Do You Really Know What Science Fiction Is?

As a cross-media genre, «science fiction» defies a clear definition, proving how challenging it is to define concepts belonging to popular culture.

Everybody seems to know intuitively what science fiction is, and even believes they can describe the products -from films and TV series to books or videogames- that fall into the category. If you ask around, people will identify Star Wars and Star Trek franchises as science fiction, as well as movies like the anticipated Dune, by the Canadian director Denis Villeneuve, or the popular Xbox game Halo. The truth is that there is no consensus about the scope and characteristics of science fiction, due to its youth in comparison to other literary genres, and to its ever-growing boundaries.

Commonly known as «SF» or even «Sci-Fi», science fiction is one of the three branches of fantastic literature, apart from fantasy fiction and horror. With roots in the Age of Enlightenment and Gothic novels, the early 19th century witnessed the publication of books like Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), considered today as one of the first stories in modern times built around the effects of science and technology. In the 1920s, American editor Hugo Gernsback coined the term «science fiction» to describe the more uplifting narratives of Amazing Stories, the pulp magazine he directed. His vision about the genre was much more optimistic than the previous century portrayed, influenced by the works of European authors like Jules Verne or H. G. Wells.

Westerners, especially Americans, embraced SF during the 20^th century: it was the predominant genre of the adventurous stories available through inexpensive magazines. Soon after, SF narratives transcended their original format, a phenomenon that generated franchises and shared universes, spin-offs, related content, and multiple installments of fictional creations (films, games, or books).

There have been many attempts to define the term, but none have been successful in bringing critics, consumers, and scholars together. I recommend Paul Kincaid’s 2003 essay «On the Origins of Genre», in which he concludes: «science fiction is not one thing. Rather, it is any number of things –a future setting, a marvelous device, an ideal society, an alien creature, a twist in time, an interstellar journey, a satirical perspective, a particular approach to the matter of the story, whatever we are looking for when we look for science fiction, here more overt, here more subtle– which are braided together in an endless variety of combinations». I particularly like the broadness and straightforwardness of this definition, easy to understand for any non-connoisseur. It points to the fluid and malleable nature of the genre, one that escapes rigid explanations as it deals with scenarios, characters, and innovations that may not exist yet but that are possible within the parameters of existing science. The future setting could be the one depicted in Utopia by Ahmed Khaled Tawfiq, and the marvelous device, the ansible in The Left Hand of God by Ursula K. Le Guin. Examples of dystopian societies can be found in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World or The Queue by Basma Abel Aziz, and creatures populate the pages of books like Binti by Nnedi Okorafor or Frankenstein in Baghdad by Ahmed Saadawi. Where Ajwan (أجوان) by Emirati author Noura Al Noman is a space opera, Douglas Adams’ The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy uses humor in combination with space exploration.

I would like to end this article with Fernando Ángel Moreno’s^[1] definition of SF as «a genre of projective fiction based on non-supernatural elements». Here the supernatural is not completely out of the equation but rather considered a non-integral part of the story. The specificity of this definition rests in an implied agreement between the reader and the story: incredible events are presented in the light of scientifically plausible settings that may or may not anticipate discoveries and advances. Consequently, the potential for wonder is limitless.

Reference:

[1] MORENO, Fernando Ángel Moreno (2010):  Teoría de la literatura de ciencia ficción. Portals Editions.