Science Fiction

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Favorite scifi concept? (lemmy.ml)

submitted 1 week ago by ashenone@lemmy.ml to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world

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I'd love to hear about your favorite concept or idea you've read about or seen in scifi media.

My personal favorite is the Conjoiner Drive out of the Revelation Space series. These ship drives are dual drives on either side of a lighthugger and have a living being inside the drives to act as a supercomputer, which holds a wormhole open inside the drives. The wormhole links far in the past to the big-bang and uses the energy from the big-bang for propulsion.

In most scifi I've come across wormholes are used for FTL travel, and I thought this was such a unique and creative use of a wormhole it has stuck with me for years after reading about it.

So what are your favorite devices or ideas that have come out of scifi media?

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[–] pugnaciousfarter@literature.cafe 4 points 1 week ago (1 children)

I've always thought of scifi being very adjacent to fantasy.

Dune, star wars are basically fantasy stories packaged with scifi elements.

I've always wondered what makes a SciFi story SciFi and I've come to the conclusion that for it to be SciFi it must be an exploration of how technology effects the human condition.

What do you think?

[–] Murse@slrpnk.net 2 points 1 week ago (1 children)

Definitely adjacent. The distinction as I understand it basically boils down whether or not there's magic.

Like Star Wars has a lot of sci fi elements, but then space wizards who use 'the force' which is just space magic. Fantasy.

Dune I'm less familiar with - never read the books. Saw the first movie but was kinda distracted and never have it my full attention. Main character definitely showed some magic super power stuff, but idr much outside of that.

Most of them kinda toggle back and forth, like Interstellar is mostly sci-fi with a sprinkling of fantasy up until the black hole scene, then it's mostly fantasy with a sprinkling of science.

Or there's Star Trek, which of mostly grounded in actual science and theory, but it's got a sprinkle of space magic here and there too.

Not many purebreds.

[–] pugnaciousfarter@literature.cafe 1 points 1 week ago

Yeah, there's certainly a degree to how SciFi something is.

But you could remove their scifi elements and tell star wars and Dune as fantasy stories and you wouldn't loose too much substance. I'd call them science fantasy at best.

But star trek, though it has magic, relies heavily on the SciFi concepts to tell a story. I'd consider it SciFi through and through.