Current mood:	pedantic
Entry tags:	definition, meta

What is Science Fiction?
Perhaps the key debate in science-fiction studies centres around the question of definition: simply, what is science fiction? because most people have at least a common-sense understanding of what science fiction is – a genre that is based on the fantastic and imaginative, rather than the realistic, and that often involves tropes such as advanced technology and journeys through space and time. Indeed, most bookshops and libraries have separate sections for science fiction, while specialist presses exist that publish texts exclusively from the genre. Nevertheless, when it comes to specifying the exact features of the form and how it differs from similar genres such as fantasy, Frederick Andrew Lerner observes that “the Science Fiction professionals themselves – writers, historians and critics, whose careers are closely associated with Science Fiction have reached no consensus” (quoted in Poquette, 2002, 284). Similarly, Adam Roberts remarks that, "[a]ll of the many definitions offered by critics have been contradicted or modified by other critics, and it is always possible to point to texts consensually called [science fiction] that fall outside of the usual definitions." (2000, 1-2)


Much of the problem is that science fiction encompasses such a wide variety of texts, ranging from space operas to murder mysteries and from military epics to domestic drama. Few other genres include texts as diverse as Alfred Bester’s The Demolished Man (1953), a baroque revenge tale set in a future where psychic powers prevent murder from happening; Robert Heinlein’s A Stranger in a Strange Land (1961), a satire on marriage, love, sex and religion that was responsible for spawning a countercultural movement; and Alex Raymond’s Flash Gordon (1934 onwards), a beautifully drawn space opera about a group of earthlings’ efforts to defeat the evil Ming the Merciless and thereby reinstate Prince Barin as the planet Mongo’s rightful ruler.

Moreover, as is the case with literature in general, science fiction has witnessed a number of distinct movements: actions, reactions and counter-reactions. Of key importance to this study, however, are the two distinct factions that were evident during the late 1960s and the 1970s and that could be likened to realism and modernism in terms of their relationship with each other. The one movement consisted of the older generation of writers and placed the emphasis heavily on science fiction as an exploration of science and technology. The other movement, which has been termed the New Wave and to which many feminist writers belonged, was more interested in science fiction’s potential to explore the human condition.

Because of the New Wave’s marginalisation within the genre, it seems appropriate to provide further information about the movement. Vida J. Maralani provides a useful overview, explaining that " these writers, many of whom were women, brought to the genre a concern for politics and lifestyles. This New Wave represented an attempt to find a language and social perspective which was adventurous and progressive in its technological vision. [Ursula] LeGuin and Joanna Russ are often identified as the two leading figures of this era; however, many other women began writing critical and poignant science fiction as well. They brought to the genre radicalism, feminism, socialism and heightened social consciousness in the hopes of confronting the problematic and disturbing in human life" (1994, paragraph 8).

In his discussion of the period, Brian Aldiss provides specific detail about the form that these changes took. According to him, "[t]he seventies brought many ground swells into prominence: ecology, computerization, proliferation of nuclear power, psychoanalysis, sexual liberation and feminism, and an adverse reaction to drugs. New technology fed new themes into the genre – cloning, biotechnology and computer science grew in importance as space flight diminished, though none had the same stark immediacy as a symbol. Science was growing ever more complex, more specialized, harder to grasp. The reality of the world outside the [science fiction] magazines – harsher, more cynical, obsessed with marketing – was reflected inside the genre, exaggerated and extrapolated. The early and mid seventies were a time of considerable maturation in the [science fiction] field. After the liberating and oft-times garish experimentation of the sixties, when style had seemed all important and the desire to shock as great an impetus as the desire to tell a story well, the writing of the seventies was quieter, less ostentatious – but no less impressive. It was immediately evident that a greater sensitivity prevailed in the field, a restraint and care for craftsmanship matched by a desire to capture the ‘sense of wonder’ so marked in the [science fiction] of the thirties and forties. And not merely to recapture the sense, but to articulate it intelligently and evocatively. (1986, 429)

