Cutting a long story short here, the reason I said 'A long, long time ago' is because that's a quote. From Star Wars. It's kinda famous. Among people who have watched Star Wars. Which is everyone.

Yeah, light sabres must have some means of terminating the energy flow, or you could pretty much cut a building in half with one. But that's not something that would seem possible given the construction. Most of what they're built around is a crystal. Luke Skywalker built one himself and he's not exactly Mensa material, let's be honest.

The Bottom Line: Star Wars has a lot of things in it which appear in sci-fi, but in a way that entirely does away with the 'sci' bit. I love Star Wars and I hope to hell the next film can revive the franchise. It looks like it may very well do that too.

Pretending Star Wars is something its not only harms it. You can pick the damn films to pieces as sci-fi. But as fantasy they stand tall.
The intention of that intro is to distance the story from the real world. You could argue that it's set in a part of the universe in which life began much sooner. But I think that it draws much too close a parallel with the standard introduction to fairytales for that to be the most likely explanation. Just substitute the word Galaxy with Land and, yeah, there it is. Instant fairytale opener.

One of my favorites. Best thing they made from the creators of X-files while it was still running. Too bad the graphics look real dated today but there were some decent episodes from that series. They went down in a blaze of glory. I bet Wang lived if the second season happened. He probably ejected out before the explosion.

Hoorah.

Let's Kick Butts.

It reminded me of Wing Commander or at least how I would have enjoyed Wing Commander on television. I was a bit disappointed with the Wing Commander movie.

If I had to pick between SAAB vs Firefly Season 2, I think SAAB had more potential going forward. Two great shows FOX cancelled. Also cancelled from FOX was Terra Nova but not in the same line of great shows that would of looked awesome on Blu-ray. The CGI budget per episode probably killed them. Almost Human wasn't too bad and also got the axe. It reminded me a bit of the Bladerunner style.

It's sci-fi. It's just not hard sci-fi. Sci-fi does not mean it's supposed to be scientificly accurate. 90% of sci-fi movies would not be sci-fi, or would be bad sci-fi if that was the case. "Science fiction" is a very broad genre. It entails everything from Randezvous with Rama to Doctor Who. And it includes a lot of genre-mixes. You can mix it with western and get Firefly and Road Warrior. With fantasy and get Star Wars and Babylon 5. With crime-noir and get Blade Runner. And by your logic, none of those are sci-fi.

"Speciality" channels that "specialize" in certain genres.. really aren't anymore. They're just a way for the cable companies to get extra add revenue. Most of these channels are taken up with infomercials or tons of adds per show.
That wasn't the case when Space:The imagination station was created. VERY few commercials, REALLY good shows and MAYBE an infomercial buried at 3-4am in the morning. The cable TV world has sold out and to the lowest bidder. Cut chord and run.

A relatively forgotten sci fi series that I liked: Space: Above and Beyond. Unfortunately it got canceled when it got really interesting. Chigs and Humans being related was an interesting premise for the future of the show.

Also Earth 2 was very interesting with the strange aliens.

The wording at the Star Wars intro could be looked at as a swapping of words from a fairy tale opener. I think I remember hearing George Lucas describe Star Wars as an opera in space. But the very definition of science fiction is what I was trying to get at. If this was Peter Pan flying around magically without any form of technological propulsion except to think it and he could choke someone with telekinesis then yeah I would say this is more a fairy tale than science fiction. But you see most of the things set in that Star Wars universe shows a technological foundation. Vader isn't floating around sprinkling pixie dust onto Luke to try to persuade him to the Dark side. Han Solo isn't throwing magic potions at the Storm troopers to make them vanish. He's using futuristic weapons which appear to have a technological foundation to present day. For example guns to laser guns, metal swords to light sabers, the NASA space shuttle to the Millennium Falcon, and the International Space station to the Death Star.

While I will agree there is some non science fiction invading Star Wars with the whole telekinesis and mind control but had this been set say during the medieval times and you had guys swinging real swords and wizards using magic potions allowing them to appear anywhere then yes I think that would shift it towards the fantasy world a bit. But there is so much futuristic technology within the Star Wars universe that it overshadows it being categorized as a fantasy or fairytale. Even Darth Vader is revealed to be part machine if I remember correctly when he removes his helmet.

You just described all of science-fiction here (except the "hard science" sub-genre). So, BSG, Flash Gordon, Blade Runner, Buck Rogers, Star Trek, etc etc etc, are not science-fiction by these standards...

But the thing is, in all of these just as in star wars (and even in dr who), all these devices function through speculative technology. Magic is only referred to for the "force" (and heck even that has been turned into materialist physical midichlorian jumping beans thingies). When people turn to scifi, it's to see unrealistic technology of a far future (a far future compared to our present technological state, wherever the the time and place of our transposed proxies), with flying saucers and talking toasters and deathray pistols and whatnot. That is why there is a category to name tales that share this sorts of things (we call it "science-fiction"). It distinguishes it from, say, sword and sorcery, or westerns, or sword and sandal, etc. That's why when someone asks you a sword and sorcery game, you bring him some ad&d thingy, not x-wings alliance.

