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It 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. Science fiction, in literature, film, television, and other media, has become popular and influential over much of the world.
- Authors
Resources. A useful book for looking up authors is A...
- History of Science Fiction
The literary genre of science fiction is diverse, and its...
- Definitions of Science Fiction
"Science fiction is that form of literature which deals with...
- Timeline of Science Fiction
Year Event Historical events One Thousand and One Nights has...
- Authors
"Science fiction is that form of literature which deals with the effects of technological change in an imagined future, an alternative present or a reconceived history". David Pringle. 1985. "Science fiction is a form of fantastic fiction which exploits the imaginative perspectives of modern science". Kim Stanley Robinson. 1987.
Science fiction (SIGH-innss FICK-shun) is a type of literature that deals with inventive technologies, futurism, space travel and exploration, and other science-based components. Technically, science fiction is a subgenre of the larger genre of fiction, but because science fiction is such a vast and broad category on its own, most writers and ...
- Early Science Fiction
- 19Th-Century Transitions
- Early 20th Century
- The New Wave and Its Aftermath
- Science Fiction in The 1980s
- Contemporary Science Fiction and Its Future
- See Also
- Further Reading
Ancient and early modern precursors
One of the earliest and most commonly-cited texts for those looking for early precursors to science fiction is the ancient Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, with the earliest text versions identified as being from about 2000 BCE. American science fiction author Lester del Rey was one such supporter of using Gilgamesh as an origin point, arguing that "science fiction is precisely as old as the first recorded fiction. That is The Epic of Gilgamesh." French science fiction writer Pierre Versins al...
One Thousand and One Nights
Several stories within the One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights, 8th–10th centuries CE) also feature science fiction elements. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", where the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey to the Garden of Eden and to Jahannam (Islamic hell), and travel across the cosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic science fiction; along the way, he encounte...
Other medieval literature
According to Dr. Abu Shadi al-Roubi, the final two chapters of the Arabic theological novel Fādil ibn Nātiq (c. 1270), also known as Theologus Autodidactus, by the Arabian polymath writer Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288) can be described as science fiction. The theological novel deals with various science fiction elements such as spontaneous generation, futurology, apocalyptic themes, eschatology, resurrection and the afterlife, but rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for the...
Shelley and Europe in the early 19th century
The 19th century saw a major acceleration of these trends and features, most clearly seen in the groundbreaking publication of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein in 1818. The short novel features the archetypal "mad scientist" experimenting with advanced technology. In his book Billion Year Spree, Brian Aldiss claims Frankenstein represents "the first seminal work to which the label SF can be logically attached". It is also the first of the "mad scientist" subgenre. Although normally associated with...
Verne and Wells
The European brand of science fiction proper began later in the 19th century with the scientific romances of H.G. Wells and the science-oriented, socially critical novels of Jules Verne. Verne's adventure stories, notably Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) mixed daring romantic adventure with technology that was either up to the minute or logically extrapolated into the future. They were tremendous com...
Late 19th-century expansion
Wells and Verne had quite a few rivals in early science fiction. Short stories and novelettes with themes of fantastic imagining appeared in journals throughout the late 19th century and many of these employed scientific ideas as the springboard to the imagination. Erewhon is a novel by Samuel Butler published in 1872 and dealing with the concept that machines could one day become sentient and supplant the human race. In 1886 the novel The Future Eve by French author Auguste Villiers de l'Isl...
American author L. Frank Baum's series of 14 books (1900–1920) based in his outlandish Land of Oz setting, contained depictions of strange weapons (Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Glinda of Oz), mechanical men (Tik-Tok of Oz) and a bevy of not-yet-realized technological inventions and devices including perhaps the first literary appearance of handhel...
Mainstream publishers
Until about 1950, magazines were the only way authors could publish new stories. Only small specialty presses like Arkham House and Gnome Press published science fiction hardcover books, all reprints of magazine stories. With rare exceptions like the collections Adventures in Time and Space and A Treasury of Science Fiction, large mainstream publishers only printed Verne and Wells. Most genre books were sold by mail from small magazine advertisements, because bookstores rarely carried science...
Precursors to the New Wave
Samuel Beckett's The Unnamable and Waiting for Godot were influential upon writing in the 1950s. In the former all sense of place and time are dispensed with; all that remains is a voice poised between the urge to continue existing and the urge to find silence and oblivion. (The only other major writer to use "The Unnamable" as a title was H. P. Lovecraft.) In the latter, time and the paradoxes of cause and effect become thematic. Beckett's influence on the intelligentsia—as well as the gener...
The New Wave
In 1960, British novelist Kingsley Amis published New Maps of Hell, a literary history and examination of the field of science fiction. This serious attention from a mainstream, acceptable writer did a great deal of good, eventually, for the reputation of science fiction. Another milestone was the publication, in 1965, of Frank Herbert's Dune, a complex work of fiction featuring political intrigue in a future galaxy, mystical religious beliefs, and the ecosystem of the desert planet Arrakis....
Cyberpunk
By the early 1980s the fantasy market was much larger than that of almost all science fiction authors. The New Wave had faded out as an important presence in the science fiction landscape. As new personal computing technologies became an integral part of society, science fiction writers felt the urge to make statements about its influence on the cultural and political landscape. Drawing on the work of the New Wave, the Cyberpunk movement developed in the early 80s. Though it placed the same i...
Contemporary science fiction has been marked by the spread of cyberpunk to other parts of the marketplace of ideas. No longer is cyberpunk a ghettoized tribe within science fiction, but an integral part of the field whose interactions with other parts have been the primary theme of science fiction around the start of the 21st century. Notably, cybe...
A Companion to Science Fiction.Ed. David Seed. Blackwell, 2005.Aldiss, Brian, and David Hargrove. Trillion Year Spree.Atheneum, 1986.Asimov, Isaac. Asimov on Science Fiction.Doubleday and Company, Inc., 1981.Definition of Science Fiction. Science fiction is one of the fiction genres that demonstrates different scientific facts, discoveries, innovations, inventions, or other strange and scientific evolutions. The stories or novels falling under this category often show technological advances, environmental issues, and space or time travels.
DEFINITION #1. Science fiction is a narrative format, initially literary and later cinematic and televisual, that uses predominantly adventure-driven formulas to talk about the future. Or futures. Or the past. Or the alternate present. Unlike other genres previously known as popular, science fiction cannot be reduced to a single scenario.
Jul 26, 2018 · Literary and cultural historians describe science fiction (SF) as the premiere narrative form of modernity because authors working in this genre extrapolate from Enlightenment ideals and industrial practices to imagine how educated people using machines and other technologies might radically change the material world.
