Talk:Science fiction/Archive 2

message: I changed the reference to Worldcon being the "largest" fan convention. It is not. Average attendance over the past 10,5, 2 or last year (Worldcon about 1,500 - 3,000), shows that other fan conventions are larger. Most notable: DragonCon in Atlanta with more than 20,000 on average since 2000. - Davodd 18:13, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Actually, the very next paragraph mentions DragonCon as the largest multi-genre convention. Worldcon was given as the original and largest fen convention. Is this distinction valid? If not, let's revise these paragraphs. KennyLucius 20:18, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: DragonCon is primarily a comic book convention, and typically media cons, whether Star Trek or comics, are larger than the Worldcon, which at least tries to keep science fiction as its focus. Rick Norwood 22:57, 15 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Dragon*Con is not primarily a comic book convention. A look at its programming tracks  shows: Comics-1 track; TV/Film-9 tracks; Books/Writing-8 tracks; Art/Costuming-2 tracks; Misc SF-3 tracks; Fandom-4 tracks. - Davodd 10:28, 18 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Worldcon size 

message: Post article passages here that have an impact on the To-do List. This will give us an idea of exactly what needs to be done. Let's try and not add anything until we conform the article to the standards set forth in the To-do list. Don't say too much. Just a brief reason what is wrong and how to conform it if you can.[[[User:Simonapro|Simonapro]] 17:31, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Splash Section for Suggestions that meet the To-do List

message: Post proposed Templates for this SF article from other Wiki articles here. Find a good one that got a WP:GA. [[[User:Simonapro|Simonapro]] 18:13, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Propose Template from another Wiki Article

message: At the moment these are the headings I proposed. They will probably changed. Although there are articles on wiki about these topics, this SF page should unify them somewhat by addressing them in the history.
Alien Beings
I would suggest that this starts with early mankind and is oral tradition. The Nagas And Serpents for example. In the Bible we have the Elohim and the nephilim for example. Then we have to leap forward to 1898: H. G. Wells "The War of the Worlds"
ALIENS ON EARTH: they came from outer space
Artificial Intelligence 
Knowledge Engine - machine-made expertise Jonathan Swift (1726)
Automaton Chessplayer - the first chess-playing computer Ambrose Bierce (1910)
Detectophone - machine translation of language Hugo Gernsback (1911)
Robot Mother - self-reproducing automaton Maurice A.  Hugi (1941)
Positronic Brain Isaac Asimov (1950)
Cyberpunk 
William Gibson in his novel "Neuromancer"
Environmental 
Ludovico Ariosto's "Orlando Furioso" 
(1516 & 1532) trip to the moon.
Government 
1984 by Orwell
Military 
H. Beam Piper's Uller Uprising (1952)
Parallel Universes 
The Time Machine is a novel by H. G. Wells, first published in 1895,
Robots
1627: Francis Bacon posthumous publication "The New Atlantis"
1890  Karel Capek [play "R.U.R." introduced word "robot" to the world]
1897  The Clown and the Automaton (Georges Melies, first robot in movie history) 
Metropolis - 1927 
1917     Hungarian author Frigyes Karinthy's satirical novels "Capilarie" 
and "Faremido" appear as sequels to Jonathan Swifts's "Gulliver's Travels", 
and adding a society based on automation and robots
June 1919     Abraham Merritt's "The Moon Pool" in "All-Story Magazine", 
featuring a spacewarp-to-another-world and "The Shing One" -- an alien 
robot constructed of pure energy
Space Opera 
E. E. Smith, with his Skylark and Lensman series;
Time 
Looks like this is covered by Well's Time Machine as history but might need a more modern example.
Utopian and Dystopian
There are many very early visionary works. This is a big topic. 
Please go ahead and makes inserts here if you wish.[[[User:Simonapro|Simonapro]] 12:27, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Much of this topic is addressed in History of science fiction. Perhaps we should consider how to summarize in this article and refer to the history article for more detail. KennyLucius 19:15, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SF Subgenre History 

