Based on the very very few that voted the rest of you will have to put up with my sharing all my ideas. If those of you who don't want that, and want to let me know, I'm open to that as well.
The next poll will be to ask if you actually read the stories, and how many.
Back to my conversation with Mac.
"3. If you do write sci-fi, I wouldn’t be too concerned with making the science too real, that’s why it’s called fiction, make it up. Sometimes the made up science can be the real driving force in the story. Or take “Starship Troopers”, really has no science, just a good story with good characters."
I dabble in Fantasy and I dabble in SF, but it is one of my biggest pet peeves when the two are crossed. Science Fiction is SCIENCE based. My SF, by the nature of my training and inclination is Soft SF as opposed to Hard SF, but that doesn't mean it is less science based. I think Mac is confusing Soft SF with Fantasy.
From Analog's submission page: "...we publish science fiction stories. That is, stories in which some aspect of future science or technology is so integral to the plot that, if that aspect were removed, the story would collapse....The science can be physical, sociological, psychological. The technology can be anything from electronic engineering to biogenetic engineering. But the stories must be strong and realistic..."
Miriam Allen deFord says (by Aldiss and Wingrove, op. cit.), "Science fiction consists of improbable possibilities, fantasy of plausible impossibilities."
"The major distinction between fantasy and science fiction is, simply, that science fiction uses one, or a very, very few new postulates, and develops the rigidly consistent logical consequences of these limited postulates. Fantasy makes its rules as it goes along...The basic nature of fantasy is "The only rule is, make up a new rule any time you need one!" The basic rule of science fiction is "Set up a basic proposition--then develop its consistent, logical consequences." "
-- John W. Campbell, Jr.
-- John W. Campbell, Jr.
Introduction, Analog 6, Garden City, New York, 1966
"Science fiction is something that could happen - but you usually wouldnt want it to. Fantasy is something that couldn't happen - though you often only wish that it could." (emphasis original)
--Arthur C. Clarke. 2000.
"A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method..."
-- Robert A. Heinlein (author of Starship Troopers) from: Science Fiction: its nature, faults and virtues, in The Science Fiction Novel, Advent, Chicago:1969
