It is the wide subject in literature. Science fiction is a genre of speculative fiction typically dealing with imaginativeconcepts such as futuristic science andtechnology, space travel, time travel,faster than light travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. Science fiction often explores the potential consequences of scientific and other innovations, and has been called a "literature of ideas."It usually eschews the supernatural, and unlike the related genre of fantasy, historically science fiction stories were intended to have at least a faint grounding inscience-based fact or theory at the time the story was created, but this connection has become tenuous or non-existent in much of science fiction.
As a means of understanding the world through speculation and storytelling, science fiction has antecedents which go back to an era when the dividing line separating the mythological from the historical tends to become somewhat blurred, though precursors to science fiction as literature can be seen inLucian's True History in the 2nd century, some of the Arabian Nightstales, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutterin the 10th century and Ibn al-Nafis'sTheologus Autodidactus in the 13th century.
A product of the budding Age of Reasonand the development of modern scienceitself, Johannes Kepler's Somnium(1620–1630)., Cyrano de Bergerac'sComical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657), his The States and Empires of the Sun (1662), Margaret Cavendish's "The Blazing World" (1666),Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Ludvig Holberg's novelNicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum (1741) and Voltaire's Micromégas (1752) are some of the first true science fantasy works,which often feature the adventures of the protagonist in fictional and fantastical places, or the moon. Isaac Asimov and Carl Saganconsidered Kepler's work the first science fiction story.It depicts a journey to the Moon and how the Earth's motion is seen from there.
Following the 18th-century development of the novel as a literary form, in the early 19th century, Mary Shelley's booksFrankenstein (1818) and The Last Manhelped define the form of the science fiction novel, and Brian Aldiss has argued that Frankenstein was the first work of science fiction. Later, Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a flight to the moon. More examples appeared throughout the 19th centuries
Then with the dawn of new technologies such as electricity, the telegraph, and new forms of powered transportation, writers including H. G. Wells and Jules Verne created a body of work that became popular across broad cross-sections of society.Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898) describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry. It is a seminal depiction of an alien invasionof Earth.
In the late 19th century, the term "scientific romance" was used in Britain to describe much of this fiction. This produced additional offshoots, such as the 1884 novella Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions by Edwin Abbott Abbott. The term would continue to be used into the early 20th century for writers such as Olaf Stapled.
In the early 20th century, pulp magazines helped develop a new generation of mainly American SF writers, influenced by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Storiesmagazine.In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars, the first of his three-decade-long series of Barsoom novels, situated on Mars and featuring John Carter as the hero. The 1928 publication of Philip Francis Nowlan's original Buck Rogers story,Armageddon 2419, in Amazing Storieswas a landmark event. This story led to comic strips featuring Buck Rogers (1929), Brick Bradford (1933), and Flash Gordon (1934). The comic strips and derivative movie serials greatly popularized science fiction.
In the late 1930s, John W. Campbellbecame editor of Astounding Science Fiction, and a critical mass of new writers emerged in New York City in a group called the Futurians, includingIsaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Donald A. Wollheim, Frederik Pohl, James Blish,Judith Merril, and others.Other important writers during this period include E.E. (Doc) Smith, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Olaf Stapledon, and A. E. van Vogt. Working outside the Campbell influence wereRay Bradbury and Stanisław Lem. Campbell's tenure at Astounding is considered to be the beginning of theGolden Age of science fiction, characterized by hard SF stories celebrating scientific achievement and progress. This lasted until post-war technological advances, new magazines such as Galaxy, edited by H. L. Gold, and a new generation of writers began writing stories with less emphasis on the hard sciences and more on the social sciences.
In the 1950s, the Beat generationincluded speculative writers such asWilliam S. Burroughs. In the 1960s and early 1970s, writers like Frank Herbert,Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny, andHarlan Ellison explored new trends, ideas, and writing styles, while a group of writers, mainly in Britain, became known as the New Wave for their embrace of a high degree of experimentation, both in form and in content, and a highbrow and self-consciously "literary" or artistic sensibility.In the 1970s, writers likeLarry Niven brought new life to hard science fiction. Ursula K. Le Guin and others pioneered soft science fiction.
In the 1980s, cyberpunk authors likeWilliam Gibson turned away from theoptimism and support for progress of traditional science fiction.This dystopian vision of the near future is described in the work of Philip K. Dick, such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and We Can Remember It for You Wholesale, which resulted in the filmsBlade Runner and Total Recall. The Star Wars franchise helped spark a new interest in space opera.C. J. Cherryh's detailed explorations of alienlife and complex scientific challenges influenced a generation of writers.
Emerging themes in the 1990s includedenvironmental issues, the implications of the global Internet and the expanding information universe, questions aboutbiotechnology and nanotechnology, as well as a post-Cold War interest in post-scarcity societies; Neal Stephenson'sThe Diamond Age comprehensively explores these themes. Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan novels brought the character-driven story back into prominence. The television seriesStar Trek: The Next Generation (1987) began a torrent of new SF shows, including three further Star Trek spin-off shows (Deep Space 9, Voyager, andEnterprise) and Babylon 5.[35] Stargate, a movie about an ancient portal to other gates across the galaxy, was released in 1994. Stargate SG-1, a TV series, premiered on July 27, 1997 and lasted 10 seasons with 214 episodes. Spin-offs include the animated television series Stargate Infinity, the TV seriesStargate Atlantis and Stargate Universe, and the direct-to-DVD films Stargate: The Ark of Truth and Stargate: Continuum.Stargate SG-1 surpassed The X-Files as the longest-running North American science fiction television series, a record later broken by Smallville.
Concern about the rapid pace of technological change crystallized around the concept of the technological singularity, popularized by Vernor Vinge's novel Marooned in Realtime and then taken up by other authors.