message: Here we need make suggestions for illustrations. We should try and make them relevant to the work being done above. If there are illustrations that define SF we need them here. We can also incorporate a text into the above to support them. I suggest a good start would be a picture of:
(1)SPOCK
I like http://www.bbc.co.uk/cult/st/gallery/images/340/tosspock3.jpg or http://www.mythfolklore.net/mywiki/images/spock.jpg
:I would like to suggest we do not have illustrations. If we do have illustrations, I would certainly vote against them being from film/TV except to illustrate a section that deals with film/TV. Notinasnaid 07:29, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text:  OK, well, I'd like to help out on this article for a bit so I won't review it if it goes forward to be a Good Article again.  In my opinion, it needs illustrations if we want it to reach good article status.  I can quite see the "purist" argument for putting in no illustrations but it will be expected.  For a start, some of those old Amazing Stories had great covers and a particular "of the time" look (and they look great) -- adding an illustration of those serves a clear purpose in the article of giving a feeling for the character of those magazines.  Since the article discusses Amazing Stories then it comes under fair use.  Similarly for TV shows, we can surely pick one or two non-copyrighted images as iconic.  The wikipedia spirit is really to Be Bold rather than discuss heavily and vote before editing unless communications has really broken down.  Can we give this approach another try?  I've added a couple of images which have correct copyright tags, removed the Heinlein cover because it's a bit dull looking and the article does not discuss this book.  I've also tagged some needed citations.  I know that everyone knows the bit about War of the Worlds -- but that should just make it easier to find cites.  Hopefully we can move the article forward without the wholescale reverts that have been happening. --Richard Clegg 09:07, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title: Illustrations

message: The Ellison quote, about sci-fi and crickets, can be found in responses made by Ellison to some online questions left by July 1998 Parcon participtants see Parcon Text.  Not sure how to reference that in the article. 
Full quote: 
"HARLAN'S RESPONSE:
First of all, the hideous neologism "sci-fi"--which sounds like crickets 
fucking--is at the core of this seeming malaise.  What is called "sci-fi" is 
_not_, repeat NOT, science fiction.  It is special effects movie/television 
produced by and for imbeciles.  Giant lizards, moronic space battles with 
spaceships acting as if they were Spads and Fokkers dogfighting in 
atmosphere, recycled fairy tales, and illiterate appeals to paranoia.  They 
bear as much relation to science fiction of quality (whether film or tv or 
books or magazines) as Dachau did to a health spa." MikeBriggs 18:32, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Ackerman's response: I can't find anything on-line that uses that quote that doesn't use Wiki as the source. MikeBriggs 18:35, 25 April 2006 (UTC)

text: Thanks -- added quote from Ellison to the artice using the cite web template.  --Richard Clegg 22:58, 25 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Harlan Ellison Quote 

message: In order to avoid POVs and personal opinions about why a specific work should be considered important enough to warrent inclusion in the SF article we can use awards as a status of the work. Examples of Awards would be Hugo and Nebula. We should probably include film and television awards also such as oscars etc. [[[User:Simonapro|Simonapro]] 18:07, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: This is a good suggestion, but keep in mind that the Hugos are fan-baed (popularity contest) while the Nebulas are voted on by writers. Weight given by a SF award is useful, but sometimes the most definitive works are overlooked by awards and only recognized after a new trend or subgenre has become obvious. For this reason, any work that sets a trend or begins a subgenre should be given some weight as well, even if never honored with an award. KennyLucius 19:34, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: Not to mention they are both English language-centric. Stanisław Lem never got a Hugo nor a Nebula and his works definitely should be included here. Ausir 19:37, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: I've posted this over on the SF Masterworks talk page [], but it's worth pointing out here as well: Chapter 16 of the 5th edition of Anatomy of Science Fiction is a list-of-lists of recommended texts. It's broad, inclusive, and not limited to awards or nationalities (though it is Anglophone, so non-English-language books are limited to those that have been translated). Between that (and the lists it compiles, if they seem useful) and the Locus Online pages and authoritative scholarship such as the Clute & Nichols Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and/or the bibliographic works of E.F. Bleiler, we have more lists than even a compulsive list-saver like me can handle. RLetson 21:03, 26 April 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  SF Awards 

message: OK -- because things seemed to have stalled I went ahead and put in the new definition above.  Please, feel free to edit if you disagree.  I used my definition since at least one person other than me seemed to think it was good to use and nobody seemed particularly happy with the current definition.  Now, there was some talk about a section on "origins of the term" and we'd made a start on that here.  A few things were undecided however.
Does this seem reasonable? "The term science fiction is credited to Hugo Gernsback, whose Amazing Stories was the first English-language magazine devoted to the genre.  Originally he used the term "scientifiction": his name for "the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Edger Allen Poe type of story--a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision" (Amazing Stories #1, March 1926).  Other specialized magazines followed Amazing, and in 1938 John W. Campbell, Jr. changed the name of the magazine he edited from Astounding Stories to Astounding Science-Fiction. (Malcolm J. Edwards and Peter Nicholls, "Astounding Science-Fiction," in Clute & Nicholls Encyclopedia of Science Fiction)"
This is a combination of RLetson's suggestion but with Rick Norwoods assertion that Gernsback first used the term (do we have a citation for that?  I'm keen that as much as possible in the article has citations.  --Richard Clegg 09:41, 6 May 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Origins of the term science fiction