Phlegmatic

It doesn't help to start a discussion, but I agree. Overly 'hard' SF can (in my view) get really tedious.

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It seems to be a big problem in modern SF literature that there is too much hard science and not enough adventure. That and the modern SF books all seem to be enormous. Peter F. Hamilton, Alastair Reynolds - I'm looking at you.

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How about realistic social science? I ask this since someone is making a film of Foundation, and I remember you expressing strong views on psychohistory in the past.

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What were those views?

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Without wishing to put words into skordh's mouth (or indeed bunn's), they both felt that psychohistory was too far-fetched a concept for them to enjoy the fiction. I took the opposite view and felt that psychohistory worked as a high-tech evolution of modern economics in much the same way as say warp drive works as a high-tech evolution of modern rocketry.

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I may well have said that or given the impression of having that view some time ago, but I have always been a big fan of the Foundation books (well, up to and including "Second Foundation" anyway). Psychohistory seems to me a bit implausable but a very entertaining concept and some of the stories are great. (I like The Mule especially). Asimov himself seems to have wilted a bit under criticism and later wrote Prelude To Foundation where he addressed the criticisms of psychohistory from the perspective of chaos theory etc... and 'demonstrated' in the fictional future that psychohistory would work anyway (I believe - many years since I read that one).

I also really like Ursula Le Guin's 'Ekumen' SF books and they too arise from social sciences insofar as they come from anywhere. The 'hard' SF elements don't get much explanation and the characters, atmosphere, cultures and societies are to the fore.

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bunn.livejournal.com

I could cheerfully suspend disbelief for a better writer with a better story to tell, but I just don't find Asimov a compelling enough story teller and I think his characters are mostly just a bit too tedious and cardboardy.

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Thanks for that. I am with you on this one, but I can see the other point of view.

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I once came across a ?1950s essay by Patrick Moore, where he was advocating a sort of "quality mark" for scientifically literate sf.

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purplecat

I once read a description of the difference between Science Fiction and Fantasy which ran "In Science Fiction you can have mermaids if there is a good reason for your world to have mermaids. In Fantasy mermaids, bless 'em, just are."

I'm not sure the "reason" has to be totally scientifically plausible. But I think I prefer my science fiction to at least attempt to signal somehow whether it's extrapolating from known science or just making stuff up. It's when the latter is mistaken for the former that a lot of confusion arises that can be damaging to science. Hollywood films are usually clearly making stuff up, even the ones that don't call themselves Science Fiction.

There's also the "bounce you out of the fiction" problem. When something in a story is "just wrong" it can be very distracting and difficult to overlook especially if the bit that is wrong is related to something you are passionate about. People who are keen on history have similar problems with a lot of historical fiction that scientists do with a lot of mainstream SF.

I don't know quite what the answer is. It's difficult to know what someone is going to find distractingly out of place, or consider damagingly misleading.

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Your point about history is an interesting one. Mistakes in history do bother me a lot more. I can't explain why.

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Yes I feel that sometimes, and try & overcome it. I like "Jonathan Strange and Mr Norell" but occasionally the descriptions of early 19th century politics seem wrong to me. On the other hand, it's an alternate world so I should probably just simmer down and enjoy the story.

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What's that film where a Royal Navy submarine that captured an Enigma machine is replaced by a US navy submarine? That sort of thing bothers me.

But then I also think that adaptations of Shakespeare plays should use approriate costumes and not modern clothes. So what do I know? (Not that I'm into Shakespeare.)

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I've seen a number of Shakespeare adaptation (both stage and screen) that used modern clothes, or more modern than circa 1600. I'm quite confident in saying that the period of the costume is probably less important than the quality of the adaptation and the quality of the acting.

As an example, take a look at Ian McKellen's Richard III, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0114279/ This is one of the best adaptations of the play that I've seen, and I've seen about half-a-dozen different ones, only one of which I haven't got on with. The classic line, A horse, a horse, my kingdom for a horse works really well in the context. (RIII is a favourite of mine.)

One Shakespeare adaptation where the costume failed miserably was Henry IV (parts one and two) put on by the Chicago Shakespeare Company (I think it was that, it was certainly Chicago). What they got wrong was using modern fabrics for period clothes and imitation Laurence Olivier wigs for all the nobles. But it was also let down by the acting. It was dire.

For the record I also intensely dislike instances of US navy submarines being used in film when Royal Navy submarines should have been used, and similar.

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I think how scientific the science needs to be depends on the time period of the setting. If it's current or near future then I want the science to resemble current science. If it's further in the future, or involving more advanced aliens (etc.) then it can be more fanciful.

The three examples given in the BBC article you referenced would have been sufficiently far fetched for me to be less happy with the film. Indeed the third one I avoided the film because the science was just plain wrong!

