Science fiction is based upon the belief that the world is changing, that the way we live is changing, and that humanity will adjust to it, or will adjust change to humanity, or will perish.
Note 2
Sometimes, as Ray Bradbury said was his purpose, their intention has been not to predict the future but to prevent it.
Note 3
The rise of fantasy may have been only a trend led by a best-selling trilogy, or it may have represented the abandonment of a search for rational solutions.
Note 4
“Fiction is simply dreams written out,” wrote John W. Campbell, the editor of Astounding (now called Analog). “Science fiction consists of the hopes and dreams and fears (for some dreams are nightmares) of a technically based society.”
Note 5
“It may be suggested that science fiction is composed of 'supernatural' writing for materialists,” wrote Groff Conklin in the first big postwar anthology, The Best of Science Fiction. “You may read every science fiction story that is true science fiction and never once have to compromise your id. The stories all have rational explanations, provided you are willing to grant the word 'rational' a certain elasticity.”
Note 6
“Science fiction is fantasy wearing a tight girdle,” said Sam Merwin, Jr., the editor of Startling Stories and Thrilling Wonder Stories in the late 1940s.
Note 7
“Social science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings,” wrote Isaac Asimov, a science-fiction great who became even better known as a prolific author of science popularizations.
Note 8
“A [good] science fiction story,” said Theodore Sturgeon, one of the best of science-fiction writers himself, “is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.”
Note 9
Sam Moskowitz, a fan who became an editor, a researcher into early science-fiction history, and an anthologist, wrote, “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.”
Note 10
Kingsley Amis, mainstream author and critic, and sometimes SF author and SF enthusiast, wrote in a similar vein: “Science fiction is that class of prose narrative treating 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. It is distinguished from pure fantasy by its need to achieve verisimilitude and win the 'willing suspension of disbelief' through scientific plausibility.”
Note 11
In his survey of American science fiction of the 19th century, Future Perfect, Professor Bruce Franklin wrote:
You may think of realistic fiction, historical fiction, science fiction, and fantasy as theoretically distinct strategies for describing what is real.... Realistic fiction tries to imitate actualities, historical fiction past probabilities, science fiction possibilities, fantasy impossibilities.
Note 12
Ray Bradbury told an interviewer “Science fiction is the art of the possible. Fantasy is the art of the impossible.”
Note 13
And Arthur C. Clarke, in an earlier attempt suggested, “Fantasy is something that can't happen and you wish it could; science fiction is something that could happen and hope it won't.”
Note 14
If I wanted to keep it short, I'd call science fiction “the literature of change,” but I also have a fondness for “the literature of the human species,” which is similar to Aldiss's longer definition, “Science fiction is the search for definition of mankind and its status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science).”
(James Gunn)
Note 15
A common element in most of these definitions is an understanding that science fiction developed out of fantasy when technology began to shape the way people lived and the future became a better guide to decision-making than history, when what is going to happen became more important than what has happened. Science fiction became possible a bit more than two centuries ago with the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution.
Note 16
Then came the Industrial Revolution. Not suddenly but gradually over the last half of the 18th century everyone who felt its effects – mainly in Western Europe and the United States – could have observed that change was now going to be humanity's fate, and that if humanity wished to be the master of change rather than its victim, people would have to start thinking about the consequences of their behavior and their choices.
Note 17
The myth of creation goes back far beyond Frankenstein, of course, and into the religious needs of man, to explain the origins of his world and himself; and the attempt to encroach upon the exclusive prerogative of deity – whether through the alchemist's search to turn base metals into gold, or attempts to find the elixir of life that would prolong man's existence beyond the God-given span, or plans to create life itself – always has ended in punishment for its blasphemy. Daedalus built a man of bronze to repel the Argonauts, and Jewish folklore tells of the creation of the Golem, molded of clay and animated by the charm or shem (one of the names of God) by various medieval rabbis, the most famous of them Rabbi Low of sixteenth century Prague. The Golem, too, turns against its creator. Only in recent times have robots and androids been treated without religious awe, and only with the development of Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics (see Chapter 10) that built in a prohibition against harming man has the creation of artificial life not resulted in tragedy. And yet many recent considerations of computers, fictional and speculative, involve overtones of punishment for blasphemy; and HAL, the murderous computer in the Kubrick-Clarke motion picture 2001: A Space Odyssey, harks back to Frankenstein and the Golem.
Note 18
Throughout most of humanity's history it has looked back toward a happier time, toward Paradise, toward a “golden age.” Ahead lay only hope of laying aside sufficient food to provide for a family until the next crop matured. The major changes in life were personal and natural: birth, marriage, death. From outside came war, disease, drought, flood, violence, theft, murder, execution.
Note 19
By the nineteenth century increasing emphasis on production for trade had created a middle class, and the middle class had adopted as its philosophy the ideal of rationalism – the establishment of rational goals (in business the goal was profits) and the conscious examination of the best methods for attaining those goals. So deeply ingrained is rationalism in our society that such a philosophy seems like mere common sense, but it was not so when larger, less-measurable goals were held up by emperors or priests or warriors, when ideal rather than practical states were considered to be the proper pursuit of humanity. In recent days, of course, rationalism has been challenged by sensationalism, which ranks feelings above thought, but that is another story to be covered in Chapter 13.
Note 20
One of the eternal dreams (and bureaucratic necessities) of humanity has been rapid communication over great distances;
Note 21
Erewhon (1872) attacks what The Coming Race idealizes. Samuel Butler's narrator finds in the interior of New Zealand an advanced civilization which has discarded machinery because by a process of evolution machinery would develop consciousness, enslave man, and finally supersede him. In this connection we might compare Arthur Clarke's speculation that man is the organic, evolutionary bridge between the inorganic and the ultra-intelligent machine which may well be man's successor.
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