What Is Sci-Fi? - Claire Hobson
What is Sci-Fi?
According to the Oxford dictionary, Science Fiction is
“a type of book, film, etc. that is based on imagined scientific discoveries of
the future, and often deals with space travel and life on other planets.”
Sci-Fi is a genre that perceives and explains a story about future machinery,
skills, etc., that humans have not yet discovered.
There are multiple common themes throughout the entire
science fiction genre. The first of these being Robots and AI; books that
include robots and AI as part of their storyline qualify as Science Fiction
because they include technologies that we do not quite have a such a scale
currently, the actual technology being the science portion of this and the
fiction being the fact that the story isn’t true and never happened.
The second frequent theme in science fiction is space
travel. The first topic commonly discussed in sci-fi books is rocket ships or
ways to travel. The second: traveling to specific planets like Mars or even
places that we don't know exist or places that do not exist. Lastly, having
life on these planets or some sort of community of large numbers of people
living there on those planets. This exhibits lots of science because, these
books include knowledge for the larger or more powerful rocket ships we don’t
have, understandings about other planets, and even how to sustain life on those
planets, all being kinds of science. This is all fiction because these
technologies of course have not been discovered yet in human history and
therefore cannot be facts or nonfiction.
The last largely used topic in science fiction is time
travel. Time travel is partially a controversial topic that's interpreted in
multiple ways throughout many different books, movies, and TV series. The
technology of time travel does not exist and therefore it is a fictional
science if that fits the genre of science fiction perfectly.
A couple of common and greatly liked science fiction books are, Dune be Franks Herbert, A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle, and Neuromancer by William Gibson. These books include themes of Robots, Time Travel, and general science and technology in the very far future from now. Science fiction is a very loved and popular genre.
Interesting post! Both Dune and A Wrinkle in Time were pivotal books of their time (Dune is often credited with the concept of sci-fi, being the first of its kind). I've never heard of Neuromancer, so I might give that a read.
ReplyDeleteThis is a good analysis of the science-fiction genre! I like how you named some famous examples of the themes you mentioned (it helped me picture what you meant). Thank you for the insightful blog; I'll keep it in mind and find these themes the next time I read a sci-fi book!
ReplyDeleteI find your blog post to be an interesting shift from regular book reviews and appreciate how you left some "greatly liked science fiction books" at the end for reference. Good job!
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