Science Fiction: An Overview

Modern science fiction (sf) originates in the nineteenth century,

its development roughly concurrent with the Industrial Revolution
 Originators of the Genre

▪ Some sf experts argue that Mary

Shelley is the first sf writer because
she brought science into a Romantic
narrative

▪ Shelley’s attention to science in

relation to a philosophical exploration
of humanity that qualifies
Frankenstein as the first sf novel

▪ Her apparent moral that “there some

things in nature that humans are not
meant to known” is an often repeated
sf theme

▪ Often cited as an early influence is the

American Romantic Edgar Allan Poe Why does Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
Doqualify
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asAllan Poe sf
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novel?
Inventions such as Captain Nemo’s remarkable
submarine in Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand
Leagues Under the Sea predicted modern
technology that the world had not yet seen
 The Pulp Era

▪ Sf needed a vehicle to reach a

large audience

▪ Starring in the 1890s, pulp

magazines were a very popular
and inexpensive form of
entertainment

▪ Named after the cheap paper on

which they were printed, the
pulps appealed to a mass
audience, and many genres
began to develop specialized
magazines

▪ No titles, however, were exclusive

to sf until Hugo Gernsback
founded Amazing Stories in 1926
 The Pulp Era

▪ Imitators of Gernsback quickly

appeared

▪ Some credit Gernsback for inventing Why is sf perceived as substandard?

the term science fiction around the
time that he launched his second sf
magazine, Science Wonder Stories

▪ Grouping of writers into specialized

forums of cheaper entertainment
perpetuated the perception that sf
was substandard literature

▪ Fantastically adventurous space

operas with bug-eye monsters,
fast spaceships, and wild
inventions began to proliferate
 Science Fiction in Europe

▪ More literary tone and storylines

that dealt with more sophisticated
topics than high adventure

▪ Czech playwright Karel Capek is

credited with creating the term
robot and introducing this device
into sf with his famous work, R.U.R.

▪ Also significant at this time are the

works of British writers, including
Aldous Huxley

▪ C.S. Lewis laced his novels with

Christian Symbolism, elevating sf
 The Golden Age of Astounding

▪ John W. Campbell Jr. began his

tenure as the editor of Astounding
Science in 1937

▪ Assembled one of sf’s elite stables,

which included Isaac Asimov, Ray
Bradbury, and Robert Heinlein

▪ Campbell emphasized accurate

science and the plausible
extrapolation of technological
progress but also insisted on a
greater degree of skill and quality in
writing

▪ Asimov credits Campbell for helping

inspire his famous Foundation series
and his early robot stories (later
collected in the book I, Robot)
 The Golden Age of
Astounding

▪ Writers made insightful

predictions that would be
proven correct, such as
the development of the
atomic bomb

▪ Astounding was
investigated by the FBI
because of its prophetic
content in his area
 Heinlein and Asimov

▪ Two of the brightest stars of

the Astounding constellation
are Isaac Asimov and Robert
Heinlein

▪ Heinlein revealed the plans of

his scheme for a Future
History series, while Asimov
began his long series about
robots with positronic brains
whose behavior is guided by
three laws of robotics
What do you think are Asimov’s three laws of robotics?
 Visions of a Dark Future

▪ America’s involvement in World

War II precipitated a shift to a
more cynical outlook

▪ New cold war environment

prompted many dark visions

▪ Shift around 1950 to

sociological-dominant science
fiction

▪ Galaxy and the Magazine of

Fantasy and Science Fiction
provided a forum for the views
of writers with a social agenda,
and sometimes a cynical streak
and a satirical edge
 Arthur C. Clarke and
the Unfathomable Cosmos

▪ Known for his revisionist attitude

regarding the optimistic
Campbellian vision of science and
technology as the savior of
humankind

▪ Depicted a cosmos that was

unfathomably huge compared to
the individual

▪ Contemplates the evolutionary

worthiness of the human race and
tests whether or not humans are
mature enough to properly handle
their scientific discoveries and
technological advances
 The New Wave

▪ Focus of this movement was a

British magazine called New Worlds

▪ Striving for aesthetic merit,

especially through literary
experimentation, writers often
concentrated on social issues,
emphasizing sociology, politics,
anthropology, and philosophy

▪ Raised subjects that had been

relatively taboo

▪ Exploring or attacking religion and

depicting sex and drug use

▪ Exemplar of the new movement

was J.G. Ballard, whose avant garde
style was bizarre and surreal
 Science Fiction Enters Academia

▪ Sf’s expansion of themes provided a

niche for social commentary and
satire

▪ Kurt Vonnegut Jr. was particularly

successful in writing in this mode

▪ Earned Vonnegut the much-envied

respect of the literary establishment
(a rare feat in sf)

▪ Vonnegut continued to mix satire and

absurd humor with more traditional
sf tropes

▪ Another writer associated is Philip K.

