Assuming I am being asked from a genre studies perspective, I like to define Science Fiction in accordance to Ursula K. Le Guin’s definition of the text we read in class: “Words can be used thus paradoxically because they have, along with a semiotic usage, a symbolic or metaphoric usage. All fiction is a metaphor. [...]
Science fiction is the imagination of a world that is different from our own. It often employs a plethora of everyday objects, interactions, habits, and occurrences in order to juxtapose this new and imagined world. Sometimes, these rudimentary happenings themselves are reimagined as often occurs in dystopian fiction. Technology plays a central role in much [...]
1. What was the socio-economic situation like when War of the Worlds by H.G Wells was published in 1898? How does this work reflect the anxieties and fears of the late 20th Century? 2. What is the purpose of drawing similarities between humans and Martians? How does this manipulate our perception of them and, accordingly, [...]
Science fiction is a form of fiction in which the plot is tied to an extrapolation of our current ideas of science or technology. To be considered science fiction, the science or technology present does not need a real basis in the science of now, but should live in the realm of the distantly possible. [...]
Science Fiction is space, aliens, robots, time travel, and tight plastic white jumpsuits with broad shoulders and no pockets (post-scarcity means post-functionality) - right? Most of the time science fiction is labeled by what it has in it. This is important, but it is not the only thing that makes it Science Fiction (SF). On [...]
In the radio adaptation, the humans’ weapons can harm the tripods, but in the film 2005 version the shields are completely impervious to our attacks. In both cases the aliens die without our attacking. All we had to do was survive long enough for them to die out. So what is the role of agency [...]
“Say, what's the matter? . . . Where are you going?” - “Not to your world. . . Goodbye, stranger. . .” Science fiction is a genre in which intelligent, non-human entities cause us to question our own privileged place in the universe. It forces us to reckon with the intelligent other in order to ask [...]
Fiction is any work that tells a story that isn't meant to recount true events in a factually accurate way. The science part of science fiction is less clear, but most people I believe are comfortable with a standard of "I know it when I see it."But for a more workable definition, it's easiest to [...]
Science fiction is, first and foremost, a fiction. It can take multiple forms, be those prose, poetry, film, radio, digital media, the list is nearly inexhaustible. But still, in those forms the work must be a fiction. “Science fact,” after all, would be a physics textbook, or maybe an episode of Carl Sagan’s Cosmos. While [...]
According to Ursula Le Guin in her introduction to The left hand of darkness, a writer of science fiction is supposed to “take a trend or phenomenon of the here-and-now, purify and intensify it for dramatic effect, and extend it into the future” (1). I could not agree more – science fiction has the ability [...]
