(Ahem. Fan of both Firefly and Star Wars speaking here: yes, AOTC was undefendable, and TPM nearly so, but the original triology was a major achievement and (IMHO) ROTS is a movie worth watching. It has flaws, indeed, but it's also got some good stuff-- the political messages are a little obvious, perhaps, and there may be a point at which it's sexist; but there's lots to admire the world-building, and for me it's a fantastic story. Not to mention having a rather attractive Obi-Wan, which has no bearing on its sci-fi status but makes it very watchable. But then, offically I don't like sci-fi (science for itself doesn't interest me) so if you want to call Star Wars fantasy, I'm happy with that. And if Firefly makes both of us happy, even better.)

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Sorry - but one of the reasons I loved Firefly was that (to me) it was the anti-star wars.

Whyfore sorry? I agree with your points, and although that's not on my Top 10 reasons I love Firefly list, you don't need to apologize to me that it's on yours! I can totally see that point.

More discussion, though:

I still don't buy Star Wars as sci-fi, even bad sci-fi. It may have revived the pulp tropes, but those were pretty much not sci-fi by that point either. I think Star Wars is partially a Western and partially a Fantasy story.

Firefly is not really a Western, per se. It sits at the intersection of SF and Western because it's using Western tropes, both in the "look" and in some of the plots, because Westerns have good adventure plots and speak to a colonial frontier society. Firefly comments on the Western trappings, though, and as you say, Star Wars didn't comment, it just was, irony-free. I was a huge SW fan, and I'm a huge Firefly fan, and they are different.

Here's another way of looking at it, maybe..."science" fiction needs to utilize something about science, and extend it into what-if, as a key component of the story/conflict. What if there were aliens is not enough - that's gonna be either fantasy or bad sci-fi. What if there was a species almost exactly like us, except they'd evolved without gender being inherent; instead they select a gender for mating? How would that work when interacting with us? Or what if military technology develops to the point that soldiers can direct remote troops from computers in safe territory? Or what if a person's identity can be stored in a computer?

Throwing spaceships into a story just isn't enough. I'm looking at Star Wars, or other feudalism-in-space stories. None of the story questions in Star Wars come from science questions. They are fantasy (What if people had psychic powers, like telekinesis and clairvoyance? What if a young boy goes on a quest to save a damsel in distress and becomes a heroic knight) with a sense of Westerns (What if there are Indiansaliens? And he has a trusty steedspaceship? And he's from a frontier ranch?).

Firefly can claim a sci-fi lineage, not because there are spaceships (although that helps), but because it takes science ideas, extends them, and asks story questions: What if humans develop space travel, and planetary terraforming capabilities? And what if for some reason they can't return to Earth after colonization is started? What if goverments/corporations could surgically alter people's brains to make them different than normal people? And what if you have this new kind of society, all flung out over space? What could happen to people mentally? Culturally?

I'm not differentiating between good and bad and mediocre sci-fi right now either, although I agree that Firefly is good sci-fi because it is authentic and human, and deals with things that real people do.

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They are fantasy (What if people had psychic powers, like telekinesis and clairvoyance?

That, I think, is where confusion arises, because the line between science-things and fantasy-things isn't clearly drawn. Yes, telekinesis is probably a fantasy concept, and certainly it occurs regularly in that genre; but scientists have, at times-- I'm not aware of any current research, but I am aware that from Victorian times through to perhaps the 1960s and beyond there were people seriously working in the area; damn, it's a while since I read up on this and the names aren't coming to mind-- investigated the possibility that humans do have the power to mentally affect the physical world, or to communicate 'telepathically', etc. Things like ESP even have science-y sounding names.

To be honest, I tend to side with the librarians at my local library, who have given up the fight and now shelve sci-fi and fantasy together. As I'm in it for the stories not the details of the questions, I don't mind.

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Here's another way of looking at it, maybe..."science" fiction needs to utilize something about science, and extend it into what-if, as a key component of the story/conflict.

I think we're at the crux of why Harlan Ellison always said he preferred the term speculative fiction (although I think he's resigned to "science" and even Sci-Fi, which he claimed to loathe at this point). And that makes sense to me on a personal level - if there's no what-if component, no matter how well-built the world/milieu, then it's fantasy. Gross generalization for others, I'm sure, but's that's how I perceive a difference between them.

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Transcript of Joss' Serenity intro: [link]

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I just read the last few posts, including Joss' intro, to my son, who has been harranguing me for the last week about how wonderful RotS is, and who is a huge Lucas fan. He's also one of my Firefly dvd toasters. I just want to thank you guys for helping guide the conversation into less-fraught waters. I love this board to unreasonable bitty bits.

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Now that I think about it, I believe that the closest parallel to Firefly in SF literature might be CL Moore's short story "Shambleau."

It's been a long while since I've read it (I have to pull out my copy of "Best of CL Moore" soon for a reread!), but IIRC, it was basically the Wild West on Mars. Northwest Smith comes to a mining town and hooks up with the the resident outsider, not knowing that she's an alien Siren whose purpose in life (I think--this is where the storyline gets a bit fuzzy for me) is to feed off of men's souls while giving them pure bliss. He is eventually rescued by some friends, but he misses her, even though she was destroying him. Very erotic stuff for Astounding Tales in the mid 1930s.

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if there's no what-if component, no matter how well-built the world/milieu, then it's fantasy.

I can grok this at a writing level. The defining attribute of story is the question it's based on, after all. The question Star Wars is based on isn't a sci-fi question like, "What would happen if the government uses chemically-altered human beings to predict violent crimes in order to prevent them, and what if it's possible they could be wrong?" (Minority Report) or, "What if our reality is a giant computer simulation created in order to keep us prisoner for use by machines?" (The Matrix) Instead, the question of Star Wars is, "What if a young man suddenly discovered that he was the son of a powerful warrior and that he alone can carry that man's legacy and perhaps save the world?"

By the question criterion a great number of stories aren't sci-fi but something of a different sort being told in a sci-fi milieu. For me, I think, the science has to be integral to the plot in order for it to be true sci-fi. You could tell the tale of "Star Wars" in a lot of different settings, including western and medieval. Actually, I'd pay money to see that done.

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I think Star Wars is definitely in the science fiction tradition of Planet Stories and Lensmen and ERB and other fantasies set in space. It's basically a way to mash a bunch of pulp genres together into one convenient form. But while you can quibble about the science in such stories, I think that is a much later formation that came along in the hard science fiction 1950s - the Campell era. To use Kathy's example, nobody doubted "Shambleau" was part of the science fiction canon when it came out. It was also understood to be a teriffic erotic horror story.

I think the western genre elements of Firefly are a bit overstated. Mostly Joss was interested in the political era of Reconstruction and how that muddied all the moral choices. Plus he likes genre and likes Westerns. Still, the central premises of Firefly are all science fiction and there's nothing about it's science based milieu which precludes horses and pistols that shoot bullets instead of deathrays.

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I think it's worth pointing out that, especially in the original 3, Lucas relied heavily on Joseph Campbell's work on Mythology. So, more than fantasy or Sci-Fi, it functions, IMO, primarily as (an attempt at) mythology, so, yes, the story can easily be transposed elsewhere, largely because it is a transposition of existing Story(ies). The same, IMO, can be said of the second and third Matrixes, which felt less like extrapolations of the "What if" to me than "And now that we have set the stage, here are the steps hero stories are supposed to go through".

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