Talk:Space warfare in science fiction

Merge with older versions

I made a copy of the older versions of this page (found here) that, although not completely sourced as of yet, contains information on Space Warfare in fiction not (yet) covered here. Any help with the merge would be welcome. S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 06:38, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Referance fixes

Some of the referances go to Wikipedia, which is against policy. They need to be fixed. S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 08:26, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Yes, according to Wikipedia policy "Articles and posts on Wikipedia, or other websites that mirror Wikipedia content, may not be used as sources."

I'll remove them. Debresser (talk) 00:08, 20 January 2009 (UTC)

The references you removed were not to Wikipedia articles, but to primary source material. For instance, the reference ""The Living Legend, Part 2". Battlestar Galactica 1978. {{cite episode}}: Text "The Living Legend, Part 2" ignored (help)" is a reference to an episode entitled The Living Legen Part 2 which was part of the Battlestar Galactica TV series broadcast in 1978. It does also link to a wikipedia article, to give more information about the source, but this is not part of the reference. I have restored this and several other similar references, along with a {{fact}} tag that was removed without explanation. JulesH (talk) 23:46, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Reworking the TV & Movies section

I think this should be structured more as a history of developments, rather than subsections for each show. So, we'd need to answer questions like:

• What was the first depiction of a space battle in a film? On television?
• What were particularly influential depictions at various times?
• How has the development of special effects influenced what we've seen?

I'm not sure the flat, uninteresting descriptions of the various weapons that are employed that we have here is useful. JulesH 23:46, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

Uninteresting is, of course, your opinion (which I don't share). Q1 would also more then likely be highly unverifiable. thanks/Fenton, Matthew Lexic Dark 52278 Alpha 771 23:50, 4 February 2007 (UTC)

JulesH's suggestions would be a big step towards making that section appropriate for inclusion in an encyclopdeia. Pete.Hurd 03:47, 5 February 2007 (UTC)

Reverted changes

Could somebody please explain to me:

• The relevance of star trek's handheld phasers to space warfare? I've never seen them used in the show for anything except hand-to-hand combat.
• Why the Enterprise's ability to stun targets on the surface of a planet is relevant. This is the only sentence that seems relevant to individual targets on a planet's surface, and it doesn't seem to fit to me.
• The relevance of the colour of photon torpedoes to anything.
• Why a link to the article about Battlestar Galactica (1978 TV series) shouldn't be included in the main body text.
• Why a fair-use image that provides no useful information to the article and has no fair-use rationale provided for use on this page shouldn't be removed.

Or should I just put my changes back in? JulesH 13:47, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

To answer the last question, I believe that the photograph of the Death Star is very relivant to the section on the destruction of plants. S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 01:43, 14 February 2007 (UTC)

Perhaps so, although it still needs a fair use rationale before it can be used in the page, according to policy. And while it's relevant, I'm still not convinced it meets the requirement at Wikipedia:Fair use#Policy in section 8 of contributing significantly.

OTOH, I was talking about the battlestar galactica image. This also lacks a fair-use rationale, and it's much less clear what it contributes. It's a picture of some guns. What does the reader learn by looking at it? JulesH 09:33, 15 February 2007 (UTC)

Oh, I forgot about that part of Fair Use! As for the Battlestar Galactica picture, I'm sure a better one could be found and uploaded, but as of right now it is the best one I could find (although I must admit, I'm fairly certain that I didn't originally find it. I merely put it back). S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 02:47, 8 March 2007 (UTC)

Merge from space combat

I don't think this merge should happen, for a variety of reasons:

• Space combat is about games, which are different to fiction (although related to it)
• All the content there is unsourced, and potentially OR.
• Category:Space trading and combat simulation games should have a main article, and currently doesn't. If Space combat were tidied up, sourced and renamed to a better name, it would be an appropriate article for this task.

Any other comments? JulesH 12:41, 14 March 2007 (UTC)

Videogame section

Space war is a major theme to videogame plots, especially in star wars. I presume make a videogame section on spacewar eg masseffect 3, halo etc. It helps differentiate between the mess the americans made of differing scifi fantasy from sci-fi genres. Alot of directors in america seem to start series off with traditional sci-fi and close it with sci-fi fantasy. This is the case with videogames as well. You can see the remarkable transitions americans make in Star wars to Halo to even Star trek. The character is in the centre role in sci-fi fantasy of which he is an underdog in scifi. However science fiction usually starts its theme with the underdog which sequels seem to slowly transition into as a major role. Starwars was different, the prequels were all sci-fi fantasy but the traditional 2 were pure science fiction. Some may contend rotj was sci-fi fantasy, however it was not, due to the canadian film industry having strong fantasy elements in sci-fi and sci-fi fantasy, empire strikes back was closer to this role (of which was not directed by lucas). I consider return of the jedi more scifi than sci-fi fantasy though not because of the strong magic theme, and love story around the centre character, but because the character never deviated from his role as an underdog..and the movie was just bad. I conjure that russian sci-fi has strong magical elements with a weak theme, it is very much on the borderline as empire strikes back was. Sci-fi fantasy in videogames is no different then the film industry at times. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Asfd666 (talk • contribs) 00:18, 27 January 2013 (UTC)

Good point, It's not that we americans hav a 'go get em' type of att, its that we have a 'its our turn' type of attitude, because of history and culture all coming into one place from around the world.

