What
is Science Fiction?:
Science Fiction or Fantasy?
| A Handbook to Literature defines science fiction as: "A form of fantasy in which scientific facts, assumptions, or hypotheses form the basis, by logical extrapolation, of adventures in the future, on other planets, in other dimensions in time, or under new variants of scientific law" (Holman). | ||
| The same Handbook defines fantasy as "a work which takes place in a nonexistent and unreal world, such as fairyland, or concerns incredible and unreal characters. . . or employs physical and scientific principles not yet discovered or contrary to present experience as in science fiction and utopian fiction" (Holman). | ||
| Miriam Allen deFord explains the difference more succinctly: "'Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities" (Aldiss 26). | ||
| In Trillion Year Spree, Brian Aldiss explains that "[i]n its wider sense, fantasy clearly embraces all science fiction. But fantasy in a narrower sense, as opposed to science fiction, generally implies a fiction leaning more towards myth or the mythopoetic than towards an assumed realism" (26). | ||
| Fantasy is a conscious breaking free from reality; it applies to a work which takes place in a non-existent and unreal world, a world that is imaginary but not possible. | ||
| Lester del Rey in The World of Science Fiction declares that in some ways the categories of fantasy and science fiction are gradually merging. He offers the following definition of science fiction that includes fantasy: "Science fiction accepts change as the major basis for stories" (9). | ||
| Extrapolation | Science fiction relies on extrapolation, the process of imagining relatively probable worlds of the future by utilizing logical extensions of scientific and cultural curves and trends. | |
| It is a common science fiction convention that authors should not contradict known scientific fact (e.g., the boiling point of water at sea level on Earth), but may do what they wish with commonly-accepted scientific theory (e.g., theoretical barriers to moving matter faster than the speed of light). The author of fantasy does not feel such restraints. |
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| Science fiction differs from mainstream literature in that it draws its metaphors from science and technology. | ||
| Let's take a closer look at some of the elements that constitute the matter of science fiction. | ||
| Next Page: Elements of Science Fiction |
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| Science
Fiction © 2002 Agatha Taormina Last Revised: February 8, 2006 |