttenberg or the other site.

SIGH!!!

You do not need to DOWNLOAD. You can read the HTML at Gutenberg just like you do at that TOR link.

http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23232/23232-h/23232-h.htm

Why you think a download takes more bandwidth or space than reading I don't know.

Yes, but Hamilton is making use of quantum physics, which psikey doesn't like, so it gets down-rated.

Would you be so kind as to justify that statement and demonstrate that you did not just make it up?

psik

 

[Werthead]

I immediately knew it was not for me, regardless of the science content or not (which I'm guessing is pretty minimal, nonexistent or hand-waving/magic/fantasy).

The science content is actually pretty high. Hamilton builds up probably the most detailed and convincing made-specifically-for-books SF universe in the history of the field, and the bulk of it is built on standard physics.

For example, an extremely major plot point at the end of the first novel turns on the simple difference between centrifugal force and gravity. Most of the ships in the setting also don't have artificial gravity and people either move around in zero-G or simulate the effect of gravity whilst under acceleration. The books also make frequent use of Newtonian physics, and spacecraft are limited by what they can do without killing the crew through high-G maneuvers. There are also no space fighters or dogfights; ships engage in combat through the use of unmanned drones over thousands of kilometres (which cannot be remote controlled due to speed-of-light limitations over large distances, and the AIs are generally better pilots anyway). There are few traditional space stations, with most of the book's settlements being built in hollowed-out (or mined-out) asteroids that have been moved into stable orbits around planets (Earth alone has thousands of them in orbit). There are also no FTL communications of any kind, and lightspeed limitations and relativity also play a role in some aspects of the storyline, as does the dangers of radiation in space travel and the expansion of a human lifespan through medical science.

At one point a spacecraft engages in a bombing run on a target on a planet. Rather than use bombs, exotic weapons or missiles, they simply accelerate towards the planet and release a cluster of heat-shielded harpoons. They cannot be jammed, EMCed or overridden, as they destroy their targets through velocity alone. This is actually a weapon - kinectic harpoons - that has been realistically discussed as something that could be used in the future.

Also vitally important is the economic stuff: PFH believes that the human race will not go into space in a big way for altruistic reasons, but purely because they can make money there. The history of space travel, settlement and expansion is therefore based on economics, most of it pretty well-thought-out. The only big reach on the economic front is that banks would be happy working on investment/repayment schemes working on a scale of two or three centuries.

The more speculative stuff comes in from the book's central idea, that of the reality dysfunction itself, which is heavily derived from quantum theory and multiple universe theory, as well as the nature of human consciousness and the difference between sentience and non-sentience, all of which is more debatable. However, PFH does provide scientific rationales (if not cast-iron theories) for everything that happens. The central conceit of the trilogy is actually what people have a hard time swallowing:

Spoiler

That when people die, their consciousness endures in a neighbouring dimension of limited space, and when a quantum rupture is caused by an alien entity trying to determine what happens to humans when they die this allows the dead 'souls' to possess living bodies in our dimension.

Obviously this is a lot to ask of the reader, especially the hard SF reader who probably isn't expecting things to be that out-there in a book they're reading. I think this is actually why PFH worked hard to make everything outside that central conceit either fully realistic, or at least somewhat plausible based on more speculative ideas.

On that front, FTL travel uses wormholes, which is a well-established scientify theory, although one which is almost certainly impractical. PFH handwaves a little the difficulties of opening wormholes using a single spacecraft's power supply, but it is based on a real theory (if a lot more speculative than the above). There's also the organic starships which do have artificial gravity, created by warping space/time on a local level. Again, there are ideas on how this might be possible (and it's simply an extension of Einstein) but it's something that is way beyond being a practical idea. But then the books are set 600 years in the future, by which time our scientific understanding should (natch) be vastly superior to where it is now.

This is actually an inherent problem in SF: our understanding of the universe and of the laws of nature is changing constantly (we've seen some big dents in dark matter/dark energy theories in recent months). Our understanding of physics now is different to when even Night's Dawn came out (notably, ND at one point seems to assume that the universe will end in a Big Crunch, which is now extremely unlikely based on the acceleration of the expansion of the universe). Our understanding will likely be radically different even within our lifespans, which makes any kind of predictability incredibly unreliable. A unified theory could be reached in a few years which makes almost everything in Night's Dawn possible. OTOH, it may well be that the dangers of radiation exposure in space over the course of months could make even the colonisation of Mars unviable and thus Robinson's Mars Trilogy (probably the most roundly-approved-of hard SF series for its adherence to realistic science) completely impossible.

Can't comprehend Newtonian Physics in a skyscraper.

The problem being that this is your own limitation, not that of others.

Here's a hint: when thousands of engineers, scientists and experts agree that something happened one way, and tiny minority of random people on the Internet believe it happened another, it's the minority that are in the wrong. Them banging on about it constantly merely destroys their own credibility.

 

[psikeyhackr]

The problem being that this is your own limitation, not that of others.

Here's a hint: when thousands of engineers, scientists and experts agree that something happened one way, and tiny minority of random people on the Internet believe it happened another, it's the minority that are in the wrong. Them banging on about it constantly merely destroys their own credibility.

I thought physics involved experimentation and credibility was simply psychology.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9YRUso7Nf3s

When did any of these "thousands of engineers" build a physical model that could completely collapse? In fact we do not even have a table from an official source specifying the tons of steel and tons of concrete on every level. So how is this physics done without data?

psik

 

[KatG]

You can read the HTML at Gutenberg just like you do at that TOR link.

