Heh, I guess you could think that way too about what I'm thinking.

I was under the impression he considered Sci-Fi as something that inherently thinks forward, no matter how technologically advanced the story actually is.

I had the exact same impression. I was never talking about technology, though. I'll be more explicit. Phrases like "forward-thinking" have connotations I'd rather not unpack here, but at the heart of the difference in perspective I was referring to is the difference in the extent to which one believes that humankind can be perfected. The struggles and challenges I referred to are inherent in the human experience (and I believe always have been), and good fantasy like all good literature is populated by characters who act in accordance with human nature; therefore, it's short-sighted to say that such characters are backward or forward. If they are portrayed believably as human beings (and that's not to say they can't be talking rabbits in the fiction) they can have something valuable to say now and 100 years from now.

I was under the impression he considered Sci-Fi as something that inherently thinks forward, no matter how technologically advanced the story actually is.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "

I never agreed with that line at all :-p

Your response illustrates a certain view of the world, though, which strikes me as primarily technocratic

You bet I am. I think you'd have to be pretty loony to think that technology is bad. Let's all live in huts and have to forage for food! :-p

I didn't say technology was bad. We've had a form of this discussion before, and I guess I'll share this quote again.

"There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy. "

I think fundamentally, as usual, Cody is using the terms to describe something a lot broader than anyone else in the discussion is used to consider. If you'd just establish it up front, though, it would make conversation a lot better.

That's funny. I thought quite the opposite.

Your response illustrates a certain view of the world, though, which strikes me as primarily technocratic

You bet I am. I think you'd have to be pretty loony to think that technology is bad. Let's all live in huts and have to forage for food! :-p

Hell, technology even makes ART better. Those brilliant shades of blue you see in oil paintings during the Renaissance were the result of new techniques to create dyes. Special effects in film can take you to places otherwise impossible. Word processing even makes writing a book a less strenuous ordeal.

I think it does, otherwise you wouldn't assume that our "old" challenges are substantially different from our "new" challenges. Your language gives you away. Your perspective of history colors your perception of a genre of fiction. A fan of literary fiction could be just as dismissive of your preferred genre, and say it only pretends to be more realistic.

It has nothing to do with old vs new. Many old problems are yet unsolved, although many are. The problem is with the mindset that goes into each genre. It's a question of direction. Fantasy dwells on the misconceptions and stumblings of the past (superstition, outdated beliefs and traditions, etc), and in many cases celebrates them, actually impeding our progress as a species, whereas Sci-Fi typically revels in the advancement of humanity in the future.

This does not presuppose anything about tech level or space ships or any of that. There are many great works that are forward thinking in which the character is on a horse. They are mostly westerns, rather than fantasies though. I would say that yes, technology often IS at the center of Sci-Fi, only because these are the issues we will face in the coming years!

Don't assume I'm talking about technological challenges. Your response illustrates a certain view of the world, though, which strikes me as primarily technocratic, and assumptive regarding what role technology has played or will play in history. You kind of proved my point.

And to me that is less interesting than the struggles that humanity has yet to face. Fantasy is backward thinking, reveling in and codifying ignorance, whereas Sci-Fi is forward thinking and progressive. It's why fantasy rarely if ever tackles complex philosophical issues, whereas Sci-Fi is full of such things.

Hand-waving away the 'how' does not prevent you from exploring the consequences.

Just the existence of the Exos and the Awoken raises many good Sci-Fi questions.

The Exos represent the shunning of biology in favour of machinery. The ultimate stage in the process of cyberization that is already happening today. While the Awoken represent another potential future: biological modification to survive in outer space.

Robots are not fantasy. They can potentially exist, and in fact DO exist now.

I think it does, otherwise you wouldn't assume that our "old" challenges are substantially different from our "new" challenges. Your language gives you away. Your perspective of history colors your perception of a genre of fiction. A fan of literary fiction could be just as dismissive of your preferred genre, and say it only pretends to be more realistic.

