Characteristics of Science Fiction and Why I Read It

I read SF for a number of reasons:

• I love that SF encourages me to look at the world differently.
• I love the sense of wonder that infuses so much SF.
• I love that SF stretches my mind and my heart.
• I love that it’s sometimes so bizarre and yet manages to stay believable.

Characteristics of SF:

• Literature of ideas, full of thought experiments.  'What if' is a very important question.
• Speculates on science - hard and soft - and technology, and humanity’s relationship to them.
• Explores ethics - often through a good cautionary tale. Perhaps just because we can do something doesn’t mean we should.
• Tells a good story with lots of interesting characters, settings, and events.

Ultimately, Science Fiction is about us - human beings - who we are, what we are, and our relationships to other life, society, technology, and the world around us.

Science Fiction Readers' Advisory

Doing Science Fiction (SF) RA can be intimidating, as can RA in any genre you don't read. SF is filled with concepts unique to the genre, but the place to start is to remember that SF is literature.  Therefore, a lot of the basic RA questions apply – especially those pertaining to emotion and style.

• Mood – humor, drama, etc.
• Length – long, short, series.
• Storyline - Character-driven vs. plot-driven, complexity of the plot.
• Pacing – fast-paced, steady, leisurely.
• Writing Style – minimalist, lush, extensive description, etc.
• Characters – strong female, children, pets, etc.

However, some of the questions and many of the answers are unique to SF:

• Storyline - Character-driven vs plot-driven vs idea-driven.  An idea-driven story is one where the story and plot are generated by an idea - generally a thought experiment the author wants to explore.
• Setting - Past, present/near future, future, all of the above, space, alien planet, alternate universe.
• Characters – alien, robot, artificial intelligence.

The point of the next several posts in this blog, which talk about SF tropes, is to give you the vocabulary and understanding to be able to ask those questions, and be able to come up with a meaninful answer for your patron when they ask "What SF book should I read next?"

SF or Fantasy? - Genres

Is it SF?  Fantasy?  Something else?

• Stories that mix elements of SF and Fantasy so it’s sometimes hard to tell which genre the story belongs to.  
• This is only a problem if you feel you need to label. Mostly an issue for those who like splitting hairs for one reason or another; like if your library decides to label fantasy for your patrons’ sake, or for academics.  Your readers may or may not care, as long as they get the elements they want in their reading.
• Many common story elements could go either way, depending on how they’re used.  Dragons - magical beings or genetically engineered constructs? Time Travel - Magically or scientifically motivated?  Moving from point to point instantly without the aid of machinery - teleporation or apparation?
• Some stories are both - magical and technological universes intersect, for instant, and the fun is seeing how members from one universe operate in the other.

Books/Series
Pern series by Ann McCaffrey (also Lost Colony, Psionics)
Warlock series by Christopher Stasheff (also Lost Colony)
Chronicles of Amber by Roger Zelazny

Utopia/Dystopia - Tropes

Utopia/Dystopia

• Utopia - perfect society, especially as regards politics, social structure, and the economy.  An environment that makes it easy for each person to be fulfilled and happy.
• Dystopia - the opposite of utopia.  A society in which the conditions are extremely bad.  Very difficult to be happy and/or fulfilled. Very possibly repressive society with strict rules that don’t necessarily make a whole lot of sense, and tend to make people miserable.  A lot of fear, hate, and possibly violence.  Often carries a current trend to extremes; cautionary tale.
• The reason I grouped them together is both that they are the two extremes of the same continuum, and that dystopias often masquerade as utopias.  Brave New World, for instance.  Everyone’s happy because they’re drugged.  In fact it’s a crime to be unhappy. Free thought is discouraged. People are prepared through genetic engineering and behavior modification to be happy in whatever role society assigns them to.  Not the utopia it appears in the beginning.
• Long history going back to Plato’s Republic 360 B.C.E.  
• Explores the question of happiness and fulfillment - can you have a society where everyone achieves those states?  Does it require a loss of freedom, and if so, is it a worthy trade?
• Have we outgrown Utopias as a society?  When I think of Utopias, I either think of an unacceptable number of strictures - personal happiness subsumed in the happiness of the whole, or I think the author is naive, and I tend to be a pretty optimistic person.
• Explores human reaction to repression and unhappiness.
• Explores methods of obtaining control.  

