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Why do so many skeptics like science fiction and fantasy?

ehcks said:
The real world is great and all, but sometimes I like to imagine a world with magic, or the effectively magic sufficiently advanced technology.

I think it's important for skeptics to have a good imagination, as long as they never confuse that with reality.
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^^this^^
 
Skeptic and science lover here who is bored to tears by sci-fi/fantasy books. I can watch some sci-fi movies without a problem, but fantasy movies are a much tougher sell for me.

I love reading non-fiction and science books in particular, but after a few years of a purely non-fiction diet I've started alternating between fiction and non-fiction titles. I find that I really only enjoy fiction when I can relate it to my life in some fashion (doesn't have to be that direct, but sci-fi/fantasy just don't speak to me on a personal level).
 
I don't read much science fiction or fantasy, with the exception of Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett, but I do love Beowulf (the poem, not any of the movies) and Old Norse literature, which is full of gods, giants, trolls, the undead, werewolves, dragons, etc. I wrote my master's thesis on The Tempest, which features a bunch of spirits, and my dissertation on a group of Christian didactic poems. That doesn't mean I think I can live in those worlds (or would want to). Science may have dinosaurs, but we've got dragons, which are much cooler: they aren't bogged down by the laws of nature (kind of like cats).
 
I'm another of those for whom it's more of a historical thing. I was a science fiction and fantasy nerd long before I discovered skepticism. It started with Star Wars and Lord Of The Rings, and I have never turned my back on that. I can appreciate a good story without worrying about whether the story is necessarily real. There's a real fuzzy grey area though, beyond which a story loses its verisimilitude. I couldn't read the Lensman series, for example. But I loved Babylon 5, even with its soul eaters, telepaths and technomages. It's hard to explain.
 
I read SF because my mother read SF back in the 50s and 60s because my grandmother read SF back in the 40s and 50s.
 
I credit my love for mythology and fantasy and science fiction and ghost stories for making me a skeptic in the first place. If Isis, Time Lords, and Count Magnus aren't real, why would God, spirits, and ghosts be real? It's all just stories, of varying quality. If you take them as entertainment they can be a lot of fun.

I love ghost stories. One of my favorite books is about paranormal investigators investigating a haunted house with a real ghost. Once you know what's real and what ain't, you can relax and enjoy it.
 
I don't think I fit the JREF demographics well except for the being sceptical thing. But I may as well have my say.

Like the OP I used to mostly read fiction but for about 12 years I have been at last giving myself a broad but shallow scientific education via books and the internet. The more popular science I read the more I enjoy it. I love to make the connections, to say "ah ha!" every now and then. The last thing I need is to loosen my feeble grasp of the current scientific consensus on different topics by reading science *fiction*.

I still love fiction of course but mostly the character-driven kind, maybe served up with a sauce of irony or humour.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Why do so many skeptics like science fiction and fantasy literature?

It puzzles me.

It just seems odd that people who don't believe in the paranormal or the unscientific should love these genres.

Am I missing out? :(
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Personally, I can't understand what people who don't murder people see in murder mysteries. Why would anyone like fiction that isn't a photorealistic copy of their non-fiction life?
 
Lamuella said:
Personally, I can't understand what people who don't murder people see in murder mysteries. Why would anyone like fiction that isn't a photorealistic copy of their non-fiction life?
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Lamuella, I'm not the OP but I think your comment about murder mysteries misses the mark so I'll explain why I, for one, love that particular genre.

First: Reading mysteries is not a passive experience. It's a game in which you are pitting your wits against the author's. A classical mystery weaves a complex puzzle and teases you with loose threads. There are surprises, shocks. There is great satisfaction in seeing some of the threads, the significant ones, cleverly drawn together in the end to form an elegant whole.

Second: No elves or aliens are harmed in the commission of real murders. The best of the genre have convincing people committing credible crimes which affect believable victims and which another class of people, familiar to every reader, called detectives tries to solve. Not photorealistic but realistic enough surely.