Because of the feminist and radical aspects of the New Wave, female authors’ science fiction in particular acted as a challenge to the masculinist nature of the genre, in which women existed only to react to or reward the male hero. Of earlier texts, Joanna Russ scathingly commented that there are “plenty of images of women in science fiction. There are hardly any women”, by which she clearly means that there are only women as seen and represented by men (quoted in Lefanu, 1988, 13-14). Similarly, Ursula LeGuin suggests that most female characters in male-authored science fiction exist solely to say “Oh?” and “Ooooh!” to the clever, resourceful, male hero (1975, 94). In stark contrast to that, the texts written by second wave feminists not only have women in heroic and unconventional roles but were also written for a profoundly political, feminist purpose. For example, Russ’s own Female Man (1975) is a lengthy and witty feminist polemic that uses the tropes of science fiction – time-travel, alternate realities, cyborgs – as tools to dissect the patriarchal order and to assert a feminist response to it.

Confronted by such a disparate genre, many critics and writers unsurprisingly have turned to tautology and circular logic in order to answer the question of definition. Edward James offers that “[science fiction] is what is marketed as [science fiction],” while Damon Knight suggests that “science fiction is what we point to when we say it” (quoted in Roberts, 2000, 2). In “The Term Defined,” Harry Harrison quips that “[t]he definition of science fiction is: Science fiction is” (quoted in Poquette, 2002, 284). While these are perhaps the only definitions on which everyone can agree, they are not very useful in reaching an understanding of what science fiction is.

Therefore, I wish to consider the more specific but contested definitions of science fiction that have been suggested by representatives of both the older generation and the New Wave of science fiction writers, and by critics studying the form. My purpose in doing so is not to develop an all-encompassing definition of science fiction, which critical history suggests is a futile endeavour, but to map out the contours of the genre.

The best known definition of science fiction is the one developed over a series of articles by Isaac Asimov, a member of the older generation of science fiction authors and an undisputed grandmaster of the genre who made his reputation through a substantial and influential corpus of work. Texts like Foundation and I, Robot were responsible for shaping science fiction and making the genre into what it is at present. In an essay entitled “Extraordinary Voyages,” Asimov presents a number of possible definitions for the genre, ranging from an extreme exclusionist one – “[s]cience fiction deals with scientists working at science in the future” – to Joseph Campbell’s extreme inclusionist one – “ [s]cience fiction stories are whatever science fiction editors buy” (1983 [1978], 22).

Because of this dizzying array of definitions, Asimov suggests that it may be necessary to take a fresh approach to the subject, and to think it out historically. To that end, he goes back to Jules Verne, the Victorian novelist who, he argues, was “the first professional science fiction writer, the first writer who made his living out of undoubted science fiction” (23). He demonstrates how Verne expanded on the traditional travel narrative by making use of various “scientific devices of the present and possible future to carry his heroes [. . .] to the polar regions, to the sea bottom, to the Earth’s center, to the moon” (23-24). As such, Asimov argues that all science fiction stories should be viewed as travel tales, whether the journey takes place through space or time. More specifically, he defines them as “extraordinary voyages into any of the infinite supply of conceivable futures,” a broad and generous definition that covers most novels that are recognised as belonging to the genre (24).

However, in his controversial “Speculative Fiction,” Asimov adds a more specific requirement to his definition of science fiction: "[G]ood science fiction presupposes a certain knowledge of science on the part of the writer. Without that knowledge, what comes out is bad science fiction. It might be good fantasy, good horror, good occult, even good fiction in general – but it is bad science fiction." (1983 [1980], 300) According to Asimov (who himself held a doctorate in biochemistry), science fiction must demonstrate some awareness of science or technology. It is not enough that a text be set in a future world or on a distant planet; it must also make sense in terms of contemporary scientific theory and praxis.

In the same article, Asimov also discusses the term “speculative fiction,” which Robert Heinlein proposed as an alternative to science fiction. Asimov rejects the term in the article, arguing that, although a qualified engineer like Heinlein demonstrates a thorough understanding of science in his work, the term has been “seized on by a number of people who know very little science and feel more comfortable speculating freely and without having to raise a sweat by learning the rules of the game” (301). He uses Ursula LeGuin’s Lathe of Heaven as an example, dissecting the logic of it to prove that it fails the test of rationality and therefore should not be considered part of the science fiction genre. In short, the article is an attempt both to establish distance between science fiction and speculative fiction, and to prove that the former is the superior genre by virtue of its greater understanding of science and technology.

