Science fiction you say? And what is that exactly?

 My love of science fiction started when I discovered the fiction section in our high school library. I was a fresh faced 12 year old. I grew up on a diet of Winnie the Pooh, Wind in the Willows, Swallows and Amazons, and Robert Louis Stevenson. My favourite character of all time was a boy called Kid Chameleon, who made his colour changing appearance in the Cor magazines I pestered my mum and dad to order for me from England.

My world changed when I happened across a copy of a little book entitled The Runaway Robot, by Lester Del Rey. It was the story of Paul and his robot, Rex. Paul's family are returning to earth from Ganymede, and Rex can't go with them as they can't afford to pay the shipping costs. Paul's father plans to sell the robot, but Paul has other ideas, and he and Rex run away. Of course, it all works out in the end and Rex the robot ends up finding his way to earth.

I was happy to find a well cared for second hand copy of the book online, with what  I assume to be the original cover. I placed my order and waited with growing anticipation for that day the postie brought me a package. The book arrived in good condition. Sometimes they don't survive the long trip across the seas as well as they might. I settled in and read the story with nostalgic delight.

I wonder, was I able to overlook the quirks of Del Rey's writing because it was a story so fondly remembered? I found the narrative taken from Rex's perspective an interesting choice on Del Rey's part. Did it add to the excitement of the hunt, or not?  What if the story had been told by Paul? These are the question a writer faces when they sit down to put the story down on paper.

I closed the book, back when I was 12, and I wanted more. Here was a whole different kind of fiction for me to discover. I could read about robots and strange planets, aliens, science and technology I couldn't begin to imagine. What was next? My first port of call the next day, was, of course the library. There was a little section for Science Fiction, tucked away in a corner of the library over by the window. I wandered over there and ran my eyes over the shelves. They lit upon a thick book by a writer named James Blish. The book was called Cities in Flight. I plucked it quickly from the shelf, lest some other science fiction fan swooped in and nabbed it before I could. I took it up to the circulation desk, with furtive glances to my left and right, to make sure no one was waiting to snatch my prize, and I happily tucked the book into my school bag. I counted the minutes until I could find a quiet place to open and start to read.

According to the Encyclopedia of Science Fiction Blish published his first story "Emergency Refueling" in Super Science Stories, March 1940. The first story in the Cities in Flight series saw the light of publication back in 1956. But the edition I remember was published in 1970 and stitched the novels together into one epic volume. According to the the TOR website, Blish did not write the books in order, which much have been confusing to those who read them first, out of order. Cities in Flight has been touted to fit more in the sub-genre of Space Opera, which is interesting, as it begs the question: Exactly what constitutes Science Fiction?

Hugo Gernsback seemed to have an idea. He suggested that science and technology had to be integral to the plot. Without it the story wouldn't work, it would fall apart and the characters would be left looking up at the stars and wondering. Robert Heinlein, whom some have suggested was perhaps the greatest SF writer suggested that Science Fiction was "realistic speculation about future events."(1)

I'm not sure that one fits very well, as the scientific or technological elements are not at the forefront. The essential question posed in the pages of a science fiction novel seems to be how this science might impact on the human condition in the future. We end up with a myriad worlds where "what if?" is the central question to both the action and development of the characters.

However, the scope is more than just individual, rather opens out into galactic proportions. If your imagination can go there, then someone else's can too, and no doubt in the years since Hugo Gernsback first published Amazing Stories back in April 1926, and started the SF genre ball rolling, I'm sure someone has had a go writing about it.

It is interesting to note before I move on, Gernsback coined the term "scientifiction," for the stories he had started publishing in  Amazing. I am so glad the term didn't stick. There is something utterly contrived about it, and every time I see it written it makes me cringe. I read somewhere recently, it was probably Ben Bova, who won the Hugo award several times for being a super awesome editor, who said serious advocates of Science Fiction, writers, editors, and the like, despised the term Sci-Fi. I'm not sure if that's still the case or if culture has softened towards that hard line stance.

Once definition of "...science fiction is: stories of travel through space (to other worlds, planets, stars); stories of travel through time (into the past or into the future); and stories of imaginary technologies (machinery, robots, computers, cyborgs and cyberculture)."(2)  Adam Roberts - The history of science fiction. This is a fairly solid definition. I have read on multiple occasions over the last few weeks that

 

the very first novel considered to be "true" science fiction is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. One quote suggests that if you take the science out of the equation what you end up with is a story about a failed medical student. It has been quite a while since I read the novel, and I had to go out and buy a copy in order to read it again. I found out that the 1818 edition is the best one to get, and having studied a bit of English literature, I have a soft spot for the scholarship found in the Norton Critical Editions. I was please to find one of them on my old mate Amazon. It arrived in the mail today, and I will start looking at the novel over the next little while I will write a kind of "review as I go," and analyse the book. There is no doubt that it has been influential, and that has to be for a reason.

I will finish off by quoting Ben Bova. "For fiction is an examination of the human spirit, placing that spirit in a crucible where we can test its true worth. In science fiction we can go far beyond the boundaries of the here-and-now to put that crucible any place and any time we  want to, and make the testing fire as hot as can be imagined."  When you read that, it makes you realise how exciting science fiction is as a genre. (Ben Bova, 2016. The craft of writing Science Fiction that sells.)