The uses andabuses of science fiction

Abstract

Science fiction is one of the most successful and perhaps most influential contemporary literary genres, and surely also one of the most significant cultural factors shaping ourimages of science, technology, and - last but not least - the future. As an integral part of postmodernculture, science fiction has penetrated all fields of the media landscape: fiction, comic books, movies, even plays and musicals. Science fiction themes and images surface sometimes quite unexpectedly in everyday life, in TV commercials and video clips, not to speak of computer games. Internet enthusiasts use science fiction jargon and imagery to depict their visions of cyberspace. A generation ago, the race to the moon was at least partly inspired by the dreams of early science fiction writers and readers. For the public, technology is science fiction come true. For many scientists and engineers too, science fiction provides the imagery of their visions.

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References

See for example the entry on

‘Definitions of SF’

Clute

and Nicholls

(ed.): The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction; 1993, London, Orbit.

Moskowitz

: Explorers of the Infinite. Shapers of Science Fiction, 11; 1974, Westport, CO, Hyperion Press.

Some SF stories by famous scientists – Otto Frisch, George Gamow, Fred Hoyle, Leo Szilard, Norbert Wiener, … – were published in the anthologies Great Science Fiction by Scientists (1962, New York, NY, Collier Books) and The Expert Dreamers (1963, London, Gollancz).

In Star Trek terminology, this is the ‘beaming’ of one person simultaneously to two places. To my knowledge the idea was first elaborated by Norbert Wiener. More recently artificial intelligence researchers and robotics scientists such as Ray Kurzweil have speculated on means of recording the information content of the human brain – as a route to software based immortality in changing bodies.

Suvin

: Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre; 1979, London/ New Haven, CO, Yale University Press.

It should be noted that SF constructs future scenarios in a similar way to futurology.

As quoted in Lambourne

Shallis

and Shortland

: Close Encounters? Science and Science Fiction, 27; 1990, Bristol/New York, NY, Adam Hilger.

Wylie

: ‘Science fiction and sanity in an age of crisis’, in Modern Science Fiction. Its Meaning and Its Future, (ed. Bretnor

), 230; 1953, New York, NY, Coward-McCann.

Laxmbourne

et al.iClose Encounters?, pp. 39–48 (see Note 7).

10.

At that time, neutron stars were still a theoretical concept; the first astronomical observations were made in 1967.

11.

From an interview with Jules Verne in T .P.'s Weekly, 9 October 1903, as quoted in

Parrinder

(ed.): H. G. Wells. The Critical Heritage, 101–102; 1972, London/Boston, MA, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

12.

SF writer L. Ron Hubbard became famous as the founder of the authoritarian pseudoreligious ‘Scientology’ organisation, whose teachings are concocted from various SF motifs (superman, thought control, etc.).

13.

The optimistic image of a future atomic age was shared equally by many scientists, politicians, the broader public, and even futures researchers such as Herman Kahn. SF writer and futurologist Arthur C. Clarke once even insisted that a sufficiently advanced science would not be distinguishable from magic (Profiles of the Future, 1962).

14.

Parrinder

: ‘Scientists in science fiction: enlightenment and after’, in Science Fiction Roots and Branches. Contemporary Critical Approaches, (ed. Garnett

and Ellis

R. J.

), 62–64; 1990, London, Macmillan.