IGN: Top 25 Sci-Fi Movies

[rocketpig]

sapphi_snake said:

rocketpig said:

sapphi_snake said:

Reasonable said:

I know.  But big names like Asimov, etc. saw it this way and I do think that it's the right (if rarely used) definition.  I tend to dislike genres in general, but if we're gonna have them I want nice clean lines where possible.

For me, if the film isn't directly examining us in a technology or real science manner with regard to ourselves or society then it's not SF.  It's borrowing trappings from SF, it's using SF as a nice setting or selling point, but it's not SF.

Rather oddly (for me) it's one rare place I do find myself taking the elitist stance that only around 10% of what's called SF really is SF.

Your opinion, but that doesn't change the fact that what you don't deem sci fi is widely considered to be a subgenre of sci fi. Heeck I for one was shocked to find out that The Road by Cormack McCarthy is widely considered to be a dystopian novel, yet that's the case I guess.

How wouldn't The Road be considered a dystopian novel? Hell, things don't get much bleaker than that situation short of just having the entire world blow up and everyone die at the end.

A dystopia (from Ancient Greek: δυσ-: bad-, ill- and Ancient Greek: τÏŒπος: place, landscape) (alternatively, cacotopia,[1] or anti-utopia) is, in literature, an often futuristic society that has degraded into a repressive and controlled state, often under the guise of being utopian. Dystopian literature has underlying cautionary tones, warning society that if we continue to live how we do, this will be the consequence. A dystopia is, thus, regarded as a sort of negative utopia and is often characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government. Dystopias usually feature different kinds of repressive social control systems, a lack or total absence of individual freedoms and expressions and constant states of warfare or violence. Dystopias often explore the concept of technology going "too far" and how humans individually and en masse use technology. A dystopian society is also often characterized by mass poverty for most of its inhabitants and a large military-like police force.

That's the definition of Dystopian taken from Wikipedia. In The Road there was no society whatsoever. It was a post-apocalyptic novel, it didn't deal with a dystopian society, as there was no society to speak of.

Or you could just look at the actual word "dystopia", which The Road fills in spades. Besides, even Wikipedia uses the all-important word "often" in the description, meaning that other uses of the word are possible. It's the same as qualifying sci-fi as "often being in the future" because it doesn't usually take place in modern times but that doesn't mean that it CAN'T take place in modern day.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dystopia