A spoken lecture by Steven Barnes on the distinction between fantasy and science fiction, emphasizing that both require internal consistency but science fiction must also relate to external real-world rules (especially physics). Uses Jurassic Park as a central example to show how emotional engagement (realistic dinosaurs) can lead audiences to suspend disbelief despite technical implausibilities. The speaker warns writers to understand the rules they break and not overreach.
Chapters
Making up of facts and organizing them within fiction. And it's actually almost all of fiction. There's another subset called fantasy, let's call it, which in other words, are stories that deliberately are structured to not take place in the world that we live in now. Fantasy. A lot of people consider that fantasy is easier than science fiction. They think that it's going to be. And they are so wrong. They are so absolutely wrong. Fantasy and science fiction, which. Science fiction is a subset of fantasy. The difference between science fiction and fantasy is that fantasy has the primary obligation of being internally consistent. Everything has to make sense within the context of the fantasy world. It can be. Harry Potter may not map over to our world, but within the world of Harry Potter, everything that's happening makes sense. They give you a few basic initial propositions, and then those things work through that story and they don't break their own rules. Very, very, very important. A lot of people think, well, I can just make it up as I go along and you cannot do that. You have a world where somebody would snap his fingers and an elephant appears in the room. What are you saying about the physics of that world? And if you break too many rules, the person who's reading the story is going to have a sense. You know, anything can happen in this world, in which case nothing is happening. There's no cause and effect. There's no cause for anything. This does not relate to the world. I understand. In which case it had better be a very short story. Seriously, you can suspend disbelief for a very short period of time when people can do massive things and. And there's no blowback, there's no consequence. So it has to be internally and externally consistent. It has to at least be a model of the world we understand, or people will not relate to it emotionally. And if they don't relate to it emotionally, they cannot suspend their disbelief. The whole thing collapses. Science fiction has to be both internally consistent and it must relate to the world that we understand on the outside, especially the basic rules of physics. If you break those rules, you should do it with complete consciousness. In other words, you should really understand the rules that you're breaking. And you should say to your audience, I understand I'm breaking a rule here. I understand that this doesn't quite make logical sense. However, if you will give me this one buy, I will tell you a story. And since time immemorial, people were willing to say, you know something? I know I don't quite believe this, but if you'll tell me a good story, I'll Put that away. I mean, if you ever wonder why in, let's say, Jurassic Park. Jurassic park is a perfect example of a story that on one level, makes no sense at all. And people all over the world were completely willing to buy into it. In other words, in Jurassic park, they have brought back creatures that have been dead for tens and hundreds of millions of years, including the most savage predator that has ever walked the Earth, a Tyrannosaurus rex. Okay? Now, when you see the park and you take a look at the barrier technology keeping the dinosaurs away from the people, what is it? It's a single fence powered by a fuse. You blow the fuse and suddenly the tourists are lunch. Obviously, obviously, this park was designed by the filmmakers to fail efficiently so that they could get into the story, people being chased by dinosaurs. So it needed to be. Because barrier technology is very well understood. I mean, if you go to the San Diego Zoo, you have a fence, and then you have a trench and then you have a wall, you know? And that's just for a lion. T. Rex. One little electrified fence. Good Lord. How do they get away with. Everybody in the audience got up and walked out saying, this is crap. Why did they do that? I'll tell you why. Because before they showed you the park, before they showed you the fence, they showed you the best freaking dinosaur you had ever seen in your life. They had that shot with the hadrosaurs and the brachiosaur down in the little pond down at the little lake, drinking. And every time I see that movie, I start to cry at that scene. My family makes fun of me. And you guys can, too, because I can kick all your butts. But every time I'm looking at this, and the CGI was so unbelievable, it looked more realistic. I never thought in my life that I would see a dinosaur that looked that real. And then they showed me the part. The little boy inside me is looking at the dinosaurs. The adult part of me is looking at the fence. I can have dinosaurs or I can be adult dinosaurs. Adult. Screw it. I'm going with the dinosaurs. And all over the world, people said dinosaurs. And they suspended their logical judgment. Okay? I'll pretend not to realize that this park's safety design is crap so that I can enjoy this. People will give you a bond. They actually will assume. Assuming that the perceived entertainment value is high enough so they want to be entertained. They came into the theater to be entertained. You can stretch that a little bit, okay? But what I'm going to talk about is how not to stretch it to the breaking point. If you're going to write science fiction, and science fiction is a subset of fantasy that has both internal and external rules, then it behooves you to understand both the internal rules of science fiction. And the external rules of. Of the world that it relates to. Science fiction writer Robert Heinlein said that there were three primary rules of science fiction, and there are three primary games of science fiction. And those games would be what if.
