Speculative Fiction

8 Key excerpts on "Speculative Fiction"

• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Routledge Introduction to Canadian Fantastic Literature

  • Allan Weiss(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  The Turn of the Screw (1898). The problem is that Todorov’s definition of “fantastic”—like Heinlein’s of “Speculative Fiction”—is shared by virtually no one, and even contradicts other readers’ and scholars’ experience. For them, “fantastic” means what Todorov calls the “marvellous.” There is no hesitation in attributing the alien invasion to aliens, or the ghostly apparition to a ghost; vampires, dragons, faster-than-light spaceships, and sentient robots are fictionally “real.” Curiously, since Todorov seems to have read only the most implausible works of science fiction, he defines that genre as works in which “the supernatural is explained in a rational manner, but according to laws which contemporary science does not acknowledge” (56). Here, he may be referring to what was called science fiction in the pulps.

  Fantastic literature, then, in almost all cases portrays secondary worlds, although on its fringes are works that are somewhat ambiguous. The problem with using “Speculative Fiction” as the overall term, as so many do, is that it refers to “speculation,” an important element in some but not all fantastic genres. To speculate means to ask, “What if?” and many of the genres we are looking at do speculate, asking questions like “What if we had an artificial intelligence that could control the world?,” “What if we could travel through time?,” and “What if there were a society in which all fertile women were made sex-slaves?” Alternate history is certainly Speculative Fiction, asking “What if some historical event had turned out differently? What if this had happened instead of that?” Without some scientific explanation for the change, it is not really science fiction. In such texts, the central idea is the focus, and the author engages in what scholars have described as a thought experiment, portraying a world that has one major alteration or perhaps a few such changes. These genres belong to what is called the literature of ideas, in which ideas are foregrounded to a greater extent than in most fictional genres; other types of the literature of ideas are satire and philosophical fiction.

  Speculative Fiction is therefore a good term for genres that foreground political, social, scientific, technological, and philosophical concepts. But fantasy does not function in the same way. It does not speculate in the way that science fiction, dystopian fiction, and alternate history do. A fantasy novel does not ask, “What if there were dragons?” but rather presents a world in which dragons are real and even a given, and then portrays characters perhaps engaged in a quest and/or facing a moral dilemma. Fantasy fits into a different tradition—the romance tradition—from the literature of ideas. That is not to say there are no ideas in fantasy, just that ideas are not the main focus as they are in these other genres. Fantasy often relies on wholly familiar elements, the sorts of beings and settings we already know from myths, legends, and history.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Science Fiction

  • Adam Roberts(Author)
  • 2006(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  1

  DEFINING SCIENCE FICTION

  The term ‘science fiction’ resists easy definition. This is a strange thing, because most people have a sense of what science fiction is. Any bookstore will have a section devoted to SF: shelves of mostly brightly coloured paperback volumes, illustrated on their covers with photorealist paintings of intricate spaceships perhaps, or of men and women in futuristic cities or bizarre alien landscapes. Most of these novels are narratives that elaborate some imaginative or fantastic premise, perhaps involving a postulated future society, encounters with creatures from another world, travel between planets or in time. In other words, science fiction as a genre or division of literature distinguishes its fictional worlds to one degree or another from the world in which we actually live: a fiction of the imagination rather than observed reality, a fantastic literature.

  But when it comes down to specifying in precisely what ways SF is distinctive, and in what ways it is different from other imaginative and fantastic literatures, there is disagreement. All 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 SF that fall outside the usual definitions. It is, perhaps, for this reason that some critics try to content themselves with definitions of the mode that are mere tautologies, as if ‘we’ all know what it is and elaboration is superfluous. Edward James suggests that ‘SF is what is marketed as SF’ (although he concedes that, as a definition, this is ‘a beginning, nothing more’) (James 1994: 3). Damon Knight says that ‘science fiction is what we point to when we say it’; and Norman Spinraid argues that ‘science fiction is anything published as science fiction’ (quoted in Clute and Nicholls 1993: 314). There is a kind of weariness in this sort of circular reasoning, as if the whole business of definition is nothing more than a cynical marketing exercise. Lance Parkin suggests that ‘SF is a notoriously difficult term to define, but when it comes down to it, a book appears on the SF shelves if the publisher thinks they will maximize their sales by labelling it as such’ (Parkin 1999: 4). This mistrust of definition has interesting implications for the self-image of SF as a genre, although it doesn’t get us very far as a starting point.

