Science fiction is related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Subgenres include hard science fiction, which emphasizes scientific accuracy, and soft science fiction, focusing on social sciences. Other notable subgenres are cyberpunk, which explores the interface between technology and society, and climate fiction, addressing environmental issues.
Precedents for science fiction are argued to exist as far back as antiquity, but the modern genre primarily arose in the 19th and early 20th centuries when popular writers began looking to technological progress and speculation as a basis for their stories. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is often credited as the first true science fiction novel, focusing on scientific creation and its consequences. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are pivotal figures in the genre's development. In the 20th century, the genre expanded with the introduction of space operas, dystopian literature, pulp magazines, and the Golden Age of Science Fiction which helped popularize science fiction.
Science fiction has been called the "literature of ideas", and continues to evolve, incorporating diverse voices and themes, influencing not just literature but film, TV, and culture at large. Besides providing entertainment it can also criticize present-day society and explore alternatives, and inspiration a "sense of wonder".
According to Isaac Asimov, "Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology."[1]Robert A. Heinlein wrote that "A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method."[2]
American science fiction author and editor Lester del Rey wrote, "Even the devoted aficionado or fan—has a hard time trying to explain what science fiction is," and the lack of a "full satisfactory definition" is because "there are no easily delineated limits to science fiction."[3]
Another definition comes from The Literature Book by DK and is, "scenarios that are at the time of writing technologically impossible, extrapolating from present-day science...[,]...or that deal with some form of speculative science-based conceit, such as a society (on Earth or another planet) that has developed in wholly different ways from our own."[4]
There is a tendency among science fiction enthusiasts as their own arbiter in deciding what exactly constitutes science fiction.[5]Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying "Science fiction is what we point to when we say it."[6] David Seed says it may be more useful to talk about science fiction as the intersection of other, more concrete, genres and subgenres.[7]
Forrest J Ackerman has been credited with first using the term "sci-fi" (analogous to the then-trendy "hi-fi") in about 1954;[8] the first known use in print was a description of Donovan's Brain by movie critic Jesse Zunser in January 1954.[9] As science fiction entered popular culture, writers and fans active in the field came to associate the term with low-budget, low-tech "B-movies" and with low-quality pulp science fiction.[10][11][12] By the 1970s, critics within the field, such as Damon Knight and Terry Carr, were using "sci fi" to distinguish hack-work from serious science fiction.[13]Peter Nicholls writes that "SF" (or "sf") is "the preferred abbreviation within the community of sf writers and readers."[14]Robert Heinlein found even "science fiction" insufficient for certain types of works in this genre, and suggested the term speculative fiction to be used instead for those that are more "serious" or "thoughtful".[15]
Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Somnium the first science fiction story; it depicts a journey to the Moon and how the Earth's motion is seen from there.[28][29] Kepler has been called the "father of science fiction".[30][31]
By 'scientifiction' I mean the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story—a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision... Not only do these amazing tales make tremendously interesting reading—they are always instructive. They supply knowledge... in a very palatable form... New adventures pictured for us in the scientifiction of today are not at all impossible of realization tomorrow... Many great science stories destined to be of historical interest are still to be written... Posterity will point to them as having blazed a new trail, not only in literature and fiction, but progress as well.[51][52][53]
Science fiction and television have consistently been in a close relationship. Television or television-like technologies frequently appeared in science fiction long before television itself became widely available in the late 1940s and early 1950s.[137]
In 1963, the time travel-themed Doctor Who premiered on BBC Television.[145] The original series ran until 1989 and was revived in 2005.[146] It has been extremely popular worldwide and has greatly influenced later TV science fiction.[147][148][149]
The space-Western series Firefly premiered in 2002 on Fox. It is set in the year 2517, after the arrival of humans in a new star system, and follows the adventures of the renegade crew of Serenity, a "Firefly-class" spaceship.[176]Orphan Black began its five-season run in 2013, about a woman who assumes the identity of one of her several genetically identical human clones. In late 2015 SyFy premiered The Expanse to great critical acclaim, an American TV series about humanity's colonization of the Solar System. Its later seasons would then be aired through Amazon Prime Video.
