Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is the genre of speculative fiction that imagines advanced and futuristic changes in technology, scientific knowledge, or biological systems. The elements common to science fiction have increased over time: from space exploration, extraterrestrial life, time travel, and robotics; to parallel universes, dystopian societies, and biological manipulations; and, most recently, to information technology, transhumanism, posthumanism, and environmental challenges. Science fiction often explores human responses to the consequences of these types of projected or imagined scientific advances.
The precise definition of science fiction has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. It contains many subgenres, including hard science fiction, which emphasizes scientific accuracy, and soft science fiction, which focuses on social sciences. Other notable subgenres are: space opera, which emphasizes pure adventure in a universe in which space travel is common; cyberpunk, which explores the interface between technology and society; and climate fiction, which addresses environmental issues.
Precedents for science fiction are claimed to exist as far back as antiquity. Some books written in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment Age were considered early science-fantasy stories. The modern genre arose primarily in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when popular writers began looking to technological progress for inspiration and speculation. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, written in 1818, is often credited as the first true science fiction novel. Jules Verne and H. G. Wells are pivotal figures in the genre's development. In the 20th century, the genre grew during the Golden Age of Science Fiction, and it expanded with the introduction of space operas, dystopian literature, and pulp magazines.
Science fiction has come to influence not only literature, but also film, television, and culture at large. Science fiction can criticize present-day society and explore alternatives, as well as provide entertainment and inspire a sense of wonder.
Definitions
The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, edited by John Clute and Peter Nicholls in 1993, contains an extensive discussion of the problem of defining the genre.
American writer and professor of biochemistry Isaac Asimov wrote, "Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology."
Science fiction writer Robert A. Heinlein wrote, "A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: 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."
American science fiction author and editor Lester del Rey wrote, "Even the devoted aficionado or fan—has a hard time trying to explain what science fiction is," and no "full satisfactory definition" exists because "there are no easily delineated limits to science fiction."
Another definition is provided in The Literature Book by the publisher DK: "scenarios that are at the time of writing technologically impossible, extrapolating from present-day science...[,]...or that deal with some form of speculative science-based conceit, such as a society (on Earth or another planet) that has developed in wholly different ways from our own."
There is a tendency among science fiction enthusiasts to be their own arbiters in deciding what constitutes science fiction. David Seed says that it may be more useful to talk about science fiction as the intersection of other more concrete subgenres. American science fiction author, editor, and critic Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying "Science fiction is what we point to when we say it."
Alternative terms
American magazine editor, science fiction writer, and literary agent Forrest J Ackerman has been credited with first using the term sci-fi (reminiscent of the then-trendy term hi-fi) in about 1954. The first known use in print was a description of Donovan's Brain by movie critic Jesse Zunser in January 1954. As science fiction entered popular culture, writers and fans in the field came to associate the term with low-quality pulp science fiction and with low-budget, low-tech B movies. By the 1970s, critics in the field, such as Damon Knight and Terry Carr, were using sci fi to distinguish hack-work from serious science fiction.
Australian literary scholar and critic Peter Nicholls wrote ca. 1993 that SF (or sf) is "the preferred abbreviation within the community of sf writers and readers."
Robert Heinlein found the term science fiction insufficient to describe certain types of works in this genre, and he suggested that the term speculative fiction be used instead for works that are more "serious" or "thoughtful".
Literature
18th century and earlier
Some scholars assert that science fiction had its beginnings in ancient times, when the distinction between myth and fact was blurred. Written in the 2nd century CE by the satirist Lucian, the novel A True Story contains many themes and tropes that are characteristic of modern science fiction, including travel to other worlds, extraterrestrial lifeforms, interplanetary warfare, and artificial life. Some consider it to be the first science fiction novel.Georgiadou, Aristoula & Larmour, David H.J.: "Lucian's Science Fiction Novel True Histories. Interpretation and Commentary" , Mnemosyne Supplement 179, Leiden 1998, , IntroductionGrewell, Greg: "Colonizing the Universe: Science Fictions Then, Now, and in the (Imagined) Future", Rocky Mountain Review of Language and Literature, Vol. 55, No. 2 (2001), pp. 25–47 (30f.); Gunn, James E., The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Viking, 1988, , p. 249, calls it "Proto-Science Fiction."Swanson, Roy Arthur: "The True, the False, and the Truly False: Lucian's Philosophical Science Fiction" , Science Fiction Studies, Vol. 3, No. 3 (Nov. 1976), pp. 227–239 Some stories from the folktale collection The Arabian Nights, along with the 10th-century fiction The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter and Ibn al-Nafis's 13th-century novel Theologus Autodidactus, are also argued to contain elements of science fiction.
