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Science Fiction / Fantasy and the Supernatural
Ghost314
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Registered User regular
I checked and didn't see this topic in the past 45 days.
I'm quitting two other threads today. One, "Do you believe in ghosts," started out with people posting weird experiences they've had or their personal theories about the supernatural. I made a provocative post, then tried to make the case that the so-called "paranormal" is worth investigating. In other words, when you eliminate all deliberate hoaxes, mental illness, misperception, etc., there's still an unexplained residue which warrants serious study. This brought out the radical skeptics. The usual rejoinders were "People who believe in such things are deluded / religious fanatics" or "There is absolutely no evidence of anything paranormal" or "You're stupid, you don't understand science." I may still be getting beaten up over there for all I know.
The other thread is the most recent BSG thread, which keeps getting bogged down on rehashing arguments about the finale. Right after the series ended on March 20, there were quite a few "anti-supernaturalists" who chimed in and expressed their disgust that Ronald D. Moore had
I also know a few people who didn't like the supernatural element in BSG because they found it "irreligious" or "heretical." RDM's BSG God is
In the show, for the most part, the Colonials' life is based on scientific anti-supernaturalism. There is a polytheistic religion, but not many take it seriously. Colonial science, in the past, created sentient machines, who were then enslaved, leading to retaliatory genocide. The Cylons, on the other hand, seem to be motivated by a fundamentalist supernaturalism, believing it's their god's will to usurp and destroy their creators. To be fair, there are supernaturalists among the Colonials and anti-supernaturalists like Cavil among the Cylons, but each side seems to be underpinned by an extreme.
Ronald Moore took the excluded middle by depicting the supernatural in an unconventional away. He isn't explaining or justifying anything. This pisses off both extremes, and this may have been his point. Given the choice made by the fleet in the finale, perhaps he's trying to say that the extremes are dangerous. Just my opinion.
The question for the thread: what do you think of using the supernatural in sci fi / fantasy? Yes or no? Why? If you approve, where on TV, in movies / novels / comics - graphic novels have you seen it done well?
I'm quitting two other threads today. One, "Do you believe in ghosts," started out with people posting weird experiences they've had or their personal theories about the supernatural. I made a provocative post, then tried to make the case that the so-called "paranormal" is worth investigating. In other words, when you eliminate all deliberate hoaxes, mental illness, misperception, etc., there's still an unexplained residue which warrants serious study. This brought out the radical skeptics. The usual rejoinders were "People who believe in such things are deluded / religious fanatics" or "There is absolutely no evidence of anything paranormal" or "You're stupid, you don't understand science." I may still be getting beaten up over there for all I know.
The other thread is the most recent BSG thread, which keeps getting bogged down on rehashing arguments about the finale. Right after the series ended on March 20, there were quite a few "anti-supernaturalists" who chimed in and expressed their disgust that Ronald D. Moore had
used the supernatural to explain or resolve several plot points. A few others were disappointed that he hadn't at least explained "God" and "angels" as advanced AIs or aliens.
To be fair, there were also anti-supernaturalists who either loved the finale or hated it for completely unrelated reasons.I also know a few people who didn't like the supernatural element in BSG because they found it "irreligious" or "heretical." RDM's BSG God is
an "it," not a "He." The angels aren't "good," they're amoral. "God's will" is pretty much inscrutable.
This upsets supernaturalists who want a more conventional portrayal.In the show, for the most part, the Colonials' life is based on scientific anti-supernaturalism. There is a polytheistic religion, but not many take it seriously. Colonial science, in the past, created sentient machines, who were then enslaved, leading to retaliatory genocide. The Cylons, on the other hand, seem to be motivated by a fundamentalist supernaturalism, believing it's their god's will to usurp and destroy their creators. To be fair, there are supernaturalists among the Colonials and anti-supernaturalists like Cavil among the Cylons, but each side seems to be underpinned by an extreme.
