science fiction

1. My own comprehension of the definition of science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction in which the stories often tell about science and technology of the future. Science fiction is a kind of literary genre in which a background of science or pseudoscience is an integral part of the story. Although science fiction is a form of fantastic literature, many of the events recounted are within the realm of future possibility, e.g. robots, space travel, interplanetary war, invasions from outer space. It is important to note that science fiction has a relationship with the principles of science—these stories involve partially true-partially fictitious laws or theories of science. It should not be completely unbelievable, because it then ventures into the genre fantasy. 

2. The history and continuity of science fiction 

Science fiction is generally considered to have had its beginnings in the late 19th century with the romances of Jules Verne and the novels of H. G. Wells. In 1926, Hugo Gernsback founded the pulp magazine Amazing Stories, devoted exclusively to science fiction, particularly to serious explorations into the future. Good writing in the field was further encouraged when John W. Campbell, Jr., founded Astounding Science Fiction in 1937. In that magazine much attention was paid to literary and dramatic qualities, theme, and characterization; Campbell "discovered" and popularized many important science fiction writers, including Isaac Asimov, Frederic Brown, A. E. van Vogt, Lewis Padgett, Eric Frank Russell, Clifford Simak, Theodore Sturgeon, Fritz Leiber, Murray Leinster, Robert Heinlein, Raymond F. Jones, and Robert Sheckley.

3. Modernity and science fiction

Science fiction has long been regarded as a useful tool of social critique and analysis by way of its extrapolation of its social reality. It has been credited by Fredric Jameson as a literary aesthetic knight-in-shining-armor here to rescue us from an "exhausted realism" by helping us engage our own ideological limits. Science fiction is in fact characteristically ambivalent regarding the ideologies of Western modernity,  specifically that of modernity as progress. The ideology of modernity as progress involves bringing into the fold all of the holdouts to the modern capitalist world economy, the introduction of bureaucratization and systems of government within the format of the modern nation, the introduction of industrialization and consumerism, the imposition of monoculture and the eradication of subsistence agrarian economies. 

4.The distinctiveness from literature and other film genres

Here I want to explain some of my ideas of the genre of science fiction. I think that we can define the genre from many different aspects. Just as Errol Vieth says, “A similar problem exists with the signifier genre, in that the discourse in which appears and the participants in that discourse determine its meaning. For a teacher of English, genre might signify a unit of work focused on the production of business letters. For a Russian formalist, the word might involve similarities in textual form and structure that allow for classification: the genre of the folktale, for example, is a genre because of the common functions and structures within the narrative and the social functions of the narrative.” Genre can be said is a particular type or style of literature, art, film or music that you can recognize because of its special features. In this essence, science fiction is an independent genre because of its combination of rich imagination and reality base.

Science fiction is an important genre of popular literature. It pays attention to vast influence that science advancement brings to human being, and has larruping character. Compare with mainstream literature, it has a powerful and unconstrained imagination and free writing fashion; Compare with other popular literature, science fiction considers more realistic problem by image-building and narration. Today, with gradual amalgamation between elegance literature and popular literature, science fiction is the best embodiment of them. Science fiction is a genre that can inspire our interest to the future, and widen our breadth of mind. It is the embodiment of people’s exploring mentality

5. Cultural implications of science fiction

The rich variety of notable science-fiction writing to emerge since the "classic" work of Asimov, Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, and Ray Bradbury includes Frank Herbert's Dune (1965) and its sequels, which conjured up a desert world where issues of ecology, ethics, and human destiny and evolution were played out. However, the generic status of science fiction remains 

本文通过五个方面对科幻小说来进行分析讲解。科幻小说是通俗文学的重要流派。与主流文学相比，它具有一种功能强大、无限制的想象和自由书写的方式，与其他通俗文学相比，科幻小说更现实的问题是通过形象塑造和叙事。如今，随着高雅文学与通俗文学的逐渐融合，科幻小说是它们的最佳体现。科幻小说是一种能激发我们对未来感兴趣的题材，扩大我们的思维广度。它是人们探索精神的体现。

problematic. It owes as much to the Gothic novel and the roman d'épouvante as it does to Utopian writing and the exoticism of the roman d'aventures. But its concerns have remained consistent: cybernetics (androids, humanoids, mutants), nuclear and bacteriological apocalypse, parallel realities, the deconstruction of temporal, spatial, and psychological categories, parasitical aliens, a bureaucracy of machines.

In my opinion, science fiction is a literary genre that extrapolates from existing knowledge about the real world to speculate about alternative worlds. It always includes an element of the fantastic, since it aims to go beyond what is, to give a literary model of "what if?" 

Science fiction is a popular modern branch of prose fiction that explores the probable consequences of some improbable or impossible transformation of the basic conditions of human (or intelligent non‐human) existence as well as a form of literary fantasy or romance that often draws upon earlier kinds of utopian and apocalyptic writing. 

This transformation need not be brought about by a technological invention, but may involve some mutation of known biological or physical reality, e.g. time travel, extraterrestrial invasion, ecological catastrophe. 

In summary, science fiction texts are often set in the future, in space, on a different world, or in a different universe or dimension. The plot creates situations different from those of both the present day and the known past. Unlike pure fantasy or utopian literature, however, science fiction posits a rational exploration of as-yet inexplicable phenomena and unknown corners of the human psyche. Science fiction texts always include a human element, explaining what effect new discoveries, happenings and scientific developments will have on us in the future. 

References
[1] H. Baudin, La Science-Fiction (1971)
[2]J. Van Herp, Panorama de la science-fiction: les thèmes, les genres, les écoles, les problèmes (1973)
[3] Fetzer, Leland, ed. (1982). Pre-Revolutionary Russian Science Fiction: An Anthology. Ann Arbor: Ardis.
[4] Gomel, Elana. (1999). "Science Fiction in Russia: From Utopia to New Age." Science Fiction Studies 26(3): 435 - 441.
[5] Howell, Yvonne. (1994). Apocalyptic Realism: The Science Fiction of Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. New York: Peter Lang.
[6] Suvin, Darko. (1979). "Russian SF and Its Utopian Tradition." In Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: On the Poetics and History of a Literary Genre. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
[7] See H. Harrison and B. W. Aldiss, ed., Astounding-Analog Reader (1973);
[8] B. W. Aldiss, Billion Year Spree: The History of Science Fiction (1973); 
[9] B. Stableford, Masters of Science Fiction (1981); N. Barron, ed., Anatomy of Wonder (1981); 
[10] E. Rabkin, ed., Science Fiction (1983); 
[11]J. Gunn, ed., The New Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1988); 
[12] E. James and F. Mendelsohn, The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (2003).




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