And that's it. The "long ago" intro doesn't matter, nor does any "ooh so the space dudes were our ancestors all along" twist at the end of whetever space opera. Once you have a universe based around machines that do stuff that our machines can't do yet, and that do it by the sole virtue of being very very very very high tech and all, then you have scifi. Realism (which can be more or less absent) is another subject entirely. What matters is how it is rationalized in-word : "it's because technology!" or "it's because magic spell!".

You can merge genres (I honestly don't remember if Krull had more scifi or fantasy elements, I remember that Thorgal has both), so it is not even mutually exclusive. But that's even one more reason why denying that star wars belongs to the scifi genre is absurdly misleading...

I'll just pop in to add another to my list of recommended/favorite franchisesL David Brin's Uplift series, especially the original trilogy (Sundiver, Startide Rising, and The Uplift War). Good stuff.

Sci-fi and noir are highly compatible. I wish more people would take the time to do something along those lines. Babylon 5 might not be hard sci-fi, but I don't recall anything much in the way of fantasy. Certainly not enough to tip the balance in the favour of fantasy (the way Star Wars does). Westerns are compatible with Sci-fi simply because the frontier moves from 'the colonies' to new, freshly colonised worlds. Perfect.

Also, I don't think you've noticed (or at least it's not evident in your post) that Star Wars A New Hope mixes in Western elements by the metric ton. But it's still more about fantasy than anything else.

I don't really find scifi that interesting, if i have to be honest. But one of the few book series i liked as a kid was John Christopher's The Tripods. It's one of the few scifi/post-apocalyptic book series that really drew me into the setting.

Beside that, i've read a lot of Jules Verne. :P

For comics i've read a bit of Valerian or Yoko Tsuno. They were alright. Also Paperinik New Adventures i'd say is scifi-ish enough to be mentioned here. What with the space alien vampire ducks trying to invading earth...

Best Disney comic ever. 10/10.

It is probably just a phase Hollywood is going through. Just like with all the Vampire tv series (true blood, vampire diaries, etc). They'll jump another bandwagon next once this one has run its course. (already started a bit, with all the superheroes movies/tv series popping up)

There was also Legend of the Seeker show. Which i honestly think was better than Game of Thrones.

Science Fiction itself has a bit of fantasy - like daydreaming about what could be. But you said "It's swords and sorcery set a long, long time ago. Which is fantasy."

I'm a little confused since you don't think it is science fiction when the entire universe setting is set at least from our perspective sometime in the distant future as I don't see us having anything remotely close to the technology seen in those movies happening any time soon in our lifetime unless something dramatic happens like an alien lands on Earth and decides to enlist humans for space traveling and share their space faring technology with us similar to what happened in Star Trek : First Contact. One day certain things in science fiction no longer are because we've achieved that technology. For example in Star Trek there is a gadget called the communicator. It allows someone to communicate with someone wirelessly over long distances. Well today we have that. It is called a cellular phone. Those memory chips you see and those square objects we had those too. They are called flash drives and floppy disks. We still haven't achieved a space ship fleet, transporter technology, light speed travel, meeting new alien species. But the idea that at one point in time they were science fiction and later have become science fact from technological progress. But the big ones are still there and haven't been achieved.

No one says they have to constantly focus on technology in order for it to be science fiction. It's the background setting that qualified it to be science fiction. Star Wars could have put a date on the intro sequence but Lucas chose not to so people would fantasize about the what if... If he time stamped it and said "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away in the year 2100". That would tell you something. The space opera is set at a future time and 2100 would still be in the future for us. By him leaving out the actual date he keeps us guessing and it also helps the movie not feel dated if it were watched in the distant future where we still haven't achieved that technological level. But one day let's say the year 8500 human civilization has exceeded everything capable in that movie technologically. They will be laughing at this movie. Sort of how people of today would look at Westerns. It doesn't impress us since we drive cars and fly airplanes while they have horses and trains. Maybe in year 8500 they've figured out teleportation over long distances so the need to use space ships has become obsolete.

Science fiction has a bit of fantasy embedded within because it hasn't happened yet.

My examples were to correlate past technology with science fiction future technology. Whether or not it will be achievable 20,000 years from now we won't know. The point is you can't exclude the possibility that it won't happen or some form of it. We won't live that long to see how far technology advances in the future. Even if the Star Wars ideas may not be built on good science we can't blame them and say it won't happen.

Check out the movie 2001 : A Space Odyssey. It was shot before we were in space. They talked to scientists to get real science put into the movie of how things would be in space. The circular artificial gravity station is something that could happen in the far future. The Hal 9000 Artificial Intelligence was something of science fiction but today we are approaching the level where basic AI might be within our lifetime.

