How to Read SF

To read science fiction is to read literature. Therefore, you read SF much the same way you might read any other type of literature. If you have taken previous literature courses (such as any introductory writing about literature course), then you should be able to discuss character, setting, plot, themes, style, etc. In any case, check out this OER’s sister volume Surface and Subtext to equip yourself with the skill to discuss literature in general. Once you’ve grasped those foundational elements, you will be ready to start learning the specific tropes and conventions of SF.

Convention and Formula

When distinguishing science fiction from other genres, we often rely on taxonomic descriptions of conventions, common tropes, ideas, plot devices, etc. Though science fiction now contains much surrealism and avant-garde experimentalism as a result of movements such as the New Wave, science fiction is rooted in formula. To be formulaic is considered by some critics to be an insult, as if the writer were not possessed of enough imagination to create a structurally innovative plot. Yet much of our favorite fiction is formulaic. Hollywood films, for example, often employ either a three-or-five-act structure that inevitably leads to a satisfying, happy ending. Though science fiction embraces its formulaic roots (Flash Gordon being an almost exact replica of Buck Rogers, for example), the genre has grown enough to contain many successful, non-formulaic examples. Indeed, we often canonize texts that transgress the formula in some way; consider, for example, Becky Chambers’s A Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet (2014), a queer take on the subgenre of space opera that demonstrates just how far space opera has come since its origins with the likes of Buck and Flash. Rather than portraying a lone hero saving the universe, space operas like those of Becky Chambers focus on the navigation of difference, therein portrayed by a galactic pluralism.

Even if some texts do violate the formula, those texts still maintain certain conventions, themes, tropes, ideas, images, symbols, clichés, and devices that would be familiar to any fan of the genre.

Any or all of the conventions above could be present in any given work. None would surprise or bewilder someone who regularly consumed science fiction (which, given the fact eight out of the ten highest grossing films of all time^[1] are works of science fiction, is all of us). In fact, you can probably name a film or television series in which some of the conventions above are present, even if terms like extrapolation might be less familiar.

In simplest terms, extrapolation is the imaginative creation of new worlds or technologies drawn from the current scientific understanding of the world. Extrapolative models serve to create a better understanding of the relationship between science fiction and science fact than predictive models; that is, simply put, science fiction does not predict the future. Sure, science fiction has predicted a lot—global communication satellites, cyberspace, mobile phones, genetic engineering, and self-driving cars. However, science fiction should not be judged on whether the futures it portrays actually plays out in reality. Indeed, sometimes science fiction extrapolates out from wrong data that was believed true at the time; for example, Edgar Rice Burroughs based his depiction of Mars on information taken from the astronomer Percival Lowell, who perpetrated the notion that Mars was criss-crossed with canals. Thankfully, SF does not predict the future; no, it extrapolates from the present. In this way, despite the future referent, what could be, the text asks us to think critically about the present, what is.

Time travel and parallel universes are similar because both are employed by genres other than science fiction, especially fantasy. Indeed, certain time travel texts seem more fantastic than others, and what tends to distinguish them is the amount of scientific jargon or pseudo-jargon that goes into the portrayal of time travel in science fiction texts. In these texts, the time travel can be affected by a machine or some other knowable, physical phenomena. H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine is the classic example. Compare that to, say, Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889), where time travel serves to frame the narrative but is not addressed in any substantive way. The idea of parallel universes has also spawned the idea of the multiverse, a concept at work across horror, fantasy, science fiction, and comics; indeed it is in comics that the multiverse is most prevalent, as with Marvel’s Miles Morales, a Spiderman from another dimension. Marvel comics also employ time travel to great effect, such as is the case with the TV series Loki (2021). Such versions of time travel rely on an interpretation based upon string theory, in which changes to the timeline produce alternate realities. While fiction allows for the portrayal of theoretical knowledge such as string theory, the only empirically known method of time travel is time dilation. Perhaps the most famous cinematic example of time dilation is Planet of the Apes (1968). As the astronauts approaches lightspeed, time slows down for them; however, on Earth, it continues to pass at the same rate. Thus the ‘planet of the apes’ is a form of future time travel (with no possibility of return). SF writer Joe Haldemann uses this trope to create powerful estrangements in The Forever War (1974); the protagonist goes off to fight an interstellar war only to return to Earth 1000 years later.

Space travel is perhaps the oldest science fiction convention, at work in even the earliest of proto-sf texts. Humanity has always dreamed of traveling to the moon, but we’ve come a long way from our first imaginings of space travel. Heck, we’ve actually gone into space! When traveling across space, the most common convention is a warp drive or some other method of faster-than-light (FTL) travel. Though we have not perfected such technologies in reality, scientists have proposed theoretical warp drives such as the Alcubierre drive. Once in space, explorers dream of first contact with an alien species, a type of contact too often modeled on the first contact European explorers had with Native Americans, though other modes of first contact exist, such as first contact of the anthropologist in Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) or the patronizing and bureaucratic first contacts made by the Federation in Star Trek. Whatever the method of space travel, it is here that science fiction directly descends from the travelogue. Indeed, much of science fiction consists of the chronicling of new and strange worlds and peoples.

