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Does the quality of the science fiction bother people?

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re: Does the quality of the science fiction bother people?

Postby jo » March 21st, 2006, 4:06 pm

"I saw it begin,” said the Lord Digory. “I did not think I would live to see it die"

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About how the cience fiction books starte??

Postby Friend » November 17th, 2006, 6:02 am

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Postby Biff » November 17th, 2006, 7:00 am

"With hindsight perhaps it wasn't a good idea, oh well must be my hind cataracts..." Prof H.J. Farnsworth

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Postby The Pfifltrigg » November 19th, 2006, 8:39 pm

I'm bugged when the details are glaringly inaccurate in a story I read (or watch on television: see below) unless they're the sort of details that aren't supposed to be accurate. The fact that there's no "Edgestow" or "Cure Hardy" on the maps of England I can find, or that there are no "Canals" on Mars or that Weston's ship looks like nothing NASA (or the Russians) ever launched is less of an issue to this reader than when "Abu" is treated as a given name (S. R. Lawhead's Celtic Crusades, book #3--- in Arabic, "Abu" means "father of" and would be followed by the man's oldest son's name, as in "Abu Ismeel" or such) or the kid brother in a CSI episode turns out to have "told off" his older bro and just ordered him to go home (supposedly kid bro pulls a gun on Mom's boyfriend, who pulls a knife: when big bro tries to intervene he's accidentally stabbed, then kid shoots the boyfriend and tells his brother to "just go home"; of course, the bro's also mortally wounded, yada yada yada... :rolleyes: They get the forensics right but the psycology of the character relationships isn't worth a tin nickel.)

As to Haldane's review: "Mr. Lewis’s idea is clear enough. The application of science to human affairs can only lead to hell." Here is a man who most singularly, distinctly, definitively does not get it. He says later on that "Parenthetically, I should have thought the most striking character of a language used by sinless beings who loved their neighbours as themselves would have been the absence of any equivalent of the word “my” and very probably of the word “I,” and of other personal pronouns and inflexions," and the first thing that comes to mind is from Lewis himself (in MC or SbJ, I think, or perhaps AoM), and his decisive distinction between "unselfishness" and Christian love.
False ideas may be refuted indeed by argument, but by true ideas alone are they expelled. — Apologia Pro Vita Sua: Cardinal Newman
Freedom lost and then regained bites with deeper fangs than freedom never in danger. — Cicero
You don't have to burn books to destroy a culture. Just get people to stop reading them. — Ray Bradbury
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Postby Erekose » November 24th, 2006, 9:12 pm

Call yourself a dog???? I've seen better hair on a lavatory brush!!!
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Re: About how the cience fiction books starte??

Postby a_hnau » November 26th, 2006, 8:20 pm

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Postby Mornche Geddick » September 10th, 2008, 4:43 pm

Bad science in an old SF novel does not bother me - for example in Brave New World the "science" of the hatcheries has a certain retro charm for me. What does annoy me is modern SF using old science because the writer is lazy - for example in the new Dr Who series the villains are still injecting experimental subject with "modified DNA". Come on! What about stem cells, synthetic viruses or RNAi?
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Postby archenland_knight » September 15th, 2008, 10:20 pm

I think the only people who are bothered by the less than perfect science are people who don't get the meaning of "Science Fiction". The science of the Cosmic Trilogy was no worse for the 1930's than the science of Star Wars is for today. It was no worse than the science of Star Trek TOS was for the 1960's.

Not too long ago I read through a rather large volume entitled "The Short Stories of Arthur C. Clarke". In the introduction, Clarke himself refers to Lewis as an "excellent writer of both fantasy and science fiction." If the science wasn't bad enough to bother Arthur C. Clarke, it's not bad enough to bother me!

Also, with all due respect to Clarke, who was an excellent writer by almost any standard, he was, at least in his later days, just downright hostile to religion of any sort. For Clarke to view works with such obvious religious overtones as Perelandra and OTSP as "Excellent science fiction" really demonstrates just how good they are. Or maybe, in Clarke's mind, the religious elements were just as much a part of the fiction as was Merlin's involvement. :thinking:
Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
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Postby Bill » September 19th, 2008, 10:34 am

Time is the fire in which we burn!

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Postby archenland_knight » September 19th, 2008, 4:15 pm

Romans 5:8 "But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us."
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Postby Bill » September 19th, 2008, 9:13 pm

Correct!

With regard to your last question, not the faintest idea :toothy-grin:

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Postby Erekose » September 23rd, 2008, 9:59 pm

Call yourself a dog???? I've seen better hair on a lavatory brush!!!
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Postby Áthas » September 26th, 2008, 12:38 pm

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Postby Bill » October 11th, 2008, 9:16 pm

Time is the fire in which we burn!

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Postby rusmeister » October 13th, 2008, 1:38 am

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