Where’s the Science in Science Fiction?

In college, my teachers would lump science fiction with fantasy (not that there’s anything wrong with that). And in a way, I simply accepted that fact since bookstores were basically practicing the same shelving scheme (and with today’s tendency of mixing both genres, that’s fine). But what did surprise me was what people considered science fiction. As a kid, science fiction sounded like this big Star Wars or Star Trek story—you clearly knew it was unbelievable but had its basis on science, even if it was pseudo-science. But science fiction managed to trickle its way into the classroom but what threw me off was the lack of science. I couldn’t help but ask, is this really science fiction?

Of course these days, I know how diverse the science fiction genre is (and in a previous entry, I did mention at how people who are familiar with a particular genre are able to classify specific works into sub-genres). But what’s astounding is the kind of science fiction that made its way in school: books like Lois Lowry’s The Giver, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451, Daniel Keyes’s Flowers for Algernon, and George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. Those books didn’t quite exactly scream out “science fiction!” when I first read them. It was more like “it’s a future earth” or a “dystopian earth” or “metaphorical earth” or in the case of Flowers for Algernon, it’s just the regular world with one exception. (Of course nowadays, I appreciate how those stories are science fiction and how diverse the genre really is to allow such diverse modes of storytelling.)

A part of me wonders: maybe it’s part of the realist fiction conspiracy. Fantasy isn’t tolerated by the literati, but science fiction is because it’s more grounded in reality (thanks to the science part), and the only stories they’ll allow are those that aren’t too off the top (such as the aforementioned books). No spaceships or aliens! Honestly, stories like 1984 and Flowers for Algernon is more like an exaggerated “what if?” fiction than something as unbelievable as science fiction (and the preconceptions of people when it comes to science fiction is probably still along the lines of Star Wars and Star Trek). There’s even the phenomenon of genre writers hiding under the umbrella of science fiction (“I’m not fantasy, I’m really science fiction! And that makes all the difference!”).

It makes me wonder at the “doublethink” of the literati. Science fiction is still a ghetto or relegated to “you’re just genre!” yet a good chunk of significant novels in the 20th century is science fiction. They’re easily saying “I recognize Fahrenheit 451 but I don’t recognize the genre it belongs to.”

Of course what’s interesting to note is that science fiction has always had a history of great stories without needing to be heavy-handed in terms of the science. I mean I was just reading I Am Legend a month ago and it’s easily like Fahrenheit 451 in the sense that it has an urban dystopian feel. And then Isaac Asimov never seemed like heavy for me. My philosopher teacher related to Foundation as a philosophy text more than as a pure science fiction one. (I think the best parlor trick Asimov successfully managed to pull off was when a friend complained that he had read Asimov at under age 13 and understood it all—that’s the conceit of Asimov, his writing is simple yet compelling!) I read Robert Heinlen’s Starship Troopers and surprisingly, for me it’s more of a young adult novel or a military novel and rather than this big, profound story, it’s easily one of the most down-to-earth fiction you could read. The aliens and the technology are really incidental to the story.

And perhaps all that is what most people fail to see—science fiction isn’t just about the science, it’s about the fiction. Does science fiction throw fancy, wacky theories? Sure. But the best stories, period, aren’t sustained by concepts alone (although there are exceptions). I think what characterizes good science fiction is when they resonate with the human condition, something that makes us both feel and think rather than simply stimulating just one of those senses/emotions.