Ronald Moore took the excluded middle by depicting the supernatural in an unconventional away. He isn't explaining or justifying anything. This pisses off both extremes, and this may have been his point. Given the choice made by the fleet in the finale, perhaps he's trying to say that the extremes are dangerous. Just my opinion.
The question for the thread: what do you think of using the supernatural in sci fi / fantasy? Yes or no? Why? If you approve, where on TV, in movies / novels / comics - graphic novels have you seen it done well?
Life is a highway -- I want to ride it -- and comment on it ironically -- all night long.
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Of course if your audience senses you have an agenda - like, a political agenda - they might decide that cheapens the work and makes it less effective, and that's valid. But simply casting your story in a world with a god, or without one, does not automatically suggest an agenda, at least not to me. I don't sense an agenda like that from BSG.
People will examine and criticize everything you write and how it relates to their own worldview. That's part of the dialogue that happens in culture. Just the fact that they're talking about it is healthy.
In, say, Lord of the Rings, magic and gods are written right into the story. They exist (or existed) and people make rational decisions based on their existence in the universe. In Star Trek, even though sometimes the 'science' is made up on the spot, the characters all act as though the solutions they come up with have a basis in 24th century accepted science. It's all part of the given story's universe.
Per your BSG example, I confess I haven't watched past the first few episodes of the first season, but one thing that irked me early on is when the president was starting to go wild with her flights of fantasy despite the entirely reasonable and pragmatic concerns of her generals. I had this sneaking suspicion (which might not have been borne out, I don't know) that she was going to be right, despite there being very little basis for her line of reasoning.
So it's not that the supernatural irks me full stop, it's when it's shoehorned into the story suddenly or done in such a way that seems inconsistent with the tone of the story.
World of science, Faster then Light travel, super sentient computers, space pirates, and time travel, where it is revealed at the end of the series that all the troubles were because, spoiler in case anyone hasnt read the series,
-- (Terry Pratchett, alt.fan.pratchett)
I know, science fiction often breaks the rules with things like traveling faster than the speed of light, but it at least pretends, then, that doing so is naturally possible--it's the difference between saying, "Our understanding of the natural world might be wrong" and "There are things beyond the natural world that cannot be explained by science."
Fantasy, on the other hand, is about the supernatural. The supernatural is an accepted part of the world of the story. In fact, the best fantasy almost makes the supernatural natural--it defines rigorous systems that respond in predictable ways, as though there are new physical laws that, while they do not exist in the real world, at least exist in the world of the story. The best example I can provide of this is Brandon Sanderson's Mistborn trilogy.
Sanderson is not the world's best fantasy author--he's good, but he's not the best--but he is, perhaps, the best author at inventing systems of magic. In his world, you know that if you're one of the Mistborn, and you ingest the correct steel alloy, you can burn that and use it to pull on metal objects through telekinesis... at least until you burn through the steel that you swallowed. You can't move an object anywhere you want--you can only pull it directly toward you. And if that object is heavier than you, the force you exert moves you, and not the object. This is just one tiny example of the rigor of his magic--everything has rules, and follows those rules.
I feel anytime you invoke something as a plot device and its limits are not understood, that's laziness. It's a reduction of the story to "because I said so"--it pulls me out of the world, reminds me that I'm reading (or watching, or playing) a piece of fiction. And worse, if it's used to solve a problem that the protagonists are facing, it feels like a cheat--it feels like the problem the protagonists were facing never mattered at all, because some unknown thing could just swoop in out of the sky anytime the writer felt like it to save the day. (This is the textbook definition of "deus ex machina", by the way.)
So, tl;dr, the supernatural is fine in fantasy stories, but it must have its own clearly defined rules and limitations, and it especially must not be used to resolve conflict unless those rules and limitations are understood. The supernatural has no place in science fiction, unless it turns out not to be supernatural after all.
But hell, I'm a strict physicalist and I don't think there's really such a thing as a "self" at all, but I don't get all butthurt over BSG having religious elements. The finale was great.
Everyone has their own definition. Don't try to impose yours for the sake of making a particular point.
Nobody wants sixty pages of "No True Cylon" arguments.
