Early Science Fiction (pgs. 11-14)
Critics agree that science fiction as a generic force emerged in this decade.
What are the 1930s?
The primary two nations involved in the Cold War where the technology of space flight fostered heightened political tension.
What are the United States and the Soviet Union?
This 1984 novel by William Gibson is often cited as the foundational text for the Cyberpunk subgenre.
What is Neuromancer?
Questions regarding the representation of gender and gender fluidity in the SF genre can be traced back to these two novels.
What is Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) and Joanna Russ' The Female Man (1971)?
This novel contemplated alternative modes of human conception long before the technology of in-vitro fertilization was used as a medical procedure.
What is Mary Shelley's Frankenstein?
Considered by some critics to be the first science fiction novel but also classified as Romantic or Gothic fiction.
What is Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus?
From the late 1940s into the early 1960s this change/advancement in technology began to displace pulp magazines, widening the audience for SF.
What are mass-market paperbacks (or the television)?
The dominant Cyberpunk subgenre of the 1980s that replaced "New Wave" science fiction of the 1970s often featured a clash between these two groups.
Among the newest approaches in SF to the relationship between humanity and technology.
What is solarpunk?
Which two people asserted that “[l]iterature always reflects the values, experiences, hopes, and fantasies of its creators, as well as the society and groupings they are a part of.”
Who are James Patrick Kelly and James Kessel?
1616 German novel argued by American SF author, John Crowley, to be "the first science-fiction novel".
What is The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz?
Three prime time shows of the late 1960s that featured science fiction or science fiction elements.
What are Star Trek, My Favorite Martian, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, The Time Tunnel, and The Jetsons?
Audience mainly attracted by the Cyberpunk subgenre.
Who are white, males?
Three modern SF novels that offer fresh perspectives on humanity's histories of exclusion and discrimination.
What are Canadian Cherie Dimaline’s The Marrow Thieves (2017), Tomi Adeyemi’s Children of Blood and Bone (2018), and Micaiah Johnson’s The Space Between Worlds (2020)?
Some want to expand the field of SF to include these three mainstream fiction genres.
What are fantasy, horror, and spy fiction?
American short stories such as “The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall”, “The Birthmark”, and “Bartleby the Scrivener” are not considered SF for these two reasons.
1) All 3 were published before the age of the pulps.
2) None feature actual scientific methodology and instead engage in fantasy.
Characteristics of the "New Wave" of science fiction writing of the 1970s.
What are psychological depth, ambiguity, irony, female characters, characters who are people of color?
This fashion style was characteristic of the steampunk subgenre that followed the cyberpunk subgenre.
What are vintage clothing designs of the nineteenth century combined with modern and nostalgic mechanical elements meant to invoke the Industrial Revolution (fashion of Victorian England, French Belle Epoque, and the Civil War Era of the United States)?
Since the turn of the 21st century SF has shifted away from the punk/hacker/grunge vibe of cyberpunk toward fiction that grapples with this.
What is the challenge of climate change?
The genre now known as science fiction was not identified as one separate from the more general categories of fiction or literature until.
What is the mid-twentieth century?
Some authors who came to be called The Old Guard of the Golden Age (of SF).
Who are Isaac Asimov, John Campbell, Robert Heinlein, and Alfred Bester?
Among the generation of writers who followed the "New Wave" of science fiction.
Who are Vonda N. McIntyre, Ed Bryant, Octavia E. Butler, Eileen Gunn, and Joe Haldeman?
Authors associated with the cyberpunk subgenre.
Who are William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, Rudy Rucker, Neal Stephenson, Cory Doctorow, Pat Cadigan, and Melissa Scott?
Contemporary SF raises questions about these three things.
What are established modes of sustainability, identity structures, and governance?
This science fiction author described the emergence of science fiction as a separate genre this way: “like the handle of a suitcase...SF emerged from the body of literature in general, and like the handle, would eventually merge back into it,”
Who is Theodore Sturgeon?