Realism in Science Fiction

Annalee Newitz recently asked "Why Is Hard Science Fiction So Unrealistic?". Newitz is interested in the tradition of literary realism and she says: "realism in fiction and film has generally been an effort to represent the experiences of ordinary people". Is there a shortage of "ordinary people" in hard science fiction stories?

The definition of "hard science fiction" is problematical because it is at risk of changing in response to evolving conceptualizations of science. We live in the age of science, an age characterized by cultural change that is due to science and technology. As recently as 30 years ago science fiction was a much simpler part of human culture than it is today. In 1978, William Bainbridge and Murray Dalziel were able to comfortably divide science fiction into three parts: hard science fiction, fantasy, and new-wave. (see: "The Shape of Science Fiction as Perceived by the Fans") Today, there is a much broader collection of well-recognized sub-genres in science fiction.

In the data set analyzed by Bainbridge and Dalziel, Isaac Asimov was ranked as the most distinctive hard science fiction author. In 1978, Asimov was one of the iconic figures of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Larry Niven is a good example of the next generation of hard science fiction authors. Science fiction is "hard science fiction" to the extent that it concerns itself with scientific advance and technological change and does so in a way that respects the nature of the universe and how science allows us to understand the universe. In my experience, authors with a personal interest in science and an understanding of how science works are the most likely to write interesting hard science fiction.

There are two common misconceptions about hard science fiction. Bainbridge and Dalziel explicitly stated one of these misconceptions. They wrote that hard science fiction: "refers to stories built around certain facts or speculations concerning the 'exact' or 'hard' sciences". It is true that the exact sciences dominate research expenditures, press coverage and popular concepts of what constitutes science. It is true that icons of hard science fiction such as Asimov and Niven were trained in mathematics and "hard science". Those truths are a consequence of the fact that the historical development of science is shaped by working scientists who tend to "divide and conquer". Scientific problems are sorted according to ease of progress and many physical science problems are the easiest and so have been tackled first. Simple problems like how to describe the nature of electromagnetism were studied first. More complex and challenging biological and social science topics are only now starting to receive adequate attention from scientists. Thus, identifying hard science fiction is not a matter of distinguishing between fiction that involves "hard science" or "soft science". Hard science fiction can certainly involve "soft science"; what is important is only that science and technology elements be present as a core aspect of the fiction.

Annalee Newitz raised (in her article) a second major misconception about hard science fiction. In discussing hard science fiction she equates hard science fiction with scientifically-accurate storytelling. This is simply wrong. There are sub-genres of science fiction within which scientific realism is prized highly. For example, the restricted comfort zone of mundane science fiction never pushes us beyond the current facts of science. However, both Asimov and Niven often extrapolated far beyond the "facts" as currently known to science. Two examples are Niven's stasis field and Asimov's Eternity. These two imagined technologies are "space/time bubbles" within which the known laws of physics explicitly do not apply. Science can tell us nothing about Niven's stasis field or Asimov's time travel device, yet they are both plot devices that exist comfortably within the genre of hard science fiction. They are depicted as the products of future science and technology and they are incorporated in their respective stories in a scientific (if entirely speculative) way.

Realism in science fiction is not to be confused with scientific realism.

Having raised the red herring of "scientifically-accurate storytelling", Annalee Newitz turns to another issue that seems to be her main concern: the types of characters and plots that we find in hard science fiction. Newitz constructs a dichotomy between science fiction with

1) "rebel heroes and extraordinary leaders" and "unrealistic megabeings with superpowers" and "alternate realities...focusing on technologies"

and fiction with

2) "ordinary people" and the "regular guy" and "building up social worlds" by showing "everyday life".

Newitz is asking: can't there be a better mix of realism and hard science fiction? We can ask, why does hard science fiction tend to be divorced from realism? These questions only make sense if you adopt a conventional definition of literary realism, and for the moment we can do so.

I think the fundamental source of the perceived split between realism and hard science fiction is that there are two fundamental directions from which science is approached in literature, a split that has variously been characterized as involving The Two Cultures or Culture Wars or postmodernity. This split involves a "glass half empty?" argument about the nature of science and its impact. Hard science fiction was born as a genre that was often "optimistic about the value of scientific and technological progress" and it remains so optimistic that its great works often depict dramatic transformations of human culture and human existence. In contrast, much of what counts as literary realism in science fiction is pessimistic and depicts imagined worlds where science and technology are powerless to change human existence for the better.

Hard science fiction stories traditionally extrapolate a scientific idea or technological power in such a way that we are transported to an imagined culture where the ordinary has been transformed into the extraordinary by science or technology. That is often the whole point of the story: science changes everything. Newitz is suffering from her misconceptions if she imagines that it makes sense to hope that hard science fiction will become more realistic in the literary sense. It would be paradoxical and self-defeating for a hard science fiction author to imagine a wonderful bit of technology and then write a story in which that technology changes nothing and people simply remain as the "ordinary people" of our everyday experience.

I sympathize with Newitz when she complains about science fiction television programs that strive to deliver realism. Most of these television shows are produced by people who think that they can cash in on the popularity of science fiction by putting a spaceship or a cloned human or some other "wiz-bang" plot device into a story and have it constitute interesting science fiction. Such television shows tend to be mind-numbingly "realistic" by endlessly showing people who are unable to change themselves for the better no matter what wonderful technologies are available to them. These programs depict conventional literary realism but the methods and workings of science are almost never realistically depicted.

Transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary is often a central part of hard science fiction. The typical protagonist of hard science fiction is an ordinary guy, but that guy often does something great or is transformed into something great by the application of science and technology. That is why hard science fiction is often so unrealistic...if you define "realism" as a depiction of current everyday existence. Hard science fiction is often about showing the ways by which science can lift us out of our current reality. Newitz specifically mentioned Asimov and she claimed that he was a failure at realistically depicting everyday life. Some of his science fiction was set in the 20th century and I'd challenge Newitz to explain how those stories (particularly many of his robot stories) failed to be realistic.

Hard science fiction authors such as Asimov are probably best known for taking readers into strange new lands where the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary and that probably takes some people out of their comfort zones, particularly television executives. If hard science fiction is done well, then even a world in which the ordinary has become extraordinary can be realistic about the nitty-gritty of everyday existence. Literary realism may have originated among non-science fiction writers and it may have originally been restricted to realistic depictions of current-day existence. There is nothing preventing science fiction authors from bringing realism to imagined cultures where everyday life is extraordinary if viewed from our perspective. Some types of hard science fiction can certainly seem unrealistic if you restrict your concept of realism to the perspective of one culture at one point in time. Science fiction is very much concerned with challenging those kinds of conceptual limitations. I'm willing to redefine and broaden the meaning of "realism" in the context of science fiction.

It is fun to follow hard science fiction authors like Asimov to distant imagined cultures. While doing so, we can be transported to places where everyday events are far from ordinary (according to our standards) and ordinary people (according to the standards of the imagined culture) get to do extraordinary things (measured by our standards). In The Start of Eternity, Gohrlay is an ordinary person in her culture. She just happens to be a Neanderthal who lives on the Moon. It is still possible to write about her life with realism. Cellular Civilization is set more within our everyday reality, but it is still possible for even the most ordinary characters like Charlie Parker to be transformed into something extraordinary by technology. In such stories I do not feel any conflict between hard science fiction and realism. Of course, I don't feel the need to adopt a restrictive view of realism.

Nor do I expect most people (including Newitz) to understand and appreciate hard science fiction. The narrowness of the Golden Age of Science Fiction provoked the "new wave" struggles to broaden the scope of science fiction. That led to the current popularity and diversity of science fiction and a state of affairs where we have hoards of "experts" on science fiction who do not understand science. Most of what passes for science fiction in popular culture is parasitic on the genre and endlessly tells us the same boring story: people living in the age of science who do not understand science are like deer standing transfixed by the head lights of an on-rushing car. I suspect that hard science fiction is a sub-genre that can only be understood and appreciated by people who are part of the scientific sub-culture. People familiar with science are comfortable with imagining alternate realities and can develop a flexible conceptualization of "realism". Once you make those moves, you are not left in the past with a narrow view of literary realism and you will become aware of the large amounts of realism that does exist within hard science fiction.

Image. Cover image for Cellular Civilization. Image credits.

Reading Science Fiction

I suspect that I've spent more hours reading science fiction stories by Jack Vance than the stories of any other author. For me, time spent reading Asimov's science fiction probably ranks second behind reading Vance. However, I do not spend very much time reading fiction. These days I get more enjoyment from writing science fiction than reading it. I find it amusing that Vance does not like to talk about reading the science fiction stories of other authors. I think I can guess why.

The science fiction that I write has been hugely influenced by both Vance an Asimov. I've mentioned the science fiction stories of Vance in about 20 percent of the posts to this blog. Asimov gets mentioned by me in more than twice as many blog posts because Asimov was trained as a scientist and his wide-ranging scientific interests and hard science fiction ideas appeal to me. For me, Vance is less of interest from a scientific perspective, but much more so for his writing style. Asimov was very open and direct about confessing to the fact that he was not a out to impress anyone with stylistic flair. Once I know the plot of an Asimov story there is usually not much value in re-reading it. In contrast, I can endless re-read Vance's stories simply to enjoy his writing style.

Asimov wrote about growing up reading science fiction stories that were published in magazines and his early work was all published in that format. The image to the left shows a Galaxy cover illustration for Vance's story Star King. Here is how Vance described Hildemar Dasce: "the strangest human being of Gersen's experience"..."His head was tall and round with a ruff of red hair...he had stained his face and neck a bright red, excepting only his cheeks which were balls of bright chalk-blue"..."at some stage in his career...his eyelids had been cut away". 1963 was when I was learning to read and years before I had even become aware of the existence of published science fiction. The plot of Star King involves the idea that people ("locators") have to fly exploration ships out into the galaxy in order to find new worlds. For example, the world of the Dryads is discovered by a locator named Lugo Teehalt. Here in 2013 we are using telescopes to find exoplanets, so the entire structure of Star King might seem antiquated, but Vance's prose makes the story worth reading even if the "future science" imagined by Vance has not aged well.