Books
Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Handmaid’s Tale by Margaret Atwood (also Post-apocalyptic)

Post-Apocalyptic - Tropes

Post-Apocalyptic

• Takes place in a world/place that recently suffered an apocalypse of some sort - ecological, disease, total war, alien invasion, etc.
• Can involve the destruction of Earth - no one can live there any more.
• Society might have broke down completely, be in disarray, or just profoundly changed. Circumstances for living have changed drastically.
• Can involve the destruction of most of the human race, savagery, slow death for everyone who survived the initial blast.
• Explores humanity’s relationship with and reaction to certain death, society building, grief.
• A story where the apocalypse happened long ago and society recovered would still technically be post-apocalyptic, but it doesn’t usually have a direct bearing on the story - only part of the explanation for why the society is the way it is.  
• Tend to be dark/depressing.
• If the apocalyptic society is space-faring, it almost always results in a spurt of moving off-world, maybe resulting in colonization.

Books
Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller, Jr. (also Classic)
Day of the Triffids by John Wyndham (also Classic)
Feed by Mira Grant (also Horror)
This Time of Darkness by H.M. Hoover
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick

Time Travel/Manipulation - Tropes

Time Travel/Manipulation

• Something/someone traveling through time or time not traveling as it usually does – speeding up or slowing down.  Sometimes living your life out in real time is considered a form of time travel – traveling through time on the slow path.
• Many stories explore the implications of paradoxes or changing history.  What effect would saving that life have on the future?  Can time be changed? One of the more famous paradoxes is the Grandfather Paradox - what would happen if you went back in time and killed your own grandfather?
• The rules of time vary from story to story.  Can you change the past or not? Is time self-correcting or not? Can you travel into the past and the future?  It depends on what the author needs for the story.
• Time can get very complex.  Sometimes I don’t try to understand; I just go with the flow.  
• SubTropes:
• Lost in time – Stuck time travelers who can’t get home
• Individual time travel – often accidental, alien device, inventor
• Time travel organization – sometimes protecting time, sometimes mining/exploiting time, sometimes exploring time.
• Mission in time – time traveling with a mission to correct an error.
• Colonizing in time – settlements in other time periods – post-apocalyptic or prisons – usually in the deep past.

Books
To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis (also Humor)
Ugly Little Boy by Isaac Asimov (Short Story)
Wrinkle in Time by Madeline L’Engle

Parallel Universes - Tropes

Parallel Universes

• The theory is that there are a multitude of parallel universes called the multiverse.  A new universe is created at every decision point.  If you need to decide whether to have coffee or tea in the morning, there are suddenly 2 universes - one where you had coffee, one where you had tea. Each is a complete universe with the same past - they just change from where you made the decision. If you decide on tea you continue on in the tea universe.
• This means that theoretically there are a great number of yous, varying from you you by different degrees depending on where they branched off and what the implications of the decision point were.
• This is one of the great “what if” tropes, and closely related to the alternate history trope.  What if Lincoln had not been assassinated?  What if the Nazi’s won WWII?  What if there had been no extinction event that wiped out the dinosaurs?
• Thought experiment about causality - what makes what happen - and the shaping of the human psyche.  How would one event/choice make a person different?
• Used to bring to different versions of a character face to face.  
• Also known as alternate reality.

Books
Lathe of Heaven by Ursula K. LeGuin

Robots/Androids/Artificial Life Forms/AI - Tropes

Robots/Androids/Artificial Life Forms/AI

• Robots can be any shape but are generally humanoid, androids are, by definition, people shaped, and artificial Intelligences are sometimes disembodied – live in the Internet or move from computer to computer as opposed to being tied to one computer.
• Artificial life forms are mostly machines, though I’ve run into some holograms.
• Used to explore issues and definition of humanity – compare robots and humans and explore their relationships. Are humans essentially living machines?
• Explore how a totally logical mind would work, and how dealing with illogical humans would work.
• Explore human interactions with technology in general, and its role in our lives.
• How different from a human is a sentient mechanical?  Is it  living? Does it deserve rights?
• Another trope dealing with the definition of life, sentience, and humanity.

