Look for my next story, “Endless Visions”, in your email next Sunday!
In the meantime…
In what terms do we talk about Sci Fi?
Hello, and welcome to the first edition of OGWiseman Explains!, another of the ongoing series which will make up the non-story weeks of my newsletter. In this series, I’ll be writing essay-ish sorts of things that are intended to be light and fun. (There will be another series later for more serious (pretentious) writing on the subject.)
In this edition, I’ll answer the above question, because it’s my newsletter and there’s no editor to stop me from being so presumptuous. Thus, mad with power, I endeavor to do that most fraught of human intellectual activities: Explain Art.
First off: I’d like to note again that I’m using “sci fi” as a very expansive term that encompasses science fiction, fantasy, historical fiction, speculative fiction, and a lot else. It’s just short and user-friendly.
Second note: All these distinctions exist on a continuum. I’m using some outlier examples for clarity, but there are exceptions and middle ground all over.
Thirdly: These definitions are not fixed or universally agreed-upon. One reason I’m defining them here is that this is how *I* will use them in this newsletter moving forward.
And now, having hemmed and hawed, I begin in earnest…
HARD SCI FI vs. SOFT SCI FI
(Spoilers throughout, though I’ve tried to pick things that are older and/or famous.)
Andy Weir, who wrote the book “The Martian” that became the Matt Damon movie, is a computer scientist whose parents are an electrical engineer and a particle physicist. He spent 5 years researching every aspect of the book, and, if interviews with him and other convincingly nerdy scientists are to be believed, it’s all 100% possible based on current technology.
Note that realistic does not mean likely! The Martian is not likely at all. It posits a Mars mission where a storm gets bad enough to damage their vehicles but not bad enough to disable them, with a ticking clock that forces the pilot to make a decision to leave someone behind. Then, the strandee is subjected to a series of unlucky breaks, including yet another ill-timed storm that isn’t quite bad enough to kill him, while he crosses a huge chunk of the Martian planetary surface.
The coincidental storms and their just-barely-survivable severity are an obvious plot device. But everything that Mark Watney does in that story—how he makes water and grows food and maintains atmosphere and eventually how he wires up a good enough vehicle to get himself off-world and home—are real science.
And to be fair, if “Apollo 13” wasn’t a famously true story, the entire thing would seem ridiculous! There’s literally a scene in the movie where they have to figure out how to put a square peg in a round hole. You can’t make that up!
Usually improbable, but always explainable. That’s Hard Sci Fi.
Now consider “Back to the Future”.
(New #1 Rule of Time Travel. “Don’t Kill Your Own Grandfather” now demoted to #2.)
In this delightful staple of my childhood, Marty McFly is a high school student, and his best friend is a disgraced nuclear physicist. And, in the immortal words of comedian John Mulaney:
“They don’t even explain how they met! Like not even in a lazy way, like ‘oh, remember when we met in the cafeteria?’, not even that!”
But so the thing is, the failure to explain how Marty and Doc became so chummy really sets the tone for the level of scientific rigor they’re bringing to the screenwriting process in this story.
How does time travel work? Well duh, when the Delorean hits 88 miles per hour, the flux capacitor kicks in and disturbs the time continuum.
What does that mean? Well—look, here comes the time-traveling dog back from the future! No time to explain now… or ever! That’s soft sci fi. What matters is what’s happening and how cool it is, not how the circuitry works.
Important to note here that even soft sci fi must have internal coherence.
Say again, even soft sci fi must obey it’s own internal rules!
When Doc is explaining to Marty “how time travel works”, they spend two sentences on the scientific, outward-facing “explanation” for time travel, but they spend 60 seconds plus on how *the Delorean works to enact time travel*, because those mechanics—how to input the dates and how to trigger the time warp—are internal to the story, and thus important and unbreakable.
(You can tell how much science it has because of the numbers.)
Indeed, in a general sense, the Softer the sci fi story is, the more important internal coherence becomes, because it substitutes for actual scientific rigor in terms of enhancing our ability to suspend disbelief.
This scale works on more fantasy-oriented fare as well. Game of Thrones is pretty Hard, because the details of how castles operate and battles unfold are well thought-out, and unexplained magic is usually secondary in determining outcomes. “Harry Potter”, however, is extremely soft fantasy, as magic is the primary determinant of story outcomes with no explanation offered for the existence of magic (though, crucially, there is a high degree of internal coherence).
NORMAL SCI FI vs. WEIRD SCI FI
Consider again Harry Potter. Great for so many reasons, but for me, the core of the appeal is the way it seems so ordinary. Sure, there’s magic, but really it’s a very specific and time-honored sort of English schoolboy/girl story that we’ve all loved from Charles Dickens to Roald Dahl. It’s got bullies and pranks, evil teachers and good ones, intramural sports, dances, and all the other familiar hallmarks. In other words, it’s extremely *normal*.
(Pictured: Vernon Dursley, Harry’s adoptive father, obviously not aware of my newsletter and therefore a philistine.)
