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Dr Strangelove
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quote:
Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Never read Tale of Two Cities. |
Drunken dissolute young Englishman happens to look exactly like a helpless young aristocrat wanted by the Jacobites in revolutionary France. When all other means of extracting the young man from his doom fail, having become redeemed by the fair maidens love for the innocent nobel the Englishman takes his place at the guilotine uttering the famous line " 'Tis a far far better thing I do now than I have ever done before. 'Tis a far far better sleep I go to now than I have ever had before." Ssssssshhhhhhh-whack-plop. quote:
Les Miserables had the rogue only bad ONCE in stealing for the priest. He was thrown in jail for stealing a loaf of bread and then stole from the priest and was redeemed and for the rest of the book (which was 90% of it) was a good guy. |
He also stole from a kid on his way to the bishop's town. I also seem to recall that he may have killed someone in prison. quote:
Clint Eastwood spagetti westerns?! Those all involved a rogue with a heart of gold since the beginning... he's cleaning out the town in FOD, and is stopping the bad guy in FFDM, and is "Good" in GB&U. Pulp Fiction? The main character is seen as good (or at least cool and sympathtic) since the beginning. |
I was thinking of Sam Jackson. Doesn't he cold-bloodedly kill a bunch of college-aged kids just to punish some kids who stole some trinket from his boss? that's pretty bad IMHO. quote:
Han was as an ass until the end when he thought about something except himself for once. |
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Brent
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As I understand it, Harry Potter has to go to a school called Hogwarts to study magic. People who believe in magic in real life don't just automatically start casting spells (supposedly). I think they study how to supposedly do it. I'm not aware of any specific story where people are automatically able to do magic just because they decide some day that they want to, but then I don't like magic so I'm no expert. Name some examples of real science fiction if neither SW nor Trek qualify. Is there any on television? Are the Space Odyssey movies real science fiction? If there is none on TV or movies, most people have never experienced it. But there is a public perception of what SF is, and the two prime examples are SW and Trek. A definition only understood correctly by a few dozen experts isn't worth much. If 99 percent of humanity is completely wrong about all definitions, how do they communicate? The definitions of the many outweigh the definitions of the few (or the one).
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Jon Miller
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in the baen free library there are two novels about a comptuer programmer who goes to a world and discovers that the magic all follows these set rules, he than writes programs using the magic and has everythign behaving very orderly (except when a bug exists...)
Jon Miller
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:16
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quote:
Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
Here is your preconcieved notions of magic. Why can't someone create a flawed magic? Magic which is not perfect. Magic which may not work perfectly. Simply because everyone has written about perfect magic doesn't end the discussion on magic. Stop boxing yourself in. |
What would be "flawed magic" exactly? What would be imperfect about it? You can't saw "flawed Gravity" or "flawed electromagnetism", or "flawed Force(as in SW)". You may misuse, but it does not make the force itself flawed. Doing a spell badly is a very different thing from making a theory that is mistaken due to missing data- one is a mistake, the other is a limit imposed on the scientist.
quote:
No it wouldn't. You could try to manipulate the future using a magical revealed future, which is only based on the facts as the society knows them, and then later finding inconveinient facts come up which render the magical prediction flawed. |
Why on Earth would a magically presented vision have ANYTHING to do with facts??? The very point of magic is to get away from the mundane reality of facts- what do facts have to do with underlying universal forces (which is what magic is in the fantasy setting). Either the magical prediction was faulty, or not, but that fault has nothing to do with reality, but with the vision itself. Again, facts on earth do not make the Revelation according to St. John false, either the revelation was correct or not itself.
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Dr Strangelove
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quote:
Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
quote:
I was thinking of Sam Jackson. Doesn't he cold-bloodedly kill a bunch of college-aged kids just to punish some kids who stole some trinket from his boss? that's pretty bad IMHO. |
Is he ever redeemed? I don't remember one.
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Don't you remember the ending of the movie? In the coffee shop he tells Travolta he's going to quit his life of crime. At that moment the young couple stage their hold-up. He and Travolta surprise and disarm them, then let them go with the promise that they'll never do it again. quote:
quote:
He also stole from a kid on his way to the bishop's town. I also seem to recall that he may have killed someone in prison. |
His stealing from the kid was simply lying to him about where the money went (under Valjean's boot), which is bad, yes, but nothing horrible. I don't recall anything about him killing a prisoner in jail. Though he did try to escape many times, leading him to be imprisoned for 19 years.
