Some Views of Science Fiction

Some of these definitions of science fiction 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. I’m not sure the original source for this list, but if you need to be given credit, please let me know.

“ 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, 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, 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, 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, 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, Modern Science Fiction, edited by Reginald Bretnor (1953)

                    

“ Science fiction is that branch of literature that deals with human responses to changes in the level of science and technology. ” — Isaac Asimov, Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine (Mar-Apr 1978)

                    

“ Science fiction is that class of prose narrative treating 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, 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, 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, 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, Collier’s Encyclopedia (1981)

                    

“ Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities. ” — Miriam Allen deFord, 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

                    

“ [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

                    

“ Science fiction is a label applied to a publishing category and its application is subject to the whims of editors and publishers. ” — John Clute and Peter Nichols

                    

“ 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

                    

“ 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

                    

“ 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

                    

“ 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

                    

“ There is only one definition of science fiction that seems to make pragmatic sense: ‘Science fiction is anything published as science fiction.’ ” — Norman Spinrad

                    

“ 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

                    

“ 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

                    

“ Science fiction is a label applied to a publishing category and its application is subject to the whims of editors and publishers. ” — John Clute and Peter Nichols

                    

“ Science fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger. ” — James Gunn

                    

“ I think science fiction must jettison its present narrative forms and plots . . . it is inner space, not outer that needs to be explored. The only true alien planet is Earth. . . . More precisely, I’d like to see s-f becoming abstract and “cool,” inventing fresh situations and contexts that illustrate its theme obliquely. . . . I firmly believe that only science fiction is fully equipped to become the literature of tomorrow, and that it is the only medium with an adequate vocabulary of ideas and situations. ” — J. G. Ballard

                    

“ [Science fiction] is our world dislocated by some kind of mental effort on the part of the author, our world transformed into that which it is not or not yet. . . . the conceptual dislocation within the society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author’s mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader’s mind, the shock of dysrecognition. He knows that it is not his actual world that he is reading about. ” — Philip K. Dick

                    

“ New ideas too difficult or too vague as yet to be presented as scientific fact . . . possible or alternate science systems. SF presents to us . . . a great range of “as if” views: The possession of these have the effect of making our minds flexible: We are capable of seeing alternate viewpoints as coequal with our own. ” — Philip K. Dick