When I was growing up I first became aware of science fiction by watching television. Finally one day I discovered the science fiction section of the local library and from that point on I became increasingly disinterested in most science fiction that ends up on television and in film. I prefer science fiction novels over short stories and I've never bought a science fiction magazine. However, I was introduced to Jack Vance through his short story The Moon Moth.

source

As shown in the image above,  the human brain retains some forms of plasticity into young adulthood (see also). Is there a critical period in the mid-20s after which it is increasingly difficult for humans to change their personality and literary preferences? For me, my tastes in science fiction have not changed much since I was in my 20s. Before I was 25 I enjoyed looking for new science fiction authors...I did not always enjoy the work of each new author that I sampled, but I was willing to keep looking for good ones. In my late 20s I eventually gave up trying...I was no longer really interested in finding new varieties of science fiction to read. Since that time, I've been satisfied to simply stick with the science fiction that has been written by my favorite authors. Over the years I've occasionally tried to pick up and read the work of newer science fiction authors, but I've failed to find their work worth reading. I can imagine that for a craftsman like Vance it might be very painful to even try to read most published science fiction. To some extent, my discovery and appreciation for the science fiction stories of masters like Vance and Asimov contributed to my disinterest in lesser science fiction authors. Why should I make an effort to read the work of new science fiction authors (who are likely to not be very good) when I can simple keep reading my favorite authors?

source

I'm willing to admit that part of my poor reading habits are due to my narrow tastes and the fact that this old dog (me) can't learn new tricks (or appreciation of new science fiction authors). However, I think there were two other major forces at work shaping my reading habits...one being the rise of the mega-bookstore companies. When I was young there were quirky little bookstores in every college town where nerdy employees knew the difference between science fiction and fantasy and where you could find an amazing diversity of science fiction books...books that were on the shelf because another lover of science fiction, an employee in the store, made sure to share them with me. When the mega-bookstore companies started taking over it became common to have a single section in the mega-bookstores where science fiction and fantasy novels were mixed together. The mega-bookstore employees typically knew nothing about science fiction and I doubt if they knew the difference between science fiction and fantasy. Their idea of "good science fiction" seemed to be limited to the works of a few authors that some drone at corporate headquarters decided to buy in bulk and force down the throats of readers by flooding the shelves with just those books.

The other change in science fiction that was external to my subjective preferences was the entry into science fiction of authors who wanted to profit from the growing popularity of the science fiction genre. In the early days of SciFi, people wrote science fiction for the love of the genre, with $$$ not being involved. Rather than write stories to advance the genre, for example, by creating interesting adventure stories, a newer generation of authors found that they could get published by slapping together dystopic misadventure stories. My generation grew up with the fun of science fiction adventure, going where no man had gone before. The next generation of science fiction was dominated by anti-science fiction authors who tried to take readers to miserable places where no sane person would ever want to go. The writing and ideas were ugly, uninteresting, often sickeningly perverse and designed to sell because of their "realism", grittiness or shock value. My response to the "new wave": NO SALE. Maybe things will come full cycle and science fiction will return to sanity. With mega-bookstores removed from the equation the distance between science fiction authors and readers can decrease and we will once again be able to discover and patronize the authors who we enjoy, not the authors who are promoted by corporate "decision makers" who have highly questionable judgement about what constitutes good science fiction.

another list

Related Reading

Science Fiction

Nightfall by Isaac Asimov

"...science fiction is the only literature capable of exploring the macrohistory of our species, and of placing our history, and even our daily lives, in a cosmic context." -H. Bruce Franklin

My current science fiction writing obsession, the Exode Saga, is my playground for exploring the Exodemic Fictional Universe, an imagined Reality in which aliens long ago came to Earth and continue to influence the fate of the human species. In this blog post I explore my preferred definition of science fiction as a literary genre. Also, I make distinctions between 1) that literary genre, 2) the proto-science fiction that came before it, and 3) the cinematic Sci Fi that came after it.

To quickly illustrate that we live surrounded by unsatisfactory definitions of "science fiction" I need go no further than arm's length: to my copy of the American Heritage Dictionary.

One source for the Mythology of Science Fiction

"Fiction in which scientific discoveries and developments form an element of the plot or background, especially a work of fiction based on prediction of future scientific possibilities." (1968 edition).

Prediction
Here is what Isaac Asimov wrote about the role of prediction in science fiction: "There is a general myth among laymen that, somehow, the chief function of a science fiction writer is to make predictions that eventually come true."

My prediction:
most people will remain confused
about the meaning of "science fiction"

Yes, science fiction authors often play around with imagined science and technology, but only very rarely are they concerned with predicting the future. Predicting the future is in no way a defining characteristic of science fiction stories: that is a myth that has been widely spread by misguided "authorities" such as dictionary publishers.

In the previous millennium, the American Heritage Dictionary was one of the books that I carried with me to college. Luckily, my first semester I had an English professor who was scientifically literate (his particular interest was literature about evolution). In that English class, we read only science fiction stories. Just read a dozen randomly selected science fiction stories and you will know that the American Heritage Dictionary was wrong to single out prediction of the future as "especially" characteristic of science fiction stories.

unrestrained fancy

Of course, dictionaries are updated, so here is the online 2014 definition: "A literary or cinematic genre in which fantasy, typically based on speculative scientific discoveries or developments, environmental changes, space travel, or life on other planets, forms part of the plot or background."

Fortunately, "prediction" has been removed from this definition of science fiction. There are two intriguing new additions in the 2014 definition: "cinematic genre" and "fantasy".  Here is their definition of the fantasy genre: "A genre of fiction or other artistic work characterized by fanciful or supernatural elements."

