Science fiction
Science fiction is the genre of speculative fiction that imagines advanced and futuristic scientific or technological progress. The elements of science fiction have evolved over time: from space exploration, extraterrestrial life, time travel, and robotics; to parallel universes, dystopian societies, and biological manipulations; and, most lately, to information technology, transhumanism, posthumanism, and environmental challenges. Science fiction often specifically 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 cyberpunk, which explores the interface between technology and society; climate fiction, which addresses environmental issues; and space opera, which emphasizes pure adventure in a universe in which space travel is common.
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; 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 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 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 writes that 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. 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, Johannes Kepler's Somnium, Athanasius Kircher's Itinerarium extaticum, Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon and The States and Empires of the Sun, Margaret Cavendish's "The Blazing World", Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels, Ludvig Holberg's Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum and Voltaire's Micromégas.
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 and The Last Man 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" about a trip to the Moon.Jules Verne was noted for his attention to detail and scientific accuracy, especially in the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas. In 1887, the novel El anacronópete by Spanish author Enrique Gaspar y Rimbau introduced the first time machine. An early French/Belgian science fiction writer was J.-H. Rosny aîné. Rosny's masterpiece is Les Navigateurs de l'Infini in which the word astronaut was used for the first time.
File:The War of the Worlds by Henrique Alvim Corrêa, original graphic 15.jpg|thumb|upright|Alien invasion featured in the novel The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells, illustrated by Henrique Alvim Corrêa in 1906
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, The Island of Doctor Moreau, The Invisible Man, and The War of the Worlds''. 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
'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.One of the first dystopian novels, We, was written by the Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin and published in 1924. 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 provided the definition:
In 1928, E. E. "Doc" Smith's first published novel, The Skylark of Space, 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.
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". Theodore Sturgeon's novel More Than Human explored possible future human evolution. In 1957, the novel Andromeda: A Space-Age Tale by the Russian writer and paleontologist Ivan Yefremov presented a view of a future interstellar communist civilization; it is considered one of the most important Soviet science fiction novels.
In 1959, Robert A. Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers marked a departure from his earlier juvenile stories and novels. It is one of the first and most influential examples of military science fiction, and it introduced the concept of powered armor exoskeletons. The German space opera series Perry Rhodan, written by various authors, started in 1961 with an account of the first Moon landing; the series has since expanded in space to multiple universes and in time by billions of years. It has become the most popular book series in science fiction to date.
During the 1960s and 1970s, New Wave science fiction was known for embracing a high degree of experimentation, as well as a highbrow and self-consciously "literary" or "artistic" sensibility.
In 1961, Stanisław Lem's novel Solaris was published in Poland. The novel dealt with the theme of human limitations, as its characters attempted to study a seemingly intelligent ocean on a newly discovered planet. Lem's work anticipated the creation of microrobots and micromachinery, nanotechnology, smartdust, virtual reality, and artificial intelligence ; his work also developed the ideas of necroevolution and artificial worlds.
In 1965, the novel Dune by Frank Herbert imagined a more complex and detailed future society than had most previous science fiction.
In 1967 Anne McCaffrey, began a science fantasy series called Dragonriders of Pern. Two novellas included in the series' first novel, Dragonflight, led McCaffrey to win the first Hugo or Nebula award given to a female author.
In 1968, Philip K. Dick's novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? was published. It is the literary source of the Blade Runner movie franchise. Published in 1969, the novel The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin is set on a planet where the inhabitants have no fixed gender. The novel is one of the most influential examples of social, feminist, or anthropological science fiction.
In 1979, Science Fiction World magazine began publication in the People's Republic of China. It dominates the Chinese science fiction magazine market, at one time claiming a circulation of 300,000 copies per issue and an estimated 3–5 readers per copy, giving it a total readership of at least 1 million people—making it the world's most popular science fiction periodical.
In 1984, William Gibson's first novel, Neuromancer, helped to popularize cyberpunk and the word cyberspace, a term he originally coined in the 1982 short story Burning Chrome. In the same year, Octavia Butler's short story "Speech Sounds" won the Hugo Award for Best Short Story. She went on to explore themes of racial injustice, global warming, women's rights, and political conflict. In 1995, she became the first science fiction author to receive a MacArthur Fellowship.
In 1986, the novel Shards of Honor by Lois McMaster Bujold began her Vorkosigan Saga science opera. 1992's novel Snow Crash by Neal Stephenson predicted immense social upheaval due to the information revolution.