Mythic Sci-Fi: does it work for you? RNA (Destiny)

by Quirel, Wednesday, December 03, 2014, 12:32 (3879 days ago) @ dogcow

I have really enjoyed the first camp, Asimov, Vinge, Arther C. Clark, etc. I really like the "What If" SciFi, not to say that I don't occasionally really enjoy the second camp on occasion. I'd say there's plenty of stories/books/games/whatever that have a foot firmly planted in each of the two camps, I feel like Halo is part of that inbetween group.

What camp would you put Halo in (& do the sequels get different placement)?

Oh, man, the answer to that could take me all day to type up. For starters, that classification isn't rigorous. I mean, this is literature and storytelling, there are no rules.

In my previous post, I hinted at Halo when I said "What if there was an ancient galaxy-spanning civilization of Humans that mysteriously disappeared and new alien races grew up worshiping their remains?" The Halo games (And I'm just talking about the Bungie trilogy) are fun stories that explore that question, and the related question of "How could such a powerful race disappear?" Halo 1 attacked that question, Halo 2 approached it from a different angle vis-à-vis the Covenant Schism. Halo 3 basically wrapped it up and clarified how the Forerunner disappeared.

Halo Wars belongs firmly in the second camp, as does ODST and Reach.

Halo 4, I think, tried to explore the same question that the original trilogy did, with the new question of "What if a member of that ancient civilization survived to the present?" It failed because it changed the framework of the question to "What if a galaxy-spanning species vaguely related to humans, but with a deep grudge against us, mysteriously disappeared and new alien races grew up worshiping their remains?"

It also failed to reasonably extrapolate the abilities of that long-vanished race. The result is basically what you'd get if it was handled by Marvel or DC. "What if a member of that alien race survived? Superman would punch him in the face until he went away."

I guess it's possible to ask a question and fail to satisfactorily answer it.

How about the Marathons?

I think those are mostly in the "What If?" camp because of how central AI Rampancy is to the story. It's tackling the same question of AI supremacy that the first two Terminator movies touched on and Asimov wrote his stories around.