Science And Literature: The Influence Of Science Fiction

1. Introduction From groundbreaking novel of ideas to blockbuster films and television. It is evident that Science Fiction has been one of the most important genres in our time. Its widespread influence across several medias such as; novel, films, computer games, comic books or ‘graphic novel’ and radio, created a huge impact to the society. In science fiction, the potential consquences of science and other innovations are being explored, thus being called the ‘Literature of ideas’ (Gilks, Fleming, & Allen, 2003).

Writers dabbling in the art of science fiction before we had this kind of technology write about a future wherein they possess this said technology. Science fiction has a knack for going beyond, and reaching that marker,

Most people know what science fiction is in some sense, but somehow finds a difficulty in specifying it from other imaginative and fantastic literature. Every bookstore across the globe will surely have section devoted to science fiction: Shelves filled with brighty-colored books with photorealist illustration of intricate spaceships or men and women in futuristic cities. These novels are mostly narrative, elaborating on both imaginative and fantastic premise. It also involves a postulated future society, bizarre encounters with creature from another planet and travel between planets or in time. Science Fiction as a genre or division in Literature creates a distinctive feature between its fictional world from the world we actually live. In other words, It is a fiction of the imagination rather than the observed

Science fiction is difficult to define because it involves a wide range of subgenres and themes. According to Damon Knight, who summed up the difficulty of defining science fiction, ‘Science fiction is what we point to when we say it’ (Knight,1967). Mark Glassy, the author of The Biology of Science fiction Cinema, argued that ‘the definition of science fiction is like the definition of pornography: you do not know what it is, but you know it when you see it’ (Glassy,2001). For some reason, some critics are contented with the definitions of the mode, which are mere tautologies. Lance Parkin says that, ‘Science fiction is a notoriously difficult term to define, but when it comes down to it, a book appears on the SF shelves if the publisher thinks they will maximize their sales by labeling it as such’ (Parkin,1999:4). The mistrust of definition has brought interesting implications to the self-image of Science Fiction as a