I'm a Star Wars dork, so I say bring on the mysticism.
If the writer uses God or a wizard or whatever as a convenient out when the plot gets into a corner then I don't like it any more than any other deus ex machina explanation for how things conveniently work out. Magic, angels, demons, and whatever else is fine as long as they follow their own set of rules. Lovecraft's beasties are all purposefully inscrutable but still follow a warped sort of logic and bizarre but consistent rules.
So I guess I like my supernatural when it's natural. Give it rules and quantifiable parameters and I'm fine with it. When things 'just happen' I don't like it.
The trouble with BSG specifically is that it generally tries to be pretty rigorous and realistic, especially by TV standards, and then presents a huge dichotomy which sabotages the realism by threading it not just with magic, but poorly-executed magic.
Yeah, but they ripped your sense of wonder a new anus in Ep. I when they brought in the midichlorians. There's kinda no mysticism left in the Star Wars universe anymore.
But even then, the actual mechanisms of the force aren't really explained. Now it's just a bunch of tiny organisms that manipulate it rather than one big organism that manipulates it.
...rendering the whole explanation pointless and infuriating. Something dangerous must have happened in Lucas's mind when it came to the prequels.
Some call it humanistic naturalism, but I guess "anti" is en vogue.
Fantasy is all about the supernatural. It's an integral part of the genre.
Science fiction isn't. Religious fanatics and religions have been covered a billion times, but omnipotent beings usually(always??...) have a history of evolution and existence in a previous state.
When you get a regular deity in a science fiction you leave the specific genre and instead have a book/flim/setting that is in both of the above. I'm still not sold that this is what BSG did and don't think there was anything wrong with the ending.
Yeah, sometimes it's better just to leave the explanations alone and run with it. Maybe that's what Ronald Moore was thinking.
Speaking of sci fi / supernatural, has anyone read "The Sparrow" and "Children of God" by Mary Doria Russell?
In BSG's case, the "one" here is Ron Moore, who lazily made up his metaphysics as he went instead of constructing the answers along with the questions he raised.
Can't explain how the flagellate motor evolved? God did it.
Can't explain how Starbuck came back or the strange narrative coincidences in the show? God did it.
For example, Fantasy can pretty much get away with anything because the very nature of it projects the audience to a pre-scientific mind-set, and takes it to be true. Thus, when the characters describe thunder as the anger of the gods and it turns out that thunder really is Odin being really pissed off about something, you are not surprised.
Functional magic isn't even supernatural, so it hardly bears mentioning. If your magic system follows rules and magical laws and such (see WoT, D&D, etc) then it's practically a science.
Science Fiction, however, functions under a post-scientific mindset. Thus, everything has to be explainable. Science Fiction uses our current world as it's foundation and then adds something (be it spaceships, cyper-bunk stuff, whatever). The vast majority of modern people, even religious ones, see the world today as at least potentially ordinary.
So you can have things that can be interpreted as being miraculious, but that could just be coincidence. You can have characters that are religious. But you can't have Jesus walk into the room, turn some bread to wine, explain the meaning of the book, and then poof away.
Science fiction can also take supernatural things and naturalize them.
Some examples:
BSG: Perfect example of Jesus walking into the room, etc. In fact, one of the only ones I can think of. Probably because most people know better.
Babylon 5: Strikes a perfect balance between some things being beyond the characters' human understanding, and naturalizing them.
The Night's Dawn Cycle: Naturalizes everything, but makes the argument that this does not alter the meaningfulness of things.
Darwin's Radio/Darwin's Children: Has this wierd thing where one of the main characters starts hearing God. But she may just have some kind of strange mental condition.
The Hyperion Cantos: Naturalizes stuff. Kind of.
On the fantasy side:
WoT: One of the best examples of a monotheistic Creator who never does anything.
The Fire of Heaven: The only attempt at writing fantasy with an interventionist Abrehaimic God I know of.
