/lit/ - Literature

[Anonymous No.2348831]

Does /lit/ like sci-fi?

[Anonymous No.2348835]

No, I prefer SF and science fiction.

[Anonymous No.2348839]

>>2348831
I like it better than most fantasy, if that means anything for you.

[Anonymous No.2348841]

Heinlein is always fun if you're in the mood for a light read.

[Anonymous No.2348845]

>>2348839
Science fiction is not fantasy. The two are distinct.

[Anonymous No.2348851]

>>2348845
Dude it's the same thing, one is in the future, one is in the past. Duh.

[Anonymous No.2348853]

>>2348851

0/10.

[Anonymous No.2348859]

>>2348851

Generally (good) science fiction and fantasty is about building a world in which the human condition can be explored from outside of our own context. The difference being that proper SF does so by extrapolating our current understanding of the universe, and will attempt to maintain a degree of scientific plausibility (FTL being a major exception in many cases, see Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space series). A great example of this plausibility is Niven's Ringworld, where after it's publication, engineers in universities all over the US crunched the numbers and declared it to be unstable, leading to corrections (and some retcon) in later novels.

Fantasy on the other hand does not have to adhere in any way to plausibility, that is in my mind the greatest deleniation between the two genres. Which is why I boil red when people refer to Star Wars as Sci-Fi.

[Anonymous No.2348889]

>>2348859
Do you "boil red" when people call The Time Machine sci-fi?

[Anonymous No.2348907]

>>2348889

You view to view science fiction through the eyes of someone living in the era that the book was written. The time machine was written in 1895, when humans were only beginning to explore the concept of time in an abstract manner. So yes, it is most certanly science fiction.

A more recent example is Stranger in a Strange Land; a book about a human raised from infancy by martians. The very idea is preposterous when read in an era where we have robots crawling the surface mars. However, in 1961 we had no means of observing mars beyond terrestrial telescopes, it wasn't until the advent of orbital telescopes that we started to develop an understand of Mars.

[Anonymous No.2348927]

http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/22579

"Bread Overhead" by Fritz Leiber. Best non-Futurama episode ever?

[Anonymous No.2349063]

Greg Egan - Axiomatic
Greg Egan - Luminous
Greg Egan - Oceanic

[Anonymous No.2349077]

hey lit care to list all the good SF books i just finished the song of ice and fire series (whats out so far) and im looking to take a bit out of something different than fantasy

[Anonymous No.2349774]

>>2349077

What are you in the mood for?

Classic golden age stuff, epic-scale, hard science fiction, space opera, adventure? Light or heavy?

[Anonymous No.2349793]

I just finished reading Ender's Game and The Speaker of the Dead. I've heard terrible things about the next two books, are they worth reading?

[Anonymous No.2349954]

>>2349793
Most certainly. They're very different to Ender's Game, but if you enjoyed Speaker you should like them.

I loved them for their biological intrigues. The end was a little deus ex machina, but it sufficed.

[Anonymous No.2349964]

>>2348831
That boat is absolutely HUGE. You can see him floating along that peninsula and second and yet the land doesn't show much, like even the beaches and rocks and possible trees or animals or buildings were all too small to be seen.

[Anonymous No.2349968]

>>2349964

You just ruined that painting for me.

[Anonymous No.2349999]

Pic pretty accurately describes current dialogue.

[Anonymous No.2350007]

>>2349964
It's sci-fi, man. Who's to say we haven't developed a fuckhuge ocean liner in the future?

[Anonymous No.2350030]

Neuromancer is fucking amazing

[Anonymous No.2350038]

>>2348851
Dumb as fuck.

[Anonymous No.2350095]

>>2350030
only molly

[Anonymous No.2350117]

>>2349964
Even more scary the captain is Italian

[Anonymous No.2350124]

>>2350117
Too soon. I died on that ship.