There's people that claim Star Wars is fantasy with scifi elements. I would've never come up with it myself, but I can't completely deny that train of thought considering how mysterious The Force is.

So what do you think, SEN, is it SciFi, fantasy or both?
It would be nice if you'd add a post explaning your choice, and I consider it a requirement if you vote 'other'.

Before Episodes 1-3, "The Force" was pretty much magic - something everyone could feel to different extents that with enough practicing/honing (if you are born with the gift for it) could become very powerful. There was no scientific exercise for it; and then when they came out with the midi-chlorian thing it was very wishy washy and offput a lot of fans. So I think that is the element of magic.

Moreover, sci-fi at one time was a subgenre of fantasy. It eventually grew into it's own genre, so I would argue that it has always been fantasy but is now classified as sci-fi. A lot of original sci-fi from the 50s dealt with things now associated with fantasy, such as telekinesis, brain washing, etc., but that is akin to the original series of Star Trek; you had psychics but with a sci-fi flare, such as the Vulcan mindmeld, or here's a scene from the episode with Gary Mitchell if you don't mind spoilers...


I know we started talking about Star Wars but I wanted to point out how fantasy and sci fi were almost indistinguishable genre wise when they were first developed. I think we're getting back to that point now for what it's worth because we can now disprove 90% of what we saw on 50s/60s sci fi flicks/shows, so we are finding more extravagant ways to tie in science fiction and using fantasy to make it believable.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Science_fantasy

Like Kame say. 4 5 and 6 are a science fantasy, because the force is a strong and powerful force that can be summoned at will by the mind. Sounds a friggen lot like magic. 1 2 and 3 go to ruin this by explaining it. Wheres the fantasy in that. If you explain EVERYTHING then people cant imagine anything for themselves, and long convocations like this fail to ever exist because there are no questions still to answer.

Movies like Inception play on that. They tell you enough to get you started, but never get into the raw gritty details of how they can summon a dream with a machine. Or if the top did stop spinning.

There is no imaginative science in the fiction of Star Wars. Anything fantastic about it, is magic. The only reason we can even confuse it with science fiction is that it takes place in space and what looks like the future, which isn't enough to call something sci-fi.

Come to think of it, if you changed the setting of Star Wars to be in a "medieval" fantasy Earth the story could still take place...

Fuck you all. Death STAR. Emphasis on the STAR, its a friggen STAR of DOOM.

But yeah if they had dragons instead of spaceships and a giant floating rock instead of the death star, medieval fantasy works. I mean hell, the little furballs at the end of Return of the Jedi are practically straight from a medieval fantasy world, they use friggen falling tree booby traps.

Futuristic science and technology (ignoring the "long time ago" stated), check.
Space travel, check.
Aliens, check.
Paranormal abilities, check.
Discusses philosophical ideas? Big check.

Supernatural phenomena, check.
Imaginary worlds, check.

I have to call both on this one, though I would say it has more elements of science fiction than of fantasy if I were forced to classify it as strictly one.

http://scifi.about.com/od/starwarsglossaryandfaq/a/Star-Wars-Faq-Is-Star-Wars-Sci-Fi-Or-Fantasy.htm
http://www.border7.com/blog/04/27/is-star-wars-fantasy-or-science-fiction/
http://amazingstoriesmag.com/2013/03/the-fuzzy-line-between-science-fiction-and-fantasy/

Well obviously that would be a way to remove it's SciFi elements, but that's not what Star Wars is. Star Wars is space travel, star ships and laser weapons.
Or is Star Trek fantasy because of Vulcan mind meld or Betazoid mind reading? Or because Star Trek could also be on a single world and the different races being kingdoms?

Science fiction doesn't imply the scientific breakthroughs have to be possible in the real world. TIE-Fighters are powered with ion engines, not magic. Laser cannons shoot photon bursts not magic lightning. Shields are powered by generators, not some supernatural power. The places are just far away, not on a fantasy world. The races are from different planets, not the same world.

Btw. playing in the future isn't necessarily connected to SciFi. Other cultures may simply existed earlier and thus gotten on a technological level higher than ours. So looking at them even during our past is science fiction.

Perhaps the best distinguishing characteristic would be the last sentence in Moose's first link: Weapons. Star Wars rarely shows crude weapons like bows or axes which is standard in every fantasy setting.
However there's no getting around the fact that neither the Force nor continuing to exist as a ghost is fitting into a scientific setting. Those are the only 2 points speaking for fantasy though, and the definition of SciFi allows for paranormal abilities so my conclusion still has to be that Star Wars is SciFi, although admittedly with one (of many) core concept being fantasy.

http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Lightsaber
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Vibroblade
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bowcaster
http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Ewok#Weapons_and_equipment

look what I can do with three minutes of google

Post has been edited 3 time(s), last time on Apr 23 2013, 4:58 pm by Pr0nogo.

I strongly suggest some of you read science fiction from the 50s; you'll notice a lot of the mind-meld type of elements in Star Trek or the Force in Star Wars is prevalent in it. I finished The Stars My Destination a couple months ago now, I would suggest it to anyone interested in what sci fi used to be.

And what exactly do your 3 minutes prove? I'm assuming you're saying they do use crude weapons, but
Lightsabers work by emitting a forcefield which holds plasma in shape. Not crude.
Vibroblades aren't shown. At least not in the movies. And they're borderline crude at best.
Bowcaster is also improved by technology. Not crude.
And ewoks are a primitive race and a minority in that. Proves nothing.

They're designed from crude weapons. Just because they added half-assed justifications for them being in the universe doesn't mean they're not still fantasy elements which were thrust violently and hardly into a vulnerable science-fiction orifice.

Warhammer 40,000 has chainswords, chainhammers, power axes, power swords, power fists, and et cetera. Just because they're artefacts from a time long ago and they hold great power that is ostensibly justified by their scientific components doesn't mean they aren't just fantasy elements acting as a penetrating device.

I suppose it proves your LOL factor, at the very least.

Ewoks prove that the Star Wars universe doesn't have a prime directive. But yes otherwise I would consider the ewoks to be in a minority.

This is true of bowcasters. But it also makes sense because it's the signature weapon of wookies which are usually depicted as having more muscle than brain.

What else is a half-assed justification?

The more technical, well-defined, and related to the scientific method a work of fiction is, the more science fiction it is.
If it is non-technical, mysterious, and arbitrary, I would deem it fantasy.

Given that, Star Wars is fantasy.

I guess that's it. There's really nothing technical about Star Wars.

As I expect this is sarcasm: given only the 6 movies, they are mostly fantasy. The movies rarely ever go into any technical detail about a lot of the technology in the universe. It has a "futuristic" setting that uses a lot of elements that might be result from scientific progress, but the story and plot are really, really fantasy in nature and rarely go any lengths to explain any phenomenon in the setting, nor does it discuss discuss any consequences of technology in detail.

Not as far as I can remember, anyway.

As for other Star Wars-related material, including that which is licensed, I cannot say. For comparison, the amount of detail put into Mass Effect's universe pushes Mass Effect fairly far into scifi territory.

EDIT:

It is counter-intuitive but I find these definitions of scifi and fantasy a lot more helpful. Given a Middle Ages or Renaissance Era setting and maybe some dragons, you could easily call it fantasy - but if a reader goes through this book and finds out that instead of some heroic journey to find the old wise man, slay the dragon, and rescue the princess, the entire book is about the development of alchemy or a well-defined system of magic, they are probably going to put it down because it was not the "fantasy" for which they were looking.