superman ?
quote:
Originally posted by Squishy:
I don’t know Aleck, Fantasy as you say can be described as having a supernatural/magic aspect to it, but I would describe it as what your mind can come up with, meaning that fantasy is a dreamt up scenario that could never possibly happen like Peter Pan for instance.
But science could never allow the situation where a man has a body stronger than steel and can fly and i’ve never heard the top comic book characters described as Sci-fi.
Well, if it’s a matter of what could conceivably happen, then a *lot* of science fiction could be eliminated. For instance, a meteor shower could never cause blindness in the world’s population and cause the growth of mobile and homicidal plant life, but that’s exactly what happens in [i]The Day of the Triffids[/i]. Radioactive fallout could never cause a man to progressively shrink in size, but that’s exactly what happens in Richard Matheson’s [i]The Incredible Shrinking Man.[/i] A matter transporter could never swap the heads and limbs of a man and a fly (conveniently shrinking or expanding the anatomical bits to be proportionally correct), yet this is what happens in [i]The Fly.[/i] All of these are set on Earth, in “present” time (or at least contemporary to the times in which they were written), are just about as outlandish as far as scenarios are concerned as any of the superhero titles mentioned, yet they’re all considered science fiction.
quote[quote]Yes Batman and Spiderman are somewhat conceivable, but I think ol Stan Lee never took into account science when writing comics, more a case he was opening up his imagination to entertain.[/quote]
…And the same thing could be said about H.G. Wells, or Ray Bradbury, etc.
quote:
I doubt that a alien who looks like a man and is superpowered by our sun is credible.
Most scientists won’t discount the possiblitys that space ships seen in Star Trek or Star Wars could be attained, I somehow doubt they would agree that the premises laid out by superhero comic books could be a reality.
Science has no place at least with Superman himself, true his nemesis would have some scientific attributes that could be classed as Sci-Fi, but the extreme nature that comic books go to have no standing in science, in our understanding our science today, the likes of Superman are beyond anything, nothing in science could point to it ever happening.
Well, a man who drinks a potion that makes him invisible is essentially scientifically impossible, but that was an idea concocted by sci-fi author H.G. Wells for his sci-fi novel [i]The Invisible Man[/i], which has been the foundation for a number of films that could be (and are) called sci-fi, up to and including Paul Verhoeven’s [i]Hollow Man[/i].
I think that what’s happening is that we’re looking at a distinct division between “hard” science fiction and “soft” science fiction. “Hard” sci-fi is something based on established scientific principles and is concerned with technical accuracy as much as plotting (such as some of Heinlein’s work), whereas “soft” sci-fi is more fanciful, and while it may have a “scientific” basis, the science itself can be pretty half-baked and serves only as something to get the plot started and is completely subservient to, and dictated by, the plot at hand (lots of Bradbury’s work, [i]Star Wars[/i], Philip K. Dick’s novels, etc.). [i]LEXX[/i] falls into the latter category, not being constrained by any “real” science, and plays around with accuracy like it doesn’t matter (and, in the context of the program, it doesn’t). Lots of “soft” sci-fi would be classified as “fantasy” if you just replaced “space ship” with “translocation spell.” Science is only a contrivance to set the story in motion, and not the focus. This, I think, is where [i]Superman[/i] falls. Its science is dubious, but it’s no more dubious than the kind of science that allows a several-hundred-foot-tall lizard to destroy Tokyo and breathe fire, or allows a woman to be programmed as a love slave and end up half-cluster lizard.
–Aleck