Science Fantasy worlds

[Dom]

So, I'm thinking of worlds today.  And I was thinking, of all the worlds I've read about in books, the ones I like the most are science fantasy.  Such as Anne McCaffrey's Pern, and Marion Zimmer Bradley's Darkover.  I've read urban fantasy, I've read high/epic fantasy, and I have some dearly-loved characters from those stories, but the worlds I like best are Pern and Darkover, and those sorts of settings.

It's possible that I'm overly attached to these two because I read those books when I was 12--basically at the very start of my SFF-reading career.  There might be some...heh...Impression going on. 

But I was wondering if this special liking of mine for science fantasy worlds (you can toss Robert Silverburg's Majipoor in there as well!) where I like the world even more then the characters in it is more then personal...I'm wondering if such worlds have any sort of broad appeal?  Look at Joan D. Vinge's Snow Queen and Summer Queen...science fantasy.  Dune...science fantasy.  Lots of the best damn books in SFF are set on compelling science fantasy worlds.  C. S. Friedman's Coldfire Trilogy.  There's more I'm not listing.

What do you guys think?  Am I on to something, or biased by my own preferences?

[blgarver]

Well, I gotta tell ya, this post made me realize i've never actually read a story set in a science fantasy world. 

I know of the Pern books, and they sound friggin awesome, but I'm just not sure where to start.  I always enjoyed the Dinotopia world, though that was more a world built through art and later turned into a movie.

Outside of LOTR and Dresden, I guess I'm kind of a noob at SFF reading.  I grew up reading Crichton, and that's all I read.  Crichton is borderline, but not really the kind of SciFi we're talking about here.  The first fantasy I read was...A Ripple in Time...anyone remember that?  Cause i don't...lol.  I'm not even sure if that's the correct title, or if it counts as SFF.  I remember we read it in elementary school, but that's about all I remember.

"The Hobbit" was my official first fantasy book I guess, but other than that I didn't really read much fantasy.

But, I can kind of see where you're coming from.  A good world can indeed be a character all in itself.  I've got sort of a vague idea for the world in my trilogy I'm gonna write next, but I need to do a lot more developing I think, cause I want it to be one of those memorable worlds.

[Dom]

You know, I just realized I never quite defined how I'm using the word "science fantasy".  To me, a science fantasy is a novel set on a world that technically has sci-fi origins (ie, colonized by a ship from earth), but said people on the world have forgotten everything about that past, and usually have regressed to a mediaeval level of technology, so the story itself generally plays out more like a fantasy, with ancient complex machines sometimes taking place of ancient complex magic.

Anyway--blgarver...If you do ever read Pern, the order they were written in I think is the best way.  Anne McCaffrey is an excellent writer for the first few books in any given series, but she has a tendancy to retcon things from old books (or maybe she just forgets they're there) to fit newer books.  So a fact from one book can be contradicted by a fact in a new book, and if you read them out of order an older book can have some things that just don't make sense if you read a newer book first.  Drives us fans crazy!  So yeah, if you read newer books first, such as The MasterHarper of Pern, earlier books don't always make sense.  So I reccomend reading them in this order...Dragonflight (used to have the green cover), Dragonquest (used to have the purple cover), The Harper Hall Trilogy (Dragonsong, Dragonsinger, Dragondrums), The White Dragon, The Renegades of Pern, Dragonsdawn, All the Weyrs of Pern. (Then there's some more books which are scattered around after All the Weyrs of Pern).

[jtaylor]

A good example of a world you might like Dom, is Kundala from The Pearl by Eric V. Lustbader. It is a world that had low tech and the people who lived there had access to sorcory provided by thier goddess Mina and her dragon followers. The world was invaded by a Ultra-tech society of aliens and colonized. There is a great contrast with the interaction between the sci/fi and fantasy elements.

[becroberts]

You know, I just realized I never quite defined how I'm using the word "science fantasy".  To me, a science fantasy is a novel set on a world that technically has sci-fi origins (ie, colonized by a ship from earth), but said people on the world have forgotten everything about that past, and usually have regressed to a mediaeval level of technology, so the story itself generally plays out more like a fantasy, with ancient complex machines sometimes taking place of ancient complex magic.

That actually makes me think of the Samaria books by Sharon Shinn, which initially look like religious fantasy about angels but are actually about a group of people brought from a dying world in a spaceship that they think is their god. There's a solid romance angle but to me, the most fascinating part is reading about the various human peoples and the angels slowly coming to realise their origins, about the few scraps of technology they still have, and why creating new technology is frowned upon.

So while I can't compare to the books you've listed, as I haven't read them, I think you're on to something about science fantasy worlds being intriguing.

[Mij]

Outside of LOTR and Dresden, I guess I'm kind of a noob at SFF reading.  I grew up reading Crichton, and that's all I read.  Crichton is borderline, but not really the kind of SciFi we're talking about here.  The first fantasy I read was...A Ripple in Time...anyone remember that?  Cause i don't...lol.  I'm not even sure if that's the correct title, or if it counts as SFF.  I remember we read it in elementary school, but that's about all I remember.

Did you mean A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle?  It has my favorite book opening ever: "It was a dark and stormy night".  I love it because it's the same phrase that Snoopy always starts his stories with. 

But, I can kind of see where you're coming from.  A good world can indeed be a character all in itself.  I've got sort of a vague idea for the world in my trilogy I'm gonna write next, but I need to do a lot more developing I think, cause I want it to be one of those memorable worlds.

