‘Every age gets the art it deserves’ ‐ science fiction : history, background and definitions

Abstract

It would be logical to commence this essay by attempting to identify the approximate locus of SF within the general corpus of literature as perceived by the academy. Fiction might here be seen as having four main categories: canonical fiction (the classics), serious fiction that strives to become canonical, plain fiction (best sellers or general works) and junk fiction: popular and gauche fiction that includes mysteries, thrillers, westerns, romances, fantasy, and SF. It has been argued that so-called junk fiction is as rewarding for its followers as the more serious genres, as junk fiction too can be complexly self-referential, richly interconnected and intertextual, taking on great depth and meaning when interpreted in the light of a much larger arrangement of interrelated stories, with all of the associated conventions and clichés, transcending a simplicity that is apparent only to the inexperienced. We SF readers ‘do not listen for that melody. We listen for the variations’. And conversely, ‘[m]ost of what seems inexcusably unintelligible in popular fiction is crystal clear to those who have learned how to read it’.