Science fiction has predicted several existing inventions, such as the atomic bomb,[186]robots,[187] and borazon.[188] In the 2020 series Away astronauts use a real-life Mars rover called InSight to listen intently for a landing on Mars. Two years later in 2022 scientists used InSight to listen for the landing of a real spacecraft.[189] The potential for Science Fiction as a genre is not just limited to being a literary sandbox for exploring otherworldly narratives but can act as a vehicle to analyze and recognize a society's past, present, and potential future social relationships with the Other. More specifically, Science Fiction offers a medium and representation of Alterity and differences in social identity.[190]
Brian Aldiss described science fiction as "cultural wallpaper".[191] This widespread influence can be found in trends for writers to employ science fiction as a tool for advocacy and generating cultural insights, as well as for educators when teaching across a range of academic disciplines not limited to the natural sciences.[192] Scholar and science fiction critic George Edgar Slusser said that science fiction "is the one real international literary form we have today, and as such has branched out to visual media, interactive media and on to whatever new media the world will invent in the 21st century. Crossover issues between the sciences and the humanities are crucial for the century to come."[193]
Robots, artificial humans, human clones, intelligent computers, and their possible conflicts with human society have all been major themes of science fiction since, at least, the publication of Shelly's Frankenstein. Some critics have seen this as reflecting authors' concerns over the social alienation seen in modern society.[200]
Feminist science fiction poses questions about social issues such as how society constructs gender roles, the role reproduction plays in defining gender, and the inequitable political or personal power of one gender over others. Some works have illustrated these themes using utopias to explore a society in which gender differences or gender power imbalances do not exist, or dystopias to explore worlds in which gender inequalities are intensified, thus asserting a need for feminist work to continue.[201][202]
One of the great benefits of science fiction is that it can convey bits and pieces, hints, and phrases, of knowledge unknown or inaccessible to the reader . . . works you ponder over as the water is running out of the bathtub or as you walk through the woods in an early winter snowfall.
In 1967, Isaac Asimov commented on the changes then occurring in the science fiction community:[212]
And because today's real life so resembles day-before-yesterday's fantasy, the old-time fans are restless. Deep within, whether they admit it or not, is a feeling of disappointment and even outrage that the outer world has invaded their private domain. They feel the loss of a 'sense of wonder' because what was once truly confined to 'wonder' has now become prosaic and mundane.
Max Gladstone defined "hard" science fiction as stories "where the math works", but pointed out that this ends up with stories that often seem "weirdly dated", as scientific paradigms shift over time.[222]Michael Swanwick dismissed the traditional definition of "hard" SF altogether, instead saying that it was defined by characters striving to solve problems "in the right way–with determination, a touch of stoicism, and the consciousness that the universe is not on his or her side."[221]
In her 1976 essay "Science Fiction and Mrs Brown", Ursula K. Le Guin was asked: "Can a science fiction writer write a novel?" She answered: "I believe that all novels ... deal with character... The great novelists have brought us to see whatever they wish us to see through some character. Otherwise, they would not be novelists, but poets, historians, or pamphleteers."[240]
Orson Scott Card, best known for his 1985 science fiction novel Ender's Game, has postulated that in science fiction the message and intellectual significance of the work are contained within the story itself and, therefore, does not require accepted literary devices and techniques he instead characterized as gimmicks or literary games.[241][242]
Jonathan Lethem, in a 1998 essay in the Village Voice entitled "Close Encounters: The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction", suggested that the point in 1973 when Thomas Pynchon's Gravity's Rainbow was nominated for the Nebula Award and was passed over in favor of Clarke's Rendezvous with Rama, stands as "a hidden tombstone marking the death of the hope that SF was about to merge with the mainstream."[243] In the same year science fiction author and physicist Gregory Benford wrote: "SF is perhaps the defining genre of the twentieth century, although its conquering armies are still camped outside the Rome of the literary citadels."[244]
Science fiction is being written, and has been written, by diverse authors from around the world. According to 2013 statistics by the science fiction publisherTor Books, men outnumber women by 78% to 22% among submissions to the publisher.[245]A controversy about voting slates in the 2015 Hugo Awards highlighted tensions in the science fiction community between a trend of increasingly diverse works and authors being honored by awards, and reaction by groups of authors and fans who preferred what they considered more "traditional" science fiction.[246]
The earliest organized online fandom was the SF Lovers Community, originally a mailing list in the late 1970s with a text archive file that was updated regularly.[264] In the 1980s, Usenet groups greatly expanded the circle of fans online.[265] In the 1990s, the development of the World-Wide Web exploded the community of online fandom by orders of magnitude, with thousands and then millions of websites devoted to science fiction and related genres for all media.[266]
^Heinlein, Robert A.; Cyril Kornbluth; Alfred Bester; Robert Bloch (1959). The Science Fiction Novel: Imagination and Social Criticism. University of Chicago: Advent Publishers.