Predicting the future of
cinematic science fiction:
more sword fights!

Their first definition makes the point that fantasy is really "unrestrained fancy", which is NOT found in science fiction. Below, I discuss exactly how imagination is restrained within the science fiction genre. Hint: the word "science" has something to do with what sets science fiction off as a genre that is distinct from fantasy. I've previously blogged about how Asimov described the difference between science fiction and fantasy. 

I went off to college the year that Star Wars hit the Big Screen. For millions of people who have never read a science fiction story, Star Wars provides their working definition of science fiction. However, Star Wars is at best an extremely fringe example of cinematic science fiction. To understand science fiction as a literary genre, it helps to look back through time, past the recent film-making era, to the historical origins of the genre.

Dr. Asimov

The literary genre of  "science fiction" began with a small group of writers who published stories in the first science fiction pulp magazines such as Amazing Stories. The "Golden Age" of science fiction has been described as arising from the influence of John Campbell when he was editor of Astounding.

Asimov's positronic robot stories

Among the science fiction writers who worked with Campbell was Isaac Asimov, one of the influential "Grand Masters" of science fiction. By some measures, Asimov was the master of "hard" science fiction. Here, I'll use some of Asimov's stories as examples of what constitutes science fiction.

Science Fiction Defined
Many readers and writers of science fiction have tried to define what constitutes a science fiction story and how such stories differ from those in other literary genres such as fantasy (a list of definitions).

Carl Freedman has argued that Mary Shelley's story Frankenstein is an example of science fiction that predated use of the term "science fiction". However, there is no doubt that Mary wrote her story after being challenged to create a horror story. I would classify Frankenstein as an anti-science fiction story with fantasy and horror elements. Writing science fiction is a social endeavor and a science fiction author needs to exist within a group of scientifically literate people and be writing so as to please readers who understand science and who are concerned with the issue of how technology changes and shapes cultures.

Renaissance

Science, Technology, Society
Science fiction stories function as social constructs that arise out of a particular shared understanding of the world that exists between a distinct group of writers and readers. To write a good science fiction story you should have an appreciation for science and the power of technology to change human societies.

Science fiction as a literary genre could not exist until after the Enlightenment, the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution. After the arrival of the late modern era, there was a large well-educated audience for fiction that is based on rational speculation rather than the more free-formed approaches to story telling that came before. By "free-formed" I mean not constrained by the type of knowledge of the natural world that is obtainable only by scientific study of nature.

Asimov's Foundation

In the 20th century, there arose a new way of thinking about the world and our place in it. Humanity emerged from a long confused past in which people were profoundly ignorant and speculative literature was commonly built upon on mysticism and magical thinking. In contrast, science fiction stories often deal with imaginary scientific and technological advances and their imagined impacts on people and societies.

4 Science Fiction Examples
1) Asimov's short story Nightfall contrasts scientific understanding of the universe with pre-scientific belief systems such as religion. The plot of Nightfall explicitly involves the science of astronomy and a specific scientific prediction. Scientists often make predictions. The particular imaginary prediction that was included by Asimov in Nightfall is based on mathematical calculations that allow foreknowledge of an impending eclipse-like event that will throw an imagined world into darkness; a sudden darkness that will trigger social collapse on a planet with many suns. Asimov asks us to imagine the psychological impact of sudden darkness on a planet where almost always it is day.

Daneel

2) Asimov wrote many stories that featured positronic robots. When he started writing his stories, electronic computers were huge, so he imagined that there would be a future science of positronics allowing for miniaturized computers and the development of mobile autonomous robots with human-like cognitive abilities. Asimov imagined and wrote stories about a gradual process by which increasingly sophisticated positronic robots would be developed, a process taking centuries of research and development, that would ultimately result in robots who became guardians of Humanity.

The End of Etenity

3) In his Foundation Saga, Asimov imagined the spread of humans outwards from Earth to 25,000,000 other planets of the galaxy. Asimov imagined a future technology for faster-than-light space travel that would allow people to move from planet to planet as easily as ships can sail across oceans.

4) In his time travel novel, The End of Eternity, Asimov imagined that the existence of time travel might result in a kind of technological and evolutionary stagnation of the human species. If we had the power to go back into our past and prevent catastrophes like nuclear wars, would we create a "safe" but technologically stagnant future for Humanity?

Data and Einstein

"Imagination is everything. It's the preview of life's coming attractions." - Albert Einstein

These four examples (above) illustrate speculative fiction stories that were written by a trained scientist (Asimov) who purposely avoided writing magic and horror into his stories. Instead, Asimov's stories began with a culture of science and a milieu of technological change and then Asimov added in new imagined science, technology and resulting social changes. Asimov's stories can be viewed as thought experiments exploring social changes that might rationally be imagined to occur as a consequence of the imagined science and technology advances.

Locus of fear: amygdala

Magic and horror can appear in science fiction stories, but if they are included as story elements then they must respect the primacy and dominance of science and reason. For example, Clarke noted that some advanced technologies might give people powers that seem magical. Faster-than-light space travel, telepathy and time travel might all be due to magic spells in a fantasy story, but if Asimov imagines a future scientific advance that would provide us with "hyperspace jumps" and faster-than-light travel then it is not magic, it is imaginary future science. Some people define science fiction as a "what if?" game being played by authors and readers, a game in which we use our imaginations to explore worlds of imaginary science and technology. However, that game cannot be overwhelmed by its fantasy and horror elements; rationality and intelligence must remain in control.