Books
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick (also Post-Apocalyptic, Mystery)
When HARLIE was One by David Gerrold (also Classic)

Humanity - Trope

Humanity

• What are the boundaries of being human?  What defines us as human beings?
• Cyborgs - humans with mechanical parts - limbs, implants. All the way to robotic bodies with human brains - when do they stop being human?  Or do they? Is mechanical percentage a significant marker?
• What if humans were able to move their consciousnesses onto computers/the internet when they die so they’re effectively immortal.  Are they alive? Are they still human? Is the consciousness still on earth a remnant or the whole personality?
• What is the future of humanity?  Will we evolve beyond our current forms?  Will we need bodies at all? Will we devolve? Will the definition of humanity change?  
• What if people’s lives were extended drastically, or they became immortal? How would society adjust?  What would people do with all the extra time?
• This is a trope that examines the nature of sentience and humanity.

Books
Emergence by David Palmer (also Post-Apocalyptic)
Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (also Classic, Horror)

Engineering Life - Trope

Engineering Life

• Mainly Bioengineering - altering a living organism using engineering principles, or its subset Genetic Engineering - altering a living organism through direct manipulation of their DNA.  Also includes cloning and reproductive technologies.
• Speculation on the nature of humanity and its boundaries. Bioengineered humans for example - suppose you crossed humans with cats, and left the human brain intact.  Would they still be human, even with tails or cat instincts? How would they be classified - as hybrids? How would society treat them?
• What is the responsibility of the creators? What are the ethics?
• What are the practical considerations? What is the legal status of a clone, for instance? Is is the same as the progenitor (the donor of the DNA)? How does it affect inheritance? Law? Property?
• This is a trope that is very relevant to dilemmas in today’s world; and a topic where ethics tend to lag behind tech. Which makes me wish that more legislators and people in power would read science fiction where many of these issues and dilemmas have been thoroughly discussed and possible solutions proposed.

Books
Strange case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson (also Classic)
Island of Dr. Moreau by H.G. Wells (also Classic)
Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes (also Classic)

Aliens - Trope

Aliens:

• Life forms that are not human and do not originate on Earth.
• There are stories that feature non-human sentient species that are from newly discovered regions of the Earth - center of the Earth, bottom of the ocean, etc. Their designation as alien species is debatable  - if they originated on Earth don’t we share DNA and are therefore related? Don’t they belong here too? As the Earth gets more thoroughly explored and as science advances, these species are less likely to come up in SF.
• Often imagined by referring to and mixing up the known - ant-like, mind like a computer, moral system similar to the Japanese Bushido code. it’s very difficult to imagine something truly alien with a mind filled with the familiar. An author has to be very careful with her world-building, character building, and plotting to come up with the truly alien. some of the most alien aliens are hardly described at all, leaving it all up to the reader’s imagination.
• Might or might not be sentient.  There are many alien pets in SF, for instance.  Not to mention all the other-planetary biospheres filled with alien species.
• Often serve as a way to examine ourselves – either by seeing ourselves through the alien’s eyes, or by using the alien to highlight the more “alien” aspects of our selves.  Sometimes also serve as a metaphor for alienation.
• Also used to emphasize our similarities in a society that often talks about our differences.
• A story might be human-centric or alien-centric.  Might not involve humans at all.
• In any story involving humans and another species, humans are one of 2 alien races; it depends on your point of view.
• The terms “species” and “race” are both used.  Also called extraterrestrials (ETs). The scientific prefix is “xeno” as in xenobotany and xenolinguistics.
• Common tropes involving aliens:
• First Contact – When 2 or more species alien to each other meet for the first time.  Might or might not involve humans
• Galactic civilization/confederation – A whole confederation/or civilization of alien specie(s) out there that humanity has to figure out their place in and deal with.  Sometimes something we helped start, like Star Trek’s Federation, sometimes something that long preceded us.
• Invasion – Aliens invading the Solar System, or humans invading alien space. Usually involving war, though I’ve read stories with peaceful, if not friendly, invasions.
• Remnants – Remnants of a very old, usually very advanced, extinct alien civilization that are a major factor in the story.  Usually their technology comes into play.  Sometimes the civilization is not as extinct as we thought.
• Aliens among us - Aliens living on Earth with humanity, either openly or secretly.
• Alien POV - Stories told from an alien point of view, usually looking at humanity, sometimes in the form of one human.
• Human Unification - Aliens serve as a threatening “other” to promote human unification – the enemy of my enemy is my friend.

