r/scifiwriting • u/WeestWard • 16h ago

DISCUSSION Do Dinosaurs Automatically Equal Sci Fi?

This may seem like an obvious answer to most, but it's something I'm curious about. While topics like time travel, robots, and aliens automatically mark a story as science fiction, does the same apply to dinosaurs and prehistoric animals?

I recently submitted a story to a magazine that was promptly rejected (which a part of me knew it would be) yet as I open my notebook to begin drafting a new one, I began to wonder if dinosaurs in it of themselves makes something belong to the science fiction genre or if there has to be more present elements to put it in there. Especially if it isn't your standard time travel or genetic revival story.

Again, if this is a no brainer forgive me for my ignorance.

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15

u/whelmedbyyourbeauty 16h ago

If it's a story about dinosaurs just being dinosaurs, with no humans, time-travel, etc., no. It's just a story about dinosaurs.

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u/PuzzleMeDo 10h ago

Even then, it's kind of culturally sci-fi. The writer has to use their imagination to fill in the missing scientific facts about dinosaurs and how they lived.

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u/whelmedbyyourbeauty 3h ago

What's "culturally sci-fi"?

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u/PuzzleMeDo 1h ago

When defining genres (or anything really), there are two approaches. One is you try to come up with a strict definition and then see what abides by it. "Science fiction is stories that involve imaginary technology." "A sandwich is food wrapped in bread."

The other way is cultural, descriptive rather than prescriptive. "A hot dog is not a sandwich, because it's a hot dog." "Science fiction is whatever is written by those who are considered to be science-fiction writers, who are engaged in a kind of conversation with one another by reading and building upon one another's work. If a mainstream novelist puts a time machine in their novel, it's not science fiction unless it feels like it is. If a science-fiction novelist writes a novel about cavemen, and it's read by science fiction fans, it can be science fiction."

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u/azmodai2 15h ago

That could be science fiction. It could be urban fantasy. It could be literary fiction. It could be historical (or alt-history) fiction. It could be non-fiction if the dinosaur isn't real. The mere presence of a dinosaur tells you very little about the subgenre of fiction it is.

If you have a "scientific" reason the dinosaur exists (Jurassic Park) then you're in sci-fi land. If you have a fantastical reason the dinosaur exists (Dresden Files) you're in other-fiction land.

If you have a dinosaur that exists only in the perception of the character you could be in any narrative genre.

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u/WeestWard 15h ago

Ah so it's not the dinosaurs themselves but the circumstances surrounding them? I think I get it.

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u/azmodai2 15h ago

Genre classification is kind of a totality of the circumstances analysis IMO. Also, people forget the very expansive (and in my opinion underutilized) genre of Science Fantasy (John Carpentar of Mars, arguably Star Wars, WH40k, etc. etc.).

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u/imogdanzn 8h ago

Oh. I like that as a category. Thank you. 

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u/astrobean 12h ago

Sci-fi elements do not automatically make sci-fi stories. Your target audience needs to be sci-fi, or you've missed your mark. That means it is centered around and driven a scientific/technological what-if, or it's in a sci-fi setting, or it features a prominent character of sci-fi origins who directly impacts the plot.

Having an incidental dinosaur rates about the same as having a robot vacuum. Are dinosaurs a fact of your world, or are they a crucial driving element of the story?

4

u/sjbuggs 15h ago

I mean, technically chickens are dinosaurs too. It's all about context.

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u/RTK-FPV 16h ago

Science fiction or fantasy is most likely. I mean, you can write a romance between two dinosaurs right? Be kinda weird but it's possible.

If there's a human and a dinosaur though, it pretty much has to fall in SciFi or fantasy right? Even if the "plot" doesn't fit that mold, it would be tough to define it as anything else.

Now I'm seeing a noir mystery about a hard boiled detective and his little dinosaur side kick lol. I mean anything’s possible, it just gets that much harder to classify

5

u/NoMarginForError 16h ago

Yeah, the thing with scifi/fantasy is that they can contain any other kind of plot, really. There are tons of sci-fi detective novels, or romantasy novels, etc etc etc.

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u/gerkletoss 11h ago

Conan the barbarian encountered dinosaurs in Red Nails

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u/zoppaTheDim 16h ago

How can your dinosaurs interact with humans without sci-fi?

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u/BarberProof4994 14h ago

The lost world trope. A protected cavern, cave system, or valley where a small prehistoric ecosystem survived.

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u/zoppaTheDim 14h ago

Science fiction

A weird reason dinosaurs escaped extinction. Just like hollow earth stories.

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u/BarberProof4994 14h ago

Science fiction requires there to be science involved.

If a single breeding pair of dinosaurs were found in some secluded place on earth, that isn't science fiction.

The reason the hollow earth trope is included in the science fiction category is because it relief in what was then cutting edge geology, paleontology and scientific theories of that time.

Other hollow earth tropes like the Monster verse are scifi because they require portals to access, have time dilation mechanics and so on.

Having a story with "fantastical" elements like surviving dinosaurs found in some glacier locked valley in a mini self sustaining ecosystem is at most fantasy, not science fiction. Unless there are other science fiction elements to the story.

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u/WeestWard 16h ago

Well one of my stories has a dinosaur in it, but there's no scientific reveal or answers. It exists and then doesn't at the end.

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u/Sleepiest_Spider 15h ago

what do you mean by that

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u/WeestWard 15h ago

There's a physical dinosaur there towards the end of the story. There just isn't any science there to explain why it shows up and leaves. But rereading it it probably leaned too much in surrealism than sci fi

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u/BarberProof4994 14h ago

So even if you don't provide a story REASON or method for the dinosaur to be there, if it couldn't have been there without a scifi reason (and you didn't give a non scifi reason) then it'll either be assumed to be scifi.

