I will go for the definition from David Gerrod (writer of “The Trouble with Tribbles” from Star Trek):
Another item to take into account when differentiating Science Fiction from Fantasy and other genres: Bolognium.
Bolognium is a term coined by Larry Niven, to describe that element of a science fiction story that cannot be explained by current science. The “scritch” material in his Ringworld is bolognium. Transporter technology in Star Trek is bolognium.
In the same book, David Gerrod then applies the bolognium to science fiction and fantasy:
[Paraphrasing]
Mr. Niven suggests that one piece of bolognium is enough per story.
With two pieces of bolognium the story requires significant skill in juggling and should not be attempted by beginners.
3 pieces of bolognium is reaching critical mass, only grand sci-fi masters should attempt it.
Stories with four or more pieces are called “fantasies”
A:
Any fantasy story where the fantastical elements are explained away with technobabble.
or B:
Any story with technological levels significantly higher then we have now usually explained with largely speculative, if not completely fabricated, science.
Well I see scifi as almost more of a type of setting then a genre. I mean you could tell any type of story with a sci fi backdrop.
a, c: Horror in a sci fi setting
b: Sci fi because the fantasy elements(the force) are explained with technobabble(medichlorians)
d: Sci fi because the time travel is explained with technobabble.
e: Like I said I think of sci fi as more of a setting then a genre per say. And therefore it can certainly coexist with genres. But then I also think any genre can coexist and that it’s probably possible to have a story that doesn’t fit into any genres. The Fifth Element for example could be considered an Action, Comedy, Science Fiction(spaceships, aliens, laser weapons, etc), Fantasy(the elements at the end used to resolve the plot). I see no reason to force any story into a single genre title.
I’ve read arguments that Frankenstein is the first real science fiction novel. I find them pretty convincing, but YMMV.
Star Wars I’ve always classified – like the Fantastic Four comic books – as Science Fantasy. It’s got the trappings of science fiction, but doesn’t care about accuracy, extrapolation, or the laws of physics.
Unfortunately, that holds true for a lot of things normally called “science fiction” as well. Are Dune and its sequels barred from being science fiction because of things like “Oracular Vision”? How about works in which an Imaginary Science is created and rigidly adhered to? It’s pretty tough to make hard and fast rules that wouldn’t disqualify an awful lot of what people consider science fiction. Heck, while Time Travel of a sort is allowed by modern physics, most of the things Time Machines do in popular stories isn’t, and is really Imaginary Science. Is Back to the Future science fiction if it involves Imaginary Science? Depends on who’s doing the classifying.
Answer: Yes. Trying to separate out Horror and Science Fiction is a pointless game, in my mind. Is H.P. Lovecraft Fantasy or Horror? Or Horror-Fantasy?
(Actually, Terminator doesn’t look to me like horror at all – it’s pretty pure SF. At least until you start trying to get technical about Time Travel)
People have been debating the definition the day after Gernsbeck’s Amazing Stories first came out (though they called it “scientifiction” then).
There is only one complete and accurate definitions:
*Science fiction is what I’m pointing at when I say, “this is science fiction.” *(Damon Knight).
People may scoff, but as Samuel R. Delany has pointed out, there is no way to come up with a definition that includes everything the definer consider science fiction that also excludes everything the definer does not include science fiction. Delany also elsewhere made the point that defining “science fiction” by defining “science” and “fiction” completely missing what “science fiction” is about. It’s like defining a baseball “shortstop” as “someone lacking in height who stops when running the basepaths.”
In any case, if you want the SF writer’s working definition, it’s:
Science fiction is a story which, if the scientific element is removed, there’d be no story.
Of course, if you read science fiction, you’ll notice that only a small part of it these days fits this definition.
What I find as a better critical definition is this:
“Science fiction is a form of fantasy where the fantasy elements have a ‘scientific’ explanation.”
This covers the field quite nicely. The difference between fantasy and science fiction only really involves trivial and superficial issues, not the root of what they are.
Science fiction also has been, since the days of Hugo Gernsback, a marketing term. Pulp magazines, books, movies, games, comic books and every other possible form has been marketed as science fiction because the people who want to sell the thing believe there is a specific audience who seeks out science fiction and by labeling it that way they will better reach that market.