Asimov’s “Speculative Fiction” remains a controversial essay, primarily because it appears to disparage many of the New Wave writers who had entered the field in the 1960s and 1970s. For Asimov, those texts’ disregard of science and technology meant that they could not be considered science fiction, but his standpoint on this issue is not necessarily an ideologically neutral one. Indeed, Maralani suggests that the article needs to be considered as part of a conservative, masculinist reaction to new, female voices in a genre that had traditionally resembled a boys’ club, rather than a simple attempt to come up with a definition of science fiction as opposed to speculative fiction (1994, paragraph 13).

Brian Aldiss’s definition of science fiction stands in stark contrast to Asimov’s views on the genre. Aldiss was among the first of the New Wave writers with his debut novel being published in 1958. Unlike Asimov or Heinlein, Aldiss has no real background in the sciences, joining the army straight after school and then working as a bookseller. Similarly, his interest in science fiction comes from the cheap and trashy pulps that he read as a teenager, rather than the more scientifically respectable works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells (Brown, 1992). As such, Aldiss is not invested in the centrality of science and technology of science fiction, but rather in its potential to reflect human nature and the human condition. As he claims in Trillion Year Spree, "[s]cience fiction is the search for the definition of mankind 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 mode" (1986, 30).

In this definition, Aldiss presents science fiction as a genre that explores what it means to be human, that endeavours to determine what remains recognisably human in changed circumstances. Interestingly, he also includes the notion that science fiction is Gothic or Post-Gothic, suggesting several parallels between the two genres, such as their emphasis on “the distant and the unearthly,” and their ability to evoke “terror, mystery and [. . .] delightful horror” (42-44).

Ursula LeGuin’s definition of the sub-genre is even broader. Like Aldiss, LeGuin is a member of the New Wave of science fiction, and has no formal training in the sciences, as her educational background is in French and Literature. In “Science Fiction and Mrs Brown,” she likens the form to a “new tool,” describing it as "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 expandable metaphor exactly suited to our expanding universe, a broken mirror, broken into numberless fragments, any one of which is capable of reflecting, for a moment, the left eye and the nose of the reader, and also the farthest stars shining in the depths of the remotest galaxy" (1989 [1975], 113). In short, according to LeGuin, science fiction can take any form and serve any purpose. It is defined not by unity and fixity but by infinite variety and malleability.

Unlike the authors discussed above, all of whom are primarily interested in the content or the purpose of the form, academics’ definitions of science fiction tend towards the technical and formal. More specifically, they are interested in the textual features of the genre and the manner in which it is apprehended and interpreted by the reader. In his Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, Darko Suvin provides one of the earliest critical definitions of science fiction, describing it as "a literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment" (1979, 8-9).

In his study of science fiction, Roberts provides a helpful gloss on Suvin’s definition. According to Roberts, cognition refers to the aspect of science fiction that “prompts us to try and understand, to comprehend the alien landscape,” whereas estrangement recalls Brechtian ideas of alienation, the element of science fiction “that we recognise as different, that estranges us from the familiar and everyday” (2000, 8). Both of these factors need to be present in a text for it to be science fiction. If it were concerned simply with estrangement, it would be incomprehensible to the reader; if it dealt only with cognition, it would be scientific or documentary. However, because of the co-presence of these two factors within the form, science fiction manages to be relevant to contemporary society and to challenge it by altering the ordinary and the accepted (Roberts, 2000, 8).

In Reading by Starlight, Damien Broderick expands upon Suvin’s definition, providing a dense and technical account of the genre’s features. According to him, "[science fiction] is that species of storytelling native to a culture undergoing the epistemic changes implicated in the rise and supercession of technical-industrial modes of production, distribution, consumption and disposal. It is marked by (i) metaphoric strategies and metonymic techniques, (ii) the foregrounding of icons and interpretative schemata from a collectively constituted generic “mega-text” and the concomitant de-emphasis of “fine writing” and characterisation, and (iii) certain priorities more often found in scientific and postmodern texts than in literary models: specifically, attention to the object in preference to the subject" (1995, 155).