It has nothing to do with old vs new. Many old problems are yet unsolved, although many are. The problem is with the mindset that goes into each genre. It's a question of direction. Fantasy dwells on the misconceptions and stumblings of the past (superstition, outdated beliefs and traditions, etc), and in many cases celebrates them, actually impeding our progress as a species, whereas Sci-Fi typically revels in the advancement of humanity in the future.

This does not presuppose anything about tech level or space ships or any of that. There are many great works that are forward thinking in which the character is on a horse. They are mostly westerns, rather than fantasies though. I would say that yes, technology often IS at the center of Sci-Fi, only because these are the issues we will face in the coming years!

How stuff works is exactly not the point with Mythic Sci-Fi.

Have you ever enjoyed ancient mythological stories, or rich fantasy epics like Tolkien's, or even the classic Star Wars? The thing in common between them is the crafting of stories with epic overarching themes, emotions and metaphors about the struggles of humanity through the ages.

And to me that is less interesting than the struggles that humanity has yet to face. Fantasy is backward thinking, reveling in and codifying ignorance, whereas Sci-Fi is forward thinking and progressive. It's why fantasy rarely if ever tackles complex philosophical issues, whereas Sci-Fi is full of such things.

I feel like I've read this somewhere before... Oh yeah! I had no clue what you meant back and still don't now. A story doesn't forfeit addressing complex issues just because the primary mode of travel is a horse instead of a starship.

Right. Cody's thesis presupposes that the humans in spaceships are fundamentally different beings than the humans on horseback.

It does not.

I think it does, otherwise you wouldn't assume that our "old" challenges are substantially different from our "new" challenges. Your language gives you away. Your perspective of history colors your perception of a genre of fiction. A fan of literary fiction could be just as dismissive of your preferred genre, and say it only pretends to be more realistic. A poet might say that the most devout practitioners of your favored genre lack a capacity for metaphor, or they unfairly discount the treasures that can be gleaned when the human imagination is unbound from the constraints of scientific "objectivity." You privilege one mode of knowing, and assume it has no limitations of its own. We probably can't have a full-throated discussion about this without getting into philosophical differences that would take us places we can't really go on this forum. Perhaps it's best just to say that I think understand your perspective, and I have a different one.

P.S. you can do Sci-Fi without spaceships.

Sure.

How stuff works is exactly not the point with Mythic Sci-Fi.

Have you ever enjoyed ancient mythological stories, or rich fantasy epics like Tolkien's, or even the classic Star Wars? The thing in common between them is the crafting of stories with epic overarching themes, emotions and metaphors about the struggles of humanity through the ages.

And to me that is less interesting than the struggles that humanity has yet to face. Fantasy is backward thinking, reveling in and codifying ignorance, whereas Sci-Fi is forward thinking and progressive. It's why fantasy rarely if ever tackles complex philosophical issues, whereas Sci-Fi is full of such things.

I feel like I've read this somewhere before... Oh yeah! I had no clue what you meant back and still don't now. A story doesn't forfeit addressing complex issues just because the primary mode of travel is a horse instead of a starship.

Right. Cody's thesis presupposes that the humans in spaceships are fundamentally different beings than the humans on horseback.

It does not.

P.S. you can do Sci-Fi without spaceships.

How about the Marathons?

I think those are mostly in the "What If?" camp because of how central AI Rampancy is to the story. It's tackling the same question of AI supremacy that the first two Terminator movies touched on and Asimov wrote his stories around.

That is exactly what I loved about the Marathons, exploring AI's becoming more than just an AI (and add in a few other things, concerns they might have about death/end of the universe).

I have really enjoyed the first camp, Asimov, Vinge, Arther C. Clark, etc. I really like the "What If" SciFi, not to say that I don't occasionally really enjoy the second camp on occasion. I'd say there's plenty of stories/books/games/whatever that have a foot firmly planted in each of the two camps, I feel like Halo is part of that inbetween group.

What camp would you put Halo in (& do the sequels get different placement)?