All that said, I'm quite happy for Stargate to have it's stargate, and for Star Trek to have transporters and replicators, and Firefly to have its Terra-forming.

I do take CSI's (and similar) enhancing of images with a pinch of salt, but that doesn't particularly bother me most of the time, though I do grumble about it occasionally.

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I think a version of Deep Blue Sea where they grew the serum in a lab rather than in super-intelligent sharks would have been somewhat shorter and a lot more boring :-) I was quite happy to suspend my disbelief.

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I'm not familiar with the film at all, so it's difficult to comment to that level, but I suspect you're right! Sometimes one has to suspend disbelief to get anything out of the film (or book). I suspect I would have avoided that film for much the same reason as I avoided the third.

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You're not familiar with Deep Blue Sea?

It's a pretty crap film with only one memorable scene. Admittedly that one scene features a dripping wet Saffron Burrows in her underwear electrocuting a giant frickin' shark, but it's still only one scene...

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*heads off to Amazon to order the DVD*

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I agree that internal consistency is paramount. This holds as much in fantasy as in science fiction. You can make up magic that does anything whatsoever you like, but once you've made up your magic system, it has to work consistently.

I also agree with Louise with the point about some errors being more damaging than others. It's like in historical novels/movies. Showing someone in Britain eating a variety of vegetable 25 years before it was introduced to the country doesn't damage anyone, but twisting history in order to portray one nationality or group as entirely in the wrong does have real world implications.

Strangely, I'm more tolerant of stupid science when it's the main premise of the plot than when it's a small detail. When it's the central premise, then the whole film becomes a case of, "okay, so this couldn't happen... but what would it be like if it did?" I like my crazy and ridiculous premise to be upfront... but then to evolve sensibly from then on, following a consistent logic that flows from the crazy premise. What I particularly hate is when a story has made moderate sense almost until the end, and then introduces some crazy impossibility to get the characters out of their sticky situation.

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*nods*

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bunn.livejournal.com

I think the vegetable thing is because you don't care about vegetables anyway...

Frodo and Sam walking through a field of maize was really painful for me, and I was so glad that they re-did the scene right at the end with Sam and the petunias for the DVD.

Strangely those two things bothered me far more than much more major rewritings...

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Actually, the vegetables thing would bother me (assuming that I noticed it), but for a different reason - i.e. the "not bothering to do research" reason mentioned below. I've written AU fanfics set in various historical periods, and every few paragraphs I paused to quickly find the name of a period-appropriate herb, or to check something about clothing or internal decor or food or whatever. It's so easy to do, and because I bother to do it when writing "just" fanfic, it really irritates me when professional authors and their editors don't bother in something they're going to charge people to read. (Although I'm more tolerant of errors in movies than in books, since they have to physically find props and locations. It's easier to write an authentic medieval garden than to find one to film in.)

However, it's more a case of me going "Grr!" at the laziness of the author, rather than me getting incandescent with rage, which I do at the merest mention of films like Braveheart or that WW2 submarine thing.

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Ansible has (had) a link to a website that picked films etc up on typography from the wrong period.

ETA: Ah, here we are -

http://www.ms-studio.com/typecasting.html

It happens in real life, too. There's an edition of Tolkien's "The Devil's Coach-Horses" where the typeface contradicts the date on the cover.

Oh well, on with the AoCiCR!

Edited Date: 2010-02-24 05:27 pm (UTC)

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That's wonderful!

Pure geek awe.

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And one more thing: I'm much more tolerant in cases when the author has apparently gone "No, I know that this probably could never happen... but what if it it did?" than when the author hasn't bothered to do even the most simple research. Lack of research annoys me - e.g. American films (or books) which are set in Britain, but clearly haven't bothered to glance at a map of the place, and have people walking from Scotland to London in a day. Such things are so easy to get right, so getting them wrong shows either laziness, or a "it doesn't matter" attitude.

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*nods* some more.

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Eg landing at Dover, and walking to Nottingham via Hadrian's wall. Or driving from London to North Yorkshire, having a drink and then heading back home.

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bunn.livejournal.com

Oooh, now in a nicely bad film I like that sort of thing. It jars in a 'good' film, but in a film that contains suitable numbers of explosions, terrible accents, bad special effects, appalling costumes, dying people in red jumpers and cries of 'we've gotta get out of here' it's nice to have those extra 'bad research' boxes ticked...

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The director who was heard to ask why one of the Tracey brothers in the Thunderbirds film couldn't be black ...

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I read that as "dyeing people in red jumpers". Is this a desperate last-ditch attempt by people in red jumpers to avoid their fate by leaping into a vat of blue dye? Or do captains chuck anyone they consider disposable into a vat of red dye just before the battle, to ensure that they only lose people they can spare?

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Me too!

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