Science fiction and/or/versus Fantasy

Post by **vison** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 4:30 am

And I wonder whether the Fremen missed the Worms when they were all gone?

I tried reading the various sequels to Dune and could never get through even one. So, if anyone can enlighten me: did the Fremen with their stored water change Dune so much the Worms went extinct? If they did, didn't that mean space travel was no longer possible?

Post by **Maria** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 4:39 pm

The Pern series is considered sci fi???

I'd have thought the teleportation ability of the dragons would put it in the fantasy realm. That, and the impossible wing to weight ratio.......

Post by **Crucifer** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 4:52 pm

Ah yes, but remember how they GET to Pern? In a big hooj spaceship...

Post by **River** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 5:10 pm

And the early settlers created the dragons by genetically manipulating fire lizards. The Pern series is borderline, but, except for the telepathy and teleportation exhibited by the dragons the mystical elements just aren't there. The big bad enemies are mindless space spores and other humans. The planet itself had been settled for more than 2000 years when the first of the stories was written, but it was always obvious that humans were colonists there, and their technology had declined with each passing century.

Post by **Primula Baggins** » Fri Sep 04, 2009 11:46 pm

I loved the earliest Pern books, through The White Dragon, as well as the YA trilogy that begins with Dragonsong. After that it began to creak badly for me, especially when my favorite character died. But I've still got the ones I listed and read them now and then.

Frelga, I am mostly through the second Foreigner book and think I will stop for now when I finish it, though I do have the third. They're interesting and well-written books, but they aren't after all the "space opera" I was hoping for as a source of ideas or at least mood.

After the opening bits of the first book, there's only one point-of-view character, and he's often the one who knows the least about what's going on. This wears on him, but also a bit on me. Two large books have so far covered only a week or two of time, and they're set (so far) on a single world. This is very different from what I'm working on.

Cherryh's books are more ambitious and probably better than anything I'm likely to write soon. I can't at this point write such a story in a way that's interesting even to me—and if I'm not interested, no one else will be.