^Clute, John (1993). ""Sci fi" (article by Peter Nicholls)". In Nicholls, Peter (ed.). Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Orbit/Time Warner Book Group UK.
^Clute, John (1993). ""SF" (article by Peter Nicholls)". In Nicholls, Peter (ed.). Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Orbit/Time Warner Book Group UK.
^ abRichardson, Matthew (2001). The Halstead Treasury of Ancient Science Fiction. Rushcutters Bay, New South Wales: Halstead Press. ISBN978-1-875684-64-9. (cf."Once Upon a Time". Emerald City (85). September 2002. Archived from the original on 11 September 2019. Retrieved 17 September 2008.)
^Khanna, Lee Cullen. "The Subject of Utopia: Margaret Cavendish and Her Blazing-World". Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: World of Difference. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1994. 15–34.
^Clute, John & Nicholls, Peter (1993). "Mary W. Shelley". Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Orbit/Time Warner Book Group UK. Archived from the original on 16 November 2006. Retrieved 17 January 2007.
^Wingrove, Aldriss (2001). Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1973) Revised and expanded as Trillion Year Spree (with David Wingrove)(1986). New York: House of Stratus. ISBN978-0-7551-0068-2.
^Tresch, John (2002). "Extra! Extra! Poe invents science fiction". In Hayes, Kevin J. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 113–132. ISBN978-0-521-79326-1.
^La obra narrativa de Enrique Gaspar: El Anacronópete (1887), María de los Ángeles Ayala, Universidad de Alicante. Del Romanticismo al Realismo : Actas del I Coloquio de la S. L. E. S. XIX, Barcelona, 24–26 October 1996 / edited by Luis F. Díaz Larios, Enrique Miralles.
^El anacronópete, English translation (2014), www.storypilot.com, Michael Main, accessed 13 April 2016
^Siegel, Mark Richard (1988). Hugo Gernsback, Father of Modern Science Fiction: With Essays on Frank Herbert and Bram Stoker. Borgo Pr. ISBN978-0-89370-174-1.
^Wagar, W. Warren (2004). H.G. Wells: Traversing Time. Wesleyan University Press. p. 7.
^Edwards, Malcolm J.; Nicholls, Peter (1995). "SF Magazines". In John Clute and Peter Nicholls. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (Updated ed.). New York: St Martin's Griffin. p. 1066. ISBN0-312-09618-6.
^Roberts, Garyn G. (2001). "Buck Rogers". In Browne, Ray B.; Browne, Pat (eds.). The Guide To United States Popular Culture. Bowling Green, Ohio: Bowling Green State University Popular Press. p. 120. ISBN978-0-87972-821-2.
^Taormina, Agatha (19 January 2005). "A History of Science Fiction". Northern Virginia Community College. Archived from the original on 26 March 2004. Retrieved 16 January 2007.
^Nichols, Peter; Ashley, Mike (23 June 2021). "Golden Age of SF". The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. Retrieved 17 November 2022.
^Nicholls, Peter (1981) The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Granada, p. 258
^Codex, Regius (2014). From Robots to Foundations. Wiesbaden/Ljubljana: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform. ISBN978-1-4995-6982-7.
^"OFF-LINE интервью с Борисом Стругацким" [OFF-LINE interview with Boris Strugatsky] (in Russian). Russian Science Fiction & Fantasy. December 2006. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 29 February 2016.