As far as Martian bases, that's coming up within our lifetime in 2027.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_One

I'm not sure where you saw me type this, "But the real problem I have with your argument is that you're arguing that Star Wars is bad. I can't agree with that."

However after your analyzing the science in Star Wars it appears to you it is built on bad science or wasn't thought out thoroughly. I can't disagree with that. I myself don't think that light saber seems like something that would happen. the fact that it shoots out from the handle. If it was one solid stick and the energy formed around it it would make more sense. I suppose they could make it a collapsible weapon when off and when on it shoots up sort of like those radio antennas. However I can see a Star Trek phaser might be possible since it is a form of energy being projected. Who knows what kind of laser technology would be possible in the future and we all know lasers when focused can cause damage. A taser does the same thing in a concentrated form. Now the stuff I've watched in the past was usually the Star Trek shows where they do make an effort at using a lot of real science in it to predict what might be possible. I never studied the science in Star Wars as I'm not obsessed with Star Wars and there have mainly been movies and no TV series to explore the science. Watching the movies as a kid I did feel it was for entertainment and you don't really focus on the science fiction. However, I still can't say Star Wars is all fantasy and not science fiction. But there are fantasy elements in the movie using science fiction.

The whole Death Star must have been a major undertaking to build and harness all that power but do I think that is something that would be built? I would say no. But when you watch it as a kid you accept it and don't analyze. Do I expect everything in science fiction to happen? No but these are ideas and when someone sees your idea one day as a kid they might continually fantasize about it and try to create it. One day I predict we will be watching movies in theaters using holograms so they are more interactive instead of just in front of you on a 2D screen or wearing 3D glasses. This is science fiction now but there will be a day this will happen and when that day comes people will be wondering how Gramps could stand watching 2D movies or virtual 3D instead of Holographic movies.

oh yeah i remember x-files creators were involved.today they look outdated,yes,but i dont really care about thatit was interesting story and series has great claustrofobic atmosphere.and best aliens ever,they were ''beliavable'' in a way..so to speak.why was that show terminated is beyond me

Fantasy can be set in any time period. Medieval is certainly the most common. After all, we've got a lot of wild tales stemming from that time period that represents a perfect starting point for any fantasy novelist. Dragons, werewolves, vampires... hell, even zombies. But when it comes down to it, fantasy is simply about the impossible being possible. Things without any grounding in reality becoming larger than life. It doesn't matter when it's set.

Science fiction is, at it's most distilled, about looking at the impact on people that change has. It could be technological, political, environmental. It's mostly about taking current events / technology / whatever cranking it up to 11 to show how beneficial or detrimental these things could be if allowed to continue down their current path. Or maybe simply to pose the question about whether or not these things represent an improvement or not. Usually, this does mean that on some level sci-fi is trying to tell you something. It's usually a bit political like that.

This is most easily done by setting things in the future. But that's by no means a requirement. Alternative histories are also an element of sci-fi. This means that sci-fi could very easily be set in the present, or even the past. Alternative WW2 outcomes are common in sci-fi. Wolfenstien NWO being one example. Set in the past, but still sci-fi.

So that's why I think you're arguing that Star Wars is bad. Because calling it sci-fi is calling it something that stumbles and blunders from its very opening scenes through to the (current) end. The laser blasts from the Star Destroyer the utterly illogical waterless Tatooine and so on.

Plus, there is the fact that none of what happens is remotely relevant to us. This is happened to alien species on other worlds a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away. A total disconnect.

Star Wars distances itself utterly from anything remotely connected to sci-fi on many levels. This is wise and should be respected. As fantasy it can play by its own rules and things make sense because its says they do. Star Wars uses sci-fi props and does its own thing with them. Calling it a space opera seems right to me.

Yes, they've got some technology that its more advanced than ours. But there's never any indication of how any of it works. You cite 2001 as an example, yet that movie perfectly encapsulates what sci-fi is about. They did their research. They asked experts. They took a long look at where they where and where things were heading and made educated guesses as to what's going to become possible in future and built their story around that. AI and it's dangers are a cornerstone of sci-fi and 2001 was one of the first to explore that with at least some understanding of how AI might be possible.

Haha, thanks! C.J Cherryh is awesome. She and Andre Norton rarely get mentioned when people talk about fantasy or SF, but they were founding members of the genres whose writing it still great today.

I also like most of the books one your list, although some with caveats.

Weber can get old fast - his writing style isn't for everyone. Same for David Drake. Bujold is very much writing ridiculous wish fulfillment with cardboard characters, which works because the humor is good but...she really only knows how to write 3 characters and keeps shoving her politics in. The latest book was a huge disappointment.

The Ender series is great though.

I need to bump the Culture series up in my TBR list - although the last few times I tried an epic series recommended by everyone, I couldn't stand them (Dresden Files and Saga of Seven Suns) so that's making me a bit leery.