In the opening sentence of this definition, Broderick presents science fiction as a form arising out of industrial or post-industrial cultures. In other words, texts belonging to the genre can be read as an extension of a more general preoccupation with science and technology in a society. As such, they function metaphorically and metonymically, encoding aspects of contemporary society within themselves and presenting them to the audience in a new form. For instance, the androids in Phillip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? (1968) may represent all groups that society considers or has considered less than human for arbitrary reasons such as their gender, their sexuality or the colour of their skin. In this case, the androids function both metaphorically and metonymically, a single fictional group which represents all real groups that have been excluded from society.

Moreover, Broderick’s definition is indicative of the suspicion surrounding science fiction as a literary form. He notes that the works are dependant upon a generic set of icons and interpretative schemata, so that the majority of texts have in common not only props like aliens, ray guns and rocket-ships, but also a belief that science and rationality are the best means of apprehending the universe. He continues to suggest that science fiction emphasises these icons and schemata at the expense of stylistics and characterisation, and that it is therefore focussed more on the object than the subject. Gwyneth Jones provides a more accessible explanation of this latter point, when she writes that a "typical science fiction novel has little space for deep and studied characterisation, not because writers lack the skill (although they may) but because in the final analysis the characters are not people, they are pieces of equipment. [. . . The] same reductive effort is at work in the plot where naked, artless ur-scenarios of quest, death and desire are openly displayed" (1995, 5).

As with all generalisations, Broderick and Jones’s assertions are not entirely true, and there are a number of science fiction texts that are characterised by artful style and sophisticated characterisation. To name just two, Ursula LeGuin’s Left Hand of Darkness (1969) is famous for its lyrical prose and its intense focus on the relationship between two individuals, while Phillip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle (1962) has earned critical praise for its sensitive and perceptive portrayal of common people in an America that has lost the Second World War and has been colonised by Japan as a result.

Nevertheless, Broderick and Jones’s critique is generally an accurate one, as the majority of science fiction texts tend to be shallow and derivative, foregrounding theories and concepts rather than plots and characters. For example, the interest of Larry Niven’s Ring World (1970) derives almost entirely from the ideas that are explored within it – the engineering marvel that is the Ring World, the luck gene that one of the characters is said to possess. The characters themselves are flat and lifeless, and the plot is contrived. Similarly, in Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers (1959), the political and social philosophy is the real hero of the piece; the protagonist is simply the same salt-of-the-earth, grunt soldier that makes up the rest of the cast. The plot is as slender, consisting as it does of boot camp episodes and battles in an interminable, unexplained war against alien invaders. On finishing the novel, the reader is left with the distinct impression that the plot was structured in order to give Heinlein maximum opportunities to lecture the reader about his particular views.

Although none of these definitions provided by the writers and academics can be taken as authoritative or final, they should give us some idea of certain features of science fiction as a genre, and, by extension, provide us with a means of interpreting the texts.

Reference List:

Aldiss, Brian and Wingrove, David. 1986. Trillion Year Spree. London: Paladin.
Asimov, Isaac. 1983. Asimov on Science Fiction. London: Granada.
Broderick, Damien. 1995. Reading by Starlight. London: Routledge.
Lefanu, Sarah. 1988. In the Chinks of the World Machine. London:The Women’s Press.
LeGuin, Ursula K. 1989 (1975). “Science Fiction and Mrs Brown.” The Language of the Night. New York: HarperCollins.
Maralani, Vida J. 1994. “Women on the Edge of Time: Science Fiction and the Women’s Movement.” Ex Post Facto. <http://userwww.sfsu.edu/~epf/1994/scifi.html> (10 June 2005)
Poquette, Ryan D. 2002. “Science Fiction and Fantasy Literature.” Literary Movements for Students: Volume 2. London: Gale.
Roberts, Adam. 2000. Science Fiction. London: Routledge.
Suvin, Darko. 1979. Metamorphoses of Science Fiction. New Haven, Yale UP.