Gerald R. Lucas

More preparation for the fall semester. Someone sent this to me years ago — I think it was my friend Walter. Some of these definitions are useful; some less so. However, I think it’s smart to see as many ideas as possible when trying to get my head around a concept. Along with these definitions, I’ve also begin to post Ursula K. Le Guin’s Introduction to The Norton Book of Science Fiction on my professional site as another useful source in beginning research into science fiction.

• “By ‘scientifiction’ I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story — a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.” — Hugo Gernsback, in “Amazing Stories” (April 1926)
• “Science Fiction is a branch of fantasy identifiable by the fact that it eases the ‘willing suspension of disbelief’ on the part of its readers by utilizing an atmosphere of scientific credibility for its imaginative speculations in physical science, space, time, social science, and philosophy.” — Sam Moskowitz, in “Explorers of the Infinite” (1963)
• “We might try to define science fiction in this broader sense as fiction based upon scientific or pseudo-scientific assumptions (space-travel, robots, telepathy, earthly immortality, and so forth) or laid in any patently unreal though non-supernatural setting (the future, or another world, and so forth).” — L. Sprague de Camp, in “Science Fiction Handbook” (1953)
• “A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its speculative scientific content.” — Theodore Sturgeon, as amended by Damon Knight, in “A Century of Science Fiction” (1962)
• “Science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings.” — Isaac Asimov, in “Modern Science Fiction”, edited by Reginald Bretnor (1953)
• “Science fiction is that branch of literature wthat deals with human responses to changes in the level of science and technology.” — Isaac Asimov, in “Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine” (Mar-Apr 1978)
• “Science fiction is that class of prose narrative wtreating of a situation that could not arise in the world we know, but which is hypothesized on the basis of some innovation in science or technology, or pseudo-science or pseudo-technology, whether human or extraterrestrial in origin.” — Kingsley Amis, in “New Maps of Hell” (1961)
• “Science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould.” — Brian W. Aldiss, in “Billion Year Spree” (1973)
• “A literary genre developed principally in the 20th Century, dealing with scientific discovery or development that, whether set in the future, or the fictitious present, or in the putative past, is superior to or simply other than that known to exist.” — Fred Saberhagen, in “Encyclopedia Britannica” 15th edition (1979)
• “The branch of fiction that deals with the possible effects of an altered technology or social system on mankind in an imagined future, an altered present, or an alternative past.” — Barry M. Malzberg, in “Collier’s Encyclopedia” (1981)
• “Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities.” — Miriam Allen deFord, in “Elsewhere, Elsewhen, Elsehow” (1971)
• “A piece of science fiction is a narrative of an imaginary invention or discovery in the natural sciences and consequent adventures and experience.” — J. O. Bailey, in “The SF Book of Lists”, p.256, ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
• “[Fiction] in which the author shows awareness of the nature and importance of the human activity known as the scientific method, and shows equal awareness of the great body of knowledge already collected through that activity, and takes into account in his stories the effect and possible future effects on human beings of scientific methods and scientific fact.” — Reginald Bretnor, in “The SF Book of Lists”, p.257, ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
• “Science fiction is a label applied to a publishing category and its application is subject to the whims of editors and publishers.” — John Clute & Peter Nichols, in “The SF Book of Lists”, p.257, ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
• “A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the scientific method. To make the definition cover all science fiction (instead of ‘almost all’) it is necessary only to strike out the word ‘future’.” — Robert Heinlein, in “The SF Book of Lists”, p.257, ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
• “Speculative fiction: stories whose objective is to explore, to discover, to learn, by means of projection, extrapolation, analogue, hypothesis-and-paper-experimentation, something about the nature of the universe, of man, of ‘reality’.” — Judith Merrill, in “The SF Book of Lists”, p.257, ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
• “It is that thing that people who understand science fiction point to, when they point to something and say ‘That’s science fiction!” — Frederik Pohl, in “The SF Book of Lists”, p.257, ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
• “Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it.” — Tom Shippey, in “The SF Book of Lists”, p.258, ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
• “There is only one definition of science fiction that seems to make pragmatic sense: ‘Science fiction is anything published as science fiction’.” — Norman Spinrad, in “The SF Book of Lists”, p.257, ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
• “A literary genre whose necessary and sufficient conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author’s empirical environment.” — Darko Suvin, in “The SF Book of Lists”, p.258, ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982); this is a particularly often-cited definition in the academic study of science fiction
• “Science fiction is that branch of fantasy which, while not true of present-day knowledge, is rendered plausible by the reader’s recognition of the scientific possibilities of it being possible at some future date or at some uncertain period in the past.” — Donald A. Wollheim, in “The SF Book of Lists”, p.258, ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)
• “Science fiction is a label applied to a publishing category and its application is subject to the whims of editors and publishers.” — John Clute & Peter Nichols, in “The SF Book of Lists”, p.257, ed. Malcolm Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, New York: Berkeley (1982)