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Science Fiction and Innovation Design

  • Thomas Michaud(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Wiley-ISTE

    (Publisher)

  In the United States, literature is more optimistic. The reason for this is that the authors come more from literary spheres, whereas elsewhere they navigate more in scientific ones [ KLE 16 ], and therefore more marked by self-criticism. Moreover, imaginaries evolve over time. On the subject of the technoimaginary world, Georges Balandier [ CHA 94 ] observes a transformation: “techno-messianic utopias” are gradually being replaced by “techno-catastrophic” utopias, a sign of a much more critical time and of this loss of idealism. The literary or cinematographic genre of “science fiction” is special in that it makes science and technology one of its main ingredients. A kind of exploration, of impulse, of a frontier [ CON 12 ], it is one of the most relevant vectors allowing us to explore, through fiction, our link with technology. Indeed, the imaginary worlds present in science fiction stories are largely carried by the technical objects that populate the proposed universes: space shuttles, underground habitats, flying cars, light sabers, humanoid robots, modified or augmented humans. Not only are these the markers of the genre, but they also advance the story with props or even main or secondary characters. In doing so, the technology present in science fiction “is always a mixture of tekhné and logos” [ MUS 13, authors’ translation]; that is to say, it is the result of a technical act, a fabrication, and it generates knowledge and a discourse, a word

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Science, Culture and Society

  Understanding Science in the 21st Century

  • Mark Erickson(Author)
  • 2016(Publication Date)
  • Polity

    (Publisher)

  Science fiction is reliant on science for plots and ideas, and we can track changes in these as the cutting edge of science has shifted (Marvel comic character Hulk’s genesis changing from being the result of a nuclear accident in the 1960s to genetic engineering in the 2000s is a good example of this). But science fiction is not simply a sponge that picks up the themes of scientific research. Science fiction presents a version of science to audiences that will concur, at least to some extent, with audiences’ hopes, and fears, for the future. The space opera vision of limitless, technologically driven human expansion and the cyberpunk vision of a dystopic, technocratic and soulless future both emerge from societies with ambiguous attitudes towards scientists, scientific institutions and scientific knowledge. Even the hard science fiction narratives of avowed cheerleaders for science as activity, and as project, see, at the very least, challenges emerging from the continuation of scientific research into areas such as nanotechnology, genetic engineering and quantum physics. In hard science fiction texts we not only learn about science as activity and as attitude, but also discover that scientific progress may be harmful to humanity – although this harm almost invariably comes from the ‘corruption’ of science by politics or big business. Science fiction shows us that we have a complex and contested relationship with science – a mixture of positive, negative and unknown. Science fiction tends to reconfirm existing notions of the project of science and does not disabuse us of our distorted knowledge of what actually takes place inside scientific workplaces. The science of science fiction remains, even in hard science fiction, an occluded set of processes, a black box, out of which emerge technologies, sometimes dangerous, that transform our world, scientists who retain control of crucial knowledge, institutions that exclude most members of society, and a project that has a momentum of its own and an inexorable drive towards ‘progress’.

  This version of science is not simply a product of the content of science fiction narratives. As we have seen, such narratives rely to a large extent on our pre-existing knowledge of science and of science fiction and its conventions. Much more important is the context within which these narratives are located: it is the context of the narrative that is providing the meaning of science that we see in science fiction. Our narratives of futurity have changed because our social understanding of the future has changed, not because we decided to construct new stories of space exploration.

  Further reading

  It is difficult to find definitive guides to science fiction as it is such a diverse and extensive genre. However, these two books provide a good overview of science fiction and a good starting point for further investigation:Luckhurst, R. (2005) Science fiction, Cambridge: Polity.Roberts, A. (2006) Science fiction

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Literature and Understanding

  The Value of a Close Reading of Literary Texts

  • Jon Phelan(Author)
  • 2020(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Literary fiction as a subgenre of both literature and fiction

  There is a tendency in the philosophy of literature, less conspicuous in the philosophy of fiction, to use the terms ‘literature’ and ‘fiction’ interchangeably. Yet the terms appear to track an important distinction; one recognised by publishers, librarians, booksellers and any reader who expects a different kind of read from the shelf marked ‘literature’ than from the shelf marked ‘fiction’.1 The problem is that in running the concepts ‘literature’ and ‘fiction’ together, no distinction is drawn between arguments that are sound only if the concept ‘literature’ is employed and arguments that are sound only if the concept ‘fiction’ is employed. As a result, the conclusions of such arguments are taken to apply indiscriminately to both literature and fiction, to the potential detriment of both. Some work needs to be done in order to determine what the conceptual relations are between literature, fiction and literary fiction. Once this is in place I can investigate the claim that the cognitive gain from reading literary fiction is generated from a reader’s engagement with literary fiction qua literature and not, as is too often assumed, qua fiction.

