To answer the question “what goes into science fiction,” to explain what its “contents” are, you first need to explain what science fiction is, or what it can be. The authors that we’ve read thus far—Gernsback, Wells, Heinlein, Merril, Russ, Suvin, Miéville, and Chu—provide different, although at times related, explanations of what science fiction is.
A.) Choose four of the following categories:
- Hugo Gernsback (G)- scientification,
- H.G. Wells (W)-scientific fantasy,
- Robert A. Heinlein(H)-gadget story and/or speculative fiction,
- Judith Merril(M)-teaching story, preaching story, and/or speculative fiction JoAnna Russ(R)-science fiction as like—but also different from—satire,
- Darko Suvin(S)-cognitively estranging novum,
- Mark Bould and China Mieville (Mie)-science fiction as the literature of “alterity”
- Chu Seo-Young(C)-science fiction as the “mimetic account” of material “unavailable for straightforward representation”
Go in depth of what each category does for a story. Need to have a good argument.
B.) Begin by summarizing what each of these categories mean. Then compare and contrast the categories that you have chosen. By comparing/contrasting them can you modify/develop/expand/refute/etc. certain elements of these categories and, by doing so, build toward your own explanation of what science fiction is?
C.)Finally, is there a story that we’ve read that exemplifies these two categories considered together (or, better still, your new working explanation of what the contents of science fiction is)?