See... but that's bad/lazy writing even in Fantasy. If it is not properly explained or justified, it doesn't really matter if it is really advanced technology or the action of some deity, it isn't consistent with the universe where it takes place.
I don't mind fantasy elements in Sci-fi shows when they are consistent with world the writer is created. If the writer is looking at how technology effects the lives of his characters, it's pretty much sci-fi. If the characters are using that technology to track down vampires or if they are working along side mages, or gain prescience by taking some drug it's still sci-fi, it's just also fantasy. They aren't mutually exclusive.
edit:HamHam has a pretty good point about the naturalizing thing. Just because it is supernatural in our world, does not mean it is not part of nature in their world. If you create rules and logic around it and make it part of how the world works, it isn't really supernatural anymore. It just represents a different nature.
Apparently he came up with the idea from chloroplasts and mitochondria, which exist in every single multicellular lifeform. Plants have the first, non-plants have the second, and the interaction between these two types of living things has defined life on earth and multicellular evolution.
The existence of a third engulfed organelle, a "midichlorian," could actually be a neat mechanism to explain how the Force works. It's not particularly vague or handwaving (at least not for magicy SF), and it makes sense that the understanding of such mechanics would have flourished in the "golden age" of the Jedi before getting reduced to vague mysticism after their fall.
The main problem was the poor narrative that introduced the concept, and the lack of any expansion on it. But the concept itself is actually kind of cool, I think.
I would argue that they are. They're two sides of the same coin, but you can't have both heads and tails at the same time. The mere inclusion of supernatural elements is not scientific, and is contrary to a scientific view of the world. Science fiction relies on science.
Doesn't mean you can't have both in your story, it just means that story is not, then, science fiction.
RE303: Religion and Science Fiction was one of the most engaging and substantive classes I took during undergrad. When one takes a step back (and in short) the exercise of religion is "world building" in order to order and make sense of the world around us. Science Fiction and Fantasy literature engages in the same "world building" from a theoretical standpoint and often, by nature, addresses the same deep-seeded human questions which are raised by religion in our world.
Star Wars is a strange case. It takes place a long time ago, and has magic, yet it's called science fiction since it takes place in space, despite its vision of space travel being less rigorous than space dragons.
Another boundary issue is something like Xenogears, which starts out as fantasy and ends up SF as the fantasy elements are revealed to actually be shit like nanomachines.
My favorite speculative fiction blends the two, and seizes upon the blurriness: magic is indistinguishable from sufficiently advanced technology.
Most science fiction makes heavy use of supernatural elements. Psychic powers, aliens with strange, even reality bending abilities, and everything in between. It's fine. It's part of the setting. Neil Gaimen is probably one of my favorite authors for having the extraordinary run headlong into the ordinary. The problem is when it's depicted inconsistently, or you have a bait-and-switch. I'm not sure if this is actually a part of Twilight, or just something I've attached to it, but a frequent problem you run across in stories where the supernatural is presented in contemporary settings is that the supernatural is so powerful that your secret society of vampires/wizards/demons/whatever should be able to easily go out and take over the world, but they don't because IITS that they keep in hiding for the protagonist to stumble over and realized The World is Nothing Like He Thought.
That's just bad writing, which always brings a story down, supernatural elements or not.
But if those supernatural elements are eventually explained by science, they're not supernatural anymore. And if you don't have any supernatural elements in your story, and it revolves around advanced technology or scientific discovery, that's science fiction.
The search for understanding is, in fact, one of the most important facets of science fiction. Fantasy takes supernatural things as a given--you don't need to search for an explanation, things just are. That doesn't mean they don't have rules of operation, but those do not make supernatural things natural--those pertain to "how", not "why".
Perfect usage of that image. A+.
You are basically saying it can't be sci-fi if they don't explain the science behind all the fantasy elements. So you have a Sci-fi book with a lot of fantasy elements. It's still Sci-fi, because there are foot notes describing how the magic happens. Even though the themes, plot and setting are not changed by removing the footnotes, if you did you would say it is no longer sci-fi?
I'm ok with using some definition of sci-fi that isn't that.