Definitions of Science Fiction ( Sci-Fi )

Wikipedia, SF : "Science Fiction is a broad genre of fiction that often involves speculations based on current science or technology. It is commonly abbreviated as SF or sci-fi. Science fiction is found in books, art, television, movies, games, theater, and other media." [top]

New York Times : "A novel, short story, play or the like, that combines science and fantasy. Science Fiction deals with life in the future, in other galaxies, or in other fantastic situations, usually making much use of recent discoveries of technology and advances in science. Science Fiction is as old as the myth of Icarus and Daedalus." [top]

Robert J. Sawyer : "Science fiction is the mainstream literature of a plausible alternative reality." [top]

Rod Sterling : "Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible." [top]

Frederik Pohl : "Science fiction is what science fiction fans mean when they point to something and say, 'That's science fiction'." [top]

Terry Carr : "Science Fiction is literature about the future, telling stories of the marvels we hope to see--or for our descendants to see--tomorrow, in the next century, or in the limitless duration of time." [top]

Arthur C. Clarke : "One of the biggest roles of science fiction is to prepare people to accept the future without pain and to encourage a flexibility of mind. Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories." [top]

Roy W. Penn : "Science Fiction is the ultimate trip in the literary world. Not bound by the day-to-day realities of what we see about us, Science Fiction transports the reader to far, unknown times and places, and introduces characters not only stranger than we ever imagined, but sometimes even stranger than we can imagine." [top]

Tom Shippey : "Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it." [top]

Dick Riley : "At its best, Science Fiction has no peer in creating another universe of experience, in showing us what we look like in the mirror of technological society or through the eyes of a non-human." [top]

Barry N. Malzberg : "Science fiction is 'that branch of fiction that deals with the possible effects of an altered technology or social system on mankind in an imagined future, an altered present, or an alternative past'." [top]

Theodore Sturgeon : "A good science-fiction story is a story about human beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, that would not have happened at all without its science content." [top]

Judith Merril : "So-called 'science fiction' is speculative or extrapolative literature (or sometimes visual art or music) dealing in some way with the idea of change--most often changing human responses to the altered, or shifting, environment of some alternative reality. Most often, simply, 'future fiction'." [top]

Michael A. Burstein : "Science fiction encompasses: all stories set in the future; all alternate history stories; all stories set on other worlds; all stories that contradict the laws of nature as we believe we now understand them; and all stories that assume a higher level of technology than we have now." [top]

Ray Bradbury : "Science fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together." [top]

John W. Campbell, Jr. : "The major distinction between fantasy and science fiction is, simply, that science fiction uses one, or a very, very few new postulates, and develops the rigidly consistent logical consequences of these limited postulates. Fantasy makes its rules as it goes along... The basic nature of fantasy is "The only rule is, make up a new rule any time you need one!" The basic rule of science fiction is "Set up a basic proposition--then develop its consistent, logical consequences." [top]

Vincent H. Gaddis : "Science fiction expressses the dreams that, varied and modified, later becomes the visions and then the realities in scientific progress. Unlike fantasy they present probabilities in their basic structure and create a reservoir of imaginative thought that sometimes can inspire more practical thinking." [top]

Philip K. Dick : "Science fiction involves a suspension of disbelief which is different than that involved with fantasy. In fantasy, you never go back to believing that there are trolls, unicorns, witches, and so on. But in science fiction, you read it, and it's not true now, but there are things which are not true now which are going to be someday." [top]

Isaac Asimov : "Modern science fiction is the only form of literature that consistently considers the nature of the changes that face us, the possible consequences, and the possible solutions. That branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings." [top]

Gerald Heard : "Science fiction in the hand of character-draughtsman can create a new contemporary tension-of-choice, new moral decisions, and so indicate how they may be faced or flunked. In its aim it is bound, by its extrapolation of science and its use of dramatic plot, to view man and his machines and his environment as a three-fold whole, the machine being the hyphen. It also views man's psyche, man's physique and the entire life process as also a threefold interacting unit. Science fiction is the prophetic ... the apocalyptic litterature of our particular culminating epoch of crisis." [top]

William Gibson : "There's just no way of saying whether there's limits there or not. In terms of what we could understand, that would be a kind of absolute limit, like the lip of a black hole. Once human history goes over that, who knows? In any case, that's the point at which Science Fiction is over." [Laughs] [top]

James O. Bailey : "The touchstone for scientific fiction, then, is that it describes an imaginary invention or discovery in the natural sciences. The most serious pieces of this fiction arise from speculation about what may happen if science makes an extraordinary discovery. The romance is an attempt to anticipate this discovery and its impact upon society, and to foresee how mankind may adjust to the new condition." [top]

Groff Conklin : "The best definition of science fiction is that it consists of stories in which one or more definitely scientific notion or theory or actual discovery is extrapolated, played with, embroided on, in a non-logical, or fictional sense, and thus carried beyond the realm of the immediately possible in an effort to see how much fun the author and reader can have exploring the imaginary outer reaches of a given idea's potentialities." [top]

Sam Moskowitz : "Science fiction is a branch of fantasy identifiable by the fact that it eases the "willing suspension of disbelief" on the part of its readers by utilizing an atmosphere of scientific credibility for its imaginative speculations in physical science, space, time, social science, and philosophy." [top]

Amit Goswami : "Science Fiction is that class of fiction which contains the currents of change in science and society. It concerns itself with the critique, extension, revision, and conspiracy of revolution, all directed against static scientific paradigms. Its goal is to prompt a paradigm shift to a new view that will be more responsive and true to nature." [top]

Lester Del Rey : " ... science fiction is the myth-making principle of human nature today." [top]

Wikipedia, Hard SF : " Hard Science Fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by an emphasis on scientific or technical detail, or on scientific accuracy, or on both." [top]

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