List of SciFi Anime

[AndroAsc]

Magic- as in, violations of the laws of physics. Tractor beams, hyperspace, desert planets with oxygen atmospheres... and that's before we get into Darth Vader choking shit.

There's no basis for any of this in reality; the only reason you don't call it magic is because if I glue some blinky lights to a piece of magic and wave my hands very fast, you won't notice that it's magic.

You do know that we are talking about science FICTION right? Why would you expect advanced technology to conform with our primitive definition of the "laws of physics"?

Advanced Technology = May defy modern day scientific knowledge but will be weakly rationalized in-universe (e.g. treknobabble). Whether or not treknobabble makes sense in a scientific context (and they usually don't) is a completely different issue. In some occasions, no in-universe rationalization is made, but there will never be a slide to reasons that are "mystical" or "magical". That is where the line is drawn.

Magic = Defies modern day scientific knowledge and all in-universe rationalization is "unscientific", usually relying on "mystical" or "superstitious" elements.

Want to go down the list you provided?

Tractor Beams Star Wars doesn't do a good job of in-universe rationalizing in the movies, but may have been explained in EU (I don't know). Might be explainable using the more esoteric scientific theories we have today (graviton particles?) Does not invoke "mystical" or "superstitious" rationalization. It is an Advanced Technology and not magic.

Hyperspace Same with Tractor Beams.

Desert Planet without Oxygen Atmosphere Why is this listed? I assume this is a scientific implausibility that such planets cannot form? Then, it's the fault of "bad science" in the writing and has nothing to do with magic.

Force Unfortunately, the force as perceived in OT has "magic" elements, but PT retconned it with midichlorians, so there is a biological explanation (although not a very good one). Force can also be explained as telekinesis and precognition, I'm not sure if the EU moved into this explanation. Overall, this is has some magical elements, and I would prefer SW rationalizing it more of genetically inherited TK and Precog "powers".

More examples, for the idiots out there who can't distinguish fantasy and science fiction.

Science Fiction:
1) The "prophecy" of Valen in B5 was very mystical from the beginning but was later rationalized as Sinclair time traveling to the past and becoming Valen, so there is a plausible scientific explanation for the mystical bullshit.
2) The Bajoran "prophets" in DS9 have been rationalized as wormhole aliens and NOT mystical gods. Although the in-universe rationalization is good, I wished DS9 could have cut down on the Bajoran religious superstitious bullshit.
3) Chaos gods in warhammer 40k has been rationalized as extradimensional aliens living in the warp (another dimension used for hyperspace travel). They feed on the "psychic energy" of their followers, this part is slanting more towards the "magic" realm, so it's a bit grey. However, most of warhammer 40k phenomenon can be explained using "psychic energy", and if you try to force out a scientific model that has this component, it becomes internally consistent.

Fantasy:
1) Lord of the Rings. The quest for some "magical" ring. Everything is bullshit magic and mysticism.

It's an utter disgrace that you fucktards call yourself science fiction fans when you can't even separate science fiction from fantasy. Fantasy is like the fucking anti-thesis of science fiction... you guys suffering from some severe brain damage that you can't distinguish the two from each other?!

[StarSword]

The absurdity is delicious. This thread is the result of one of two things:

1) A 13 year old with a vastly over-inflated sense of self-importance and the opinion that true sci-fi consists solely of his favorite stuff.

2) A troll.

So which is it?

[AndroAsc]

Meanwhile, highly-evolved beings from Mars invade the earth by launching themselves through space, fight in giant mechanical machines, use guns that fire beams of intense heat at targets, and use chemical weapons before the first large-scale use of them in WWI, and that is NOT science because it takes place in the late 19th century and is outdated.


Pictured: fucking MAGIC!

I guess you can't read fucktard? Who is the 13-year illiterate dick now? Did I ever say that 20k leagues under the sea is MAGIC? Did I ever say your example is MAGIC? I simply said it is not science fiction by my standard. If I have to give it category, it would be at best modern day or futuristic but not science fiction by today's standard, and neither is it fantasy.

Go learn how to read before spewing shit...

[Stark]

If science fiction is fantasy with a silly rationalization, then what was the point of this thread? Everything that says 'electrical' or 'quantum' is scifi now.

And sorry, if psionics can be in scifi, there's no magic in lotr. If fantasy is the 'antithesis' of scifi, why are they a) so similar and b) in the same department at the bookstore?

Nevermind, Greg Egan and Neal Stephenson don't write scifi.

[StarSword]

If science fiction is fantasy with a silly rationalization, then what was the point of this thread? Everything that says 'electrical' or 'quantum' is scifi now.

And sorry, if psionics can be in scifi, there's no magic in lotr. If fantasy is the 'antithesis' of scifi, why are they a) so similar and b) in the same department at the bookstore?

Nevermind, Greg Egan and Neal Stephenson don't write scifi.