Another major convention in science fiction could be described as the posthuman, which in general describes an aesthetic and a way of life integrated with and dependent upon advanced information technologies such as artificial intelligence and genetic modification. You might not think of genetic modification as an information technology, but DNA is just another form of information that can be transformed and transmitted. Cyborgs, organisms part computer and part machine, bridge the divide between the natural and the artificial, their relationship suggesting two-way informatics between the mechanical-electrical and the biochemical. Artificial intelligence is everywhere, in learning algorithms or advanced computers such as IBM’s Watson, but nowhere does artificial intelligence inspire more fear in us than when it is given anthropomorphic robot form.^[2] When anthropomorphic, robots invoke what psychologists call the uncanny valley, a concept that explains the unease a reader or viewer feels when regarding a homunculus that is a very close approximation yet somehow still just a little bit… off. The uncanny valley can be observed in HBO’s series Westworld (2016), itself based on an older film by the same name. In the HBO series, Westworld is a theme park where park-goers can have “authentic” western adventures, complete with murder and other more heinous forms of violence: no worries, all the actors are played by realistic humanoid androids. The robots begin to gain consciousness, and in their efforts to throw off their shackles, they infiltrate the human world so thoroughly the viewer can only distinguish original humans from their clone copies via gut instinct and intuition. In all instances, such technologies are posthuman. They also hasten the singularity, the moment that artificial intelligence exceeds human intelligence. That intelligence could be a super-intelligent robot, but it may very well be a new bio-engineered species.

Not all conventions happen in terms of content and themes; some happen at the level of form and style. For example, science fiction has certain types of characters and often portrays settings in a particular way. Though many notable works of science fiction certainly don’t follow this convention, it is common for a scientist to play the role of protagonist. Indeed, if the scientist is not the protagonist, they might prove the antagonist instead; in either case, the trope of the mad scientist is a common one. Many works of science fiction also treat the landscape as a character, taking care to develop the physics and politics of a world with the depth and care that a high realist might give to an individual’s psychological profile. At one end of the spectrum, treating landscape as character simply means worldbuilding, but at the other end of the spectrum, as is the case with Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris, the landscape is, in fact, a character, even if “contact” seems impossible. This tendency to portray landscape as a character relies on the materialist notion that we are products of our environments. Following such a materialist outlook, to create believable new characters who live in new and marvelous surroundings requires on the part of the author an in-depth knowledge of how environmental, biological, and social systems are intertwined. This interconnectedness is the essence of science fiction worldbuilding.

Finally, at the heart of nearly every SF story is the impetus to ask, “What if?” In this sense, nearly all SF could be said to be engaged in thought experiments meant to teach us about our world.

Theoretical Terrain

In this section we introduce some concepts from a landmark work of science fiction theory, Darko Suvin’s Metamorphoses of Science Fiction: The History and Poetics of a Literary Genre (1979). In that text, Suvin describes science fiction as a literature of estrangement, much like fantasy literature. But so as to separate the estrangements of SF from the estrangements of fantasy, he emphasizes the extrapolative, scientific nature of SF’s estrangements. Based on this distinction, he calls SF the literature of cognitive estrangement. We will explore each of those terms separately and then together in this section, thereby giving you a solid understanding of the logic behind Suvin’s declaration. We will also discuss the major critiques and continuations of Suvin’s theoretical territory, thereby giving you the tools to enter into this conversation. One major critique of this text is the fact that it casts fantasy literature as the enemy to science fiction, as if science fiction were an enlightenment force at war with supernatural superstition in every form, even fictional. Suvin later softened his position on fantasy literature—a critic must be able to take criticism—but the entire situation raises an important question. How did the study of science fiction arrive at the point that it felt like it needed to 1) define the object of that study in a theoretical way, and 2) define that object diametrically opposed to fantasy literature?

Science fiction became an object of literary studies in the 1970s. Prior to this period, there had been some critical ink spilled on the subject, but science fiction was mostly regarded as escapist literature not worthy of study, at least not based on its own merits; at best, it was only worthy of study as a pop-culture phenomenon, more a sociological project than a literary one. This is, of course, why Ray Bradbury resisted the label of science fiction writer in the 1950s. He wanted to be taken seriously and science fiction was simply not. To make matters worse, most people were only exposed to science fiction through television and film. Sure, the original Star Trek (1966) might have been groundbreaking for its portrayal of an interracial kiss, and Rod Sterling’s The Twilight Zone (1959) was known for highlighting the anxieties surrounding cultural, social, and economic issues, but the vast majority of science fiction produced by Hollywood during the post-WW II era is overrun with themes of militarism, might makes right, imperialism, and colonialism. Much of it is outright Cold War propaganda.