Then there’s a book called “Hyperion”, by Dan Simmons. Essentially it’s Chaucer in Deep Space. Seven pilgrims make their way to a pilgrimage planet inhabited by a god-like monster called The Shrike that will likely destroy them all when they arrive. It’s incredible, but there’s not a recognizable human peccadillo or stock story beat anywhere in the sucker. It’s just completely *weird*.
(Pictured: The Shrike, probably aware of my newsletter.)
Most of the really popular stuff is at least fairly Normal. In fact, it’s hard to think of something that’s achieved true mainstream acceptance while being thoroughly Weird. Certain popular anime are pretty Weird (more specific discussion not available because I’m not a big enough fan). “Mad Max” exists in a pretty weird world, but uses a very simple, very familiar story structure to seem much more Normal. The Matrix is on one level about the very concept of Normality, but is itself very Normal, especially in story structure. The Marvel Cinematic Universe has gotten pretty Weird (Thanos is Weird, especially at first, and everything Asgardian is Weird also), but keep in mind that the saga started out extremely normal indeed. The first Marvel film was about Ironman, a superhero so resolutely Normal he has no superhuman powers, and by the time the saga started to get Weird it already had a massive fan base.
(I can’t write content with pictures of you, Mom. #sorrynotsorry)
Also, stuff can become more Normal over time. Lord of the Rings was very Weird when Tolkien was writing, and now it’s become such a fantasy archetype (plus entered so deeply into the poplar consciousness) that it’s pretty much Normal-ized. Star Wars has followed the same trajectory, although movies—being necessarily visual—are by definition more Normal than books.
PERSONAL SCI FI vs. EPIC SCI FI
Alfred Bester’s masterpiece “The Stars My Destination” really shouldn’t work as a book. It anticipates the cyberpunk movement in some ways—evil mega corporations and a generally dystopian vision—but isn’t as slick as what comes after. It adds to that an element of teleportation and telepathy that breaks its own rules at times, and a sometimes meandering plot that has some truly strange elements.
What makes it a classic instead of a misfire is that it is so incredibly *personal*. The story swirls around Gully Foyle, who starts as a passive, pitiful figure and is awakened to a journey of vengeance when a giant corporation abandons him in deep space. He becomes a “Count of Monte Cristo”, Edmund Dantes figure, tear-assing through dystopia towards his vengeance at such a pace that we forget the small discrepancies and detours before we even have to forgive them.
(Not getting enough of a sense that this guy is angry from just the dutch angle and his glowing red facial scars, could there be flame literally shooting out of his ears?)
On the opposite end of this spectrum we find some of the huge fantasy series—Game of Thrones, obviously, but even more so things like Robert Jordan’s “The Wheel of Time” series. In The Wheel of Time’s 14 main books there are 2,782 (!) distinct, named characters.
(This is a chronological character chart of The Wheel of Time, using just the main characters, and not even all of them, and in order to fit into one image it has to be so small you can’t read it. And that’s the best one I could find. And I looked for a *while*.)
Now just because these books aren’t Personal, doesn’t mean there aren’t great characters. The characters are incredible! But, no single character is the star. The star is the story, the world, or, to put it another way, the star is the Author. In Jordan’s Epic tale, even the primary characters can disappear for chapter after chapter, as we explore secondary and tertiary threads. As Jordan was so fond of reminding us, ‘The Wheel Weaves as the Wheel Wills’.
What makes “Lord of the Rings” still probably the greatest fantasy novel is its ability to synthesize these two approaches. The story is undeniably epic—Tolkien created over a dozen languages in the writing, and the overall timeline spans thousands of years—yet its undeniable center is Sam and Frodo, making their tiny way to Mordor. Unlike Gully Foyle, their mission isn’t vengeance, but it’s still their Personal quest that we follow every step of the way through this Epic world.
(Me, if I was Samwise Gamgee.)
MY FICTION AND THESE CATEGORIES
My Sci Fi works tend to fall in the Soft and Personal categories, with a mix of Normal and Weird depending on what idea I’m working on. BUT! Just because I tend to write Soft and Personal doesn’t mean that’s all I like! I love hard Sci Fi when it’s well-written (Michael Crichton wrote a lot of Hard-ish Sci Fi and he’s one of my all-time favorites), I’m just not a scientist or a doctor so I can’t do that credibly. And I’d like to write something really epic one day, but it’s hard and takes a long time! Robert Jordan started working on the first book of The Wheel of time in 1984 and published it in 1990, then literally died before finishing his magnum opus, requiring a substitute author to complete the work.
(Me, thinking about committing to a multi-book Epic series.)
What really matters to me is that an author—whether it’s me or someone I’m reading—understands what they’re trying to write and honors the conventions of that. There is great Sci Fi with every possible combination of these categories.
Thanks for reading, and look for my third story, “Endless Visions”, hitting your inbox next Sunday, January 31! And of course, if you enjoyed this post, please like it, leave me a comment, and share this post with friends!