RESEARCHING SCIENCE FICTION – BASIC GUIDELINES Sara Martín Alegre Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
[email protected] September 2012 From: http://myjetpack.tumblr.com/page/3 1. TO BEGIN WITH… If you’re reading this document, you must be in all likelihood already a reader of science fiction (or SF, or sf). (Or maybe just interested or curious?) To begin with, you might want to consider what we mean by SF, or, as others prefer to call it, ‘speculative fiction.’ My own view is quite simple: SF offers plots which answer a ‘what if?’ question based on technological and scientific speculation. We need to distinguish, thus, between fantasy, which responds to an impossible, magic ‘what if…?’ (‘what if people could fly?’), from SF, which responds to a ‘what if…?’ that might perhaps happen if science and technology advance in a certain direction (‘what if humans could fly to Mars?’) Before embarking on academic work in this field you need to consider the following: *the list of authors/works you have read so far (and in which language): make it! (who’s your favourite, by the way, and why?) *your connections with fandom, if any *why you enjoy this particular genre (try giving yourself 3 reasons) *which media interests you more (print, including comics; screen: TV, film, videogames) 1 *which sub-genre you like best (from: https://www.worldswithoutend.com/resources_sub-genres.asp. Please, note that this is, rather, a list of themes often combined) Science Fiction Sub-Genres Alien Invasion Hard SF Singularity Alternate History (SF) Human Development