The Engines of Cognitive Experience

The human brain contains a complex collection of specialized information processing modules that we use to produce our conscious experiences. Story writers can tap into brain components such as the amygdala in order to provoke experiences such as fear in readers. Patients such as S.M. who have damage to their amygdala cannot respond correctly to social cues such as a fearful expression on another person's face.

Another sub-cortical brain structure, the caudate, plays a role in producing feelings of surprise and expectation violation when we witness magic. Writers of horror and fantasy stories long ago learned how to engage readers in fiction by crafting tales that activate sub-cortical brain regions like the amygdala and the caudate.

A Hollywood cheap trick:
the amygdala allows us to recognize
fearful facial expressions.

When story authors write about horrifying things such as a monster composed of dead body parts or magical events, they are, in some sense, using a "cheap trick" that can captivate readers. Such literary "tricks of the trade" can even be used in children's stories since they trigger innate emotional responses that are programmed in sub-cortical brain structures like the amygdala. For a science fiction author like Asimov who avoids the conventional "cheap tricks" that are employed by writers of fantasy and horror, how can a reader's brain be stimulated? What "tricks" do science fiction stories use in order to keep readers engaged and turning the pages?

"Science fiction is knowledge fiction" -Theodore Sturgeon

Cortical areas used for visual imagery.

A science fiction story writer like Asimov wants his readers to think and imagine strange new worlds that our brains never evolved to respond to. Humans need to use the cerebral cortex when they are asked to think in new ways and not simply react to familiar emotion-provoking stimuli. Just how complicated a brain process is thinking? The level of complexity can be appreciated by noting the many cortical brain regions that are involved in a task like mentally manipulating images (see the figure to the left).

In The End of Eternity, Asimov asks readers to imagine a society composed of time travelers. The protagonist of the story, Andrew Harlan, is a Time Technician who can alter the course of historical events on Earth by "stepping into history" at any point in time. One of the "what if?" games of the imagination that Asimov plays with readers is to ask us to imagine what would happen if Harlan traveled in Time and saw a "copy" of himself.

The invention of Eternity.

The exploration of such bizarre imaginary events as time paradoxes is a staple of science fiction. Asimov guides readers through a thought experiment in which the Eternals fear the idea of traveling though time and possibly meeting themselves. When Harlan catches just a glimpse of himself one day, he is horrified. This is an example of how horror can find its way into a science fiction story. Asimov is playing a game in which he invites us to imagine a strange new culture within which Harlan can activate his amygdala in a very unusual way. In order for us to empathize with Harlan, we must play Asimov's game and try to imagine a culture that is quite different from our own. We try to put the cortex in control of the amygdala, not the other way around. Ideas first, emotions second.

Skepticism and Wonder

The Demon-Haunted World

Carl Sagan asked us to think about the power of science as a combination of skepticism and wonder. A social effort to create and share experiences of wonder is common to most speculative fiction. Science fiction is a special genre because it also incorporates the constraint of skepticism. In the science fiction genre we expect readers and writers to learn from the history of science and technology and to be concerned with how science modifies society and the shape of our lives.

Expanded night

What do we have to be skeptical about in a story? Every time we read a science fiction story we play a little game: we ask, could this actually happen, given the imaginary science and technology that have been introduced by the author?

In the case of Nightfall, I was never convinced that people (even aliens) would react to darkness in the way described by Asimov. However, Asimov was playing the "science fiction game" and he created a science fictional thought experiment. Asimov himself did not think that Nightfall was among his best science fiction stories, but it did help make him famous and launch his literary career.

Robots in Space

Science fiction stories are often structured around or guided by a competition between conflicting ideas, just a science expands our understanding of the world through competition between hypotheses. For example, in Asimov's robot novels, the "Spacers" and the "Settlers" have different visions for the future expansion of humanity through the galaxy. In The End of Eternity, the Eternals are devoted to their vision of the future (based on continued use of time travel) while Noÿs Lambent and her people (from 10,000,000 years in our future) want to put an end to time travel and let Humanity develop in another direction.

Contact

In Carl Sagan's novel, Contact, the "big idea" is a question: if the universe was created, what form might objective scientific evidence take that supports the existence of a creator? Sagan was playing a particularly fascinating science fictional "what if?" game that conflicts with the idea that we must accept the idea of a creator of the universe on faith alone.

The culture of science fiction assumes that readers will skeptically examine science fiction stories. Fans of science fiction expect interesting ideas and questions to be raised and discussed within science fiction stories. If an author of a story has no interest in science and has no new ideas to offer and instead resorts to literary trickery, then science fiction fans can reject such stories and label them as "pseudo-science fiction".

Cortical regions important for reading

Asimov described the source of his complex plots as being thought, and lots of it. Readers of science fiction stories expect authors to put a lot of thought into creating imaginary worlds. And those worlds of the imagination have to make sense in the same way that our world makes sense. In a science fiction story, readers do not want to be subjected to unrestrained flights of fancy.

