Science Fiction

Science Fiction

"Science fiction is that branch of literature that deals with human responses to changes in the level of science and technology." --Isaac Asimov

"Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities." --Miriam Allen deFord

"Science Fiction reflect scientific thought; a fiction of things-to-come based on things-at-hand." -- Benjamin Appel

"Science fiction is that class of prose narrative treating of 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-technology, whether human or extra-terrestrial in origin." --Kingsley Amis

(As well, David Simpson has some useful comments on Science Fiction).

Science fiction is a genre of literature often difficult to define. As a result, many scholars and writers disagree on the technicalities of what is and what is not sci fi, often creating awfully narrow definitions that begin to inhibit the literature. For the purposes of this course, we will be concerned with the technological elements of sci fi as they are represented in the following films: The Stepford Wives, Bladerunner, The Terminator, Terminator 2: Judgement Day, and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. We are primarily concerned with explorations of gender and technology and we will, therefore, seek to interrogate issues surrounding identity, power and emotion within the human and non-human relationships within each of these films. Moreover, as with all texts, the contextualization of a particular text through readings and discussion will play a vital role in how we look at Science Fiction.

Science fiction, like fantasy, its neighbouring genre, has traditionally been preoccupied with the simplicity of its characters and has opted for more elaborately constructed worlds as its focus. The distinction between science fiction and fantasy is arguably minimal, usually involving the incorporation of technology in the former. Both fantasy and science fiction, deal with elaborate worlds, often set in a distant future or past and both genres are more deeply concerned with these 'worlds' than with the characters who inhabit them. As Sherry Turkle notes in The Second Self (1984),

[o]nce you write a microworld, in computer code or between the covers of a book, you have to obey its constraints. Hackers are drawn to making microworlds [?] Science fiction gets its complexity from the invention of worlds rather than the definition of character. While most everyday fiction takes everyday reality as its backdrop and develops interest in the complexity of its human characters, science fiction characters tend to be more one-dimensional. (Turkle 222)

Characters, thus, are traditionally impoverished or 'simple' in science fiction. Moreover, they are often dissolved into one-dimensional embodiments of 'good' and 'bad'. Certainly discussion of characterization in terms of 'good' and 'bad' is simplistic; however, it is precisely because fantasy and science fiction often use this framework to define its characters that we will also employ and discuss these terms within debate. (For further reading on the emphasis fantasy places on its elaborate worlds see: Eric Rabkin, The Fantastic in Literature (New York: Oxford UP, 1979); --., Fantastic Worlds: Myths, Tales and Stories. (New York: Oxford UP, 1977)). You will note that some of the films that we discuss in this Course (Stepford Wives, Bladerunner) devote a fair amount of attention to characterization, thus refuting the one dimensionality of traditional works of Science Fiction, whereas others (The Terminator Films), arguably do not. One dimensional characters operate within a system of binary logic, representing the unrealistic and unsophisticated label imposed upon them. Yet many texts now challenge this convention in Science Fiction and Fantasy, making the development of characterization their focus and dispelling the simplistic binary logic of good and bad embodiments. We will be discussing binary logic in more detail in the Supernatural theme of the Course.