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2721560 No.2721560 [Reply] [Original]

Is it possible to take the science fiction genre and apply the same treatment that George RR Martin did to fantasy through his Song of Ice and Fire series?
What I mean by this is take the staples of science fiction and turn them on their heads. Hell, what exactly are considered staples of science fiction? More specifically, sci fi in a futuristic setting.

>> No.2721564

Elaborate on the GRRM bit.

>> No.2721567

GRRM didn't turn fantasy on its head, people have been doing that gritty/realistic style since Tolkien

>> No.2721570

What staples of fantasy did GRRM turn on their heads? Like, really?

>> No.2721573

R.E Howard did a gritty fantasy with a well sculpted world and political intrigue before George RR Martin was even born.

>> No.2721576

First, this, >>2721567, and you've clearly never read sci-fi since it's obvious. The golden age had the reactionary new wave against them, and then we got cyberpunk, and etc

>> No.2721780

GRRM didn't turn fantasy on it's head besides a few small elements (post-magic world which really hadn't been explored as indepth as ASOIAF does) but merely took history and twisted it into fantastical elements (Hadran's Wall = The Wall. War of the Five Kings = War of the Roses).

In that way it'd be a bit harder to twist current elements into something familiar in science fiction, which is why as previous posters have said cyberpunk comes as close to the same kind of affect that GRRM was going for in fantasy. Before cyberpunk science fiction was very utopian, clean, etc. and as Gibson says he just took that and made it in higher resolution so you could see the gloom and grime.

That said, I think there's still space for a sweeping science fiction space opera epic with as many cast members and intricate plots and motivations as ASOIAF, it just hasn't been done yet.

Leviathan Wakes is the first in a series that is trying to do something like that but I think just by the first book alone it's coming up very short.

>> No.2721800

Dune

>> No.2721839

Can't find the quote, but i think it was William Gibson who said that there's no point in writing Sci/Fi set in the future anymore for we lack persistent sense of "now".

Otherwise, This >>2721780

And, read Daniel Suarez's "Daemon" & "Freedom" or Charles Stross's "Accelerando".

>> No.2721855

>That said, I think there's still space for a sweeping science fiction space opera epic with as many cast members and intricate plots and motivations as ASOIAF, it just hasn't been done yet.

Sounds like Legend of the Galactic Heroes to me.

>> No.2721969

>>2721780
>>2721855
Gonna second that.
Definitely sounds like LoGH.

>> No.2721981
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2721981

I think most science fiction is actually fantasy.
Probably Phillip K. Dick and that other polish guy are the only true science fiction writers.

>> No.2721991

>>2721981

well then, that would make you an idiot.

>> No.2721999

>>2721981

>I think most science fiction is actually fantasy.
That's probably correct

>Probably Phillip K. Dick and that other polish guy are the only true science fiction writers.
That's not.

>> No.2722013

>>2721991
nyaaagh;
all fiction is fantasy

>> No.2722018

>>2721780
Stephen R Donaldson actually did pretty much this in the early-to-mid nineties with his Gap Cycle. The first book (if you're reading the five book "version") is pretty much rape central, but afterward it grows in complexity and characters.

>> No.2722070

Vonnegut's quote about Sci-Fi being a drawer is spot on. It is too broad of a genre for one novel to turn it on its head, the best you can really do is invert tropes which has been done many times before