John C. Wright Explains It All
Author (and blogger of extremely long posts) John C. Wright has joined the long line of people who have tried to define SF. As is not uncommon with such exercises, he presumes we're the standard, and that everything else is more or less flawed. There's a certain "nyah, nyah!" energy to that kind of thing, but I've never been convinced by such arguments.
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A slightly more convincing definition of Science Fiction was offered by the same author: Science Fiction is the mythology of a scientific age.
It differs from other mythologies only in that the various heroes, gods, and monsters of SF must be something accepted by the reader as coming from a scientific world-view: namely, that the universe is a nuetral and inanimate machine controlled by laws open to investigation by the human reason.
If impossibilities, absurdities, or magic appears in an SF story, the appearances are saved if the author treats these things as if they came from investigation of mechanisms of the universe.
Hence, time travel is allowed by the reader, if done by a machine; fate and destiny are allowed in time travel stories, or as a product of statistical economics; faster than light drive is allowed if it is said to be a discovery of a hitherto unknown law; mind-reading is allowed if it is called psionics; demigods are allowed if they are called the products of eugenics, gene-engineering or the next step of evolution.
The emphasis is on exploring the ramifications of the scientific world view on human lives and cultures.
The relationship between real science and science fiction is roughly the same as the relationship between real law and court room dramas: namely, just enough to lend versimilitude. Faster than light drives, time travel, and other unscientific notions are allowed when they spring from speculations, no matter how farfetched, arguably within the scientific world view.
Posted by: John C. Wright | December 30, 2006 03:03 AM