Quote:
Originally Posted by Van Rijn
Now, I'd call those both fantasy. "Kryptonian" is just another way of giving someone fantastic powers with no real explanation.... It's like the discussion of Steampunk: That's fantasy too.
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And, "It works by sending tachyon particles into modevendium alloy charged with anti-protons," doesn't really tell you anything either.
Star Trek's sci-fi, though, right?
How about
Ringworld, with virtually unbreakable materials and luck as a biologically-based trait? Where do you draw the line?
I've got to disagree with the second.
Some steampunk is fantasy-like, though I would still call it sci-fi, just very loose sci-fi. There's nothing in
The Difference Engine that couldn't have really happened, had Charles Babbage not ticked off the people he needed to fund his machines.
There is a real Difference Engine, now, in The Science Museum, London, built according to the mechanical tolerances achievable at the time, and it works just fine.
I'm actually writing a novel that's partly set in a post-steampunk world--they've moved onto electromechanical technology. Nothing is impossible, and most things are very probable in the story.