ENGL 3840 Science Fiction

1
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
Toward a Definition of Science Fiction
2
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 Works Cited Aldiss, Brian. Billion Year Spree
The True History of Science Fiction. NY
Schocken, 1973. Allen, Dick, ed. Science
Fiction The Future. 2nd Edition. NY Harcourt,
Brace, 1983. Ash, Brian, ed. The Visual
Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. NY Harmony
Books, 1977. Ateberry, Brian. Teacher's Guide to
Accompany The Norton Book of Science Fiction. NY
W. W. Norton, 1993. Ballard, J. G. A User's
Guide to the Millennium Essays and Reviews. New
York Picador, 1996. Card, Orson Scott. How to
Write Science Fiction and Fantasy. Cincinnati
Writers Digest Books, 1990. Clareson, Thomas.
"The Other Side of Realism." ''', ed. SF The
Other Side of Realism Essays on Modern Fantasy
and Science Fiction. Bowling Green Bowling Green
University Popular Press, 1971. Conklin, Groff.
"What is Good Science Fiction?" Junior Libraries
15 April 1958. Fiedler, Leslie A.
"Introduction." In Dreams Awake A
Historical-Critical Anthology of Science Fiction.
New York Dell, 1975. Franklin, H. Bruce. Future
Perfect American Science Fiction of the
Nineteenth Century. New York Oxford U P, 1978.
3
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 Works Cited (cont.) Frye, Northrup. The Anatomy
of Criticism Four Essays. Princeton, NJ
Princeton U P, 1971. ___, Sheridan Baker, and
George Perkins. The Harper Handbook to
Literature. NY Harper and Row, 1985. Gunn,
James. "The Readers of Hard Science Fiction."
Slusser and Rabkin. 70-81 ___, ed. The Road to
Science Fiction From Here to Forever. Vol. 4.
Clarkston, GA White Wolf Publishing, 1982.
Heard, Gerald. Modern Science Fiction Its
Meaning and Its Future. New York Coward-McCann,
1953. Hillegas, Mark R., ed. Shadows of
Imagination The Fantasies of C. S. Lewis, J. R.
R. Tolkien, and Charles Williams. Carbondale
Southern Illinois University Press, 1961.
Knight, Damon.In Search of Wonder Essays on
Modern Science Fiction. Chicago Advent, 1967.
Le Guin, Ursula K. "Íntroduction to The Left
Hand of Darkness." The Language of the Night
Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. Ed. Susan
Wood. NY Berkley Medallion, 1979 145-49. ___.
"Introduction." LeGuin and Ateberry. 15-42.
4
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 Works Cited (cont.) ___. "Introduction." LeGuin
and Ateberry. 15-42. ___. "Science Fiction and
Mrs. Brown." The Language of the Night Essays on
Fantasy and Science Fiction Ed. Susan Wood. NY
Berkley Medallion, 1979 91-110. ___ and Brian
Ateberry, eds. The Norton Book of Science
Fiction. NY W. W. Norton, 1993. Lem, Stanislaw.
Microworlds Writings on Science Fiction and
Fantasy. Ed. Franz Rottensteiner. NY HBJ, 1984.
Lewis, C. S. "On Science Fiction." Of Other
Worlds Essays and Stories. Ed. Walter Hooper.
NY Harcourt, Brace Jovanovich, 1966. Lundwall,
Sam J. Science Fiction What It_s All About. NY
Ace Books, 1971. Malzberg, Barry. The Engines of
the Night Science Fiction in the Eighties.
Garden City Doubleday, 1982. McCaffery, Larry,
ed. Across the Wounded Galaxies Interviews with
Contemporary American Science Fiction Writers.
Urbana Illinois University Press, 1990.
McConnell, Frank. "Sturgeon_s Law First
Corollary." Slusser and Rabkin. 14-23. Minyard,
Applewhite, ed. Decades of Science Fiction.
Lincolnwood, IL NTC Publishing, 1998.
Parrinder, Patrick. Science Fiction Its
Criticism and Teaching. New Accents. 
5
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 Works Cited Pringle, David. Science Fiction,
The 100 Best Novels An English Language
Selection, 1949-1984. NY Carroll and Graf, 1984.
Slusser, George E., "The Ideal Worlds of Science
Fiction." Slusser and Rabkin. 214-44. ___. and
Eric S. Rabkin, ed. Hard Science Fiction.
Carbondale Southern Illinois U P, 1986. Suvin,
Darko. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction On the
Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New
Haven Yale U P, 1979. Wilson, William, A Little
Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject (1851).  
