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Is it Sci-Fi?
- Thread starter slobake
- Start date
My car is kinda scifi compared to what I thought scifi was as a kid. Just doesn't fly yet. But I hear he's working on that.... 
I personally can't stand the sub genre bit--it gets way out of hand. I lump all of it into sci-fi ( or science fiction or SF or science-fantasy or whatever) The Hobbit? Alas Babylon? The Elric Saga? Songs Of Distant Earth? All sci-fi as far as I'm concerned.
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A lot of sci-fi doesn't "violate the laws of physics." The Martian, Sunshine, Bladerunner...
Is it a Plymouth Satellite?My car is kinda scifi compared to what I thought scifi was as a kid. Just doesn't fly yet. But I hear he's working on that....
I enjoy Sci-Fi, Science Fiction, Fantasy and all kinds of fiction. Some things a very thought provoking and some things are bubble gum. Some lit is also very funny. I like all types and I don't take genre categories too seriously.
I realize that genres are good tools though. Those tools can help when we are looking for something to read or watch.
I realize that genres are good tools though. Those tools can help when we are looking for something to read or watch.
I think some fans take things way too seriously. I have noticed this in the Star Trek series and the Star Wars series. It is fiction after all.
"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Arthur C Clarke
Faster than at the speed of light?
(I hope I am not violating a rule by posting music that lacks a bass, only synth/keyboard left hand)
edit - correct lyric
Correct. In fact, if significant points in the story clearly violate known laws of physics, then it's not qualified to be called science fiction -- it's fantasy.
Invoking the paranormal and supernatural to advance the plot is a dead giveaway.
There are exceptions. The major one being faster than light travel (FTL). Since human colonization of space is central to so much of SF, FTL has been given a lifetime pass.
Is FTL travel a violation of the laws of physics or is it something we still need to learn? Is there something specific in the laws of physics that FTL violates?
Thanks, I'll take my answer off the air.
Is FTL travel a violation of the laws of physics or is it something we still need to learn? Is there something specific in the laws of physics that FTL violates?
Thanks, I'll take my answer off the air.
Yes. I forget the details, but very strange things start to happen when particles are accelerated to speeds that could be reasonably compared to light speed. We don’t have a way to accelerate matter to that speed, but everything we know indicates that an object attaining lightspeed would experience super weird quantum effects that make lightspeed travel impossible for all practical purposes.
I don’t know anything about the state of Trek fandom these days, but Star Wars fandom has become increasingly awful since Disney started putting the movies out. I’ve been a Star Wars fan literally my entire life (my first memory is of seeing the first film from the back seat of my parents’ car at the drive-in) and even so I’ve started downplaying my love for the franchise. I just don’t want to be associated with the creeps who seem to be driving the fandom now. Lots of weird woman-hating going on there, as well as a dash of white supremacy. Gross.
Is FTL travel a violation of the laws of physics or is it something we still need to learn? Is there something specific in the laws of physics that FTL violates?
Thanks, I'll take my answer off the air.
A fundamental property of the universe is that only massless particles may travel at the speed of light. Photons have no mass and therefore are able to move at that speed.
This limit is well established and has been so thoroughly tested that there is virtually no chance that it will turn out to be wrong.
Having said that, it's conceivable future scientists may discover some way of traveling great distances without actually moving at light speed. In that case, we'd still be right about the light speed limit, but perhaps find a way to get around it.
In SF practice, most FTL drives are assumed to be exactly that. Maybe we've discovered wormholes in space that allow us to take shortcuts by manipulating the shape of extra-dimensional space. We might then make a "doorway" somewhere close by (like say in orbit above the Earth) and then connect it to another doorway that opens up somewhere far away, where we want to travel (perhaps in the Andromeda galaxy, 2 million light years away).
The problem is, not only don't we know how to do this, but it looks increasingly like this scheme may be just as impossible as light speed travel itself.
