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SCIENCE FICTION Notes including • Introduction to Science Fiction • Critical Commentaries 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea The Time Machine I, Robot The Demolished Man Childhood's End Conjure Wife Mission of Gravity A Canticle for Leibowitz Dune The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress Rite of Passage The Left Hand of Darkness Ringworld • Critical Essays • Selected Bibliography by L. David Allen, M.A. Department of English University of Nebraska
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Cliffs Notes on Science Fiction © 1973
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INTRODUCTION TO SCIENCE FICTION Although it doesn't really prove anything, and although there are as many dangers to pigeon-holing as there are advantages, it is sometimes helpful to have some kind of categories and subcategories to help one sort things out. It is important to remember that any label emphasizes a single aspect of a work and plays down all the rest of the work; consequently, if such labeling becomes an end in itself rather than a momentary convenience, the richness and worth of the literary work are virtually destroyed. Furthermore, many sets of labels take no notice of gradations in emphasis, leaving little room for a work that is not purely one thing or another--and most literary works, or anything else for that matter, are not pure anything. Finally, any set of labels can be argued with and rejected by anyone with a different point-ofview. Even with these warnings, it is with some trepidation that the following set of categories for science fiction are offered. The first category, then, might be called Hard Science Fiction. This would be science fiction in which the major impetus for the exploration which takes place is one of the so-called hard, or physical, sciences, including chemistry, physics, biology, astronomy, geology, and possibly mathematics, as well as the technology associated with, or growing out of, one of those sciences. Such sciences, and consequently any science fiction based on them, assume the existence of an orderly universe whose laws are regular and discoverable. Under Hard Science Fiction, we can further divide stories into Gadget stories, Extrapolative stories, and Speculative stories. Gadget stories are those in which the main interest is in how some machine, or set of machines, work, or in the development of a machine or other technological device. There are, fortunately, very few of these around any more. Extrapolative stories are those which take current knowledge from one of the sciences and logically project what might be the next steps taken in that science; also included are those stories which take currently accepted knowledge or theory and either apply it in a new context to show its implications or build a world around a particular set of facts. Speculative stories are generally projected farther into the future than Extrapolative stories and consequently have some difficulty in projecting the logical development of a science; however, the sciences involved in such stories are similar to the sciences we know now and are based in them. A second general category can be labeled Soft Science Fiction. This encompasses science fiction in which the major impetus for the exploration is one of the so-called soft sciences; that is, sciences focusing on human activities, most of which have not been fully accepted as being as rigorous or as capable of prediction as the physical sciences. Soft Science Fiction would include any stories based on such organized approaches to knowledge as sociology, psychology, anthropology, political science, historiography, theology, linguistics, and some approaches to myth. Stories about any technology related to these would also come under this heading. In this category as well, the assumption of an ord