And the original reason that he was put in was to steal a loaf of bread because he and his sister that he was taken care of were starving. Hardly a character we see as an ass. |
I may be getting the original story confused with a French movie version I saw a few years ago. However I seem to recall that the money he stole form the boy was every penny he had in the world.quote:
quote:
Drunken dissolute young Englishman happens to look exactly like a helpless young aristocrat wanted by the Jacobites in revolutionary France. When all other means of extracting the young man from his doom fail, having become redeemed by the fair maidens love for the innocent nobel the Englishman takes his place at the guilotine uttering the famous line " 'Tis a far far better thing I do now than I have ever done before. 'Tis a far far better sleep I go to now than I have ever had before." Ssssssshhhhhhh-whack-plop. |
How was he rogue then? |
He was a lawyer (barrister or solicitor, I forget) who spent his time drinking his family's money away. Back in those days the English thought that sort of behavior was bad.
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Jon Miller
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ok, yours is a fair deffinition
as long as you recognise that most others define things differently
JM
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General Ludd
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Minion of the Dominion
Aug 2001
time: 05:16
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
If "magic" is treated as some known quantity that can be measured, predicted, and studies, then, while you can still call it magic, it is hardly "magical", as in mysterious and otherworldly. |
It can be measured, predicted, and studied, but is still mysterious and otherwordly, because it is largely dependant on other planes of existance. (and what is more otherwordly than that?)
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Brent
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Attempts at magic fail plenty of times in stories. There may be side effects, or simply the wrong thing happens, or they didn't do it right and nothing happens. The Force does not always work either. You have to concentrate in order to have any effect, and in the novels, which are widely accepted, there are creatures called Ysalamiri which kill the Force in the area immediately surrounding them. And the Force didn't save all the good Jedi from the Purge, nor did it save the Emperor in the end.
If a magical vision doesn't show you facts, it is not magic. It is hallucination.
Who says a movie or whatever cannot be cross-genre? What movie or whatever is Science Fiction with no humor, drama, action, or romance?
2001: how realistic is it that Jupiter can become a star? How realistic is it that the space station in the movie could have been built without the real world concerns that prevented it in reality? How realistic are the Monoliths?
The debate about magic is moot because magic does not exist. There is no correct definition. People study supposed magic, and in fiction magic would not happen if someone didn't study and cause it. People get scientific about magic all the time. Different worlds are said to have varying strengths of magic.
There is no one definition for anything. There is no perfect definition for anything. No one definition includes all SF and excludes all else.
Magic is an illusion. In stories there is always assumed to be an explanation. It simply happens to be unknown to normal people.
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Starchild
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a raving alcoholic drama queen with a penchant for the biosciences
Jan 1970
time: 00:16
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
If "magic" is treated as some known quantity that can be measured, predicted, and studies, then, while you can still call it magic, it is hardly "magical", as in mysterious and otherworldly. |
In some fantasy and cross-genre pieces ("Gargoyles" is the one that springs to mind), magic is treated as another form of energy but one that can be guided by human will.
"Energy is energy, whether generated by science or sorcery."
Technology or magic are just fiction catchwords for "doing something currently impossible."
I miss my collection of the Pern novels. I got into them at the perfect time cause the first ones start out as fantasy with dragons and lords but as the novels progressed, and I grew up, it revealed this science-fiction world of a fallen society on a distant planet with genetically modified creatures.
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Imran Siddiqui
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The Potterverse
Jan 1970
time: 00:16
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quote:
Why on Earth would a magically presented vision have ANYTHING to do with facts??? The very point of magic is to get away from the mundane reality of facts- what do facts have to do with underlying universal forces (which is what magic is in the fantasy setting). Either the magical prediction was faulty, or not, but that fault has nothing to do with reality, but with the vision itself. |
Can you PLEASE get your head out of this narrowly created box of what you think magic is. Yes, magic can be studied and measured and still be magic. Just because you've boxed magic in to make your argument stick doesn't mean your definition of magic has any merit.
