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In conversation with someone I had just been introduced to at a friend's birthday the topic of science fiction and fantasy came up. I did declare that I like science fiction and am not as keen on fantasy in general (with exceptions). My interlocutor winced. She likes fantasy and hates science fiction. Curiously, she likes Star Wars. I pointed out that to me SW looks a bit more like fantasy rather than SF. Science fiction to me is not about spaceships and space dogfights with death rays, it is not about alien invasions. It is about asking some big questions, why are we in the universe, why is there a universe and what else there could be out there.
Philip K Dick doesn't do spaceships, Neal Stephenson doesn't much do spaceships -there is one spaceship in Anathem but that is almost incidental-. I see why Stephenson prefers to call what he does 'speculative fiction', given that 'sci-fi' has acquired some facile, trashy connotations. Isaac Asimov in an essay was making a distinction between 'sci-fi' and science fiction. Tried to find the article in question but only found this reference to it: https://www.sarahfobes.com/sci-fi/asimov-on-science-fiction/ -I pretty much concur in his appreciation of the subject -but I would go beyond what appears in the paragraph I quote and refer back to the big questions, perhaps unanswerable ones.
“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all.”
“We can define “sci-fi” as trashy material sometimes confused, by ignorant people, with Science Fiction. Thus, Star Trek is Science Fiction, while Godzilla Meets Mothra is sci-fi.”
“What’s importance about science fiction, even crucial, is the very thing that gave it birth-the perception of change through technology. It is not that science fiction predicts this particular change or that that makes it important, it is that it predicts change. It is change, continuing change inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the word as it will be – and naturally this means that there must be an accurate perception of the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our Everyman, must take on a science fictional way of thinking, whether he likes it or not or even whether he knows it or not. Only so can the deadly problems of today be solved.”
Philip K Dick doesn't do spaceships, Neal Stephenson doesn't much do spaceships -there is one spaceship in Anathem but that is almost incidental-. I see why Stephenson prefers to call what he does 'speculative fiction', given that 'sci-fi' has acquired some facile, trashy connotations. Isaac Asimov in an essay was making a distinction between 'sci-fi' and science fiction. Tried to find the article in question but only found this reference to it: https://www.sarahfobes.com/sci-fi/asimov-on-science-fiction/ -I pretty much concur in his appreciation of the subject -but I would go beyond what appears in the paragraph I quote and refer back to the big questions, perhaps unanswerable ones.
“Individual science fiction stories may seem as trivial as ever to the blinder critics and philosophers of today — but the core of science fiction, its essence has become crucial to our salvation, if we are to be saved at all.”
“We can define “sci-fi” as trashy material sometimes confused, by ignorant people, with Science Fiction. Thus, Star Trek is Science Fiction, while Godzilla Meets Mothra is sci-fi.”
“What’s importance about science fiction, even crucial, is the very thing that gave it birth-the perception of change through technology. It is not that science fiction predicts this particular change or that that makes it important, it is that it predicts change. It is change, continuing change inevitable change, that is the dominant factor in society today. No sensible decision can be made any longer without taking into account not only the world as it is, but the word as it will be – and naturally this means that there must be an accurate perception of the world as it will be. This, in turn, means that our statesmen, our businessmen, our Everyman, must take on a science fictional way of thinking, whether he likes it or not or even whether he knows it or not. Only so can the deadly problems of today be solved.”
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