I fist started seriously think about style versus genre on the subject of film noirand what mattered more to classifying a story as a noir, the content or the stylistic elements. My thoughts have expanded and I find myself looking at other divisions and wondering just how far can this analysis go?

Consider science-fiction, just as with film noirit too seems to possess a slipper definition that comes down a great deal to personal taste. For the most part SF is fairly easy to define, stories in which a technological or scientific advancement or theory plays a critical element in its structure; so critical that if removed the story collapses. The novel and the film The Martianis a perfect recent example of a piece meeting this definition. However at the other end of the spectrum we have a film such as Star Wars, which is a story about space knight, space princesses, and space wizards in a grand conflict dealing with good and evil. While the film takes place in outer space, and the characters utilizes technological weaponry and transportation everything about that tech and setting is fanciful ignoring that facts of science.

The Martianfits if we define SF as a genre with boundaries and rules that delineate what is and more importantly what is not science-fiction. Star Wars fits if we define SF as a style, stories that have the look, feel, and trappings of advanced technology but are unconcerned with valid scientific underpinnings or theories.

Here is the crux of so many debates over what is and is not science-fiction. Some people use the style model while others use the genre one and quite often the people themselves are not aware of their mode of thinking and so when a person of one camp engages in a discussion with someone from the other discord and unresolvable debates follow because at heart they are speaking of two very different viewpoints.

As with all art there is no ‘right’ answer to selecting between the viewpoints and we