Another feature of Asimov's science fiction is a large amount of dialog. It has been shown that while reading stories that contain dialog, brain regions involved in predicting the behavior of other people become activated. Science fiction provides readers with particularly demanding "what if?" puzzles in which we must imagine person-to-person discussions within an imagined technological/social setting. We each get to judge if the author has presented a sensible and interesting story.

A brain following rules: orange cortical regions are active.

By "sensible",  I mean a story that "follows the rules". A science fiction story should follow the rules that we know in real life plus those that arise from any additional imaginary scientific discoveries that are included in the fictional universe by the author (like faster-than-light space travel). When operating under the constraints imposed by "the laws of physics" and other imagined rules of science, the human brain must adopt a special activity pattern, what we could call the science fiction mode.

Fringe Science Fiction

Trullion

Of course, there will always by gray and fuzzy boundaries at the edges of the science fiction literary genre. Some stories can contain elements of science fiction and also include features that are characteristic of other literary genres such as fantasy and horror. Scientists such as Asimov and Sagan are likely to be most comfortable when their fiction is firmly within the narrow confines of hard science fiction.

Jack Vance is an example of an author who had very little interest in the boundaries between literary genres. I don't mind calling his Alastor Cluster, Cadwal and Demon Princes series "science fiction" even though Vance's novels have a quite different character than stories like Contact and The End of Eternity.

In the fictional universe created by Jack Vance, science and technology are not very intrusive. Vance had no training as a scientist, so this should be no surprise. Vance's main "use" for science was in the area of imagined spaceship propulsion: Vance needed easy travel between planets that would allow him to take readers on adventures among the stars. As an experienced world traveler, Earth alone was not large enough for Vance's imagination.

A billion years of stasis

In some sense, the science fiction genre is a community effort to explore this question: can science and technology change everything? Science fiction authors take delight in imagining how new cultures and new human (or alien) experiences might arise due to the influence of scientific advances. Vance wanted to write fun stories that would not be inconvenienced by runaway technological change. It was enough for him to imagine how human behavior might be altered if people could live on different planets.

I credit Vance with one of the great science fiction concepts: the Institute. The Institute is devoted to the control of scientific research and the pace of technological change.

I find it fascinating that Asimov found his own ways to prevent rampant technological change in his fictional universe. In his Foundation stories, Asimov depicted very little scientific and technological change during the thousands of years during which Humanity spread through the galaxy. Daneel did not allow human nature to be changed.

Non-Literary Science Fiction

Forbidden Planet

Just when science fiction began as a literary genre, the technological tools that were needed for radio and television programming were becoming available. Already, some early films with science fiction themes had been made. Film and television, as visual story telling media, have usually failed to capture and convey the spirit of the the science fiction literary genre. The social contract among science fiction authors and readers is different than that between video producers and viewers. Science fiction as a literary genre arose among a select group of people who in the 20th century were early adopters of a modern mindset that embraced technology-driven change and the "stars" of science fiction tend to be scientists or at least science-literate authors. In contrast, the television and film industries have always been most likely to target a wider audience that includes people with anti-science biases and interests that center more on magical fantasy and horror stories.

Star Trek

A good example of the perversion of science fiction by television is Star Trek. Gene Roddenberry invented a science fictional universe where space travel and post-scarcity economics allowed for a "Federation of Planets" in which humans and aliens could peacefully explore the vastness of space. Through a series of bad choices that are typical of television, the Star Trek television shows became mired in endless military conflicts, turning their backs on Roddenberry's original vision of a future that would be quite different from the dreary history our primitive planet. Just to get his foot in the door, Roddenberry had to tell television network executives that Star Trek would be a Western set among the stars. Only occasionally has true literary quality science fiction survived the Hollywood sausage grinding machine to reach the viewing public. What most people now call "science fiction" has little in common with the literary genre and culture of literary science fiction that was created in the 20th century.

Ma and Pa science fiction marketing

Even worse, while the 20th century had book and magazine publishers who understood and loved science fiction, the commercial success of science fiction led to the appropriation of the term "science fiction" as a marketing device that could be slapped on any story by cash-hungry publishers. This trend of cultural misappropriation of the term "science fiction" included the efforts of an endless stream of pontificators who have given the world many bogus definitions of science fiction, for example, attempting to redefine anti-science horror stories as science fiction or attempting to blur the lines between fantasy and science fiction in favor of some homogenized "speculative fiction" genre that in many people's minds has replaced the original meaning of science fiction. A sorry phenomenon of my lifetime was the rise and fall of book superstores that had integrated "fantasy and science fiction" book shelves and that conspired with publishers to ignore science fiction as a specialized and unique literary genre. Lucky for us, after the boom and bust of fantahorrorscifi mass marketing, there are still some people who continue to defend and develop science fiction as a literary genre.

If you put a Scientist in a Horror Story does that Make it Science Fiction?

Carl Freedman set a low bar for status as a science fiction story. He made the claim that if a reader can believe that something like the scenario described by an author might possibly happen, then we are in the domain of science fiction. Specifically, if you can imagine a scientist going into his garage some day and magically animating dead body parts then that makes Frankenstein a science fiction story. Of course, if you imagine a wizard magically animating dead body parts then that would be fantasy.

