Do you prefer real-world settings or "science fantasy"?

[adam_grif]

This isn't a discussion on whether one shouldn't exist, or whether characters are more important than setting or anything like that. Instead:

All other things being equal, do you prefer stories that adhere rigidly to real world physics to the best of the author's ability, or ones that do not?

Why do you feel that way?

[Samuel]

Escapism means I want characters that can shoot fire out their hands. Or insane powers of manipulation on the part of the cast. Plausibility generally requires sticking to the real world because thinking up all the required side effects is hard.

[adam_grif]

So which do you prefer? Escapism or Plausibility?

[Stark]

I don't give a shit about real-world physics in stories. I care about consistency, internal plausibility, and consequences.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

I personally prefer not to stick to real physics. Mankind's expansion into the stars being limited to c, if not impossible, is too depressing for me. I have trouble reading any book where there isn't any FTL or other nonsense technology to make things 'interesting.' There's only so many times I can stand to read about astronauts in variable-gravity couches accelerating towards distant objects at reasonable gee levels.

For more mundane, earth-bound technologies, I sometimes find myself wondering why the author even tries to make it science fiction. If your technology is so 'realistic' and subtle that the results are innocuous to the plot, then just bite the bullet, set the damn story in New York in 1988 and quadruple your sales by going mainstream, dammit!

[Broomstick]

I don't give a shit about real-world physics in stories. I care about consistency, internal plausibility, and consequences.

As implausible as it may seem, I am in complete agreement with Stark about this. Yes, Stark and I actually agree on something. Please note this, as it is an extremely rare occurrence.

[Kingmaker]

If your technology is so 'realistic' and subtle that the results are innocuous to the plot, then just bite the bullet, set the damn story in New York in 1988 and quadruple your sales by going mainstream, dammit!

And make it about an orphaned laundress with cancer so you can win a Nobel prize, too.

I prefer soft sci-fi/sci-fantasy to hard sci-fi, partly because I think it allows for more freedom, and partly because I feel that a lot hard sci-fi is boring. There is also my undying conviction that any attempt to realistically extrapolate the distant future is doomed to failure, taking away the "this could really happen" appeal of hard sci-fi. I'd rather have a sci-fi fantasy that makes sense within its own setting.

[Coyote]

I don't give a shit about real-world physics in stories. I care about consistency, internal plausibility, and consequences.

As implausible as it may seem, I am in complete agreement with Stark about this. Yes, Stark and I actually agree on something. Please note this, as it is an extremely rare occurrence.

...dogs and cats, living together!



And I agree, too.

[Peptuck]

Science fantasy.

Too many sci-fi authors and fans get caught up on being "realistic" or "hard." Fuck hardness. I want a goddamn engaging story with pew-pew and spaceships and exploding suns and googly-eyed aliens.

[Formless]

I think I know what inspired this thread

That being said, I think that the story should come first. If hard sci-fi can actually tell decent stories within the constraints given, then good, I will read. However, in that soft sci-fi or fantasy more often fulfill this requirement I prefer it.

Well, okay, it also helps that I agree with this:

There is also my undying conviction that any attempt to realistically extrapolate the distant future is doomed to failure, taking away the "this could really happen" appeal of hard sci-fi. I'd rather have a sci-fi fantasy that makes sense within its own setting.

Oh, and Stark too. But that's a given when I say "put the story first."

[Junghalli]

Hard SF has a little extra appeal to me because I like the fun of seeing what can be done while sticking to hard science (things like Blindsight's take on vampires are right up my alley), but really both are good. The quality of a story depends on the skill of the author, not what genre it's in.

I do have a reaction sort of like Bob the Gunslinger's but in the opposite direction, in that after a while I start to find the technological tunnel vision of a lot of soft SF on starships and big guns to be a rather depressing vision of the future. A future where people fly in giant mile-long starships to shoot people up with 9999 gigaton lazors but they still die of old age at ~100 and space hobos still scrounge in the space garbage dump is not really one I want to imagine my descendants living in; we should be able to do much better with realistic technology, let alone the sort of magic these guys often have access to.

[adam_grif]

I can enjoy both, but I prefer it when they keep it more realistic.

The main problem I have with much of soft scifi isn't necessarily the tech, it's the lack of imagination with it. They haven't put FTL in it because they think FTL will make it more interesting, they've put FTL in it so they don't have to change the space western formula and this way they can treat each planet as a town with the ship hopping between them in days or weeks. They don't want to deal with the scales involved in real life outer space, so they shrink it the only way they know how - by ignoring it. They didn't put Space Stealth in it because they wanted to explore the consequences of it, they put Space Stealth in it so they can have subs of the north Atlantic in space.