I agree with your assessment. Leave it as it is. S h a r k f a c e 2 1 7 04:31, 9 April 2007 (UTC)

Firefly

Joss Whedon's Firefly features no sound in space battles (as it would be, with no medium to carry the sound). Is this the first show to do so, and, if not, what is and should it be included? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 58.168.42.150 (talk) 08:52, 12 November 2007 (UTC)

I believe Babylon 5 preceded it. There may be others. JulesH (talk) 23:48, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Didn't the original Battlestar also feature soundless space?'''Aryeonos''' (talk) 09:39, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Proposal to Merge with Space battle

As many of the topics covered, if not the actual content itself, are similar or the same, I propose a merge into this article in order to keep the redundancy to a minimum. 74.170.91.7 (talk) 14:44, 28 June 2009 (UTC)

Support - the two are identical, or at least very similar. Space warfare in fiction is the better title. Cyclopaedic (talk) 15:56, 17 October 2009 (UTC)

Blackmore and Tech

What's the point of the Blackmore quote, it doesn't seem to do anything or offer any insight or explanations. Its nothing more than a witty comment that lends little more to the article, so why is it here?'''Aryeonos''' (talk) 09:42, 7 December 2010 (UTC)

Deleted. It wasn't even coherent, as far as I could see. Dementia13 (talk) 16:02, 24 September 2012 (UTC)

Future war? Say what?

What does Future War even mean? There is no definition and the examples given seem to indicate the editors are talking about any fictional war that involves advanced technology in some form or another, which is the entire genre of SciFi. I assumed, from the article's title, Space warfare, that this would be about warfare occurring in space. Instead, it seems to be used as an umbrella phrase to talk about any random SciFi war that the editors assigned meaning to, all the while stating the obvious as if this were some sort of profound observation:

"Some conclude that the human race will never be involved in actual space warfare because of the distances involved and logistical impracticalities."

We could say the same thing about any and all aspects of SciFi, because, by definition, ALL Science Fiction is beyond our current abilities ... if we had master it then it wouldn't be Science Fiction any more, it would just be Fiction.

"The energy required to destroy a planet or star is without a doubt well beyond our current scientific means"

Oh really? So far not a single Wikipedia editor has read that sentence sober and found nothing problematic with it?

It has been calculated [20][21] that overcoming the gravity holding together an Earth-sized planet takes on the order of 1032 joules of energy, or roughly the total output of the sun in a week. More detailed estimates place the violent destruction of Alderaan (appearing in Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope) as requiring 1.0 × 1038[22] joules of energy, or on the order of millions of times more than necessary to permanently break the planet apart at a slower rate. This is the equivalent of a mass between 1.1 × 1018 to 1.3 × 1019 tonnes of resting matter converted directly into energy (by Albert Einstein's formula, E = mc²) with no losses. For reference, the mass of the moon is estimated to be 7.36 × 1022 kilograms (or roughly 7.36 × 1019 tonnes, only somewhat greater than the upper estimate of the mass needed to achieve the estimated energy).

What does this even mean? Why is this paragraph important to the article? The same goes for the last paragraph on Naval Warfare.

Personally, I would vote to delete this article. Failing that, I would suggest removing the entire Technology/Destruction of Planets and Stars/ Navy sections, since they are Original Research and uncited. I would keep the title of the article and focus entirely on warfare in space, or I would change the article's title to Future War, provide a working definition (whatever it means, I still have no idea other than wars in the future) and focus entirely on that instead. I would suggest not trying to do both. Again, I do not find any value in this article but I know it's policy to keep anything that might be fixable, so I offer these observations only as suggestions. Cheers! Chalchiuhtlatonal (talk) 12:59, 19 June 2012 (UTC)

The article is not perfect, but your assumptions do not constitute a rationale for deletion. From the context, it appears that "future war" is a historical literary concept that was a precursor to modern science fiction. This should be spelled out more clearly. (Edit: I hadn't noticed, but this is stated explicitly in the lead paragraph. It should still be explained in more detail in the article body, because the article as stands assumes that the reader knows what that is. I'm relatively knowledgeable on the subject, and had never seen the term). However, if you think that all of science fiction boils down to "any fictional war that involves advanced technology in some form or another", you would do well to learn why the genre is called "science" fiction and not "space fantasy" fiction. Also, the sections you claim are OR and uncited actually contain many citations, and they appear to already have been present when you posted this. If you have suggestions for improvement, make them. If you just want to gripe, find a web forum somewhere and flame away. Dementia13 (talk) 02:18, 13 September 2012 (UTC)