6
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 "Science fiction is the search for a definition
of man and his status in the universe which will
stand in our advanced but confused state of
knowledge (science), and is characteristically
cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould." Brian
Aldiss in Billion Year Spree (8)
7
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 "Science fiction is fiction about the future
of science and scientists." Isaac Asimov
(paraphrased in The Visual Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction) (257)
8
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"What distinguishes science fiction from other
kinds of fiction is a peculiar compromise between
scientific truth and untruth. Samuel Delany has
analyzed this compromise in terms of the SF
text's subjunctivity ("About 5,750 Words"). What
he means by this term is the degree to which
every statement in the fiction describes a
hypothetical condition something that is not
happening, has not happened, could not have
happened in the past (unlike realistic fiction),
but might happen, given the proper changes in
society and scientific knowledge. Another word
for subjunctivity might be 'ifness,' the
condition of being contingent. "What SF is
contingent upon is change that does not violate
the readers understanding of scientifically
defined reality, which is not to say that we
necessarily accept any statement in the text as
scientifically valid. Rather, we accept reference
within SF as allusions to science, broadly
conceived of as a field of endeavor, a way of
mapping the universe, and a way of speaking about
the universe and the attempt to comprehend
it. Brian Ateberry, in Teachers Guide to
Accompany The Norton Book of Science Fiction
(29-30)
9
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"One can almost make the case that science
fiction, far from being a disreputable minor
genre, in fact constitutes the strongest literary
tradition of the twentieth century, and may well
be its authentic literature. Within its pages, as
in our lives, archaic myth and scientific
apocalypse collide and fuse. However naively, it
had tried to respond to the most significant
events of our time--the threat of nuclear war,
over-population, the computer revolution, the
possibilities and abuses of physical science, the
ecological dangers to our planet, the consumer
society as benign tyranny--topics that haunt our
minds but are scarcely considered by the
mainstream novel. If few great names stand out in
science fiction, this reflects its collaborative
nature, just as no great names stand out in the
design of the Boeing 747 or, for that matter,
Chartres Cathedral." j. G. Ballard, in A Users
Guide to the Millennium (193-94)
10
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 "To be science fiction, not fantasy, an honest
effort at prophetic extrapolation of the known
must be made. Ghosts can enter science fiction,
if theyre logically explained, but not if they
are simply the ghosts of fantasy. Prophetic
extrapolation can derive from a number of
different sources, and apply in a number of
fields. Sociology, psychology, and
para-psychology are, today, not true sciences
therefore, instead of forecasting future results
of application of sociological science of today,
we must forecast the development of a science of
sociology. From there the story can take
off." John W. Campbell. Jr. in Of Worlds Beyond
(1947) (quoted in James Gunn, "The Readers of
Hard Science Fiction" 74)
11
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 "What SF writers write is SF. --Orson Scott
Card in How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy
(11)
12
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 "The best definition of science fiction is that
it consists of stories in which one or more
definitely scientific notion or theory or actual
discovery is extrapolated, played with,
embroidered on, in a non-logical, or fictional
sense, and thus carried beyond the realm of the
immediately possible in an effort to see how much
fun the author and reader can have exploring the
imaginary outer reaches of a given ideas
potentialities." Groff Conklin, "What is Good
Science Fiction" (16)
13
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"Science fiction is a new way of reading, a new
way of making texts make sense--collectively
producing a new set of codes. SF writers
invented the genre by writing new kinds of
sentences and embedding them in contexts in which
those sentences were readable." Samuel R. Delany,
in an interview with Larry McCaffery in Across
the Wounded Galaxies (79)
14
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"In fact, one good working definition of science
fiction may be the literature which, growing with
science and technology, evaluates it and relates
it meaningfully to the rest of human
existence. H. Bruce Franklin, Future Perfect
(vii)
15
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"Science fiction frequently tries to imagine what
life would be like on a plane as far above us as
we are above savagery its setting is often of a
kind that appears to us technologically
miraculous. It is thus a mode of romance with a
strong tendency to myth." Northrup Frye, The
Anatomy of Criticism (49)
16
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"By scientifction . . . 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." Hugo Gernsback
(quoted in Fiedler 11)
17
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 "Science fiction is the branch of literature
that deals with the effects of change on people
in the real world as it can be projected into the
past, the future, or to distant places. It often
concerns itself with scientific or technological
change, and it usually involves matters whose
importance is greater than the individual or the
community often the civilization or the race
itself is in danger." James Gunn, The Road to
Science Fiction, Vol. 4 (16)
18
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"Science fiction is the prophetic . . . the
apocalyptic literature of our particular and
culminating epoch of crisis." Gerald Heard,
Modern Science Fiction (255)
19
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 "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." Robert
Heinlein (quoted in Parrinder 16)
20
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"Science fiction is the myth of machine
civilization, which, in its utopian
extrapolation, it tends to glorify." Mark R.