^Mike Ashley (14 May 2007). Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazines from 1970–1980. Liverpool University Press. p. 218. ISBN978-1-84631-003-4.
^McGuirk, Carol (1992). "The 'New' Romancers". In Slusser, George Edgar; Shippey, T. A. (eds.). Fiction 2000. University of Georgia Press. pp. 109–125. ISBN978-0-8203-1449-5.
^Caroti, Simone (2011). The Generation Starship in Science Fiction. McFarland. p. 156. ISBN978-0-7864-8576-5.
^Peter Swirski (ed), The Art and Science of Stanislaw Lem, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2008, ISBN0-7735-3047-9
^Publishers Weekly review of Robin Roberts, Anne McCaffrey: A Life with Dragons (2007). Quoted by Amazon.comArchived 1 June 2021 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 16 July 2011.
^Sammon, Paul M. (1996). Future Noir: the Making of Blade Runner. London: Orion Media. p. 49. ISBN0-06-105314-7.
^Fitting, Peter (July 1991). "The Lessons of Cyberpunk". In Penley, C.; Ross, A. Technoculture. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. pp. 295–315
^SciFi Film History – Metropolis (1927)Archived 10 October 2017 at the Wayback Machine – Though most agree that the first science fiction film was Georges Méliès' A Trip to the Moon (1902), Metropolis (1926) is the first feature length outing of the genre. (scififilmhistory.com, retrieved 15 May 2013)
^"Metropolis". Turner Classic Movies. Archived from the original on 16 March 2014. Retrieved 30 March 2019.
^Russo, Joe; Landsman, Larry; Gross, Edward (2001). Planet of the Apes Revisited: The Behind-The Scenes Story of the Classic Science Fiction Saga (1st ed.). New York: Thomas Dunne Books/St. Martin's Griffin. ISBN0-312-25239-0.
^Suzanne Williams-Rautiolla (2 April 2005). "Captain Video and His Video Rangers". The Museum of Broadcast Communications. Archived from the original on 30 March 2009. Retrieved 17 January 2007.
^Stanyard, Stewart T. (2007). Dimensions Behind the Twilight Zone: A Backstage Tribute to Television's Groundbreaking Series ([Online-Ausg.] ed.). Toronto: ECW press. p. 18. ISBN978-1-55022-744-4.
^O'Reilly, Terry (24 May 2014). "21st Century Brands". Under the Influence. Season 3. Episode 21. Event occurs at time 2:07. CBC Radio One. Archived from the original on 8 June 2014. Transcript of the original source. Retrieved 7 June 2014. The series had lots of interesting devices that marveled us back in the 1960s. In episode one, we see wife Jane doing exercises in front of a flatscreen television. In another episode, we see George Jetson reading the newspaper on a screen. Can anyone say tablet? In another, Boss Spacely tells George to fix something called a "computer virus". Everyone on the show uses video chat, foreshadowing Skype and Face Time. There is a robot vacuum cleaner, foretelling the 2002 arrival of the iRobot Roomba vacuum. There was also a tanning bed used in an episode, a product that wasn't introduced to North America until 1979. And while flying space cars that have yet to land in our lives, the Jetsons show had moving sidewalks like we now have in airports, treadmills that didn't hit the consumer market until 1969, and they had a repairman who had a piece of technology called... Mac.
^Moran, Caitlin (30 June 2007). "Doctor Who is simply masterful". The Times. London. Archived from the original on 17 June 2011. Retrieved 1 July 2007. [Doctor Who] is as thrilling and as loved as Jolene, or bread and cheese, or honeysuckle, or Friday. It's quintessential to being British.
^"Special Collectors' Issue: 100 Greatest Episodes of All Time". TV Guide (28 June – 4 July). 1997.
^British Science Fiction Television: A Hitchhiker's Guide, John R. Cook, Peter Wright, I.B.Tauris, 6 January 2006, page 9
^Gowran, Clay. "Nielsen Ratings Are Dim on New Shows". Chicago Tribune. 11 October 1966: B10.
^Gould, Jack. "How Does Your Favorite Rate? Maybe Higher Than You Think." New York Times. 16 October 1966: 129.
