Sense of Pitch, I got

Distorted Tunes Test

Interesting. I'm always loathe to tell people "I have perfect pitch", even though I've been told -- by lay people -- that I have, because I don't actually know what the phrase means. However, Absolute pitch says:

Although AP in humans ordinarily is dependent on labeling of tones according to musical-notation conventions, it is not merely the "pitch class" (i.e. the musical note name) that can be identified. Rather it is pitch itself. A tone's pitch is identified with significantly better accuracy than the plus/minus 3 percent frequency tolerance preset by the semitone interval that forms the smallest unit in the Western music notation. An AP possessor can tell if an acoustically played tone is sharp or flat relative to a standard intonation internally available to the AP possessor. It appears that the standard intonations of different AP possessors may be different, dependent on the level of intonation which they have been exposed to in early childhood. This becomes evident when AP possessors report to feel[ing] uneasy or even confused when they have to listen to, or to play, music on a level of tuning that differs from their internal standard. [Emphasis added.]

Oh. I do *that*. My ability to recognize/replicate intonation is what makes mimicking accents fun.

Aw, what the hell: "SF is crap, fantasy is good."

So there.

slithytove is catching some crap, I guess, for allegedly asserting the opposite, though I don't see the slamming myself. I didn't read the entry when posted -- I just wasn't in the mood, hey, it happens -- and while I'm not sure, now that I have read it, if I agree with all that he says, I do find the following to be an interesting assessment: Valentine Michael Smith's struggle in Stranger in a Strange Land, for example, is not a struggle with his own character, or a contest of wills with others, but a struggle to achieve a correct understanding of humanity.

I think what I am unsure about is not the attempted box for SF that slithytove finds, but the one for fantasy. [Science fiction says that problems are created, or solved, through the use of reason, science, logic. Fantasy says that problems are created or solved through character, emotion, and will. SF says that events happen because of our ideas. Fantasy says that events happen because of who we are.] How we are, versus what we are, perhaps?

SF as a genre has been rightly slammed, traditionally, or, stereotypically, for being about "ideas", not people, so this box for SF, of the problem and solution coming from science/reason/logic seems...reasonable. Even the difference between "hard" and "soft" science fiction, as I have understood it, is the difference between emphasis on character.

[As an exercise, consider "Gateway". Hard or soft science fiction? Science fiction or science fantasy? Science fiction or fantasy?]

Aren't most stories about people? Isn't that what makes them interesting? And if most stories are about people, that means they're character-driven, which seems to be slithytove's suggested box for fantasy. Therefore, aren't most stories fantasies? In which case, "fantasy" is the norm, and SF is the odd little cul-de-sac.

Perhaps fantasy is the default setting. What is a fantasy, after all? A made-up story about someone.

*shrug*

But, what I've realized is that I don't actually care. I just can't get myself to be worked up about it. I want to read stories, I want to write stories. My stories have people in them. Sometimes technology, too. Whatever.

One seeking enlightenment

Oh, *god* no, not about the difference between science fiction and fantasy. Blah, blah, blah.

No, this afternoon's question is for our experienced novel-submitters in the audience:

If I'm sending three sample chapters, etc., of a novel out -- whazzat really mean? Roughly umpty-ump pages? Three consecutive chapters or three scattered across the work? The first N pages of the novel? The really good action bit in the middle?

Inquiring minds and all that.