Hillegas, Shadows of Imagination (xvii)
21
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"Science Fiction is what I mean when I point to
it." Damon Knight (quoted in James Gunn, "The
Readers of Hard Science Fiction" 71) "What we
get from science fiction--what keeps us reading
it, in spite of our doubts and occasional
disgust--is not different from the thing that
makes mainstream stories rewarding, but only
expressed differently. We live on a minute island
of known things. Our undiminished wonder at the
mystery which surrounds us is what makes us
human. In science fiction we can approach that
mystery, not in small, everyday symbols, but in
big ones of space and time." DamonKnight, In
Search of Wonder (4)
22
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"And what is science fiction at its best but just
a new tool as Mrs. Woolf avowedly sought 50
years ago, a crazy, protean, left-handed
monkey-wrench, which can be put to any use the
craftsman has in mind--satire, extrapolation,
prediction, absurdity, exactitude, exaggeration,
warning, message-carrying, tale-telling, whatever
you like--an infinitely expanding metaphor
exactly suited to an expanding universe, a broken
mirror, broken into numberless fragments, any one
of which is capable of reflecting, for a moment,
the left eye and nose of the reader, and also the
farthest stars shining in the depths of the
remotest galaxy? Ursula K. LeGuin, "Science
Fiction and Mrs. Brown" (106)
23
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 "Science fiction, then, commonly uses techniques
both from the realistic and the fantastic
traditions of narrative to tell a story of which
a referent, implicit or explicit, is the
mind-set, the content, or the mythos of science
and technology. "In his Strategies of Fantasy,
Brian Attebery shows how science fiction uses
science as its megatext. The nourishing medium,
the origin of the imagery, the motive of the
narrative, is to be found in the contents,
assumptions, and world view of modern science and
technology. Science writes Attebery surrounds,
supports, and judges SF in much the same way the
Bible grounds Christian devotional
poetry." Ursula K. LeGuin, from the introduction
to The Norton Book of Science Fiction (23-24)
24
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 "Science fiction is not predictive it is
descriptive. All fiction is metaphor. Science
fiction is metaphor. "All fiction is metaphor.
Science fiction is metaphor. What sets it apart
from older forms of fiction seems to be its use
of new metaphors, drawn from certain great
dominants of our contemporary life--science, all
the sciences and technology, and the relativistic
and the historical outlook, among them. Space
travel is one of those metaphors, so is an
alternative society, an alternative biology the
future is another. The future, in fiction, is a
metaphor." Ursula K. LeGuin, in the introduction
to The Left Hand of Darkness (149
25
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"It is the premise of science fiction that
anything shown shall in principle be
interpretable empirically and rationally. In
science fiction there can be no inexplicable
marvels, no transcendence, no devils or
demons--and the patterns of occurrence must be
verisimilar. Stanislaw Lem in Microworlds (35)
26
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"In this kind of story the pseudo-scientific
apparatus is to be taken simply as a 'machine' in
the sense which that word bore for the
Neo-Classical critics. The most superficial
appearance of plausibility--the merest sop to our
critical intellect--will do. I am inclined to
think that frankly supernatural methods are best.
