Recently I’ve been engaged in a little reading project – reading post-Hiroshima End of the World science fiction side by side with the best mainstream literature of the 1950’s. What I see is that 1950’s sci-fi at the time ignored the last 100 years of development in literature, while the mainstream literature of the time ignored the last 100 years of technological development. Very slowly, this has changed over the last 60 years, and we’ve reached the point where things are getting really exciting…
Guardian columnist Damien Walter on “Why Science Fiction is the Literature of Change:
Perhaps more than any other literary genre, SF responded to a 20th Century that was driven by wave upon wave of technological change. For millions of readers SF became a trusted guide to a world being transformed by scientific discoveries so fundamental that the world of 2001 would have made little or no sense to the people of 1901. The physical changes have been vast, but psychological impact has also been vast, and there the literature of SF: Science Fiction, Fantasy and Horror, have all emerged as ways of exploring the psychology of our changing century.
I have no doubt that the changes ahead of us in the 21st century will make the 20th seem positively pedestrian. And from the ever growing popularity of SF, I believe many other people feel the same. SF is no longer an emerging literary genre. It is established and here to stay, although its appearance may, in deed will, change radically. And more and more people recognise that, while it has its roots in the pulp and the popular, SF provides one of the best ways of examining the rapidly changing world around us. Because, once one strips surface appearance of SF, the rockets and rayguns and swords and sorcery that define Sci-Fi in the popular imagination, once the furniture of genre is carted off, the literary heart of SF is the metaphor.
One final comment: obviously the merger is not complete – the fact the millions of sci-fi readers saw their favorite literature as “a trusted guide” is part of the problem. The genuine attempts at supposedly realistic cultural and technological prediction are for me among the least compelling aspects of science fiction. The literary hear of SF really is the metaphor.
The Finch and Pea 
Fascinating stuff and interesting blog too! I just wrote a blog entry with parallel themes about the failure of mainstream sci-fi to deliver a viable future and becoming a kind of anachronistic history lesson of sorts.
Predictions about the future always seemed to me to be kind of a side-show. It’s cliché to say that the key to these future stories is how they resemble the present, but its true. A great example I recently read is Maureen McHugh’s stories in After the Apocalypse – stories of refugees trying to make their way to Canada and criminals sent to fight it out in zombie preserves have a familiar ring in our era of the war on terror, post-Katrina New Orleans, and the practices at Guantanamo Bay.
Hello,
Whilst I believe parts of the SF genre will merge with the literary works, other parts of SF will continue to pave the way, where literary writers can only follow. This is particularly true of hard science fiction. The reasons are complicated,, but some can be found on my blog.
That also seems to be one of Damien Walter’s points and I agree – sci-fi has developed ways of writing about our experiences with technology that are being adopted by writers outside the genre. And of course we now have an increasing number of writers who grew up voraciously reading both Philip Dick and Philip Roth.