Sorry, but I don't buy Freedman's argument. Mary Shelley wrote a horror story and then more than a century later some historical revisionists started trying to claim that she invented the science fiction genre. I also would not trust an English professor to tell me at what point in the past the human species came into existence.

Hollywood magic: Watson today, Ava tomorrow.

"...the book just doesn’t seem 'scientific'."

Picture an 18-year-old of today who hears about Watson and then writes a story in which a scientist goes into his basement and creates an "artificial man" by stitching together a copy of Wikipedia and a few billion internet search results. You'd end up with something like Ex Machina and a couple of million other 18-year-olds who have no problem imagining that Apple, Inc. could soon create an artificial intelligence like Ava. That kind of thinking sells movie tickets, but it is not scientific.

As a novel, Frankenstein was written in the Gothic literary genre. Inserting a scientist or a spaceship or a robot into a horror story does not magically transform that horror story into a science fiction story.

"Gothic horror novels are science fiction in reverse"

Mary Shelley played a shell game with readers. By throwing in some pseudoscience mumbo-jumbo she hoped to make readers imagine that her horror scenario was possible. Even now, more than a hundred years later, I'm sure that there are many English professors and millions of other scientifically illiterate people who believe that scientists behave like Victor Frankenstein. Thank you, comic book writers and Hollywood, for endlessly including mad scientists in your stories.

dehumanize me!

If you want to run a Turing Test, you don't learn anything useful about machine intelligence by going out and recruiting the people who are most likely to be fooled by a computer program into thinking that they are interacting with a human being. Similarly, when looking for an understanding of science fiction as a literary genre, we don't have to let scientifically illiterate people be our guide. If someone in Hollywood decides to market horror or fantasy as science fiction then I don't have to buy it. Yes, C-3PO, I'm looking at you.

Broad vs Narrow

"[Science fiction is] the attempt to deal
rationally with alternate possibilities in a
manner which will be entertaining."

So, you can see that I prefer a narrow definition of "science fiction". You can find many people who advocate broader definitions of the genre (example).

I have a very pragmatic reason for adopting a narrow definition of science fiction. I don't enjoy other literary genres such as fantasy and horror where rationality is compromised. I can understand why people who don't mind letting go of logic and reason might prefer a broader view of what constitutes science fiction.

People with training in science learn to appreciate and apply narrow definitions, so to some extent my preferred definition of "science fiction" must be expected to conflict with pop culture world views that flourish among the scientifically illiterate. And that's fine with me.

1928

"..... one single positive dream is more important than a thousand negative realities" -Adeline Yen Mah
_______________________________________________
Related reading: Recursive Science Fiction
More commentary on The End of Eternity 
Time warp 2010: comments on science fiction and fantasy
Commentary on anti-science fiction by Steven Lyle Jordan
What Is The Purpose of Science Fiction Stories?
Proto-science fiction (notice the lack of any discussion of a role for readers/fans/audience for identifying the works of science fiction as a literary genre)
Genre evolution project
Skeptical Readers by M R Mortimer
Science fiction writing considered as a disease

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Sci Fi & Hollywood

From the January 1959 issue of Amazing.

even Bug-Eyed Monsters like negligee

source

2019 UPDATE
The tweet shown to the right was in the context of praising Jack Vance for the way he successfully ignored genre boundaries. Sadly, I should be listed as a lost soul who can't stop patrolling the boundaries between science fiction, horror and fantasy.

The Undead of Exode

horror trumps science

For me, part of the fun of writing science fiction is trying to break out of my rather restricted comfort zone. Ever since discovering Isaac Asimov and Author Clarke back in the 1970s I've been a fan of what I view as being "hard" science fiction. As a science nerd, I enjoy stories that include science, high tech gadgets and characters who logically solve problems in a futuristic setting.

With my narrow focus of interest on hard science fiction, I don't have much patience with other genres such as fantasy. However, on the distant horizon of my writing "to do" list, I have my ultimate challenge: to write a fantasy story ... but I still really can't imagine how I will bring myself to do that.

magic trumps logic

In the same way that some people can be color blind, I'm "fantasy blind". I recently saw part of one of the Harry Potter movies where two of the characters were able to magically fly across an ocean in a flash, then in the next scene it was a major challenge for them to cross an additional 100 feet of water inside a cave. I've never understood the rules that guide the course of events in fantasy stories. I would not know how to construct a fantasy story...when I write I enjoy working within the constraints of natural laws that limit what is possible.

Through my participation in a collaborative fiction writing project (The Search for Kalid), I discovered how to appreciate the fun of including Space Opera elements in stories. That was a major breakthrough for me because I began writing science fiction with the intention of creating only "serious" stories that would not have room for goofy Space Opera elements. Most recently, I decided that rather than gripe about horror in science fiction, I'd make an attempt to include a horror thread in the story Exode. I'll need to mve gently towards my goal of including an element of horror in Exode: I want the horror element to be part of the suspense and mystery in adventure of the story, not an excuse to splash blood and guts across the pages.

zombies in political commentary

I'm impressed by authors who can effortlessly work in multiple genres, jumping between genres with agility. I've long enjoyed the science fiction of Jack Vance, but I've never been able to follow him into his fantasy or the "thriller" Bad Ronald. As a long-time hard science fiction fan, I'm just not very adventurous in seeking out othrer types of fiction and I frequently suffer when it seems that the science fiction genre is being over-run by types of stories that I do not enjoy reading. I recently came across the blog of David Loeff, another suffering science fiction fan, who wondered if the science fiction genre had become "un-dead" after having been over-run by vampires and zombies. David lamented the fact that writers seem to find it easier to jump on the band wagon some current pop culture theme like zombies rather than write more conventional fiction (pointing towards Vance as an author worthy of emulation).

