What is science fiction? That's a very good question. Attempts to define of science fiction (aka SF) have led to endless conversation. Two common meanings:
A strict meaning: Science Fiction is the genre of fictional works in which known science and/or technology are extrapolated, in a way that seems scientifically plausible (termed hard SF). At the edge of this are works which explore a universe in which one or more 'laws' of our universe are tweaked in implausible ways to see what happens (e.g. ThePracticeEffect?).
Popular usage is often much broader, including Fantasy, other works that make no attempt at scientific plausibility, alternate histories (aka WhatIf stories), and works in which science & technology are not central at all, but just part of the setting (e.g. StarWars). In this sense, Science Fiction is the genre of fictional works which take place not in our reality and time, but in the future, another universe altogether, and/or in an alternate reality in which events have unfolded differently. Some would use Speculative Fiction instead of Science Fiction here, but that has not caught on outside of a limited circle.
On BookShelved, books that are SF in this broad sense are tagged as VisionsOfWonder.
As to the golden-agers, how could they have predicted the disruptive effect of the minature integrated circuit? And what, we might wonder, are the cyber-wankers^H^H^H^H^H^H^Hpunks getting wrong right now?
It cracks me up, too, that they imagined computers getting bigger, filling whole buildings, as they got more powerful. The "city fathers" AI in JamesBlish's Okie stories even shunt their hardware around on a miniature railway to reconfigure themselves for new problems!
But AstroNomer's observation leads me on to one of my pet observations about SF: it is the fiction of the present, not the future. Even when the stories are set in the future. Whereas non-genre/literary/whatever-the-hell-you-want-to-call-it is the fiction of the past, even when the story is set in the present. Occasionally a contemporary (ie, anachronistic) feature will sneak into a mainstream novel, but almost always as a (conspicuous) gimmick.
Similarly, one can laugh at how wrong Newton was, and wonder how wrong Einstein et al. are.
Hardly. Newton's results were remarkably accurate, given the data he had to work with, Einstein's yet more so again. Newton's big idea (the clockwork universe) turns out not to be the answer to end all questions, but it served us pretty damn well for a few centuries.
Sorry i wasn't clear - not meaning to put Newton or Einstein down, just trying to take the laughter at yesterday's theories and predictions as a reminder to us to be humble about what we believe today.
On the other hand, most of the time even strict-SF authors are not trying to "get it right" but to explore interesting possibilities.
JohnWCampbell's very strict definition: "Presuming adequate education (meaning, at least, a 4 year degree in one of the "hard" sciences...) on the part of the writer, it's SF if he honestly thinks it could happen, and fantasy if he does not."
I strongly doubt it that we're permitted to copy/paste other people's stuff given that bookshelved itself isn't copyleft. I'm also against any attempt to turn bookshelved into an encyclopaedia or a dumping ground for 'content' from other places. There already exist websites where I can read more or less anonymous reviews of every book under the sun. One of the things I value about this wiki is that it truly reflects the highly subjective interests of the members of this community. For instance all but one of DanBrown's books have been reviewed here whilst no one has even mentioned DavidMitchell's CloudAtlas. See AnesthesiologyReview or FiniteAndInfiniteGames for further discussion about the value of subjectivity and history when it comes to weighing reviews. After all if the authors on that list interest people then their names will naturally appear here when someone reviews their books.--ade
I tried reading CloudAtlas. I hated it. -- EarleMartin
By 2007, all 4 of DanBrown's novels have been reviewed here. -- ElizabethWiethoff
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