SciFi elements in "Gravity's Rainbow"?

[kelber at mindspring.com]

I've never understood why fantasy and sci-fi are lumped together.  They both fall under the "speculative fiction" umbrella, and there's sometimes overlap.  But what (in hell!) do Game of Thrones and books of that ilk have in common with science-based fiction?  I'm interested in speculations about where technology is leading us, the nature of intelligence and its place in the universe.  It doesn't follow that I should be interested in dragons and medieval-ish knights and battling elves.

Laura


-----Original Message-----
>From: Dave Monroe <against.the.dave at gmail.com>
>Sent: Aug 21, 2011 12:27 PM
>To: kelber at mindspring.com
>Cc: pynchon-l at waste.org
>Subject: Re: SciFi elements in "Gravity's Rainbow"?
>
>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/