(SF) is that most atypical genre, an outcome of the post-Industrial Revolution, branded by the marketing of Hugo Gernsback, creator of Amazing Stories, who launched, in April 1926 a magazine of ‘scientifiction’ stories. 'Scientifiction' quickly became the more fluid 'science fiction,' or 'sci-fi' or SF, as it is known today.
Alone of the literary genres -- unlike say, crime or historical fiction -- it rejects Botting ’s ‘artifice of authenticity’ (p.3), often flaunting its artificiality in exotic settings like desert worlds or spaceships.
There are three key concepts that define a text as SF:
- The novum: identified by critic Darko Suvin in as: “the thing[s] that differentiate the world portrayed [in SF] from the world we recognize around us is the crucial separator between SF and the other forms of...fantastic literature. The term ‘novum’, the Latin for ‘new’ or ‘new thing’... refer[s] to this point of difference.” ( Roberts, p. 6).
- That sense of the alien, estrangement -- or as Roberts prefers to call it, ‘alterity.’ Suvin defines SF as “a...genre whose necessary...conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition.” (p.7)
- Cognition, or thought; “that aspect of SF which prompts us to try to comprehend the alien landscape of a given SF...story.” (p.8)
Novum
An example of a novum, that 'new thing' evolving to create new novum is the idea of recreating dinosaurs; mooted by Allen Steele in "Trembling Earth," (IASFM November 1990) the idea has been used extensively since (most notably in Crichton's Jurassic Park, culminating in Alastair Reynolds’ ‘At Budokan.’ His novum consists of colliding the now-familiar trope of reconstitutied dinosaurs with the idea of the 'manufactured' band (such as the Monkees) to create a fresh novum – the applications that revivified dinosaurs can be used in to generate a monetary return.
With its novum, a typical SF story such as "Reynolds" will have a premise (a cryptic message from the protagonist’s ex-partner) and a setting (a plane’s cargo hold). But for it to transcend a mere conceit, a story also needs a character (the failed promoter trying to make a comeback), be it human, animal, machine –e.g., a space probe- or even an alien.
Utopias & Dystopias
SF is often portrayed as grimly preoccupied with dystopias, tyrannies such as that in Orwell’s 1984. There are many dystopias. But there are also perfect societies taking their form from Thomas More’s Utopia. Dystopias are easier to write than utopias, which are perfect, which by its nature excludes the conflict necessary for story. Only Le Guin’s The Dispossessed (1974) and Kim Stanley Robinson’s Pacific Edge (1990) are recent examples of successful utopias.
Because SF scenarios need explaining, it is a challenge to inform the reader without lecturing, or infodumping. One technique is distancing moves, as in Jason Stoddard’s "Overhead" from Shine: “Nils jumped over Ani Loera’s shoulders.” (That someone can jump so high implies that this isn’t Earth – where it is, is drip-fed within the narrative).
Such techniques are constantly changing, just as SF has evolved throughout its history.
Extrapolation
From the very early days of SF, the genre has splintered and fractured into movements and the stories themselves have reflected that constant change. Early stories especially were little more than extensions of Conan Doyle's Lost World stories, but set on other worlds, so that Mars, Callisto, Venus or even Jupiter boasted jungles or deserts.
Later, as SF novels became more scientifically accurate, increasing numbers of them were extrapolative, that is, extending a contemporary trend. John Brunner’s Stand on Zanzibar (1968) took its title from a remark that if standing upright the world's population could fit onto the Isle of Wight. Brunner remarked that the escalating population would require somewhere larger by 2010 -they would need to stand on Zanzibar.
SF texts increasingly became satirical, as typified by "The Midas Plague" (Frederik Pohl, "The Midas Plague," Galaxy magazine, 1954) in which it becomes a social duty to consume ever more. Then, as the genre further metamorphosed (reflecting society) from being dominated by young white males to a postmodern genre whose language and narratives drew increasingly upon the developing world, feminists and LGBT groups: Paolo Bacigalupi's The Windup Girl, the latest Hugo and Nebula winning novel is set in Thailand, featuring Thai and Chinese protagonists.
The movements within SF have given labels to that fragmentation; in 1938 John W. Campbell took over as editor of Astounding magazine. The stories he ran from 1938 to 1950 so dominated the field that it became known as The Golden Age.
In the 1960s stories increasingly using literary techniques became known as the New Wave. In the 1980s a new school merging noir with SF and the New wave was dubbed Cyberpunk. In the 90s, slipstream, steampunk, interstitial, biopunk (90s) successively entered the reader's consciousness, until some critics claimed that SF was now too big, and too diverse to claim to be one genre.
Sideways in Time
Popular belief is that SF is all about the future; but there are as many backward and sideways looks at alterity; time travel is one of the most common tropes in SF, from Wells onwards; and the potential to change history at one particular ‘Jonbarr Point' (taken from protagonist Jon Barr, in Jack Williamson’s 1938 The Legion of Time) leads inevitably into the subject of alternate histories as pioneered by Murray Leinster's Sideways in Time (Astounding 1934).
SF has come a long way since Gernsback's crude polemicizing. In this timeline this article has barely scratched the surface.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