They're going out of their way just to make sure the status quo never changes so they can just copy and paste stories into The Future (TM). And if that's all you want to do, then I struggle to see why you wanted to make it science fiction in the first place.

[Sheridan]

I, honestly, could care less which it is, with two caveats.

1.)The story is internally consistent. I couldn't care less if you violate all three laws of thermodynamics, as long as you do so in the same way(s) each and every time. I want the bullshittium to have the same characteristics each time it gets put into a power source, not have it suddenly not work for no reason.

2.)The story is focused on, well, the story, and not simply a vehicle for the author to show that (s)he's done his/her homework (I'm looking at you, Weber). I don't mind explanations of how stuff works, I just don't want to have to sit through a lecture every two pages.

[Stofsk]

I actually prefer real-world settings for the most part. I like to know Earth is still around in a few centuries from now, as opposed to say, Star Wars, where it's in a whole different galaxy altogether.

[adam_grif]

I, honestly, could care less

Just an FYI.

[Knife]

I'm a fan of consistency as well. If the world has some amazing shit in it, but it all makes sense within that amazing shit, I'm good. Pretty much as long as they hold the SOD, I'm good.

[The Dark]

I like Jell-O sci-fi, where it has a firm consistency, but it's not as hard as a brick. IOW, I want an internally consistent reality, but fudging some of the science in favor of story is fine. That said, Simon Green (as an example) drives me nuts

[loomer]

So long as it's consistent and well told, I don't care.

However, this consistency is often found in what Dark calls 'jelly sci-fi' - harder than most, with a couple of extensions for the story's sake, like FTL and artificial gravity, so normally that's my preference for 'blind' selections.

[Junghalli]

I can enjoy both, but I prefer it when they keep it more realistic.

The main problem I have with much of soft scifi isn't necessarily the tech, it's the lack of imagination with it. They haven't put FTL in it because they think FTL will make it more interesting, they've put FTL in it so they don't have to change the space western formula and this way they can treat each planet as a town with the ship hopping between them in days or weeks. They don't want to deal with the scales involved in real life outer space, so they shrink it the only way they know how - by ignoring it. They didn't put Space Stealth in it because they wanted to explore the consequences of it, they put Space Stealth in it so they can have subs of the north Atlantic in space.

They're going out of their way just to make sure the status quo never changes so they can just copy and paste stories into The Future (TM). And if that's all you want to do, then I struggle to see why you wanted to make it science fiction in the first place.

Yeah, that's my big problem with soft SF. A lot of it seems more than a bit formulaic and unimaginative. Take the modern world, add FTL spaceships and lasers, turn the nations into star empires, add some WWII in space and some Colonialism and maybe some feudalism for spice, systematically ignore, handwave away, or ban any technology that might disrupt the formula (like AI or mind uploading), warm over and serve. A lot of these universes aren't bad on their own merits but after a while it all seems kind of stale to me. I'm not even asking for transhumanism and shit, how about instead of WWII or 1800s in space you take the "go anywhere jump drive = MAD" and make a political order based on the Cold War with the Great Powers sweating under the threat of mutual annihilation and fighting through proxy wars on Third Galaxy planets. I can't offhand remember a single setting that does something like that, even though MAD scenarios are really not hard to achieve with an interstellar setting with multiple roughly equal power blocs. Yeah, I get that MAD won't let you have them awesome dramatic between roughly equal opponents (unless you're willing to really go balls-out and show your entire setting turned into a charnel house), but come on, would it really hurt so much to challenge yourself a bit there?

[Shroom Man 777]

Real world settings? You mean real-world settings, like in movies like Commando or True Lies or The Last Action Hero?

I gotta go with STRAK and Broomstick and Coyots. It really doesn't matter if this sci-fi show I'm watching adheres to DELTA V PHYSICS IN SPACE or the NEWTONIAN CONSERVATION OF MOMENTUM IN ZERO GRAVITY or the TEMPORAL EFFECTS OF RELATIVISTIC CEE-FRACTIONAL SPACEFLIGHT or something. All that matters is if the show is presented in an entertaining and worthwhile fashion.

Adam, what particular "realistic" sci-fi do you like, then?

[Guardsman Bass]

Generally, I like the "softer" sci-fi more, since you can usually just ignore the techno-magic as long as it's consistent and focus on the plot and characters. On the other hand, it can be interesting to inject a little of the hard sci-fi implications into it, since it makes for some cool differences.

[adam_grif]

Real world settings? You mean real-world settings, like in movies like Commando or True Lies or The Last Action Hero?

I worded it poorly, but what I meant was settings constrained by the same rules as the real world is.