^Kilgore, De Witt Douglas (March 2010). "Difference Engine: Aliens, Robots, and Other Racial Matters in the History of Science Fiction". Science Fiction Studies. 37 (1): 16–22. JSTOR40649582.
^Dziubinskyj, Aaron (November 2004). "Review: Science Fiction in Latin America and Spain". Science Fiction Studies. 31 (3 Soviet Science Fiction: The Thaw and After). JSTOR4241289.
^Androids, Humanoids, and Other Science Fiction Monsters: Science and Soul in Science Fiction Films, Per Schelde, NYU Press, 1994, pages 1–10
^Elyce Rae Helford, in Westfahl, Gary. The Greenwood Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and Fantasy: Greenwood Press, 2005: 289–290.
^Hauskeller, Michael; Carbonell, Curtis D.; Philbeck, Thomas D. (13 January 2016). The Palgrave handbook of posthumanism in film and television. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN978-1-137-43032-8. OCLC918873873.
^Barlowe, Wayne Douglas (1987). Barlowe's Guide to Extraterrestrials. Workman Publishing Company. ISBN0-89480-500-2.
^Baxter, John (1997). "Kubrick Beyond the Infinite". Stanley Kubrick: A Biography. Basic Books. pp. 199–230. ISBN0-7867-0485-3.
^Gary K. Wolfe and Carol T. Williams, "The Majesty of Kindness: The Dialectic of Cordwainer Smith", Voices for the Future: Essays on Major Science Fiction Writers, Volume 3, Thomas D. Clareson editor, Popular Press, 1983, pages 53–72.
^Le Guin, Ursula K. (1976) "Science Fiction and Mrs Brown", in The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction, Perennial HarperCollins, Revised edition 1993; in Science Fiction at Large (ed. Peter Nicholls), Gollancz, London, 1976; in Explorations of the Marvellous (ed. Peter Nicholls), Fontana, London, 1978; in Speculations on Speculation. Theories of Science Fiction (eds. James Gunn and Matthew Candelaria), The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Maryland, 2005.
^Lethem, Jonathan (1998), "Close Encounters: The Squandered Promise of Science Fiction", Village Voice, June. Also reprinted in a slightly expanded version under the title "Why Can't We All Live Together?: A Vision of Genre Paradise Lost" in the New York Review of Science Fiction, September 1998, Number 121, Vol 11, No. 1.
^Benford, Gregory (1998) "Meaning-Stuffed Dreams:Thomas Disch and the future of SF", New York Review of Science Fiction, September, Number 121, Vol. 11, No. 1
^Peter Fitting (2010), "Utopia, dystopia, and science fiction", in Gregory Claeys (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Utopian Literature, Cambridge University Press, pp. 138–139
^Hartwell, David G. (1996). Age of Wonders: Exploring the World of Science Fiction. Tor Books. pp. 109–131. ISBN978-0-312-86235-0.
^Ashley, M. (April 1989). The Immortal Professor, Astro Adventures No.7, p.6.
^H. G. Stratmann (14 September 2015). Using Medicine in Science Fiction: The SF Writer's Guide to Human Biology. Springer, 2015. p. 227. ISBN978-3-319-16015-3.
General and cited sources
Aldiss, Brian. Billion Year Spree: The True History of Science Fiction, 1973.
Raja, Masood Ashraf, Jason W. Ellis and Swaralipi Nandi. eds., The Postnational Fantasy: Essays on Postcolonialism, Cosmopolitics and Science Fiction. McFarland 2011. ISBN978-0-7864-6141-7.
Reginald, Robert. Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature, 1975–1991. Detroit, MI/Washington, D.C./London: Gale Research, 1992. ISBN0-8103-1825-3.
Suvin, Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: on the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre, New Haven : Yale University Press, 1979.
Weldes, Jutta, ed. To Seek Out New Worlds: Exploring Links between Science Fiction and World Politics. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003. ISBN0-312-29557-X.
Wolfe, Gary K. Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Glossary and Guide to Scholarship. New York: Greenwood Press, 1986. ISBN0-313-22981-3.