Hard Science Fantasy?

Craig Brewer · 02 Dec 2008, 01:54 · from 2008-December.txt.gz

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From: cnbrewer at yahoo.com (Craig Brewer)
Date: Mon, 1 Dec 2008 17:54:37 -0800 (PST)
Subject: (urth) Hard Science Fantasy?
References: <W73797934965451228173918@webmail16>
	<493473D2.1070101 at calmeilles.co.uk>
Message-ID: <326324.9783.qm at web37604.mail.mud.yahoo.com>

So what counts as internal consistency in a world where, on the one hand, what initially seems like a medieval castle turns out to be an abandoned rocket ship (i.e., science trumps fantasy) but where, at the same time, a dude ends up being able to inconsistently resurrect both himself (?) and others (i.e., magic)? Isn't part of the point of New Sun the not knowing whether science or magic is in control? Wolfe specifically calls his chosen genre here "science fantasy" so that he didn't have to hold to "hard science" or outright anything goes magic. (I wish I could easily locate the interview where he says this.) He also has written stories he's specifically labeled "hard sf" and others that he's specifically called fantasy.

My real point here is that part of what initially attracted me to New Sun was the realization that the fantasy bits turned out to be "sf" at times and that the "science fiction" tropes (the alien Hieros, etc.) ended up having a magical, or at least metaphysical, edge.

(So all the real space sails talk is really cool. But is someone also going to show me a real world technological equivalent of every wonder under Urth and its sky? Or, a more pointed question is whether even the assumption that one could do this misunderstands the kind of imaginative world Wolfe created here.)

----- Original Message ----
From: Matthew malthouse <calmeilles at gmail.com>
To: The Urth Mailing List <urth at lists.urth.net>
Sent: Monday, December 1, 2008 5:31:30 PM
Subject: Re: (urth) House Absolute

Son of Witz wrote:

> Yo, but we're talking about a book where the space ships have masts and sails.
> It need not conform to science.

But there should be internal consistency or a reason for the lack thereof.

Matthew
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