Science Fiction

admin Posted on October 10, 2009

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Science Fiction

What qualities would a book have to have to be considered science fiction?

I have heard the argument that some stories claim to be science fiction and are not. A popular example is Star Wars. It is set in the past rather than the future and has many fantasy elements. The technology level is not comparable to most other science fiction. I am curious because I have written something of similar situations.
In my book, there are multiple planets and space travel. There are also ancient prophecies, 'magical' items and some worlds have little to no technology beyond modern means. Some have even less. Would this be considered science fiction, even though it is not futuristic and doesn't have common sci-fi elements like robots?

To be considered "science fiction," a book or story would need to have the setting, background and/or some of the elements be based on science or technology. It doesn't matter at all whether it's set in the past or future.

Another name for it is "speculative fiction" to emphasize that the science or technology is something we don't have yet. The author is speculating how things might be if we did have the technology. So anything with space travel is science fiction or speculative fiction, because we really can't do much more than get to the moon and back or orbit Earth in a stellite right now. And of course, people wrote of traveling to the moon before we could do it.

"Hard science fiction" inlcudes more of the scientific details. A space travel story might not bother saying much more than that they use a spaceship and go to an Earth-like planet. In a hard SF story, there would be more about how the spaceship works or how warp speed works, or what makes another planet able to support life.

Fantasy elements often do show up in SF books, which is why the genre is often referred to as "science fiction - fantasy." If you think about it, some of what we call "magic" might be forces we just don't know about yet. Fantasy creatures such as centaurs might really exist on other planets.

You can go ahead and call your creation :science fiction" if you feel that's what it is. If it's set in space, it will likely be labeled SF anyway.

the rocky horror picture show-science fiction/double feature