On this subject, I have a how-to book by Orson Scott Card (most famous for the Ender series). In chapter one he speaks of a sci-fi short story of his, "Tinker," that was rejected by Analog, a sci-fi magazine, on the grounds that it was fantasy:

It was the tale of a wandering tinker who had a psionic gift that manifested itself in two ways: he could communicate with birds, and he could heal the sick. When he returned to his hometown, Worthing, a medieval-ish village deep in the Forest of Waters, he came into conflict with the villagers over their treatment of his birds; eventually he was blamed for an epidemic that carried off many villagers during a devastating winter storm, and they killed him.

<snip>

The story came back in due course, rejected. But there was something in the accompanying letter to encourage me. Ben Bova, then editor of Analog, told me he liked the way I wrote and hoped to see more stories from me. [StarSword here: Ben Bova is perhaps better known as the creator of the hard sci-fi series The Asteroid Wars.]

So why was he rejecting "Tinker"?

Because it wasn't science fiction. "Analog publishes only science fiction," said Ben, so of course a fantasy like "Tinker" wouldn't do.

I was outraged -- at first. "Tinker" had psionic powers, a colony planet, a far future time period -- if that wasn't science fiction, what was?

Until I looked again at the story the way Ben Bova must have seen it. He knew nothing about the other stories in the cycle. "Tinker" included no mention of its taking place on a world colonized by human beings, and there was nothing alien about the landscape. It could have been an English village in about 950 A.D.

As for John Tinker's psionic powers, there was nothing in the story to suggest they weren't magical powers. There was nothing to suggest they were, either -- he chanted no spells, rubbed no talisman, prayed to no pagan deity.

But in the absence of other evidence, the landscape clearly marked "Tinker" as fantasy. It was all those trees in the Forest of Waters. A rustic setting always suggests fantasy; to suggest science fiction, you need sheet metal and plastic. You need rivets. The buildings in "Tinker" didn't even use nails!

I had discovered the first kind of boundary that marks the twin genres of fantasy and science fiction: the publishing category.

[Kingmaker]

You do know that we are talking about science FICTION right? Why would you expect advanced technology to conform with our primitive definition of the "laws of physics"?

You do know that we are talking about SCIENCE fiction, right?

the force as perceived in OT has "magic" elements, but PT retconned it with midichlorians, so there is a biological explanation

Nope. That just removes the magic one step. Still no scientific rationalization of the Force. Besides, teknobabble isn't science, it's the mysticalization of technology.

Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for you to demonstrate that "Sci-fi is invented and founded by Wars and Trek." I find it fucking hilarious that a guy who claims to be an SF fan and is shitting all over fantasy for being full of "bullshit magic and mysticism" is setting up a pair of works with basically no contemplation of scientific issues as the exemplars of the genre.

[Stark]

He just means that he doesn't think earlier science fiction (like I, Robot, Buck Rogers, or Space 2001) 'count' because they're 'outdated'.

Because you can outdate themes, right? Discussion of logic and ethics can be outdated, right? Guys riding rocket bikes and blasting martians can be outdated too!

I have a lame confession; playing DEHR made me look back at older 'cyberpunk' (ugh) shit, and I realised that I'd missed the point the whole time; that there are powerful themes in there that are ageless but resonate with modern, urban readers. This doesn't mean the narrator of WotW calling for a trap and riding on country roads to towns that are now deep inside London makes it less 'scifi' - frankly I consider the early stuff extremely broad-minded and adventurous compared to the majority of modern scifi.

[Kingmaker]

He just means that he doesn't think earlier science fiction (like I, Robot, Buck Rogers, or Space 2001) 'count' because they're 'outdated'.

I know. I just want to see what flailing bullshit justification he produces.

I consider the early stuff extremely broad-minded and adventurous compared to the majority of modern scifi.

That's the problem of genre. The more stuff there, the harder it becomes to do something new. Not only because there aren't many low-hanging ideas left, but because established conventions confine ideas to some extent (to a great extent in the case of chucklefucks like the OP).

[Stark]

I think a lot of it is modern publishing, too, like in the quote above - if you write interesting, obtuse, strange and far-reaching scifi, you either reach a tiny audience or don't get published at all. If you reskin Star Wars, you sell heaps and get a publishing deal. I haven't read any scifi that is as 'science fiction' as Greg Egan novels, but I doubt people outside Australia have any exposure beyond a tiny market.

You could never push a giant submarine like Nautilus with the batteries described in the book; just like most scifi novels have FTL that would never work, guns based on misunderstandings of thermodynamics, societies based on cereal boxes, etc. If you were to be really anal and try to identify the core nugget of 'scifi', it would be the pretentious social/human awareness, which pulp novels throughout all history have lacked.

And not, y'know, 'pew pew spaceships'.

