Ask most people on the street to define science fiction and they might say “Something like Star Trek or The War of the Worlds.” I would have probably said something similar until I read On the Origin of Species: Mary Shelley by Brian W. Aldiss with David Wingrove (1986). It was then that I thought deeply on the components which form that which we recognize as “science fiction.” Aldiss and Wingrove define the genre as follows:
Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the gothic or post-gothic mode.
I was really interested by the phrase “advanced but confused state of knowledge.” “Advanced” implies there is some baseline state from which we can measure if some work is advanced. However, advanced is relative. As we’ve discover new technologies across the centuries, what might be considered advanced has changed drastically. Even Aldiss and Wingrove, writing in 1986, would likely have defined advanced far differently than I would today.
With many genres, there is a common through-line that connects works across decades and centuries. For instance, a romance novel is a romance novel, whether it was written 200 years ago or today. Yet science fiction might be distinct in that it is so tied to the current state of technology; older works might be obviously as dated when read today. However, I suppose romance and other genres similarly evolve over time, in that the romance novels of the past surely do not reflect the same themes of those of the present. It will be interesting to investigate throughout this class how science fiction evolves in language and ideas from its origin in Mary Shelley’s 1818 to today.
Feminist Science Fictions 