I have to agree here.  I think the best SFF I've read -- and I'll add the Riftwar Saga by Raymond E. Feist to those already mentioned -- are so compelling in part because you have a feeling that the world setting works and is real.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

You know, I just realized I never quite defined how I'm using the word "science fantasy".  To me, a science fantasy is a novel set on a world that technically has sci-fi origins (ie, colonized by a ship from earth), but said people on the world have forgotten everything about that past, and usually have regressed to a mediaeval level of technology, so the story itself generally plays out more like a fantasy, with ancient complex machines sometimes taking place of ancient complex magic.

Thanks for clarifying, because there's more than one borderland between SF and fantasy and I was not sure which you meant. That particular genre I tend to think of as "fantasy with SF underwear".

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Crichton is borderline, but not really the kind of SciFi we're talking about here.

Crichton writes technothriller/horror, not SF.  It's a question of attitude.  SF is about thinking about and playing with the implications of ideas; Crichton just wants the cool new stuff to be scary and kill people so that shutting it down at the end is a win.  This is a form of plotting that gets me very angry indeed, because it encourages assumptions that are hostile to actual science. 

[blgarver]

Crichton writes technothriller/horror, not SF.  It's a question of attitude.  SF is about thinking about and playing with the implications of ideas; Crichton just wants the cool new stuff to be scary and kill people so that shutting it down at the end is a win.  This is a form of plotting that gets me very angry indeed, because it encourages assumptions that are hostile to actual science. 

Okay that makes sense.  I've always called his stuff "science not-so-fiction" just because it's not entirely outside the realms of reality.  But technothriller/horror is more accurate. 

What do you mean by "hostile to actual science"?

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

What do you mean by "hostile to actual science"?

Science, done in the real world, has as an absolute fundamental axiom the assumption that new things are worth knowing, be that because they are fun or cool or interesting or are going to let you build more stuff or whatever.

The basic assumptions of Crichton's work are that new things are scary and dangerous and have to be stamped out because otherwise they will have inevitable terrible consequences, and that people who work to find out new things are at best irresponsible and more likely malevolent. (I do not think this assumption is absolutely essential for making a technothriller work, though I'm having a hard time seeing where the technothriller values of preserving the status quo could fit with a geniune SFnal attitude to new ideas; horror seems pretty much defined by the Other being horrible and dangerous and scary, but I don't think the question of whether something is horror or not is in the same direction as whether it's SF or fantasy or mainstream, it's possible to be horror or not-horror in any of those spaces.)

As somebody who works in real-world science, I take major umbrage at Crichton's assumption.

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Okay that makes sense.  I've always called his stuff "science not-so-fiction" just because it's not entirely outside the realms of reality.

Also, there's a non-trivial amount of day-after-tomorrow SF in the world that's pretty close to the realms of reality but not with the obnoxious anti-science attitude.  Though by definition day-after-tomorrow settings age rapidly, and there's less of it this past five years or so than there used to be because it's a harder world to be short-term optimistic in than it was five-years-plus-time-to-write-a-novel ago.

[recentcoin]

Actually, I think Crighton's stuff is more of a morality tale.  It doesn't seem to be about knowledge itself but about the misuse and abuse of it.  It's more about the old saying we have in IT, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should".

Eaters of the Dead - made into the movie the 13th Warrior - a retelling of the Beowulf saga but also about a collision of cultures.  The technologically superior vikings wiping out the older tribal inhabitants.  Moral of the story - Just because you can pitch your tent somewhere doesn't mean you should.

Congo - humans are punished for attempting to exploit both nature and an ape.  Moral of the story - Just because you have a sat phone, you are not invincible. 

Sphere - human techology from the future causes one of the men who discovers it to go insane and start killing his crewmates  Moral of the story - Just because you can peek behind door #3 doesn't mean you really want to know what's in there. 

Jurassic Park - overweening scientists re-create dinosaurs and they drive the humans off the island  Moral of the story - Just because you can clone dinosaurs doesn't mean you should. 

Airframe - all about trying to cover up the actual facts of a mid air incident that involves several fatalties.  Moral of the story - Just because you think you can cover it up doesn't mean you can or should. 

They're all like that.  You folks need to learn to write a critical analysis of a piece. 

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

Actually, I think Crighton's stuff is more of a morality tale.  It doesn't seem to be about knowledge itself but about the misuse and abuse of it.  It's more about the old saying we have in IT, "Just because you can doesn't mean you should".

There's only so many different variations you can read on "exploring new and interesting knowledge always has terrible consequences" before it starts to convince you it's a theme; point me at any Crichton story where something new is a force for good, otr any sympathetic character who believes in exploring the new, if you want to convince me he's not either a Luddite himself, or someone who consciously chooses to write from a Luddite perspective.

[recentcoin]

Not all of his stuff is about technology - so I can't call him a Luddite.  I will agree with you that a *lot* of it revolves around technology, but not all.  I will say this, the more I learn about some of the things that we're doing now, the more of a Luddite I find myself becoming.  We insist on tinkering with things we do not fully understand and it's only a matter of time until the consequences catch up to us. 

2 cents....

RecentCoin

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

We insist on tinkering with things we do not fully understand and it's only a matter of time until the consequences catch up to us. 

Being responsibly aware of consequences is one thing, but we won't get the ability to handle consequences well without understanding things well in the first place; at this point in the history of a technological civilisation, there's not really any way we can go back to living in caves and hope the problems will go away, whereas there are real possibilities for bringing the consequences of our industrialisation, for example, under control by working smarter.

If we don't tinker with anything until we fully understand it, how are we supposed to learn ?