Wednesday, July 09, 2008

Science vs Magic in Fiction

IO9 takes on one of my pet peeves - What makes Science Fiction, science fiction. When is it Magic and when is it Science so to speak.

The article I think, states my thoughts on the subject very nicely:
  • One of the biggest debates among people who like scfi is where to draw the line between science and magic. Some adhere to the idea that magic is simply science that we don't yet understand, others feel that magic represents an essential mystery that can't be understood rationally. Of course the other big dividing line between magic and science has to do with genre: magic appears mostly in fantasy stories, and science (of course) in science fiction.
Authors like Elizabeth Bear, Ted Chiang, Stephen Hunt and others comment on the ongoing "discussion" Click the article title to go to the complete article in IO9

No comments: