Space Opera vs Hard Sci-Fi, personal vs realistic

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Earther

There's hard sci-fi and there's high fantasy. In between them is space opera. Not much more to say. Pick one to use in GURPS.

I don't think there's a single continuum with Hard Sci-Fi at one end and High Fantasy at the other, with Space Opera in the middle. It's a lot more complicated than that. Each genre is marked by a number of common tropes, but they can be mixed and matched to a great degree, resulting in settings that don't fit any one category. Saying "pick one" is excluding a lot of other settings. Also, a large part of this thread has been discussion of what these distinctive genre conventions actually are - such as the prevalence of thinly justified superscience (Star Trek) or magic (Star Wars), the focus on the personal, political and/or societal scale, etc. Let's not be too hastily in making sweeping generalizations.

[Earther]

Originally Posted by JCurwen3

I agree about the need of the dictatorship, but I don't think you'd need one for long. The ideal would be a benevolent dictatorship that, for two or three generations, separated children from their parents, and encouraged and educated different, more hopeful, forward-thinking, dissociative, individualistic, skeptical values, in such a way that the infectious cultural hangovers and baggage of the past didn't get passed on and on and on. Then, set up a constitution in a constrained version of the language (whatever language) that prevents most ambiguities and has more laws about what kinds of laws...

1) Dictators don't give up their power.

2) Hitler was a huge fan of Hitler Youth.

3) Constitutions are not followed.

[Earther]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

I don't think there's a single continuum with Hard Sci-Fi at one end and High Fantasy at the other, with Space Opera in the middle. It's a lot more complicated than that. Each genre is marked by a number of common tropes, but they can be mixed and matched to a great degree, resulting in settings that don't fit any one category. Saying "pick one" is excluding a lot of other settings. Also, a large part of this thread has been discussion of what these distinctive genre conventions actually are - such as the prevalence of thinly justified superscience (Star Trek) or magic (Star Wars), the focus on the personal, political and/or societal scale, etc. Let's not be too hastily in making sweeping generalizations.

If you want to be technical, there's actually no science in sci-fi anymore.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Earther

If you want to be technical, there's actually no science in sci-fi anymore.

Care to explain what you mean by that?

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

Care to explain what you mean by that?

Most of modern sci if I've seen has just been magic with technobabble or X IN SPACE. Not bad, but not really science-y.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Most of modern sci if I've seen has just been magic with technobabble or X IN SPACE. Not bad, but not really science-y.

The most recent science fiction books I've read have been posthumanist stuff. And while it makes some assumptions that I feel are optimistic, they aren't "magic with technobabble" like you find in Star Trek.

In fact, my long-time favorite science fiction series would probably have to be Ghost in the Shell. Again, it makes optimistic assumptions about cyber technology, and exercises some cinematic liscense with the narrative and action, but there's little in it that could be considerd superscience.

[Flyndaran]

I guess I have been out of the loop on modern sci fi books.
Transhumanism often comes off as insulting with how easy they think radical genetic engineering is and will be. They are still learning new things about basic inheritance that keeps adding complexity to the "system".

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

Most of modern sci if I've seen has just been magic with technobabble or X IN SPACE. Not bad, but not really science-y.

What do you mean by "seen"? Are you talking about visual media, or about actual books?

Bill Stoddard

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Earther

There's hard sci-fi and there's high fantasy. In between them is space opera. Not much more to say. Pick one to use in GURPS.

I'm not going to get into a definitional argument with you, as I defined what exactly I was asking for in the OP. Moreover, your statement is wildly optimisti. It's not enough to slap a label on something if you don't design it properly.

For example, let's say we allow disintegrators and force swords in our "Space Pirates With Laser Cutlass Space Opera." What you'll actually find, before long, is that people who use force swords will die while people who use disintegrators will thrive and win. So you can tell people what your intentions are, but unless you make your mechanics support your intention, you'll have a problem.

And the problem here is that Ultra-Tech mechanics tend to favor long-ranged combat, push-button warfare, and high levels of automation which tend to eliminate the "personal" and immediate element so common in the popular conception (or, more specifically, the definition of space opera for the purpose of this thread) of space opera. Thus, the thread.

Telling me "Just call it space opera" is useless if you don't have mechanics to back up the space opera label (or better, suggestions for the sorts of mechanics that support space opera).

Unless you mean to suggest that space opera cannot possibly have the same level of verisimilitude as hard sci-fi, in which case I disagree with you.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I'm not going to get into a definitional argument with you, as I defined what exactly I was asking for in the OP. Moreover, your statement is wildly optimisti. It's not enough to slap a label on something if you don't design it properly.

I realize that we've drifted pretty far from your original question, which had to do with how to tweak the technology, powers and rules used in a setting to achieve a desired feel. Are there aspects of this that you feel haven't been addressed yet? If so, perhaps you could restate them so we can steer this thread back on track.

For example, let's say we allow disintegrators and force swords in our "Space Pirates With Laser Cutlass Space Opera." What you'll actually find, before long, is that people who use force swords will die while people who use disintegrators will thrive and win. So you can tell people what your intentions are, but unless you make your mechanics support your intention, you'll have a problem.

Oh man, don't get me started on disintegrators. They're a device that shows up with with relative frequency in Space Opera - or at least, weapons in Space Opera are frequently capable of causing whole-body disintegration of their targets. However, to achieve this UT makes the weapons so ludicrously powerful that they can't help but become the ultimate tool of destruction. This is counter to how they are generally portrayed in Space Opera fiction, in which "disintegrators" tend to be just like any other gun, except if they kill their target they get a cool-looking special effect that leaves no messy corpse.

And the problem here is that Ultra-Tech mechanics tend to favor long-ranged combat, push-button warfare, and high levels of automation which tend to eliminate the "personal" and immediate element so common in the popular conception (or, more specifically, the definition of space opera for the purpose of this thread) of space opera. Thus, the thread.

Let's see. I think Force Screens have already been mentioned, as have legal restrictions, cultural trends and wide-spread ECM / Stealth. Any other options you think need to be addressed further?