Higgs-induced zombie eats a physics student.

As an example of where zombies trump science fiction I'll point to the recently released "Decay", an amateur movie built upon one of the great science stories of this year, the observation of Higgs particles at the LHC facility in Europe. In Decay, we are asked to imagine that when the Higgs decays, the resulting radiation magically turns people into cannibalistic zombies. It seems a sad commentary on our time that rather than create an interesting science fiction story about physics, a bunch of Ph.D. students would simply punt and make a silly zombie movie.

Apparently, part of the fun for the makers of Decay when they produce a movie about zombies at the LHC, was using zombies as a way to make commentary about how some people in the world view science. When the LHC was first going online, some people feared that black holes would be generated, leading to the end of the world. I suppose it is just a short step from fantasy black hole production to imagining that the LHC can turn people into zombies. Still, I'd be happier if the makers of Decay had been able to make a creative science-based adventure story.

zombie economics

It might well be the case that for writers trying to put bread on the table, it pay$ to write about zombie$ these days. The entertainment industry is driven by fads and if I was a starving artist I'd be tempted to $pin a few zombie tale$ simply to cash in on the craze. I occasional fantasize about a story in which Hollywood film executives are zombie-like aliens who simply make movies about topics that they are familiar with on their home world.

Immortal Buld
Since deciding on a rather unusual process of linked birth and death for the Buld in Exode, I've been trying to finalize my construction of a particular Buld character who needs to be at least 15,000 years old. When a new Buld arises as a conceptus, it quickly sets about the task of replacing the cells of its mother's body with its own cells. Part of the neural network structure of the mother's brain is retained when the baby's neurons replace those of the mother, so some of the thought patterns and personality of the parent can be passed from generation to generation. The Buld are hermaphroditic and, due to the ubiquitous presence of nanoscopic medical repair robots, they all retain the ability to become pregnant, even those who abstain from sex and live to be thousands of years old.

One of the great religious pillars of Hemmal is the dictum: "live eswer, die eswer". "Eswer" is from an ancient Preland language and in this context it can best be translated as "sword". Although the Prelands and Buld of Hemmal use the English language, there has never been a sword on the planet: the meaning of many words such as "sword" have never found their way from Earth to the culture of Hemmal. However, many of the heroic epics that are popular among the Prelands include the tragic theme of a hero who makes a tool. At first the tool affords magical success to the hero, but ultimately, the tool use backfires and there is a tragic ending. These tools are often called esweri ("swords") but they are depicted as being a magical hand-held device, rather like a basket hilt with no attached sword blade.

Among the Buld of Hemmal, a second interpretation of "live eswer, die eswer" (English translation: "live by the sword, die by the sword") has arisen. For the Huaoshy, the Buld Clan is a means by which new combinations of human genes can be produced, tested, and if found beneficial, transferred to Earth. Buld sexual behavior is shaped by religious ritual in Buld temples and Buld reproduction is carefully guided by the pek. Some of the Buld are aware of the mechanism of Buld reproduction and that when a "true" Buld becomes pregnant the new conceptus will usually develop into a true Buld by means of a process that causes the death of the parent. A Buld individual can live indefinitely...as long as thon does not become pregnant. In Exode, Yandrey is a Buld who has lived on Hemmal for more than 15,000 years as an Interventionist agent who helps make sure that "false" Buld such as Parthney can leave Hemmal and make their way to Earth.

Yandrey

Because of past connections to the Buld Scholars, Yandrey is one of the few people on Hemmal who knows that "eswre" and "suen" were the ancient Preland words for the genitalia of the hermaphroditic Prelands. Among "modern" Prelands, "live eswer, die eswer" means roughly, "if you make use of tools then those tools will kill you". This meaning is known to the Buld, but for a few Buld such as Yandrey the alternate meaning is "preganacy will kill you", although other Buld often mis-translate this as "sexual activity will kill you".

Over the long history of pek-human interactions, a continually reoccurring problem has been a tendency for some Prelands to mistakenly worship the pek as the creators of the human species. The pek actively try to keep the lives of Prelands short so as to facilitate a rapid pace of evolution and it is possible for Prelands to become aware of the fact that the pek are non-biological, what we might call artificial lifeforms...and immortal. Some Prelands come to think that their Creators want humans to become "undead" immortal beings like the pek. Unavoidably, some of these memes from Genesaunt Culture have made their way to Earth and been twisted into forms that can persist among humans who are allowed no contact with pek.

Yandrey is like an immortal seeker of souls who extracts poor unsuspecting humans such as Parthney from Hemmal, sending them off across space to do the bidding of the Interventionists. The pek like Reginal do their best to make Parthney stay on Hemmal. The tension that exits between Yandrey and Reginal spills over into the first chapter of Exode, but Parthney himself is largely unaware the battle for his soul. The reader is left to wonder what is best for Parthney and humanity.