It seems to me that quite a lot of science fiction — in fact speculative fiction as a whole — is used to comment on the current political climate when it was written. On television, Star Trek, Babylon 5 and the re-imagined Battlestar Gallactica are good cases in point. In literature, I could probably list [...]
Posts under ‘General Concepts’
The State of the Genre
Science fiction, unlike so many other genres of literature, has a unique culture. And so, it is not difficult to find opinion pieces and essays about the state of the genre. Once recent example is “The future of futurism” by Amy Biancolli of the Houston Chronicle.
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The Industrial Revolution’s Role in the Development of SF
In The Road to Science Fiction: From Gilgamesh to Wells, James Gunn put forth the idea that the Industrial Revolution sparked the change that needed to happen before science fiction could become a true genre. He wrote that people
“had to adopt an open mind about the nature of the universe — its beginning and [...]
What Is Science Fiction?
In my research for this project, I’ve found a lot of different — even conflicting — definitions of science fiction. In fact, one author wrote, “A definition of science fiction can be attempted in twenty words and remain unachieved in two thousand.”
Frederick Pohl claimed that, “Science fiction is the a way of thinking about things.”
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