Suvin certainly wasn’t the first critic to write a book about science fiction. For example, Brian Aldiss’ Billion Year Spree (1973) comes about six years before Suvin’s work. While it is an extremely important literary history directly responsible for the valorization of Mary Shelley as one of the first writers of SF, it lacked a certain theoretical rigor during a time when theoretical approaches to literature began to dominate the critical landscape. For science fiction, this critical landscape at the time was dominated by groups of Marxist theorists including Frederic Jameson and, you guessed it, Darko Suvin. For Marxist critics, SF literature exhibited a naturally revolutionary character, not in any specific Marxist sense, but in a formal sense. The forward looking yet grounded-in-reality approach science fiction takes, they concluded, fosters a revolutionary imagination. To understand Darko Suvin’s definition of science fiction as the literature of cognitive estrangement, it is important to understand that he recognizes this as the essential method through which science fiction achieves its unique liberatory potential.

So what is cognitive estrangement? Let’s take each word separately. Estrangement is a formal literary technique whereby the text calls into question or skews aspects of the world that you have taken for granted to make you see them anew. Estrangement is closely related to defamiliarization, a very similar concept first identified by the Russian Formalists. For the Russian Formalists, defamiliarization was present in even the most realistic texts; what worth would an author have if they could not make the reader see the world differently? Literary estrangement is also related to the great German playwright Bertolt Brecht’s alienation effect, or V-effect (the V standing for Verfremdung, one German word for alienation or estrangement^[3]). Following Brecht, the alienation effect unsettles the reader, makes them uncomfortable, and draws them out of their comfort zone, this being a precondition for critical thought.

Literary estrangement also plays a vital role in horror, fairy tales, fantasy, and utopian literature. If estrangement is a literary technique found across a wide array of theoretical schools and used by authors of many different genres, what distinguishes the estrangements of science fiction from, say, the estrangements of fantasy literature? Well, for Suvin, cognition, of course.

What Suvin means by cognition is a little more complicated, and probably not what the average person means when they talk about cognition in a general way. Cognition in a general sense involves knowing and recognizing; in this sense, it is the opposite of estrangement. The two are not conceived of as diametrically opposed by Suvin but as dialectical opposites, so from the interplay of these opposites within the science fiction text emerges science fiction’s revolutionary character. Cognition for Suvin is broader than it might be for a cognitive scientist because here he employs a specifically Marxist interpretation; for a Marxist, cognition refers to the relationship between the individual and their socioeconomic environment. A cognitive world is, then, based in scientific understanding, but also in the belief that the individual is shaped by their environment and capable of shaping it in turn. This idea comes directly from Marx: “Men make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already, given and transmitted from the past.”^[4]

Following Suvin, every future-oriented science fiction story implicitly engages in an interplay of cognition and estrangement that enables and fosters critical reflection. The author, beginning from the conditions of their reality, imagines humanity making radical changes to the nature of that reality, changes extrapolated from rational thought and scientific knowledge. In the process, the author produces worlds that estrange the position of the reader in space-time, estrangements that cause the reader to look around, take stock, and begin to realize their amazing capacity to change what is. This is the essence of cognitive estrangement. Following this interplay of cognition and estrangement to its logical conclusion, the science fiction reader need do nothing special on their part to think critically other than allow themselves to escape into the story and enjoy. Thus, by arguing that escapism is a path to even deeper critical engagement, Suvin faced head-on the accusations of frivolous “escapism” delivered by those critical of SF.

Suvin’s definitions were highly influential at the time, but they seem outdated when used to analyze much of the fiction currently being produced, especially weird fiction, a subgenre that borrows conventions freely from both science fiction and fantasy. Even at the time, Suvin’s critique seemed more ideologically oriented than aesthetically oriented. Leaving Marxism behind, Suvin represents a long Enlightenment tradition that sought to eradicate superstitions; in Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, fantasy literature is the “old obscurantist foe,” a leftover holdout overrun with medieval nostalgia and firmly at odds with any true revolutionary movement. Suvin also limits his understanding of cognition to the purely material, failing to recognize that for many, the religious and spiritual are important modes of cognition. In fact, current SF criticism tends to focus on cognitions, admitting that even if fantasy does not come to know the world in the same way as SF, a type of cognition is still at work. Finally, Suvin’s insistence on a revolutionary thrust to SF contradicts known fact. Far too much SF is unapologetically reactionary.

The preceding discussion should give you the tools to enter into the theoretical conversation. In fact, afrofuturism, queer futurisms, indigenous futurisms, and other types of identity-based science fiction movements rely implicitly on the idea of cognitive estrangement. By including different identities and their unique modes of cognition, we increase the variety of future estrangements, and by increasing the variety of future estrangements, we enhance our ability to critically reflect on contemporary reality.