I took a hero once to Mars in a space-ship, but
when I knew better I had angels convey him to
Venus. Nor need the strange worlds, when we get
there, be at all strictly tied to scientific
probabilities. It is their wonder, or beauty, or
suggestiveness that matter." C. S. Lewis, "On
Science Fiction" (68-69)
27
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
A simplified definition would be that the author
of a 'straight' science fiction story proceeds
from (or alleges to proceed from) known facts,
developed in a credible way, whereas the author
of a fantasy story starts with an idea and builds
a world around it. The question of whether a
certain story of imagination is a fantasy or a
science fiction work would depend upon the device
the author uses to explain his projected or
unreal world. If he uses the gimmick or device of
saying 'This is a logical or probable assumption
based upon known science, which is going to
develop from known science or from investigations
of areas not yet quite explored but suspected,'
then one could call it science fiction. But if he
asks the reader to suspend his disbelief simply
because of the fun of it, in other words, just to
say 'Here is a fairy tale I'm going to tell
you,' then it is fantasy. It could actually be
the same story. Sam J. Lundwall, from Science
Fiction What Its All About (22)
28
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 "Science fiction will always offer easier
alternatives. Science fiction will always be
slanted, by definition, to taking its readers out
of the world. Only weak people, however--pat
Freudianism and the great cult psychology
movements of the seventies have taught us--want
out of the world. Strong people want in. Strong
people want to, must deal with life as it is
presented. Science fiction if a literature for
the weak, the defenseless, the handicapped and
the scorned. Panacea and pap." Barry Malzberg, in
Engines of the Night (83-84)
29
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"If this appears that I am arguing for a
deconstruction of our ideas of generic norms,
returning us to a primal chaos of fictive forms
in which all fictive forms are equally
privileged if this appears that I am arguing for
the dismantling of the concept itself, science
fiction, as more a barrier than an aid to
reading if this seems as if I am saying that all
fiction worth examining is, one way or another,
science fiction it is because that is what I am
doing." Frank McConnell, in "Sturgeons Law
First Corollary" (15)
30
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"Science fiction is not fiction about science,
but fiction which endeavors to find the meaning
in science and in the scientific technology we
are constructing." Judith Merrill (quoted in
Science Fiction The Future (2)
31
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"Science fiction is a branch of fantasy
identifiable by the fact that it eases the
willing suspension of disbelief on the part of
its readers by utilizing an atmosphere of science
credibility for its imaginative speculations in
physical science, space, time, social science and
philosophy." Sam Moskowitz,, quoted in Science
Fiction The Future (1)
32
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"Science fiction is a form of fantastic fiction
which exploits the imaginative perspectives of
modern science." David Pringle,, in Science
Fiction The 100 Best Novels
33
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"If poetry can be said to aspire to the condition
of music, then science fiction tends toward that
of pure idea. That idea is, we are told, Science.
But science fiction is two words, and it is
strange if not paradoxical that, in this fiction,
science, as idea almost synonymous with the
original sense of that word, disembodied vision,
should so strongly claim a precise locus, a
literary form that is "ideal" in a very
particular way. For the sense of this term,
denoting as it does the absolute, unique, and
singular, is qualified in science fiction, the
literature that, constantly reembodying the
disembodied, claims as its ideal a condition of
materiality equal to that of the material
universe its science encounters." George E.
Slusser,, "The Ideal Worlds of Science Fiction"
(214)
34
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"The term can be applied only to a story in which
wherein removal of its scientific content would
invalidate the narrative." Theodore Sturgeon,
(paraphrased in The Visual Encyclopedia of
Science Fiction) (257)   Nine tenths of science
fiction is crap. Of course, nine tenths of
everything is crap. (rough paraphrase) Theodore
Sturgeon (source unknown)
35
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
Science fiction is "the literature of cognitive
estrangement." Darko Suvin,, in Metamorphoses of
Science Fiction (4)
36
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
 "Thomas Campbell says that 'Fiction in poetry
is not the reverse of truth, but her soft and
enchanting resemblance.' Now this applies
especially to Science-Fiction, in which the
revealed truths of Science may be given
interwoven with a pleasing story which may itself
be poetical and true--thus circulating a
knowledge of the Poetry of science clothed in a
garb of the Poetry of Life. William Wilson, from
A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject
(1851) quoted in Parrinder (2)
37
ENGL 3840 Science Fiction
SF Defined
"If the labours of men of Science should ever
create any material revolution, direct or
indirect, in our condition, and in the
impressions which we habitually receive, the Poet
will sleep then no more than at present, but he
will be ready to follow the steps of the man of
Science, not only in those general indirect
effects, but he will be at his side, carrying
sensation into the midst of the objects of the
Science itself. The remotest discoveries of the
Chemist, the Botanist, or Mineralogist, will be
as proper objects of the Poet's art as any upon
which it can be employed, if the time should ever
come when these things shall be familiar to us,
and the relations under which they are
contemplated by the followers of these respective
Sciences shall be manifestly and palpably
material to us as enjoying and suffering beings.
If the time should ever come when what is now
called Science, thus familiarized to men, shall
be ready to put on, as it were, a form of flesh
and blood, the Poet will lend his divine spirit
to aid the transfiguration, and will welcome the
Being thus produced, as a dear and genuine inmate
of the household of man." William Wordsworth,
"Preface to Lyrical Ballads