Several books written during the Scientific Revolution and later the Age of Enlightenment are considered true works of science-fantasy. Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627), Johannes Kepler's Somnium (1634), Athanasius Kircher's Itinerarium extaticum (1656), Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657) and The States and Empires of the Sun (1662), Margaret Cavendish's "The Blazing World" (1666), Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Ludvig Holberg's Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum (1741) and Voltaire's Micromégas (1752).Khanna, Lee Cullen. "The Subject of Utopia: Margaret Cavendish and Her Blazing-World". Utopian and Science Fiction by Women: World of Difference. Syracuse: Syracuse UP, 1994. 15–34.
Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Johannes Kepler's 1634 novel Somnium to be the first science fiction story; it depicts a journey to the Moon and how the Earth's motion is seen from there. Kepler has been called the "father of science fiction".
19th century Following the 17th-century development of the novel as a literary form, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826) helped to define the form of the science fiction novel. Brian Aldiss has argued that Frankenstein was the first work of science fiction. Edgar Allan Poe wrote several stories considered to be science fiction, including "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" (1835) about a trip to the Moon.Tresch, John (2002). "Extra! Extra! Poe invents science fiction". In Hayes, Kevin J. The Cambridge Companion to Edgar Allan Poe. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 113–132. .
Jules Verne was noted for his attention to detail and scientific accuracy, especially in the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870). In 1887, the novel El anacronópete by Spanish author Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau introduced the first time machine.La obra narrativa de Enrique Gaspar: El Anacronópete (1887), María de los Ángeles Ayala, Universidad de Alicante. Del Romanticismo al Realismo : Actas del I Coloquio de la S. L. E. S. XIX, Barcelona, 24–26 October 1996 / edited by Luis F. Díaz Larios, Enrique Miralles.El anacronópete, English translation (2014), www.storypilot.com, Michael Main, accessed 13 April 2016 An early French/Belgian science fiction writer was J.-H. Rosny aîné (1856–1940). Rosny's masterpiece is Les Navigateurs de l'Infini (The Navigators of Infinity) (1925) in which the word astronaut (astronautique in French) was used for the first time.Arthur B. Evans (1988). Science Fiction vs. Scientific Fiction in France: From Jules Verne to J.-H. Rosny Aîné (La science-fiction contre la fiction scientifique en France; De Jules Verne à J.-H. Rosny aìné) . In: Science fiction studies, vol. 15, no. 1, p. 1-11.
Many critics consider H. G. Wells to be one of science fiction's most important authors, or even "the Shakespeare of science fiction". His novels include The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), The Invisible Man (1897), and The War of the Worlds (1898). His science fiction imagined alien invasion, biological engineering, invisibility, and time travel. In his non-fiction futurologist works, he predicted the advent of airplanes, military tanks, nuclear weapons, satellite television, space travel, and something like the World Wide Web.
20th century Edgar Rice Burroughs's novel A Princess of Mars, published in 1912, was the first of his thirty-year planetary romance series about the fictional Barsoom; the novels were set on Mars and featured John Carter as the hero.Porges, Irwin (1975). Edgar Rice Burroughs. Provo, Utah: Brigham Young University Press. .
One of the first dystopian novels, We, was written by the Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin and published in 1924.Brown, p. xi, citing Shane, gives 1921. Russell, p. 3, dates the first draft to 1919. It describes a world of harmony and conformity within a united totalitarian state.
In 1926, Hugo Gernsback published the first American science fiction magazine, Amazing Stories. In its first issue, he said:
In 1928, E. E. "Doc" Smith's first published novel, The Skylark of Space (co-authored with Lee Hawkins Garby), appeared in Amazing Stories. It is often described as the first great space opera. That same year, Philip Francis Nowlan's original story about Buck Rogers, Armageddon 2419, also appeared in Amazing Stories. This story was followed by a Buck Rogers comic strip, the first serious science fiction comic.
Last and First Men: A Story of the Near and Far Future is a future history novel written in 1930 by the British author Olaf Stapledon. A work of innovative scale in the science fiction genre, it describes the fictional history of humanity from the present forward across two billion years.
In 1937, John W. Campbell became the editor of Astounding Science Fiction magazine; this event is sometimes considered the beginning of the Golden Age of Science Fiction, which was characterized by stories celebrating scientific achievement and progress. The "Golden Age" is often said to have ended in 1946, but sometimes the late 1940s and the 1950s are included in this period.Nicholls, Peter (1981) The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, Granada, p. 258
In 1942, Isaac Asimov began the Foundation series of novels, which chronicles the rise and fall of galactic empires, and also introduces the concept of psychohistory. The series was later awarded a one-time Hugo Award for "Best All-Time Series".