The marketing sense of science fiction, as well as fantasy and horror, has always been far greater than the literary definition of those genres. It’s how Kurt Vonnegut and William Gibson and Stephen Baxter and Ray Bradbury and Ursula LeGuin all get moshed together under the same label. It’s why Eternal Sunshine and Being John Malkovich never get referred to as science fiction movies although they are core to the genre, being about ideas rather than spaceships and robots.*
Obviously there is a lot of overlap between the marketing and the literary senses, but the overlap among science fiction, fantasy, and horror is purely literary as they are almost never marketed as hybrids. That confuses people. It’s the same way that f&sf/mysteries are normally marketed as f&sf and almost never as mysteries. For some reason f&sf readers go for mysteries but mystery readers reject f&sf. Vivian Vande Velde won a Edgar Award for Best Young Adult mystery but the book was sold and marketed purely as a fantasy. It works the other way round as well. Paranormal Romance is frankly admitted to be f&sf but it is marketed almost solely as romance. Mainstream readers also won’t touch anything marketed as f&sf even though virtually every issue of the NYTimes Book Review contains a review of a mainstream book that would clearly be f&sf is mere content were the only thing considered.
The gap between how a work is marketed and what a work consists of confuses almost everybody except marketers. Who don’t care as long as it sells. The rest of us wind up in this 80-year-long argument for a while and then get out for the sake of our sanity.
And we limit our discussion to print because movie sci-fi is normally so much pure crap that the only label for it is crap. Blockbusters are in the blockbuster genre not the sf genre. At least if I have any say over the matter.
Note to the idiots. You can use spaceships and robots to express ideas. It’s the ideas that are primary, not the expression.
Asimov has a good definition in Asimov on Science Fiction. I don’t want to butcher the quote because I don’t have access to my books now, I will look it up later. Maybe someone else is familiar with his essay.
To throw a monkey wrench into the works, consider a story I read (I think in a Hugo winners collection): It’s set in the distant prehistoric past. The tribe’s priests have just declared that pork is taboo, leaving the tribe to eat mostly the much more bland mutton. They’re having difficulty surviving, because the mutton is just too unappealing to eat enough to keep up their strength. But then the chief realizes that that white rock, and that plant with the root in funny break-apart sections, have much more flavor than their size would suggest, and that if he mixes those in with the mutton in the pot, it makes it taste a lot better, and the tribe is saved.
Now, is that science fiction? I would probably say so. But it doesn’t rely on any technology not known to us, it isn’t set in the future, and it may, for all anyone now knows, be completely true.
Exapno Mapcase: I think that’s it. “Science fiction is what I point to and say it is” makes perfect sense if the “I” is defined as “a marketing executive.”
Why would it be? It’s a story about people addressing a problem in a past era. Why isn’t it historical fiction (or prehistorical fiction)?
I find it hard to believe that a tribe would be dangerously close to starvation just because they’re not fond of the taste of their food. It reminds me of an interchange between two Sumerians in Larry Gonick’s Cartoon History of the Universe:
1st Sumerian: Don’t you get tired of just eating bread and onions?
2nd Sumerian: Tired of Food??!
I also find prehistoric people only having the choices of pork and mutton (and of tabooing pork at that level of society) unlikely but I suppose it could have happened.
(The British ate a lot of mutton because of their wool industry – they had to do something with the sheep when they got old. But I’d think that anyone who had sheep would also be likely to have goats. It’s true that Egyptians, Muslims, and some Mesopotamians, in addition to the Jews outlawed eating pig – but they were a bove the primitive level you suggest. And, as a follower of Marvin Harruis’ Cultural Materialist theories, it seems unlikely a taboo to develop until you reach that level of sophistication. But I Could Be Wrong.)
Heh. What about those WILD WILD WEST episodes where the 1800s-era characters would make a big deal about their futuristic 1960s-era gear, be it a television set or a movie projector? (It soon got to be a running gag: an army tank here, a guided missile there…)
I won’t comment on what’s the definition of Science Fiction but I did create a web site to vote and discuss whether various books, movies, etc are Science Fiction or not. It’s called “Is it Science Fiction?” and you can find it here: http://isitsciencefiction.com/
And no, just because a story takes place in the future, that is not SF. (Although it’s rare to place a story in the future and not speculate on technological advancements, though I swear I’ve come across such things. . . . Anyone?) And it’s quite possible to have some of SF’s usual trappings but still not be SF. Somewhere in Time is a time-travel movie, but it’s not SF: Christopher Reeve “travels” in time just by wishing. That’s pure fantasy.
Also, there a lot of examples that don’t seem like SF but actually are. Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind? SF.
Another question: does it have to have a speculative element, or fantasy? Can it be based on current science, or must it by definition “make something up” in order to qualify? Is *ER *science fiction? Is CSI? Granted, *CSI *makes up enough bullshit to qualify, but who thinks of *CSI *as SF?