  There is a tradition that takes all literature to be fictional by definition. This view is summarised by Tzvetan Todorov when he says that literature is ‘imitation through language’ and as all imitation is not real but fictional then ‘literature is fiction’ (Todorov 1973: 7 italics in original). It is not clear, however, why we should join this tradition given that many works read and admired as literature are not fictional. Works admired for their literary qualities but which are not fictions include: Descartes’ Meditations, Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, some of George Orwell’s essays, and The Song of Solomon. Some works considered ‘literary’ include works based on fact which are fictionalised in their presentation such as Arthur Miller’s The Crucible

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  The Fantastic in Religious Narrative from Exodus to Elisha

  • Laura Feldt(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  In this type of literature, new and other realities are created; it is a literature replete with monsters, metamorphoses and strange occurrences. Fantastic literature, and horror too, is often said to have sprung from the Gothic tradition 2 to be continued and developed by Hoffmann and Poe (and many others) in the nineteenth century. Fantasy understood as literature dominated by alternative worlds was developed later, in the nineteenth century, 3 and brought to a peak in England in the middle of twentieth century. 4 This kind of narrative with ‘supernatural’ content, narratives of monsters, ghosts, magic, miracles and the like, has continued to evolve and today comprises a large variety of types, with the Harry Potter series as probably the most popular work of fantasy to date. In the following, for the sake of convenience, I refer to all theories of fantastic literature, fantasy, magical realism, horror and neighbouring genres and terminology (supernatural fiction, Speculative Fiction etc.), as fantasy theory. 5 The field of fantasy theory consists of the literary-critical theories developed as critical reflections on these types of literature. Fantasy theory has its origin in the eighteenth century in Baumgarten’s theory of heterocosmic and utopian worlds and Breitinger’s theory of marvellous worlds, both modelled on Leibniz’ idea of possible worlds (Doležel 1990 : 33–52; Traill 1996 : 3). The later Romantics, however, were among the first to attempt to describe the various kinds of fantastic and fantasy literature and their characteristics (Traill 1996 : 3–4), and the interest continued into the twentieth century, with a preliminary critical peak in the post 1970s. Fantasy theory is historically characterized by an interest in definition and the specification of literary features that seem to fall short of the many types of fantasy practice witnessed today (Ivanovic et al

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Science Fiction: A Guide for the Perplexed

  • Sherryl Vint(Author)
  • 2014(Publication Date)
  • Bloomsbury Academic

    (Publisher)

  In print, such shifts emerged from overt resistance to standards avowed by editors such as Campbell: the genre, many felt, could be more. Barry Malzberg’s metafictional Galaxies (1975), not “a novel so much as a series of notes toward one” (7), conveys the dilemma of being compelled to write technophilic hard sf when he is convinced that the “expansion of technology will only delimit consciousness, create greater feelings of alienation, impotence, hopelessness and so on” (22). He admits to abandoning Analog in the 1960s due to the limited horizons of its themes and style. “We need writers who can show us what the machines are doing to us in terms more systematized than those of random paranoia,” he laments. “A writer who could combine the techniques of modern fiction with a genuine command of science could be at the top of this field in no more than a few years. He would also stand alone” (13). The narrator attacks sf’s shallow characterization—“the neutron star comes as close to a protagonist as this novel will ever have” (116)—and declares that he will not deny the captain’s sexuality, although he knows this will contravene generic norms. Similarly frustrated by generic conventions that limited the imaginative possibilities of this nonrealist genre, and given expanded venues for publication, writers in the 1960s began to write a new kind of sf. Since many of the limitations seemed tied to Campbell specifically, and his technocratic, hard sf preferences more generally, the term “Speculative Fiction” attained currency as a replacement for “science fiction,” which now seemed too narrow to describe the field of imaginative literature. Judith Merril, who edited a Year’s Best anthology series from 1956–68 and introduced American audiences to the avant-garde sf of British writers in England Swings SF (1968), was key to establishing sf as a site of literary and aesthetic innovation, as well as philosophical speculation

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book
• 

  eBook - ePub

  Scraps Of The Untainted Sky

  Science Fiction, Utopia, Dystopia

  • Thomas Moylan(Author)
  • 2018(Publication Date)
  • Routledge

    (Publisher)

  Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.

  In sf, however, she finds the most powerful way forward; for she sees it as an intellectual mode in which the very structure of the narrative is concerned with the positing and exploration of new worlds:

  The myths of science fiction run along the lines of exploring a new world conceptually (not necessarily physically), creating needed physical or social machinery, assessing the consequences of technological or other changes, and so on. These are not stories about men qua Man and women qua Woman; they are myths of human intelligence and human adaptability. They not only ignore gender roles but—at least theoretically—are not culture-bound. (To Write 91)

  Sf is therefore an optimum mode for reaching beyond the myths of male power. Russ acknowledges Suvin's comparatist connection of sf with forms of medieval literature (a common enough recognition, though more often made by medieval scholars looking forward rather than others looking backward), and she ends her essay with a paean to varieties of didactic writing (allegory, exemplum, parable, political fiction, sf) that follow from that observation. As she notes, each of these allow authors and readers to think through collective solutions to human problems. Writing in the radical tone of the 1960s, she celebrates these literary modes, and the "outsiders" who work with them, as best situated for the work of radical cultural critique: "When things are changing, those who know least about them—in the usual terms—may make the best job of them" (To Write 93).29

  Sign up to read

  Learn more about book