Flawed magic can mean a partial failure, maybe because you have evaluated the facts wrong or studied it incorrectly.
We do not accept your narrow definition of magic. Sorry.
quote:
a story like 1984 (which is science fiction but NOT fantastical) |
Actually it is a fantasy, because such a society does not exist.
quote:
Don't you remember the ending of the movie? In the coffee shop he tells Travolta he's going to quit his life of crime. At that moment the young couple stage their hold-up. He and Travolta surprise and disarm them, then let them go with the promise that they'll never do it again. |
I don't think that deciding to retire is the same as redemption. He just doesn't want to do it anymore. I don't think that makes him in a 'good guy', in the classical sense of the world.
quote:
However I seem to recall that the money he stole form the boy was every penny he had in the world. |
Which, IIRC, was one penny  . Which Valjean put his foot over and then told the boy that he hadn't seen it.
quote:
He was a lawyer (barrister or solicitor, I forget) who spent his time drinking his family's money away. Back in those days the English thought that sort of behavior was bad. |
Yes... but hardly roguish. Foolish perhaps, but not purposely being an ******* (though I guess it depends on your definition of the term).
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Brent
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So because someone had nothing, it's no big deal to take away what that person has?
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MosesPresley
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The difference between science and magic may be a moot point. Remember Arthur C. Clarke's famous line, "Any sufficiently advanced technology would be indistinguishable from magic."
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Jon Miller
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DnD magic is then Science Fiction?
Woot
JM
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:16
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quote:
Originally posted by Brent
Attempts at magic fail plenty of times in stories. There may be side effects, or simply the wrong thing happens, or they didn't do it right and nothing happens. The Force does not always work either. You have to concentrate in order to have any effect, and in the novels, which are widely accepted, there are creatures called Ysalamiri which kill the Force in the area immediately surrounding them. And the Force didn't save all the good Jedi from the Purge, nor did it save the Emperor in the end. |
Any attempt to harness energy of any type can fail-what is the point?
quote:
If a magical vision doesn't show you facts, it is not magic. It is hallucination. |
Ok, thanks for agreeing with me that a magically produced future vision would be perfect, and thus the Foundation series would not work with science replaced by magical revelation. 
quote:
Who says a movie or whatever cannot be cross-genre? What movie or whatever is Science Fiction with no humor, drama, action, or romance? |
What are you talking about? Humor, drama, action, romance are ALL basic parts of ANY STORY, whatever the genre. Any movie must have at least onje of these to exist. Saying a movie is fantasy, NOT sci fi in no way states that real sci fi can;t have drama- Solaris has drama.
quote:
2001: how realistic is it that Jupiter can become a star? |
1. That is in 2010, NOT 2001.
2. IF the condition of the plot in 2010 were met, ie. the mass in Jupiter were increased so much that the whole thing imploded, then you would get fusion of the hydrogen and would get a star.
quote:
How realistic is it that the space station in the movie could have been built without the real world concerns that prevented it in reality? |
What Concerns? The only reason we don't have a space station like the one in 2001 today are financial. Same reason we have yet to make moon bases-there is NOT technical issue for this not happening.
quote:
How realistic are the Monoliths? |
I don't know- maybe in 5000 years we will, or not. This is where that Clarke statement about any tech being so advanced it is magic- for the reader of 2001 and 2010 and so forth the Monolith is magical, in so far as we are utterly ignorant of its workings.
quote:
There is no one definition for anything. There is no perfect definition for anything. No one definition includes all SF and excludes all else. |
Oh, of course there are fuzzy borders for any definition, but the question is, what is the underlying point of sci fi- the common usage you accept is that simply having advanced technology in it makes it sci fi. I disagree, to me the point is HOW science, whether futuristic or not, is used in the story. Does it simply serve as a setting device-hey, look, knights IN SPACE! Or is it integral to the theme of the story?
quote:
Magic is an illusion. In stories there is always assumed to be an explanation. It simply happens to be unknown to normal people. |
Magic is not always an illusion, in fact in most fantasy stories the effects of magic are quite physical.
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12-04-2005 07:48
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