Sci Fi notes

Some basic notes on the genre and key sub-genres within it:

*What is science fiction? The definition is actually somewhat up for debate! One that your professor likes is Serdar Yegulalp's: "A kind of fiction that could only result from a scientifically-influenced worldview."

*According to Octavia Butler, one of the first rules of science fiction was that if you use science, you have to use it accurately. Of course, scientific theory is always developing, which means science fiction from the past may no longer apply the further back you go. Old sci fi novels may seem prophetic in certain ways, and really, really off in others.

As science fiction has developed as a category--basically since the age of Reason and the development of modern science itself--it has become more "open" than being just about science. Generally this rule is now primarily applied to what is called "hard science fiction," which is science fiction that sticks really closely to science in its writing, often dealing with cutting edge physics, etc.

Science fiction is sometimes called "the literature of ideas," although what literature isn't about ideas? This basically means it uses imagination and doesn't take the world as we live in it today for a limitation.

*As I mentioned on the first day of class, we are using the term science fiction somewhat loosely in this class. Some of the novels you are reading deal directly with science fiction themes (like robots), and others would fall more into the broader category of speculative fiction. Speculative fiction is fiction that speculates upon what is real or possible in the world in some significant way. For example, Kindred is speculative in that it posits the possibility of time travel. In a speculative novel, the laws of the universe are called into question in some major way. A science fiction novel where two astronauts get lost in space isn't speculative, because it could happen. A science fiction novel where they encounter alien life is, because this has not happened yet. Speculative fiction also encompasses some other genres: some (but not all) horror, some (but not all) historical fiction (Kindred is also historical fiction), and (all) fantasy.

*Soft science fiction is science fiction that deals with the social sciences such as economics, psychology, political science, and anthropology. Dystopian/utopian narratives fall under this umbrella.

One note on hard vs soft: sometimes these lines are broken down in a way that makes critics (including your professor) uncomfortable. After all "soft" sounds weak and "hard" sounds much more serious and important; they even have gendered elements to them at times (almost all the "hard" science fiction writers are male. Just as the sciences have struggled to create a more gender inclusive environment, it's important to consider each work of science fiction and its relationship to science as a field on its own terms, looking at what it offers and why.

It's also worthy to note that just as many of the inventions and "prophecies" in hard sci fi have turned out to be bunk as they have in soft--and soft often gets to the heart of human nature in a very "real" way.