There are many topics that quickly mark a particular work as science fiction. The following links will take you to brief discussions of some of the most common topics that recur in science fiction.
Within each topic, I provide lists of recommended reading--both short fiction and novels--and recommended viewing--both film and television.
Go to the Reading Guides and Browse by Topic for overviews of selected written works. Go to the Media Guides and Browse by Topic for overviews of selected films and television series. |
| Science Fiction Topics |
| Alien
Encounters: works dealing with first contact with an alien
race and/or alien invasion; also works dealing primarily with an alien language or culture. |
| Alien Invasion: See Alien Encounters. |
| Alternate History: works that ask what the effects on history would be if one event were changed. See Parallel Universes. |
| Artificial
Intelligence: works dealing with sentient computers, robots,
androids and cyborgs. |
| Ecological Science Fiction: fiction that deals with the impact of the environment on civilization. |
| Feminism: fiction dealing with gender roles and relationships between the sexes. |
| First Contact: stories about the first encounter between humans and an alien race. See Alien Encounters. |
| Frankenstein's Heirs: variations on the idea of scientists who do not consider the consequences of their experiments. |
| Future
War: works dealing with wars and the military in the future. |
| Galactic Empires : sweeping stories of society and politics on a galactic scale. |
| Genetic
Manipulation: works dealing with any kind of genetic manipulation,
including cloning. |
| Mad Scientists: See Frankenstein and His Heirs |
| Mars: stories about Mars and life forms from Mars. |
| Parallel Universes: stories in which characters discovers that reality diverged at some point and that they can pass from one reality to the other. |
| Post-Apocalyptic Earth: stories of the aftermath of some natural or manmade cataclysmic event that has changed life on Earth in radical ways. |
| Science
and Technology: works with an emphasis on extrapolation from known science and works dealing
with the work of scientists. |
| Time
Travel: works dealing with the manipulation of time. |
| Utopia/Dystopia: fiction depicting an ideal society or its opposite. |
