Science Fiction is the current name for a class of prose
narrative which assumes an imaginary technological or scientific progress, or
depends upon an imaginary change in the human environment. Such narrative were
first labeled “Science Friction” by the American magazine of the 1920’s, though
the term previously used in Britain was ”Scientific Romance”, and many
contemporary writers and critics preferred “Speculative Fiction”. Narrations of
this kind are distinguished from other kind of fantastic narrative by the claim
that they respect the limits of scientific possibility. It also referred to stories that appeared in cheap, so-called pulp
magazines, but science fiction now appears in all media, including motion
pictures, staged dramas, television programs, and video games, as well as short
stories and book-length works.
The Early Times: Although
elements of science fiction appear in many stories of imaginary voyages
including in those of Lucian, the Greek writer of the second century, and
swift’sGulliver’s travels, it is only in the 19th century
that the advancement of science began to inspire a good deal of work, in the
vain. Science fictional themes play a significant part In the work of Edgar
Allan Poe and Hawthorne, and Mary Shelley’sFrankenstein is a
notable early example. In this tale Frankenstein, a student natural philosophy,
unnatural strength, this creature looks horrible but is eager to be loved.
Frankenstein ultimately agrees to make a mate for him, but later in a wave of
remorse, destroy the female he has been constructing, the creature swears
revenge on his creature, and kill Frankenstein’s bride on their wedding night.
Frankenstein decided to destroy his creature and after a chase across the
world, the two confront each other in the Arctic wastes. Frankenstein dies and
the creature who mourns for his creator disappears into the wilderness. Bulwer
– Lytton’s The Coming Race describes a visit to
subterranean race of superior beings that live in the depth of the earth. They
have developed a highly sophisticated civilization and the author points to
their superiority to the present civilization on the surface.
The Later Times: Jules
Verne the French novelist in the 19th century is one of the
immortal in the realm of science fiction. Among his most successful tales are A
Journey To The Centre Of The Earth, Round The Earth In Twenty Four
Days and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea,
which recounts the advantages of Captain Nemo on the submarine Nautilus. Among
the British by far the most ambitious as well as most successful author at the
beginning of the 29th century was H.G. Wells. His first work, The
Time Machine, is based on the invention of a machine which can travel
through time, enabling him to examine the destiny of the human race. The
Invisible Man is based upon a scientist who fatally stumbles upon
the secret of invisibility. The War Of The Worlds is a
powerful and apocalyptic vision of the world invaded by people from Mars. All
resistance to them fails, but ultimately the horrible Martian’s armored weapons
prove ineffective against the ravage of earthly bacteria which succeed where
men’s best effort failed. Other novels of Wells include The First
Men On The Moon and The Food The Gods.
Inherent Irony: Science
fiction also led to negative or dystrophic views of the world’s present
materialistic and scientific progress. Aldus Huxley’s Brave New
World, written in this mode, describes the state of affairs in the year
632. After ford – that is, the twenty sixth century – in which the means of
production are in state ownership. Biological engineering or “eugenics” fit
different categories of workers – Alphas, Betas, Gammas etc – to their stations
in life, and universal happiness is preserved by psychotropic drugs. The work
provides a scathing criticism of the values implicit in the myth of social
salvation through technological progress. George Orwell’s Nineteen
Eighty - Four , written in 1958, describes England as
part of the super stateOceania in the year 1984. It is ruled to the party,
and the party’s workers are constantly rewriting history or redesigning the
language with aim of controlling men’s thought absolutely. One who even thinks
against the state is guilty of thought – crimes and his spirit is broken and
made to surrender to the state.Diversified
Themes: Science fiction also sometimes presented a state of
affairs when the entire traditional religious system seemed to have crumble
away, to be replaced by a scientific perspective. The earth was a tiny atom in
as infinity Universe, and man’s dominion but billions of years. One example is The
Host World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle in which the author evidently
influenced by Darwin’s Origin Of Species described
the discovery of a lost world of the pre-historic animals including the famous
“missing link” which unites man with the animal. Jack London’sThe Iron
Heel gives a socialist vision of the historically inevitable
demise of capitalism, and is in the form of a manuscript edited by a man who
lives in the fourth century of the Brotherhood of Man.
Intellectual
sophistication: Isaac Asimov and Robert Heinlein brought a
measure of intellectual sophistication to science fiction while retaining
its imaginative fertility and adventurousness. A professor of
biochemistry at Boston, he wrote which at once dealt worth in the romance
of source of science and explained basic scientific theories. Some of his
science fiction stories are the most popular ever produced, specially those
collected in the three volume Foundation series and the
classic collection, I-robot which made famous the ‘ Three Laws Of Robotics’.
Heinlein was the first writer to fit a number of stories together into a
coherent future history, all of which are collected in The Past
through Tomorrow. History features as ‘an alternate world’ in some of
his novels. His understanding of technology and enthusiasm for the myth of the
conquest of space made him an outstanding bestseller. It is noteworthy that
both Asimov and Heinlein owe a debt to korel Capek, a Czech novelist and
dramatist, who introduced, as early as in the 1920’s, such motifs as
interplanetary travel, robots, mechanical brain, atomic weapon and destruction
of the world as a result of its own technological achievement. His best known
independent work was R.U.R a play set ‘on a remote
island in 1950-60’ (the play was written in 1920). The title stands for
‘Rossum’s Universal Robot’s, and the concept of the mechanical ‘robot’ – a word
coined from the Czech “robota” meaning drudgery – opened up a whole new vein of
science fiction.
More on Modern
Times: A new generation of post World War II writers
– John Wyndham, Brian Aldiss and J.G.Ballard – retain a strong interest in the
catastrophic tradition. In novels such as The Day of the Triffids and The
Chrysalides he focuses on the reactions of ordinary people to
terrible circumstances which plunge them into a struggle for survival. These
anxious fantasies are preoccupied with the difficulty of preserving the values
of English decency in hostile conditions. Aldess, in novels like Non
– Stop and Greybeard develops stock themes
of science fiction in a thoughtful and stylish manner. There are fantasies of
the far future, satires, antinovels and descriptions of the aftermath of a
psycho-chemical war. Ballard is an avant garde writer of science fiction,
and his novels focus on the psychological adoptions made by his central
characters to natural catastrophes the most famous being The Drowned
World and The Drought.
The two most successful contemporary science fiction writers are
the British Arthur Clark and the American J.R.R Tolkien. As a writer and
popularize of science and as a writer of optimizer Clark has been an
ardent champion of technological progress. His novels deal with space
exploration hypothetical communications and are realist in treatment. These includeRendezvous
with Rama and Imperial Earth. Later works like A
Space Odyssey and Odyssey Two emphasize
the visionary element in his work. Pessimistic, in contrast to Clarke, Tolkien
is a fantasy writer menacing dragons who prey on the idealized rural communities
in which the stories are set. In J. R. R. Tolkien's The Lord Of
The Ring , an equally reluctant hobbit hero Frodo Bagginshas
to save the world from appalling evil.
Conclusion: Thus,
the genre of science – fiction has developed and is continuing to develop in
diverse directions. Indeed, the boundaries of the genre are now more difficult
to outline than ever before, since many mainstream novelists like Thomas
Pynchon and Gore Vidal have started using science fiction elements in their
works.
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