Talk:List of science fiction themes

message: Is it just me or is this page very similar to Science Fiction concepts?  Any objection to the idea of folding them into each other (this page is certainly better wiki-ed than t'other) and redirecting concepts here? --Bth
:Sounds good to me, go for it. --Brion
::since this was posted, concepts was merged into Outline of science fiction.Mercurywoodrose (talk) 07:11, 16 November 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Science Fiction concepts

message: I reckon we could do with a Category:Science Fiction Concepts - it would contain most/all of the items on this list, plus also the ones which aren't widespread or generic enough to appear, but are still noteworthy. Just thought I'd ask whether there are any similar categories, or any other reasons why it might be a bad idea, before going ahead and creating it. Chris Thornett 13:53, 15 December 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Category

message: Hi AKR
I am not for the last change you did about politics. You should be less accurate or more general, speaking about the 2 extreme, as well as to involve just alien views.. I suggest.  --Despres (talk) 14:42, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Im not for the last change 

message: on the wikia called future there is a saving of this page if users delete the page on wikipedia  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Despres (talk • contribs) 14:53, 29 June 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  on wikia 

message: your stock you puted on the page is way too political and not enough science fiction, I would say and I suspect. We all know politics has many allure but does it make it science fiction?  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Despres (talk • contribs) 06:29, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  AKR619 I meant it's way too political 

message: hi
anybody know the future or some science fiction stories or any particular topic related to the battle if there is one, of female/male. We know that with robotics, women wont need to make children anymore, robots will do them, so Im asking if female will disapear or will fight over men. or just partner as the origin of our species.
--Jon  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Despres (talk • contribs) 04:49, 4 August 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Or vice versa.  There are stories in which everyone is hermaphroditic (Schild's Ladder, Oceanic); stories about colonies where only one sex exists (Virgin Planet, Spartan Planet, War with the Yukks, Ethan of Athos) for various reasons ... —Tamfang (talk) 03:59, 27 January 2011 (UTC)
thread_title:  The future of female/male 

message: Removing the uncited tag is clearly in bad faith. Who thinks this article is cited? anyone? This is not an opinion, everyone can see that it clearly has no references!Yobmod (talk) 08:35, 19 August 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Tags

message: The page has been protected. 
Please discuss here on the talk page.
Incidentally, there have been edit summaries that are simply inappropriate. Further attacks or incivility may lead to further sanction. - jc37 11:26, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: Upon further investigation, I've changed it to semi-protection. However, if this ends up hindering discussion, full-protection will be re-enabled. - jc37 17:13, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Protected 

message: "If the title does not already clarify what the list includes, then the list's lead section should do so. Don't leave readers confused over the list's inclusion criteria or have editors guessing what may be added to the list."  and Wikipedia:Featured list criteria recommends that "[a list] has an engaging lead section that introduces the subject, and defines the scope and inclusion criteria of the list."
Currently the lede is very vague which is perhaps one of the factors leading to the recent edit war.
Is there some way that we can more clearly define the expected content and organization of this list article? -- The Red Pen of Doom 17:53, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: If no one gets to it before monday, i'll take a stab at adapting parts from the Science fiction articles intro - that has some cited stuff on general themes. I'm currently pushing 2 lists through to featured Lists, so will see if the leads i wrote for them are ok with reviewers.Yobmod (talk) 18:24, 15 November 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  Need greater clarity per [[WP:LIST#Lead section or paragraph]] 

message: I don't suppose anyone has thought through the distinctions and overlaps among and between theme, motif, trope, concept, novum, and (sub)genre--? These are all category terms relating to content, but not all category terms serve the same function in SF criticism--or are even used in exactly the same way. First job: figure out exactly what is being described here and get a grip on the appropriate critical terminology.
Then there's the OR issue: Much of this article strikes me as being just that, rather than a report on or digest of what various authorities in the field have to say about the conceptual building blocks of SF (which is what the article seems to be trying for). There is a literature that deals with this, so there's no need to reinvent the wheel or make up new terms.
As it stands, the article is a straggling list of "ideas some people find in SF," peppered with nonce terms and links to WP articles of dubious relevance or usefulness. (Paradise engineering? Quantum suicide? Nudity in science fiction?!) In fact, I wonder whether the project is a reasonable one, since the "ideas" (themes, tropes, motifs, concepts, novums) that SF can address is endless--essentially, any scientific or pseudoscientific notion or area of study. There are hundreds of books and essays that grapple with exactly this problem, a body of scholarship not easily reducible to a Wiki list. RLetson (talk) 17:09, 17 November 2008 (UTC)
replies: text: I think i merged 3 very similar lists into this one. The problem with making separate articles for themes, tropes etc is that the boundary between is impossible to police. But i agree the whole list looks like OR at the moment. Next step will be to maybe split the lists into sections for tropes that make something SF from the themes that can occur in any genre that SF has notably tackled. Btw, the nudity in SF article was redirected as being a cruftlist, and some of the other tpics should have similar things done to them.Yobmod (talk) 12:05, 15 December 2008 (UTC)
thread_title: Just what ''is'' this article's focus?

message: There is cited list of SF stock characters linked in the this list. Can anyone give a reason that this article should have another such list instead of the link to the subarticle?Yobmod (talk) 13:00, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Stock characters

message: Any reason the TOC is now floated left? AFAIK this is recommended against as it interferes with text readers for blind people (? or some reason), so should only be used with a specific reason. I'll unfloat it if no-one has objections.
Hmmm, but maybe this is the reason "If the TOC is going to be placed in a long list page, it should be floated." Is this page long? I'll leave it for now.Yobmod (talk) 13:05, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Floated TOC

message: *Please decide here what to include. Anthony Appleyard (talk) 13:08, 8 January 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Time travel and aliens have citations. IMDB is not a RS. Thank you.
IMDB trivia may not be a reliable source, but pages for the movies and television pages are, especially the ones with posters, because those movies and television shows DID happen. --210.49.251.226 (talk) 23:46, 3 February 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  What to include?

