Science fiction: literature or 'space opera'

Q. What is science fiction
A. The dictionary answer is 'fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component' (Webster's). The term was first coined in 1851, but it started to gain more general currency during the 1920s. But the term is broad, as there are areas where science fiction merges with horror, myth and fantasy and literary fiction: the essential ingredients are that the setting be in a futuristic or fictional (often parallel or hypothesised) world that is not meant, at least not literally, to be taken as our own in the present.

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Q. So, literature or space opera
A. Both. Another dictionary definition: space opera, 'a futuristic melodramatic fantasy involving space travellers and extraterrestrial beings', and in its crudest form the genre is little more than that. Which is not to say that fantasies involving space travellers and extraterrestrial beings are necessarily crude, as both the book and film of 2001: A Space Odyssey proved. Many 'literary' writers have used science fiction motifs, particularly future settings, to explore concerns more typically associated with straight high-brow fiction. Classic examples include:

Aldous Huxleys' Brave New World - in which a futuristic utopia is revealed as a dehumanised and sterile society

Anthony Burgess's A Clockwork Orange - which envisions a decadent and lawless society in which gangs of drug-fuelled youths terrorise the rest of the population and speak in an English-Russian argot

The Handmaid's Tale, Margaret Atwood's vision of a morally 'fundamentalist' future America
Depressing stuff, but all great reads.

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Q. Is all literary science fiction so gloomy
A. Much of it is. Novelists working in the genre use the possibilities of not grounding a story in the literal here and now or historically accurate past to present visions of how society might develop in the future. These are often grim predictions based on either a breakdown of structured society -through social degeneration or some kind of Holocaust or Armageddon - or on a hypothesised now as a result of rewriting history, such as Pavane by Keith Roberts, which imagines an England conquered by Spain in 1588, and Fatherland by Robert Harris, which portrays a world in which Germany won the Second World War.

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Writers frequently use this genre as warnings through allegory of the potential for the decline of civilisation. A thriving utopian society is rarely depicted, and if it is, it is as the prelude to decadence as cultural rigor mortis sets in, the will or ability to defend itself wanes and eventually the barbarians invade. It seems that the collective perception of these writers is that the rise and fall of civilisations and empires is the only way human society will proceed. After the rise, the fall and then regeneration in a new form, until . . .

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However, that said, much up-market science fiction isn't always so pessimistic, even when the underlying message is dark or at best resigned.

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Q. Whose on the lit list
A. Hundreds of writers, but some names to try out are Kurt Vonnegut Jr, Ray Bradbury, Arthur C. Clarke, Philip K. Dick, J.G. Ballard, John Wyndham, A. E. van Vogt and Isaac Asimov.

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Q. How long has it been around
A. That depends on what you include. Could Thomas More's Utopia be considered, in the broadest sense, science fiction Probably not. Nor Gulliver's Travels, though both contain elements that would now class a novel as such. Jules Verne, the enormously popular French writer, laid the foundations of modern science fiction in the 19th century with classics such as Journey to the Centre of the Earth, From the Earth to the Moon and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. H.G. Wells, writing around the turn of the 20th century, was a science fiction writer of great vision and imagination. 'The Time Machine', The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon, Tales of Space and Time and The War in the Air all contain elements of uncanny foresight as well as passionate concern for the fate of man and society. From that time on� science fiction has been a major literary genre and continues to be so

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Q. And space opera
A. From the 1920s onwards, in comics and pulp novels as well as films and series such as Flash Gordon, space opera has entertained children of all ages and (often) appalled parents. Superman and his ilk are still with us, though Dan Dare and the Mekon seem to have gone into another dimension. Spin-off books from TV series make up much of the volume of the pulpier (and this is not necessarily a derogatory term here) market. Star Trek and Dr Who are obvious examples. Many so-so writers end up being classified as space opera simply because they weren't great writers, though some, between the laser battles and the sentient-rock life forms manage to get in a few challenging ideas about man and his place in the universe. The space race from the late 1950s into the 1970s engendered a huge amounts of interest in space and space flight and this was a boom time for the genre - helped in no little way, perhaps, by the fashion for hallucinogenic drugs and a less materialistic outlook on the world. It's still out there, though, and don't forget, in space, nobody can hear you scream . . .

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By Simon Smith