Dick

▪ He earned a reputation as an inspired

master of metaphysics and alternate
states of reality
 New Barriers Broken

▪ New Wave broke down the often-

noted gender barrier

▪ Ursula K. Le Guin, Joanna Russ, and

James Tiptree Jr. (the pseudonym of
Alice Sheldon) brought themes of
gender to the foreground and
helped overcome assumptions
regarding sf and the marginalization
of women

▪ Introducing feminism into the genre

▪ Stars Wars sounded the death knell

for the New Wave

▪ Creating a demand for the first-

paced wild adventures of science-
fantasy space operas
 Cyberpunk and Other
Contemporary SF

▪ Subgenre was initiated by William

Gibson’s Neuromancer, a novel that
depicts a world overrun by the
proliferation of technology, in
which human life becomes
devalued and characters often
despise or reject their bodies in
favor of cybernetics and interaction
within the consensual hallucination
known as cyberspace

▪ Explores themes of invasion of the

body and mind, as well as the
dehumanization and alienation
that accompanies life in an
impersonal, high-tech society
 Revamping and Expanding

▪ Alternate histories became popular

▪ The past years have seen the reign of

sf’s “Killer B’s”: David Brin, Gregory
Benford, and Greg Bear

▪ Their works are often perceived

as a new kind of hard sf, which
also takes into account some of
the concerns of the New Wave

▪ One of the most acclaimed

contemporary writers is Octavia
Butler

▪ Concentrating on themes of
gender, race, and social
disparities

▪ Another writer who has achieve

similar status is Margaret Atwood
 The icons of science fiction

▪ Feature that unites every

kind of sf is the
construction—in some
sense—of a world other
than our own

▪ Imaginary setting is a major

character in the story—and
this fictional surface is held
together by the highly
foregrounded description of
unreal objects, customs,
kinships, fashions
 Rockets, spaceships,
space habitats, virtual environments

▪ The rocket, with its upward thrusting

phallic shape and dramatic flight, is
an inevitable symbol of energy and
escape, but a rocket is a weapon as
well as an innocent, spectacular
firework

▪ Both the climatic achievement and

the embodied death wish of modern
civilization

▪ The rocket as a symbol of escape to

the stars has long been superseded

▪ The finned, phallic cone has been

replaced by the spaceship

What does a rocket symbolize?

 Rockets, spaceships,
space habitats, virtual environments

▪ The spaceship is an alternative, contained

world in itself

▪ The spaceship, forging its lonely way

through a vast, inimical ocean, becomes a
world like this one: a vulnerable and yet
demanding closed environment
contradicting the rocket’s promise of
escape from our origins

▪ Most celebrated of sf images—the fragile

giant jewels, drifting in immense
darkness against a backdrop of pinprick
diamonds—the fictional spaceship is
usually a place of refuge, security, and
stability

▪ Space “stations,” hubs where ships like

these are services, become multi-layered
cities with exotic markets, zoning laws,
class divisions, slums, and parkland
What does a spaceship symbolize?
 Rockets, spaceships,
space habitats, virtual
environments

▪ Access to the virtual world has

as yet no fixed, visual image
attached, either in reality or in
fiction

▪ Whatever meditation we
choose, the persistence of the
physical body, the “meat” that is
left behind when we enter the
seamless digital world,
remains—linking this new
concept to the ancient sf image
of the super-potent but absurdly
vulnerable disembodied brain
What
Howdoes a virtual
could environment
we access a virtual symbolize?
world?
 Robots, androids; cyborgs and aliens

▪ A robot (from the Czech robota) is a

worker

▪ Though mechanical men may

resemble humans, they remain
defined and devalued by their
artificiality

▪ In Asimov’s scenario, the fact that

the Three Laws of Robotics are
there to protect the humans from
their mentally and physically
superior creations was always clear

▪ Robotic goodness was the

preferred image in liberal sf
What does a robot symbolize?
 Robots, androids; cyborgs and aliens

▪ What is the ontological status of a

genetically engineered biological
human being, mass-manufactured to
order?

▪ Or a being born human, who has

elected to exchange some or all of her
body parts for hardware, or to morph
into a non-human body more suited to
some alien environment?

▪ In the real world medical technology is

now creating cyborgs—human beings
entirely dependent on machine parts
inserted into their bodies
How isWhat does
medical a cyborg symbolize?
technology creating cyborgs?
 Robots, androids; cyborgs and aliens

▪ Aliens became competitors, and

therefore our deadly enemies

▪ After the Second World War and in

the 1960s, peace was the message
and aliens could be pitied, admired
or defended

▪ More recently, sf aliens have taken

on a range of topical, dramatically
useful roles: immigrants, ethnic
minorities, underprivileged guest-
workers, wily diplomatic opponents

What does an alien symbolize?

 Animals, vegetables, and minerals

▪ The alien planet, artefact, planet (or

universe!) is vital

▪ It is perhaps sf’s greatest aesthetic gift

and brings us closest to experiencing
the romance of scientific endeavor

▪ Sense of wonder invoked

▪ Generations of sf readers have been

introduced, sometimes without
knowing it, to the fabulous diversity of
their own planet

▪ Frank Herbert’s Dune succeeds because

the story of the desert planet is a story
about scarcity, and the kind of human
culture that scarcity produces
What do alien animals, vegetables, and minerals
symbolize?
 Mad scientists and
damsels in distress

▪ Often said that sf is devoid of

convincing characterization

▪ Bound to foreground the

imagined world, the action-
adventure and the gadgets

▪ Sf relies on a set of stock figures

▪ The “mad scientist” is not a

bogeyman or a cartoon figure

▪ Represents an idea, a discussion

about the nature of
responsibility, a topic of debate
What does a mad scientist symbolize?
 Mad scientists and
damsels in distress

▪ Fabled sf cliché, the

diaphanously clad damsel on the
cover

▪ Unavoidable subtext in the sf

adventure:

▪ Hero-tales generally involve the

hero being rewarded, after his
trials, by gaining access—in some
sense—to the desirable female

▪ One of the more striking

developments in modern sf has
been the emergence of the
female-hero icon
WhatName
do damsels in distress
female-hero iconssymbolize?
in sf