this post was submitted on 12 Jul 2026
56 points (95.2% liked)
Science Fiction
19088 readers
12 users here now
Welcome to /c/ScienceFiction
December book club canceled. Short stories instead!
We are a community for discussing all things Science Fiction. We want this to be a place for members to discuss and share everything they love about Science Fiction, whether that be books, movies, TV shows and more. Please feel free to take part and help our community grow.
- Be civil: disagreements happen, but that doesn’t provide the right to personally insult others.
- Posts or comments that are homophobic, transphobic, racist, sexist, ableist, or advocating violence will be removed.
- Spam, self promotion, trolling, and bots are not allowed
- Put (Spoilers) in the title of your post if you anticipate spoilers.
- Please use spoiler tags whenever commenting a spoiler in a non-spoiler thread.
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Wormholes always kinda rubbed me wrong in sci-fi. They're always depicted in a way that screams fantasy, not science, with only one exception that comes to mind, which was Interstellar's depiction of a wormhole as a sphere, even taking the time to explain why it looks that way.
The only got it half right though, since as soon as they enter the sphere it's straight back to the fantasy BS with the blue tunnel. That scene could have been a really cool transition of entering the one 'side' of the sphere while exiting the other simultaneously. Cut from the crew's perspective seeing lens-like distortion of the stars, to an external view of the ship moving into the sphere.
I kinda feel like that's how they intended to do that scene, with the whole buildup about the sphere, but decided to throw a nod to oldschool science fantasy for some reason.
Oh well. They got it half right, and that half was pretty fucking sick - it was the first presentation of a wormhole that didn't instantly yoink me out of suspension of disbelief. Until the blue tunnel ofc, at which point, yoink.
To answer OP's question, I guess for me it's less a specific concept as it is presenting something possible only in theory in a believable way. The whole lens-distortion style transition would have been way less flashy, but less can be more.
I've always thought of scifi being very adjacent to fantasy.
Dune, star wars are basically fantasy stories packaged with scifi elements.
I've always wondered what makes a SciFi story SciFi and I've come to the conclusion that for it to be SciFi it must be an exploration of how technology effects the human condition.
What do you think?
Definitely adjacent. The distinction as I understand it basically boils down whether or not there's magic.
Like Star Wars has a lot of sci fi elements, but then space wizards who use 'the force' which is just space magic. Fantasy.
Dune I'm less familiar with - never read the books. Saw the first movie but was kinda distracted and never have it my full attention. Main character definitely showed some magic super power stuff, but idr much outside of that.
Most of them kinda toggle back and forth, like Interstellar is mostly sci-fi with a sprinkling of fantasy up until the black hole scene, then it's mostly fantasy with a sprinkling of science.
Or there's Star Trek, which of mostly grounded in actual science and theory, but it's got a sprinkle of space magic here and there too.
Not many purebreds.
Yeah, there's certainly a degree to how SciFi something is.
But you could remove their scifi elements and tell star wars and Dune as fantasy stories and you wouldn't loose too much substance. I'd call them science fantasy at best.
But star trek, though it has magic, relies heavily on the SciFi concepts to tell a story. I'd consider it SciFi through and through.
Now this has me thinking about the wormholes in Stargate. I never quite understood why the wormhole had a shakey "going down a waterslide at a theme park, but in space" vibe.
Because it looks cool
It's round. It has to spin!
The General says it has to spin!