[StarSword]

On the subject of him thinking Jules Verne no longer is sci-fi because we've passed the date it's set at:

By that logic, Terminator and Star Trek aren't sci-fi anymore either: One of my teachers told me that some day in May this year was the date the machines took over in Terminator. (Being a cynical smart-ass, I responded, "Didn't that already happen?") Star Trek is a little harder to explain: since one of their story elements, namely, Khan Noonien Singh, was a feature of the Eugenics Wars in the mid-1990s, which didn't happen (unless you count the Rwandan and Balkan genocides as eugenics wars), Star Trek obviously isn't sci-fi anymore.

[SilverWingedSeraph]

The more AndroAsc posts, the more I wonder if this is some sort of elaborate troll.

Apparently sci-fi is only sci-fi if it has lasers and preferable spaceships. Because he says so. And if it has fantasy elements, then it's not sci-fi! Unless the fantasy elements are given a half-assed pseudoscience explaination. In which case it's fine, and not magic. Honest.

Hey ass-hat. Sci-fi stands for science fiction. If it's about science, the potential areas where scientific advancement might lead us, the consequences of science, the ethics of science, or even just about having or encountering others who have more advanced technology, etc., and it's fiction, then it's science fiction. If you wanted a more specific type of sci-fi, you should have asked for that. You don't get to rebrand the genre to be only a narrow section of it that you like.

[sirocco]

It's funny to see where each one of you draws the line between science fiction and fantasy. I personally consider the date of first publication and the time when the story takes place.

So Asimov's stories will always be science fiction for me since he was writing about the future. While on the contrary, Tolkien was writing about a distant/alternative past.

As for Star Wars and its "A long time ago in a far away galaxy", I have mixed feelings. However, I'd be inclined to follow SilverWingedSeraph's opinion, to have science fiction you need a reflexion on the consequences and ethics of science. Never found anything like that in star Wars, so I'd say that it's "fantasy in a futuristic setting".

[Stark]

Protip: fantasy can be set in the 'future'. Oops, turns out your metric is amazingly stupid!

The relevant meanings may be words like 'fantastic' and 'science'. I hope you didn't spend years concocting this stupidity which you then immediately abandon when it doesn't result in intuitively 'correct' results.

[sirocco]

Protip: fantasy can be set in the 'future'. Oops, turns out your metric is amazingly stupid!

The relevant meanings may be words like 'fantastic' and 'science'. I hope you didn't spend years concocting this stupidity which you then immediately abandon when it doesn't result in intuitively 'correct' results.

Then were do you draw the line between fantasy and science-fiction?

[Stark]

How about you read the thread first, instead of replying to the last post with something dumber than the OP?

The first page has people talking about scientific investigation and scientific attitudes. Are these concepts too hard for you, Mr 'I judge by relative date, unless that results in stupid shit and then I don't'?

'Fantasty' is fiction about the fantastic, not 'has elves' or 'occurred in the past'. Alice in Wonderland wouldn't have been scifi if it took place in 2525. because it's about fantastical things that have or need no explanation. Night Watch could be argued to have science fiction elements, because they investigate and deal with the trappings of fantasy in a totally scientific way and the focus of the narrative is on explanations and implications.

[sirocco]

I have a post in the first page answering the original request, which was to list Scifi animes. It derailed from there when people started giving their opinion on what can be considered scifi. I did read the first page now I expect you to read at least the title of the thread.

If Alice in Wonderland was taking place in 2525, it may have been science fiction for the simple reason that Lewis Caroll would have had a reason to have it taken place in 2525, and neither in 1865 nor in 3000 BC.

What you seem to not have understood is that I think that the genre is defined by the author. My generalization comes from the fact that generally stories set in the past evoke the nostalgy of what could have been, while for those set in the future, it's rather about what you hope or fear might happen.

[The Yosemite Bear]

hell I remember a bit from Asimov where he wrote some crime fiction about physics, and proper use of restraint harnesses where a guy takes out a serial killer hitchhiker by driving into the highway median at 90mph (guess what it was written before seatbelts and the driver had a racing harness)

[inviz345]

bucky o'hare
Defenders of the Earth
Jayce and the Wheeled Warriors
Battle of the Planets
Terrahawks

[Stark]

If Alice in Wonderland was taking place in 2525, it may have been science fiction for the simple reason that Lewis Caroll would have had a reason to have it taken place in 2525, and neither in 1865 nor in 3000 BC.

You're a lost cunt. If the story was EXACTLY THE SAME beyond a Alice going to THE FUTURE as well as into HALLUCINATIONS, you think it would be scifi? There are literally no words for how stupid you sound. You stick to your primitive 'future = scifi' rubbish, evne though you already highlighted that it doesn't work and you have to use other ACTUAL metrics in some cases.

Maybe you should just admit your idea is fucking dumb and use those other ACTUAL methods all the time.

[andrewgpaul]

The Sword of Shannara was technically set in the future - some of his later books are much more explicit at revealing this. Does that make it Sci-fi, despite being about elves, trolls, an evil wizard and a magic sword?