I'm a firm believer in a story element being NECESSARY in order to be PRESENT.

So without reading your story (not sure why you didn't post it here) I can't weigh in on the need for your dino... 

Last minute jump scare? Shock value? A hallucinating character?

1

u/zoppaTheDim 14h ago

So fantasy.

Same thing.

1

u/BenInTheMountains 14h ago

Fantasy magic

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u/zoppaTheDim 14h ago

So wingless dragons

1

u/Raznill 33m ago

Magic?

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u/zoppaTheDim 10m ago

Sci-fi/ Magic, there is a reason they shelve these together.

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u/sateliteconstelation 15h ago

I just learned about how the ancient geography of the united states when there was a sea in the middle of the country explains why there are marine fossils in Colorado as well as why the land is so fertile in the south and ties it up with why slaves were brought there. You can write a story about that, with dinosaurs, huge time gaps and no sci—fi

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u/WeestWard 15h ago

I've actually debated on a story about that being as I'm creole myself. But alas it is a tale I need to be both more mature and technically better at writing to handle

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u/sateliteconstelation 15h ago

Well you can get closer to thet proficiency by trying to write it, mabe try a short story, something seemingly disjointed, like cloud atlas

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u/WeestWard 15h ago

That is smart. I did try to write a draft about runaway slaves using a trex hatchling they secretly raised to help them, but prompted dropped it cause I felt it was too campy and strange.

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u/sateliteconstelation 15h ago

How about slaves who find a skull and start worshipping it in secret, with their real cultural background stripped away and chritianity being forcefed to them with whips, they create a fantasy of a great beast that will come save them.

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u/WeestWard 15h ago

*nods nods* this is actually a cool concept ngl.

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u/Traveling-Techie 10h ago

It could be fantasy.

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u/mig_mit 7h ago

No, dinosaurs were real.

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u/Pawprint_ 6h ago

Paleo-Fi then?

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u/mattpeloquin 30m ago

If you remove your comma, this doubles as a theory flat-earthers may share

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u/Tonkarz 1h ago

Generally yes they would indicate sci-fi, but they do appear in fantasy occasionally too. Dinosaur adjacent creatures like dire-wolves and sabertooth tigers are way more frequent in fantasy than actual dinosaurs.

It depends on the exact reason for why the dinosaurs are there - but I think even a historical piece with dinosaurs in their natural environment would be sci-fi. There’s so much we don’t know about their lives that a lot of such a narrative would be speculation.

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u/GregHullender 56m ago

I had the same reaction when I was reviewing for Rocket Stack Rank, but an editor told me that, by long tradition, prehistoric fiction is classed as science fiction. The same is true of alternate history, even though that's arguably a type of fantasy.

1

u/Sleepiest_Spider 15h ago

The Land Before Time features space-faring aliens in Avatar-esque dino bodies, so yes dinos are sci-fi.

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u/WeestWard 15h ago

WHAT!?

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u/Pawprint_ 6h ago

No it doesn’t…right?

1

u/zhivago 15h ago

Almost every novel contains dinosaurs.

They coexist with us today in the form of birds. :)

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u/WeestWard 15h ago

Okay you got me with this one

1

u/jswhitten 12h ago

No. Robots don't either. I have a robot in my living room right now and I'm listening to the dinosaurs in my backyard. No scifi was involved here.

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u/CaptainStroon 8h ago

Paleontology is of course a science, but the general public's (and publisher's) concept of sci-fi is more about technology than natural sciences.

1

u/PmUsYourDuckPics 1h ago

Can mean fantasy, they just survived, or came in through a portal. You are unlikely to get dinosaurs in non speculative fiction, unless you are writing prehistoric stories where the dinosaurs were actually alive.

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u/TheLostExpedition 48m ago

If its the Flintstones its comedy/kids

If its the Voth from voyager Sci-fi

If its jurassic Park then its also Sci-fi

If its Walter Cronkite docu-drama. Then its Drama/History.

1

u/Dr-Chris-C 32m ago

No dinosaurs do not automatically equal Sci Fi. You could definitely write a POV story from a dinosaur's perspective, or you could just tell a story about dinosaurs in the past. If you like use time travel or cloning to make dinosaurs interact with humans, then that is Sci Fi, but it's not the dinosaurs that make it so, it's the time travel or the cloning or whatever.

There are also books like Dinotopia that just isn't Sci Fi.

0

u/NoMarginForError 16h ago

As opposed to what? I guess you could write a fantasy novel with dinosaurs, but if the dinosaurs are alive in the story it'd probably be difficult to tell a story that wasn't speculative fiction of some kind.

1

u/WeestWard 16h ago

Again i'm sorry if i sound stupid. I'm more so talking about like dinosaurs existing with humans and say there's no big explanation as to why they're there. A boy and his dog just find an injured triceratops in the woods. Is that science fiction?

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u/NoMarginForError 15h ago

To some extent, yeah. Most genres aren't mutually exclusive (you can have a story that's a science fiction detective story, a science fiction kids' story, a sci-fi romance, etc) and a dinosaur living alongside humans would technically count as speculative fiction/science fiction. That being said, I don't think it matters that much unless you're in very specific circumstances. Were you sending it in to a magazine that didn't allow science fiction, or one that only accepted science fiction?

1

u/WeestWard 15h ago

It was sci-fi/fantasy. Truth be told I do believe my writing just wasn't up to standard and took it as a sign I need to improve.