Science Fiction

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Science fiction a.k.a. sci-fi, a.k.a. SF, includes works of fiction that include some scientific or engineering idea or discovery that is not part of contemporary life in advanced industrial countries. Thus the contemporary frontiers of science fiction march forward and its hinterland disappears as science and engineering increase in power and subtlety. The boundaries between science fiction and fantasy are not always clear but elements of the magical or supernatural appear to distinguish the latter. For example, according to science fiction writer and essayist Thomas M. Disch, "rocket ships are SF and magic carpets are fantasy." (p.3)

Such literature may consist of a careful and informed extrapolation of scientific facts and principles, or it may range into far-fetched areas flatly contradictory of such facts and principles.
In either case, plausibility based on science is a requisite, so that such precursors of the genre as Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley's Gothic novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818) and Robert Louis Stevenson's Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886) are plainly science fiction, whereas Bram Stoker's Dracula (1897), based purely on the Supernatural, is not.
There are, of course, many borderline cases of works using outer-space settings and futuristic-looking technology as little more than window-dressing for tales of adventure, romance, and other typical dramatic themes; examples include Star Wars (which is by many people considered not Science Fiction but Fantasy) and many Hollywood Space Operas. Fans of hard science fiction would regard such films as fantasy, whereas the general public would probably place them squarely in the science fiction category.

Science fiction was made possible only by the rise of modern science itself, notably the revolutions in astronomy and physics. Aside from the age-old genre of fantasy literature, which does not qualify, there were notable precursors: imaginary voyages to the moon in the 17th century in Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1656), space travel in Voltaire's Microm�gas (1752), alien cultures in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), and science fiction elements in the 19th-century stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Fitz-James O'Brien. Science fiction proper began, however, toward the end of the 19th century with the scientific romances of Jules Verne, whose science was rather on the level of invention, as well as the science-oriented novels of social criticism by H.G. Wells.

The development of science fiction as a self-conscious genre dates from 1926, when Hugo Gernsback, who coined the portmanteau word scientifiction, founded Amazing Stories magazine, which was devoted exclusively to science fiction stories. Published in this and other pulp magazines with great and growing success, such stories were not viewed as serious literature but as sensationalism. With the advent in 1937 of a demanding editor, John W. Campbell, Jr., of Astounding Science Fiction (founded in 1930) and with the publication of stories and novels by such writers as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert Heinlein, science fiction emerged as a mode of serious fiction. Ventures into the genre by writers who were not devoted exclusively to science fiction, such as Karel Capek, Aldous Huxley, C. S. Lewis, and Kurt Vonnegut, also added respectability. Magazine covers of bug-eyed monsters and scantily-clad women preserved the sensational image for many, however.

In 1954, Forrest J Ackerman combined science fiction with hi-fi, resulting in the term sci-fi - a term that many science fiction fans loathe to this day despite its general usage.

A great boom in the popularity of science fiction followed World War II. Some science fiction works became paperback best-sellers. The increasing intellectual sophistication of the genre and the emphasis on wider societal and psychological issues significantly broadened the appeal of science fiction to the reading public. Science fiction became international, extending into the Soviet Union and other eastern European nations, where it was frequently used as a vehicle for political commentary that could not be safely published in other forms. (The Polish author Stanislaw Lem is one of the non-English science fiction writers who has become widely known outside his native country.) Serious criticism of the genre is now common, and science fiction is studied in colleges and universities, as literature and in how it relates to science and society.

One of the unique features of the science fiction genre is its strong fan community, of which many authors are a firm part. Local fan groups exist in most of the English-speaking world, as well as in Japan, Europe, and elsewhere; these groups often publish their own works. Many "fan" magazines (and a few professional ones) exist that are dedicated solely to informing the science fiction fan on all aspects of the genre. The premiere awards of science fiction, the Hugo Awards, are awarded by members of the annual Worldcon, which is almost entirely volunteer-run by fans.

Science fiction writers' work have included predictions of future societies on Earth, analyses of the consequences of interstellar travel, and imaginative explorations of other forms of intelligent life and their societies in other worlds.

Science fiction has also been popular in radio, comic books, television, and movies; it is notable that about three-quarters of the top twenty highest grossing films, (source: IMDB June 2002) are based around science-fiction or fantasy themes.


Genres

Links

Background

  • Thomas M. Disch. 1998, 2000. The Dreams Our Stuff Is Made Of: Hoe Science Fiction Conquered the World. Touchstone. ISBN 0684824051, ISBN 0684859785.
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