Books/Series
Gateway series by Frederik Pohl (Remnants)
Doona series by Anne McCaffrey (First Contact)
Contact by Carl Sagain (First Contact)
Cuckoo’s Egg by C.J. Cherryh (First Contact)
Stranger in a Strange Land by Robert Heinlein (Aliens)
Ring of Swords by Eleanor Arnason (Aliens)
Tripod series by John Christopher (Alien Invasion)
Liaden Universe by Sharon Lee & Steve Miller (Galactic Civilization, Alien POV)
Sector General by James White (Galactic Civilization, Alien POV)
Battlefield Earth by L. Ron Hubbard (Alien Invasion)

Steampunk - Subgenre

Steampunk

• A specific flavor of alternate history focusing on science and technology.
• What if inventors in the late 19th century had been able to use steam and their level of science to create all sorts of advanced technology – dirigibles for transoceanic flights, powerful clockwork computers, robots, etc.?  What would that have done for the British Empire?  How would that technology have affected the Civil War?  What if the aether theory had been correct? How would that affect advanced science & technology, and everyday life?  
• Includes the life sciences - zombies, werewolves, vampires, etc.
• Very popular right now.  
• As much of an aesthetic movement as a subgenre.  Lots of websites, costuming and crafting around steampunk mainly involving brass, gears, goggles and at least vaguely Victorian style clothing. Some of it is very clever.
• For an idea of the look a couple of steampunk movies - “Sherlock Holmes” (2009) and the 2008 Dr. Who Christmas Special “The Next Doctor.”  

Series

The Parasol Protectorate series by Gail Carriger

Hard Science Fiction - Subgenre

Hard SF

• Ideas about science, technology, and society drive the action and the story.
• Heavily concerned with scientific and technological (applied science) speculation based on current knowledge or trends in science.
• Takes the spirit of scientific inquiry seriously.
• Often requires some basic knowledge of science and technology to really get the story.
• Other writing considerations – like characterization – sometimes suffer in deference to plot and science.
• Often written by scientists.
• Can be dazzling, far-reaching, and mind-blowing.
• Very effective in short stories – one idea per story and the idea is played out to great effect. This also makes the author’s possible flaws with character based storytelling much less of an issue. If the author can handle the basic storytelling needs – like characterization – novels tend to be an interplay of various permutations/implications of the basic idea, and again very effective.

Books
I, Robot by Isaac Asimov (also Robots)

Space Opera - Subgenra

Space Opera

• Everything is very large scale – big battles, big civilizations, sweeping events. Often a little melodramatic, but a lot of fun.
• Tends to take place against the backdrop of a galactic civilization.
• Often the plot is a more intimate story against this operatic background. How is this individual or family or relationship affected by these sweeping events?
• Used to be a pejorative term indicating a shallow and action/adventure-focused story - the space equivalent to the schlocky sort of horse operas/westerns.  In the 1990s there was a resurgence of interest and now it’s generally quality adventure storytelling on a really big scale.
• Often feels a bit mythic, and the characters have archetypal aspects.
• Does not have to be serious - Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy is an example of a very humorous space opera.
• Often includes: Human Diaspora, Military SF, Politics.

Books/Series:
Flinx Series by Alan Dean Foster (also Human Diaspora, Psionics)
Dune by Frank Herbert (also Human Diaspora, Aliens, Politics)
Miles Vorkosigan series by Lois McMaster Bujold (also Bioengineering)
Serrano’s Legacy by Elizabeth Moon (also Military, Life prolongation, Mystery – 1st trilogy – Herris Serrano series))