I can now that you've given the link. But before, you made it much more work. So people didn't go read the stories because they weren't click and go. We can't even get them to click into sub-forums here. You have to make it as easy as possible. Excerpt quotes from the stories or summary descriptions of their plots would have been even better.

Why you think a download takes more bandwidth or space than reading I don't know.

Since you aren't listening, we'll discontinue this part of the conversation.

Would you be so kind as to justify that statement and demonstrate that you did not just make it up?

Every time a major SF work that involves speculative science based off of quantum physics has come up here for discussion, you have made negative comments about it not being good science. And when I asked you about this issue directly once because of that, you said that you did not consider quantum theories to be real science. So from past experience, it seems that books that involve quantum theory material, like The Reality Dysfunction, tend to be regarded as poor science by you and would be downgraded on your science scale accordingly. If you would like to revise that idea, by all means, go ahead.

Separately from all that, moderator hat on, Wert, Psikey, you are very well aware that you are not allowed to discuss the subject of collapsing skyscrapers on these forums. Further conversation on this subject, which is off topic, will be removed from posts.

 

[psikeyhackr]

Every time a major SF work that involves speculative science based off of quantum physics has come up here for discussion, you have made negative comments about it not being good science. And when I asked you about this issue directly once because of that, you said that you did not consider quantum theories to be real science. So from past experience, it seems that books that involve quantum theory material, like The Reality Dysfunction, tend to be regarded as poor science by you and would be downgraded on your science scale accordingly. If you would like to revise that idea, by all means, go ahead.

I may have said something like that about String Theory but I know I would never say that about quantum theory.

http://www.flonnet.com/fl2201/stories/20050114002709000.htm

I read Reality Dysfunction to just beyond the trip up the river. I just got bored with the story. I didn't have any complaints about the science or technology in it.

psik

 

[psikeyhackr]

I will suggest 5 stories as archetypes to demonstrate some differences rather than only explain the characteristics with words. These stories are all in the public domain so everyone can get them easily and they are also available as audiobooks.

#1. Queen of the Black Coast (1934) by Robert E. Howard
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/42183/42183-h/42183-h.htm
http://librivox.org/conan-and-the-queen-of-the-black-coast-by-robert-e-howard/

#2. Cat and Mouse (1959) by Ralph Williams
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24392/24392-h/24392-h.htm
http://ia700300.us.archive.org/2/it...11_librivox/catandmouse_williams_blb_64kb.mp3

#3. The Servant Problem (Nov 1962) by Robert F. Young
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/23232/23232-h/23232-h.htm
http://ia600408.us.archive.org/25/items/short_scifi_028_0910_librivox/servantproblem_young_64kb.mp3

#4. Omnilingual (Feb 1957) by H. Beam Piper
http://www.tor.com/blogs/2012/03/scientific-language-h-beam-pipers-qomnilingualq
http://www.feedbooks.com/book/308/omnilingual
http://librivox.org/omnilingual-by-h-beam-piper/

#5. All Day September (1959) by Roger Kuykendal
http://www.gutenberg.org/files/24161/24161-h/24161-h.htm
http://ia700508.us.archive.org/21/i...brivox/alldayseptember_kuykendall_bt_64kb.mp3

#1 is blatantly not science fiction but instead sword and sorcery fantasy. It is part of the famous, or infamous, Conan series. Many stories called science fiction today are actually fantasy and some mix SF and fantasy elements.
#2 was nominated for a Hugo but lost to Flowers for Algernon so it should be decent even though it says nothing whatsoever about the "science" or "technology" enabling the story. An alien just makes things happen as though by magic though in this genre we assume the alien is using advanced but unexplained science.
#3 is unusually similar to #2 in that the technology driving the story performs the same function of interstellar transportation but the writer offers a kind of explanation mentioning topology and mobius loops and also includes a little astronomy. A bit of Treknobabble though not quite that bad in this case. But this was published in Nov of 1962, right after the Cuban Missile Crisis. You can see how it touches the story though how could it get published so soon?
#4 is a mixture of speculation about future technology combined with considerable discussion of real science regarding physics and chemistry though it describes a Mars which we now know does not exist. This story is from after World War II but before Sputnik. I regard this story as the quintessential science fiction tale.
#5 is strictly hard SF and contains nothing likely to be impossible at some time in the not too distant future. It is in fact curious in that it is a Moon colony story 10 years before the first Moon landing in 1969 and a prospector finds water on the Moon which was actually found in October of 2009. The story also has a little chemistry. It brings to mind A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke.

psik

 

[Seli]

...
#5 is strictly hard SF and contains nothing likely to be impossible at some time in the not too distant future. It is in fact curious in that it is a Moon colony story 10 years before the first Moon landing in 1969 and a prospector finds water on the Moon which was actually found in October of 2009. The story also has a little chemistry. It brings to mind A Fall of Moondust by Arthur C. Clarke.

psik

Interestingly enough those were probably ideas going around at the time.

The Tintin comic album Explorers on the Moon (1954) also had the protagonist discovering water on the moon, that book and the preceding Destination Moon (1952) are probably the hardest pure SF Herge produced.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destination_Moon_(Tintin)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Explorers_on_the_Moon