Continued Reading: A Few Subgenres of SF

To end this section, we will examine a few subgenres of science fiction, subtypes of stories within the larger genre. This list is hardly exhaustive!

Space Opera

Space Opera is probably one of the most immediately recognizable subgenres of science fiction. It usually involves high-stakes epic action at galactic scale; Star Wars is, of course, the quintessential example of a space opera. Within the space opera we might also speak about planetary romances. Plantery romances rely on epic action and adventure, but are usually confined to a single planet (more than one and they become interplanetary romances). Not all space operas need to be melodramatic and filled with gunfights though; in the hand of a writer like Isaac Asmiov, space opera can be downright metaphysical.

Time Travel

Time travel is both a convention and a subgenre. In many texts, time travel is employed but is not the central concern of the text. For example, time travel is not the central concern of Avengers: Endgame; in fact, it is a convenient tool on par with the dimensions through which Dr. Strange travels. In a text such as H.G. Well’s The Time Machine (1895), the mechanism of time travel is the point, thereby featuring time travel in an integral way. Authors use time travel in a lot of decidedly non-science fiction texts, too, and often time travel blurs the distinction between fantasy and science fiction. Perhaps this is because outside of time dilation, time travel seems improbable.

Military SF

Military science fiction is any work of science fiction that portrays and engages with the intricacies of military life. With Starship Troopers, Robert Heinlein invented the genre. Heinlein was, of course, a veteran, and the 1950s were the height of the Cold War, a mentality with which the genre has close ties (think how often heroes battle mindless insect-like hoards meant to allegorize totalitarian communism). Notably, the genre seems to have had a direct impact on the military, considering how the use of exoskeletons, robotics, and drones have changed warfare.

Cyberpunk

“Cyberpunk” is a neologism that combines the words “cyber” and “punk,” Critic David Ketterer famously described this subgenre as “high tech, low life;” “cyberpunk” describes a lifestyle just as much as it describes a subgenre of art. The protagonists are often hackers, and even when they aren’t they come from the dregs of society. Perhaps the most famous example of cyberpunk in film is the Wachowski sister’s The Matrix (1999), a film with which most people are at least passingly familiar. Cyberpunk stories also portray virtual realities, augmented and upgraded humans, and other advanced cyber technologies.

Alternate History

Alternate histories occupy a position somewhere between historical fiction and science fiction. Here, perhaps more than anywhere else, authors like to play the game “What if?” For example, Philip K. Dick’s The Man in the High Castle asks, what if the Nazis had won World War II? A chilling prospect no doubt, but a fiction that requires re-constructing past ways of life, and in this sense, it is like historical fiction. This subgenre makes use of the convention of parallel universes.

(Post) Apocalyptic

Humanity has always imagined the end of the world, only we long ago imagined it to be the work of gods rather than the work of humanity. Let’s call the apocalyptic that which engages with and portrays the actual apocalyptic event, whether that be war, famine, pestilence, and death in all its forms. The postapocalyptic portrays the world after the apocalypse, sometimes so far removed from the event that humanity only retains a distant memory of the apocalypse itself. One of the earliest works in this category even predates Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein! That work is Anna Laetitia Barbaud’s Eighteen-Hundred and Eleven: A Poem, which portrays the societal aftermath of a catastrophic war.

Solarpunk

Solarpunk is a rather new subgenre that combines elements of post-apocalyptic fiction with a heavy dose of utopianism. In these post-apocalyptic settings, humans come together and use their technology and culture to overcome the apocalypse. There is a sense of hope in this genre in the face of massive ecological and societal collapse. In this sense it is utopian, but solarpunk is not utopian in the traditional sense. Rather than present idealized worlds, the worlds of solarpunk are still rife with conflict and contradiction.