Oh, man, the answer to that could take me all day to type up. For starters, that classification isn't rigorous. I mean, this is literature and storytelling, there are no rules.

In my previous post, I hinted at Halo when I said "What if there was an ancient galaxy-spanning civilization of Humans that mysteriously disappeared and new alien races grew up worshiping their remains?" The Halo games (And I'm just talking about the Bungie trilogy) are fun stories that explore that question, and the related question of "How could such a powerful race disappear?" Halo 1 attacked that question, Halo 2 approached it from a different angle vis-à-vis the Covenant Schism. Halo 3 basically wrapped it up and clarified how the Forerunner disappeared.

Halo Wars belongs firmly in the second camp, as does ODST and Reach.

Halo 4, I think, tried to explore the same question that the original trilogy did, with the new question of "What if a member of that ancient civilization survived to the present?" It failed because it changed the framework of the question to "What if a galaxy-spanning species vaguely related to humans, but with a deep grudge against us, mysteriously disappeared and new alien races grew up worshiping their remains?"

It also failed to reasonably extrapolate the abilities of that long-vanished race. The result is basically what you'd get if it was handled by Marvel or DC. "What if a member of that alien race survived? Superman would punch him in the face until he went away."

I guess it's possible to ask a question and fail to satisfactorily answer it.

How about the Marathons?

I think those are mostly in the "What If?" camp because of how central AI Rampancy is to the story. It's tackling the same question of AI supremacy that the first two Terminator movies touched on and Asimov wrote his stories around.

I liked the first one best but I liked the rest of the trilogy as well.

It was a good story, written by a good author, in desperate need of a great editor.

I mostly asked because it had the best treatment of souls that I've read in science fiction. The discovery of souls changed everything in the story, but it was treated as an insufficiently-understood scientific phenomenon instead of a mystical part of ourselves beyond the ken of science. And it managed to explore the idea without ramming its head up its own ass like Xenocide did, so bonus points for that.

I think the narrative of Destiny needs to be more present (or if not, many more missions of the current style to enable the world to feel more dynamic and extensive), but the universe they've created is very strong and alluring to me. It's far more interesting than Halo's was at CE's release and has the potential to go all kinds of places and do all kinds of things without breaking it.

What you call plot-holes, I call spaces for speculation. Where you feel you can't reason, I can imagine and don't even feel the need to reason. A lot of it comes from your opinion and experiences with the game. I've had a lot of fun with the game and reading the Grimoire so instead of looking the unknowns as a negative, I look at them with a fun speculation. It's like any book or movie, really. If the writer can catch your interest, it doesn't have to explain every little thing to be fulfilling. I think these debates often just boil down to varying personal experiences, and not the work itself.

Reason, logic, they are but one of our mental facilities, and when taken to the extreme, they can turn thoughts to redundant absurdity. Even the best works of science fiction have holes in it and can be picked apart to nonsense if the reader is in the mood. Because both sci-fi and fantasy require leaps to exist. If they could be fully explained, Arthur C. Clarke would be only a scientist with a proven thesis, not a conjurer and forward-thinker. A fitting phrase for this sort of continual deconstruction is "turtles all the way down"...

Which is funny/interesting as that's a myth (turtle carrying the world upon its shoulders) and yet we've used it to help explain an issue we experience. It's like... fantasy, man!

Instead of Star Trek's often fantasy-technobable, we have a more mythological vocabulary with Destiny. They seem barely different to me. And both can be convincing. You look at Jack Vance's Dying Earth stories and you see the two vocabularies morph into one - technology taken to extreme speculation where it has becomes magic and powerful aliens become gods.

I think we need more mixing of the pot, more entries in the vague spaces between genres. Destiny's universe and style feels fresh to me in this way, and I'm hoping Bungie can craft some fulfilling narratives with the tools they've built. I know I've got some fun comics already in my head with the Crucible factions stabbing each other in the back, Exo manipulations, Fallen origin stories. If only I had a time machine. Or a wand. Or both. :)