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Science Fiction @lemmy.world
canthidium @lemmy.world
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Hello everyone! I'm Canthidum, new mod here. Wanted to introduce myself and get some input from the community.

Hello. I'm the new mod of ScienceFiction. I just wanted to introduce myself as you'll be seeing my name a lot more around here. I also wanted to get some community input on a couple things.

First, you'll notice we have revamped the about/rules sidebar. Please familiarize yourself with the guidelines, it's not much different, just trying to be more welcoming and informative as well as make sure we are having a safe, good experience for our members. I like to be transparent as well as get community input often because after all, this community is for you all.

Second, one of the things I came on for is to post weekly discussion threads to make sure conversations about ongoing shows/movies/books, etc are easy to find and take part in. So I wanted to see what all you would like to discuss. Obviously Foundaition is airing now, so I will be making sure we have a pinned discussion post about each week's new episode. I also wanted to see what else you might want to talk about and what upcoming media you were looking forward to that you would like to have discussion threads for. Izzy has been making monthly "What are you watching/reading?" posts but we also want to have more specific weekly threads as well. So what are you looking forward to?

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15 comments

  • Hi, Thanks for volunteering your time. I would like to see if we could somehow integrate bookwyrm into the community. I found a ton of stuff from /r/scifi and I think that we could do some type of collaborative list of books we like or something and get that aspect of the fediverse happening too. Good luck, may the schwartz be with you

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    • I have an idea, but it is a bit complicated. Basically in a month from now I am going to find the 10 most popular science fiction books from the august "What are you Reading" post and make a poll for a community book club. We will vote on which of these 10 books will be the book of the month to read in September.

      As for BookWyrm I think what I'll do is make a ScienceFiction community account and then the Reading and Read books on that account will be the books from the book club we voted on. Also that account will follow everyone here in the community that posts their BookWyrm account so you can find other members.

      I suppose I could even start this now for August.

      https://bookwyrm.social/user/ScienceFiction

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    • That’s a brilliant idea.

      Also kinda happening naturally

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    • That's a great idea

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  • Thanks for volunteering. I appreciate the change in the community guidelines towards being more welcoming and informative.

    A question and some observations, and a suggestion …

    What is this community willing to consider as on topic?

    The sidebar says this is a place to discuss all things sci-fi but the community name is ‘science fiction.’

    ‘Sci-fi’ is often considered to encompass all of speculative fiction including horror and fantasy.

    ‘Science fiction’ can be defined more narrowly. In the old subreddit for sci-fi books, as an example, the discussion could be captured by those who insisted that only classic, hard science fiction, or fiction based on currently established science theory, was science fiction. There seemed to be a fair bit of gatekeeping of more popular franchises or works that involved more speculative science. There was a great deal of dismissiveness from some users about anything with faster than light travel. It made it challenging to have more wide ranging discussions.

    My own preference would be for a big tent sci-fi community that embraces all the different permutations of the genres, and allows for the mashups.

    If the intent is to go with that big tent speculative fiction definition, in the spirit of being open and welcoming, it would be helpful to be yet more clear in the sidebar on this point.

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    • I must say that, given the name, my expectations when I joined were that it would be about (sci)ence (fi)ction in particular, not (s)peculative (f)iction in general.

      Personally, I read quite a lot of the first, not that much of the second, almost none of the third (although, yes, the borders are very fuzzy at times). So, it would feel more at home if this was mostly with a dab of sf where the borders do blur, instead of full-fledged sf.

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    • The intent was to be science fiction without the fantasy or horror. Some things are going to be a mixed bag of these elements so it didn't make sense to be so restrictive as not everyone is going to care about the nuanced differences between them. So if there is a spectrum from the maximum science fiction to maximum fantasy then we should be leaning into the science fiction side of that.

      Personally I don't think Lemmy is big enough with enough traffic to start worrying about gate keeping. So unless someone is trying to suggest something like Lord of the Rings or Game of Thrones is science fiction I would let it slide. For now our rules are going to be a bit fuzzy until things develop more naturally.

      I'll change the text to "science fiction" just to avoid any potential confusion.

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      • Yes, please, let's keep the focus on the science part of science fiction, or at least as a North Star. Otherwise we'll start discussing Barbie or romcoms because after all they are fiction / fantasy.

        Let's not make the same mistake bookstores make. They may have a reason to mix the genres because of lack of space, but we don't have that excuse.

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      • Thanks Izzy. Yes I agree. I was using Sci-fi and science fiction more or less as synonyms but I do understand that some have a hard distinction. I've always used them interchangeably to encompass "science-based" media not including fantasy and horror. So that would include Star wars, Star Trek, and most space based things even if they aren't purely based in realistic science. I've always heard "hard Sci-fi" as things that seem to be based on realistic science.

        I'll admit I'm a layman when it comes to the extreme science fiction media. I'm also not a big reader. But I love sci-fi movies and shows. I volunteered to help with discussions of that mostly but to also learn more and get into reading more as well.

        I hope I'm making sense but my view is to be more broad and inclusive.

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    • that is news to me, I thought sci fi was just a short form for science fiction. I dont think many people would welcome that type of borderline content, I know I wouldnt; and I positively bristle when comic books are referred to as sf, just my $0.02

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      • Well, I appreciate that perspective as long as the definition of science fiction doesn’t get so narrow that it has to fit within the scientific knowledge of a person with a bachelor’s in physics in 1975 - which it sometimes seems to.

        My point is that it’s worth discussing early. That way the Sidebar can be clear, and the mods can do their thing and the rest of the members can avoid gatekeeping.

        Personally, I can take or leave the wild science of Silver Age Superman comics, or Marvel. I’m not sure why anyone would consider that to be any more fantasy than Star Wars or Farscape however.

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  • Thanks for volunteering. Kudos! (Seriously).

    First, Some ppl see the sidebat (typo left), others see noise...accept...'more like guidelines...'

    Second, stickies or regular posts for the Network biggies is a good idea. Currently the series that make good sense to me are SNW. yes, Foundation, Futurama, perhaps What we do in the Shadows, Harley Quinn, depending on how anal you are, going on my current playlist. Reach out for others playlists...

    /movies/books should probably be handled seperately, in a better world.

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  • You are doing the lords work, my friend. Thank you.

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