Forum - View topicNEWS: Japanese Science Fiction Con's Seiun Nominees Posted [2011-04-24]
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Sunday Silence
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Kick Ass?
Really? |
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Echo_City
Posts: 1236 |
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Full-Metal Alchemist? That's not science fiction, that's fantasy.
What's next? Guin Saga?! Seriously. Shoot, let's throw in DBZ, not only is it nostalgic but it has far more "science" than FMA. Capsule cars/houses/etc, the dragonball scanner, the gravity fields, space ships, the power meter... The list goes on. Where's the science in FMA again, because all I see is the occult masquerading as psudeo-science? Are the pickings for good scifi really that slim that they have to allow such in? They must be, for as was mentioned, the rather non-scifi Kick Ass was allowed in. |
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Megiddo
 Posts: 8360 Location: IL |
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I'd say that transmuting things certainly is science, though of course FMA transmutations are certainly beyond the scope anything conceivable (hey, science fiction!).
That said, go Tatami Galaxy. I was highly entertained and Yuasa definitely deserves all the credit he can get for directing that. |
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Egan Loo
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Seiun Awards are similar to the Hugo Awards; even though the World Science Fiction Society awards the Hugo Awards at the World Science Fiction Convention, both science-fiction and fantasy works are eligible. Recent Hugo Awards have gone to Stardust, Pan's Labyrinth, The Incredibles, and The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
As mentioned in the article, it already happened — albeit one year too late, sadly. Kaoru Kurimoto won a Seiun Award for her Guin Saga novel series posthumously. |
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Echo_City
Posts: 1236 |
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Oh, and this magical ability to convert elements, an ability originally said to not exist, is powered by the life force of our world. A special ability powered by the spiritual life force of beings in a linked world. That sounds quite fantastical to me. Especially with all their occult references thrown in. Even if we were to pretend that the "transmutations" are scientific, that still does not explain the original ability of the alchemists to reshape elements. A nuclear transformation would allow Al to turn that broken radio into silver, not magically cause it to reassemble itself. In fact, the alchemists' ability to shape elements functions uncannily like the "bending" featured in Avatar: The Last Airbender, which is a purely fantasy series. As the saying goes, if it barks like a dog & smells like a dog... But we can't even pretend that, as FMA doesn't even try to give a token explanation as to how the purported "science" behind its transmutations works. If they're not going to give us that much, then we can't entertain the notion that it is science fiction. The franchise felt as though it started out with the intention of being scientific, but due to a combination of ignorance on the part of the creator & difficulty in maintaining the scientific premise (especially when it is obvious that the shounen audience doesn't care about such), the franchise decided to take the easy way out and go fantasy. |
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Echo_City
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Egan Loo
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Despite the name of their related conventions, neither the Seiun nor the Hugo Awards have alleged that they are only for the science-fiction genre.
Quality of writing and story aside, both Heinlein and Asimov have written fantasy. We don't have to be mad about awards that have a tradition of honoring both science fiction and fantasy for decades, especially when authors such as Heinlein and Asimov have worked in both genres. |
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skafreak51
 Posts: 212 |
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While I don't quite understand why FMA is on there, I'm absolutely confused at Kick-Ass's inclusion.
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enurtsol
 Posts: 14889 |
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Kick Ass should win, just for Hit-Girl alone. Then we'd get Kick Ass 2!
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amarielah
 Posts: 178 |
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@ Echo City
I've had this very same discussion with somebody on another site, who was insisting that the FMA manga was fantasy, while the FMA anime was science fiction (because it included parallel universes, of all things - as if fricken' Narnia counts as science fiction). The person you're responding to was probably referring to the manga, however, where the magic system works a little bit differently. For example, in the manga it turn out that spoiler[geothermal energy] is what powers alchemy. But - for some reason - human souls can still act as either a tool of amplification, as seen with the philosopher's stones, or as a means of dampening alchemical power, which is an important point towards the end of the series. And then of course there's the fact that the entire system is reliant on seemingly arbitrary symbols that would have been pretty much impossible to discover through any sort of experimental procedure. So yeah, the manga's fantasy, pure and simple. That said, this looks like it's more an award for "speculative fiction" as opposed to pure science fiction. Kamen Rider isn't exactly what I'd call hard SciFi, myself. |
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vanfanel
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In Japan, it's probably simpler to just think of "SF" as standing for "speculative fiction" instead of "science fiction." I wish a stronger distinction was made (both in Japan and when it comes to English-language awards like the Nebulas), but anyone who delves into Japanese "SF" will soon run into many things that are by no stretch of the imagination science fiction (and many other things that are). Nozomi Omori, who edits a yearly anthology of the best Japanese SF is a huge fan of the late Judith Merril, and her choices often seem to be driven by a "What would Judith do?" kind of logic. It is what it is, unfortunately for those of us who prefer John W. Campbell's ideas on what SF is (and isn't).
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