All that matters is if the show is presented in an entertaining and worthwhile fashion.

Yes, and the original post says that this isn't about whether you can deal with it, or whether you think story is more important, but again:

All other things being equal, do you prefer stories that adhere rigidly to real world physics to the best of the author's ability, or ones that do not?

So assuming no difference between quality of characters and plot, do you prefer stories that are harder or softer?

Adam, what particular "realistic" sci-fi do you like, then?

Mmmn, it's not too often we get one that's trying to focus on ultra-realism, but I do like elements of some stories that try to be harder. A recent example: one of the things I liked about the original Revelation Space was that it had no FTL, and dealt with time dilation, journeys that take lifetimes and so on. Then of course, there was the ridiculous wankfest that was Wolf machinery, cache weapons and inertia suppression. I can deal with it, but I was disappointed that he decided to put that stuff in. In Bab 5, I liked the way they handled the space dogfights (aside from the fact that they HAD space dogfights).

Then there are settings that have virtually zero techmagic, i.e. Gattaca (which I like quite a bit) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which basically takes place next Sunday, A.D.. Crytonomicon was good in that respect too.

[Shroom Man 777]

So assuming no difference between quality of characters and plot, do you prefer stories that are harder or softer?

Hrm... it depends, then. On one hand, I'd like to see a space hero's space quest to defeat the dark lord of space and bring freedom to the space kingdom on space - and this entails all sort of soft squishy sci-fi. On the other hand, a more "modest" setting with an average human struggling to overcome the unfair social structures imposed upon him in his future society and prevail against all sorts of adversity - and this could entail all sort of harder more rigid sci-fi.

Then again, we could also have an action adventure involving a great hero that doesn't involve ridiculous soft sci-fi. Equilibrium had no fantastic technology at all save for super-prozac, and the only unrealistic thing was the implausible killiness of the main character. It was fun. Also, Avatar, aside from the stuff of the Na'vi, most of the human technology was portrayed really realistically. The same goes for the likes of Aliens.

I guess I can love them both equally if they're both done equally competently. I'd love to see giant ridiculous space ships and laser swords and heroes throwing pew-pew lasers at you and vanquishing space monsters. But I also greatly enjoy more realistic portrayals with not-so-grandiose stories. On one hand, there's the fantastic and the ridiculous, on the other hand there's the "realistic" and seemingly close-at-hand and believable.

It depends on your genre and stylistic preferences?

Mmmn, it's not too often we get one that's trying to focus on ultra-realism, but I do like elements of some stories that try to be harder. A recent example: one of the things I liked about the original Revelation Space was that it had no FTL, and dealt with time dilation, journeys that take lifetimes and so on. Then of course, there was the ridiculous wankfest that was Wolf machinery, cache weapons and inertia suppression. I can deal with it, but I was disappointed that he decided to put that stuff in. In Bab 5, I liked the way they handled the space dogfights (aside from the fact that they HAD space dogfights).

Ah, so you like those little nifty details that the author puts in? Instead of going on about space swords and space monsters, the way the author portrays realistic details and aspects of science, and puts meticulous effort into it and stuff fascinates you, and/or entertains you? I can dig that.

Then there are settings that have virtually zero techmagic, i.e. Gattaca (which I like quite a bit) and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, which basically takes place next Sunday, A.D.. Crytonomicon was good in that respect too.

Oh, fuck me, I love Gattaca. Even mindless sci-fi action movies can have virtually zero techmagic too, like Equilibrium. Avatar's portrayal of human tech is fairly realistic, as it is in Aliens. Hell, Total Recall didn't have ridiculous stuff.

Hrm... I wonder. Those fantastic soft sci-fi, particularly in movies, they tend to be laden with visual effects and stuff and compared with more "modest" films seem to have less focus on stuff like drama and characterization. I mean, shit, compare something like Transformers to Gattaca, or District 9 to Revenge of the Sith. That's something to consider.

[Sea Skimmer]

It’s all a matter of how the situation is handled. I tend to prefer more realistic settings because they tend to be less convoluted, but I’m fine with outright magic if its well thought out and not one big no limits conundrum.

[Shroom Man 777]

I think that the good sci-fi settings, be it realistic or soft, that I really like are similar in that they both don't dwell in whatever technology or stuff they have, but instead focus merely on the story of the characters and the events that surround them in their life. To me, that seems like the best way to truly get "inside" a universe - be it hard or soft.

Watching Luke Skywalker, Han Solo and Chewie have their adventures, without a care of how their technobabulators worked or any in-depth exploration of extraneous unnecessary details of their "verse" actually brings you closer to the Galaxy Far, Far Away. The same applies too for other characters and stories in other settings, hard or soft.