message: In line with RLetsons comments above, about these not all being themes, i'm thinking of arranging the tropes that obviously form parts of the themes under each theme, then if the tropes have sub-article, making them into collapsible lists. This way the list is maximally useful for people just browsing, without looking like a long mess. I think a (sourced) paragraph explaining how and why the theme is important in SF should be written too, some of which will simply be condensations of the articles we have.
Eg:
Main heading - Advanced technology (with cite)
:sub-heading - Space travel (with cite)
:Sub-heading - Military (with cite)
::collapsible list with : weapons in SF, Rayguns etc etc
Main heading - Alternative societies (with cite)
:sub-heading - Politics in SF (with cite)
::collapsible list with: libertarianism, Robocracy etc etc.
:sub-heading - Religion in SF (with cite)
::collapsible list with: Religious ideas in SF
:sub-heading - Sex and gender(with cite)
::collapsible list with: Sex in SF, Gender in SF, Homosexuality in SF, etc etc.
Any opinions on ordering, or problems with using collapsble lists? Also, does this page therefore need a rename to List of SF themes and concepts or somesuch?Yobmod (talk) 10:49, 20 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Revamp of list

message: * (per this request.)
First, I agree with the idea of keeping this to the more "strict" themes of sci-fi, rather than try to include those of the several overlapping genres (such as horror or fantasy). This being a wiki, after all, we should easily be able to have several such lists, and simply "see also" them.
Also, my recollection is that the inclusion of "aliens" (as in non-human, non-terrestrial, life forms) typically places any otherwise sci-fi story into "science-fantasy".
Sci-fi tends to relate directly to differences (I'll shy away from calling them necessarily "advancements") in philosophy (both personal and group), and technology. A change in "society" is merely a change in the perspective from what may be considered a "norm", to whatever the author may be describing/presenting in their work.
That said, the philosophical change to the person/group/society must be science/technology related for it to be called more than just a work of philosophy, and to instead be sci-fi. (There have been arguments about Thomas More's Utopia for years - whether it should be called sci-fi or not. I'll shy away from that debate as well : )
And all of the above would obviously need to be cited from various sources. 
(I not so recently read an old article where they were discussing the various works of Arthur C. Clarke, and analysing whether they fell into philosophy, sci-fi, or sci-fan.)
Good luck on the ReOrg. (I may join in myself if time and energy permit : ) - jc37 03:03, 26 January 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Thoughts 

message: I don't mean this as a slight to the authors.  I just mean that when I have time, I'm going to completely redo this list to be A. less indiscriminant B. Cited and C. give more context to the sublists.  i kan reed (talk) 18:06, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
replies: text: Curious. Did you ever redo this list? :) Misty MH (talk) 07:43, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  This list sucks 

message: I noticed that the word "dimension" isn't found in the Article or on Talk. Neither then are Interdimensional concepts directly mentioned. These are, of course, major concepts in much sci-fi, and even discussed in theoretical physics. I went over the list a couple of times, thinking about where to add such, but couldn't decide. Ideas? Consensus? Misty MH (talk) 07:54, 1 February 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dimensions. Interdimensional Concepts. 

message: Everything is a science fiction theme, The Sun, Life, the Universe, 42 and even 193. Lists are navigation tool in wikipedia. Therefore this list either has to list wikipedia articles, or, as colleague Gorthian pointed out to me, have references to scholarly sources which specifically discuss a certain topic as a SF subject. Otherwise I can put the whole English vocabulary of nouns into this list. Staszek Lem (talk) 18:41, 17 December 2015 (UTC)
replies: text: It's about the themes that are unique or characteristic to science fiction and those which are featured frequently. This is of interest e.g. as science fiction often allows for novel inquiries into various topics, also often brings forth new topics and because many topics make out entire subgenres of science fiction. Also it's not about random occurrences in the works but about central themes. While science fiction can be seen as an approach / a imaginative "way" it can also be properly analyzed for its contents (much of which is so characteristic that it gets a mention in the first sentence of the science fiction article). --Fixuture (talk) 21:15, 11 January 2016 (UTC)
replies: text: Completely agreed. However in order to make it in a wikipedia article it must be a subject of a reliable source which discuses this and that theme as a peculiarity of SF or of coverage therein. Second, since this is a list, ie., a wikipedia navigation tool, the items must be links to articles or relevant sections, with possible exception of convenience "super-items" for the purpose of hierarchical classification. Staszek Lem (talk) 23:23, 12 January 2016 (UTC)

text: re: "I doubt that every science fiction theme is unique" -- Please don't forget that lists are navigation tools in wikipedia. wikipedia article should not be merely a catalog or everything. User:Fixuture wrote " unique or characteristic". Something may be characteristic to several areas. As long as there is a source which discusses specifically  human nature in science fiction or dandelions in science fiction, it belongs to our list. In other words out article is List of science fiction themes which were covered as such in scholarly sources. For example, which searching for funny examples similar to "dandelions in scifi" I unexpectelly came up with The Animal Fable in Science Fiction and Fantasy - hence Animals in science fiction jumped onto my waiting list. Staszek Lem (talk) 19:21, 14 January 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  Content of the list 

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thread_title:  A Commons file used on this page or its Wikidata item has been nominated for deletion