Science Fiction: The Medieval Romance

In order to study the scientific romances in context to other literary genres we need to go back to the chivalric romance of the Middle Ages and the Gothic novel of the late eighteenth century which can be called the ancestors of prose romance .Malory’s Morte de’ Arthur deserves special mention as it marks the birth of romances in England, it was the first English book in poetic prose and Thomas More’s Utopia(1516) can be considered as another important book which had germs of the present day novel. Gradually the medieval romance lost its popularity with the advent of picaresque tales of adventure which later resulted in the development of heroic romance which came into significance with the publication of Sir Philip Sydney’s Arcadia in 1590.The

If a writer of romance makes use of his arbitrary judgement, the science fiction writers cloak that arbitrariness under the mask of necessity and the writer of realistic fiction hides the fundamental arbitrariness under the garb of verisimilitude. Science fiction has been described as a romance basically because its subject matter is essentially romantic in nature; presenting the sheer excitement as well as the horrors of the new vistas opened up by the progress and development of science and technology but its purpose is not just to amaze and astound its readers, therefore, science fiction being termed as ‘literature of wonder’ is not completely true. In fact science fiction comes much closer to be regarded as ‘contemporary mythology’ as it offers such tales of adventure and fantasy which deals with the prospects and destiny of man and his universe. This brand of fiction has a small section of the society as its ardent devotees who are the believers of scientific principles and theories and use it as a mode of expression for today’s ideological fantasies by first estranging the readers by presenting

; the scientists, astronauts, the aliens etc. and it has a cosmic and universal appeal involving the entire mankind. This concern for the future of human race has also earned it the status of ‘vision literature’ a branch of futurology or in other words the science of social forecasting and thus raising the science fiction writers to the status of social prophets and the tale of the future is the main representative of the epic mode in science fiction .Thus we find that; “Science fiction is often closer than realistic fiction to the old epics by virtue of its universal scale, the scope it allows for heroic enterprise, and its concern with man’s confrontation with non- empirical and extra terrestrial forces.” (3) But the science fiction epics find it very difficult to present their futuristic views in convincing details, therefore, they are brief and allegorical and can be termed as the truncated epic or an epic fable rather than the long continuous narratives of classical form of epics comprising of twelve books! Wells’ The Time Machine (1895) is the best example of this kind where a voyage of thirty million years into future has been narrated in around 30,000 words. Patrick