SciFi elements in "Gravity's Rainbow"?

[Dave Monroe]

On Sun, Aug 21, 2011 at 10:53 AM,  <kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:

> Are alternate history stories necessarily science fiction?  Certainly, they're speculative fiction, but shouldn't there be something science-y in a sci-fi book?  Ditto for time travel.  By Robinson's definition, Slaughterhouse Five and Time and Again(Jack Finney) are science fiction.  I guess I've automatically considered The Man in the High Castle to be sci-fi, simply because it's written by PKD, but there's nothing particularly science-y about it.

... this is a valid, even a good, question, though do noite that,
generally, time travel stories do in deed generally deploy some sort
of fictional(ized? can there be "fictional" science is another valid,
perhaps even good, question) science (e.g., The Time Machine), but not
always (does A Connecticut Yake in King Arthur's Court count?  but,
again, Time and Again)..  Atternate histories often (e.g., The Guns of
the South) do so as well, but not always (e.g., Bring the Jubllee) do
so as well (The Difference Engine as an example of an alternate
history via an alternate/fictional science?).

Does history (or, perhaps, more properly, historiography?) count as (a) science?

... this may the point @ which "speculative fiction" becomes the
preferable term (though ithe is to beg the question, what precisely
separate "speculative" from ":fiction"?) ...

Meanwhile:http://www.uchronia.net/