Oh ****. I just realised your post was a joke.
 
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Lukraak_Sisser said:
I do kind of know what you mean though, as a biochemist by trade I cannot watch any movie/series that shows 'real' use of those techniques. Movies like Outbreak or series like CSI I cannot help but shouting in my head 'It doesnt WORK that way!!!'.
But strangely enough once it becomes fictional enough that it should be clear to anyone that it IS fiction this switches off. Star trek medicine or Fringe I have no problem watching. Odd but true.
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To be honest, even without being a chemist or a physicist, stuff from ST often tripped my suspension of disbelief HARD. Like the silicon-based virus from Enterprise that SOMEHOW works just great on humans. Or just about any use of genetics in Enterprise for example. (No, a strand of DNA in a baby is not a merry mix of genes from both parents. 'Nuff said.)

I'll agree with your basic gist, though. As long as I don't know what the f-bomb does polarizing the deflector dish actually do, I can swallow it. It's when the authors get close enough to home and show they slept through high-school that it starts bothering me.
 
Orphia Nay said:
Why do so many skeptics like science fiction and fantasy literature?

It puzzles me.

It just seems odd that people who don't believe in the paranormal or the unscientific should love these genres.

Am I missing out? :(
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Ultimately it's a matter of scope. As in, can you accept X as true, or can you accept rule Y, only for the scope of exercise Z?

E.g., let's say you're a soldier on some military exercise, and you have to attack obver a river. There's a big bridge right in front of you, but some general has stuck a big billboard on it that says "DESTROYED". Can you accept that that bridge is, in fact, destroyed and impossible to use to cross the river, for the scope of that exercise?

What does that have to do with fantasy? Well, it's the same idea. Can you naturally apply different rules to different worlds, or have trouble keeping them apart? Can you imagine that a simulated plant in a simulated world where it rains would get wet, or are you stuck in an "OMG, it's not real rain, it can't get anything wet" frame? (At least one person argued the latter even on this board, a long time ago.)

The same really applies to being ok with fantasy. Different worlds have different rules, really. E.g.,

- the world of the real Earth has no magic
- in the world of Midkemia (from the Riftwar saga) or Discworld or, well, take the world of whatever fantasy novel, magic is real and works just fine
- for the more gamer minded, in the world of Azeroth (from Warcraft) or Tamriel (from The Elder Scrolls), magic works just fine too

- in the real-life Earth, there is no evidence that any gods ever existed or actually did anything at all
- in the world of Midkemia or Discworld or whatever, the gods are very very real and active. Some even hyper-active ;)

And it's not just about magic, really. E.g.,

- in the real-life Earth, a giant combat mecha would be severely limited by pressure on his feet, and have a giant surface to spread those few tons of armour on. I.e., it would be the dumbest combat vehicle ever.
- in the Battletech universe, or the Star Wars universe, (and several others) giant combat mecha are the ultimate things you can throw at a battlefield
 
I used to be a much bigger fan of sci-fi/fantasy. Then at some point in my adult life the cumulative understanding of plots and tropes undermined my enjoyment of any such fiction, save for parody. Now I can hardly get 5 minutes into a movie or book before I ask myself, "where have I heard this before?" It becomes all too easy to anticipate the twists and resolutions.

For example, I find the latest Batman movies rather boring. Yes indeed, why so serious? It's still a guy in a silly suit pulling off ridiculous stunts and villains who seem only to exist to keep the hero busy.

As for the argument that fiction somehow enlightens us to truths about ourselves... well I find that looking into non-fiction stories is a lot more revealing. Authors use all sorts of methods to create believable characters, but they fall apart when you've seen most of their archetypes.
 
I'll confess my deviation. I prefer historically based stories. I love history in general.

I also find mythology more fascinating than fantasy. Age of Mythology was always cooler that Warcraft III.
 
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