Is the Term “Science Fiction” Passé?

A reader and author's perspective

We live in an age when things that were once regarded as the delusional ravings of mad writers in the genre “science fiction” are now commonplace. You, the writer, can’t astound your readers, stretching their brains beyond the here and now, with such things. It takes much more. You have to stretch your brain or simply have to use some other way to show that you’re writing about a future, past, or life elsewhere.

And that is why I ask: Is the term “science fiction” even valid anymore?

How about using the term “space fiction” since most science fiction now seems to involve space? Or using the term “fantasy fiction,” especially if you’re dealing with world building or the total fantasy ideas of time travel and parallel universes?

A bit of nitpicking, to be sure. But as a writer, I tend to pick nits over words, and most likely so do you. For me, the term “science fiction” has certainly seen its time come and go.

But not to be ungrateful, I clearly acknowledge that we have the science fiction genre to thank for many things in our modern world. Laptop computers, cell phones, space stations, lasers, drones, and lab-grown meat, to name a few, are now household words.

Inventions

In the early days of science fiction (the 1800s just as real inventors and scientists were announcing amazing new things such as the Curies’ discovery of polonium and radium), writers thrilled readers with technological ideas that seemed beyond possibility. The purpose of these invention mentions was originally to convince readers that they were reading about the future where anything was possible. Often they were also plot devices. For example, teleporting from a spaceship to the surface of a planet and vice versa (Star Trek) created interesting scenarios such as beaming whales onboard. Landing a craft capable of soaring through space on a planet or asteroid and taking off again (as in the short-lived TV series Firefly) involved a completely different set of possibilities. But sometimes the authors were warning about science going beyond moral considerations or conveying a promise of wonders yet to come, some of the more practical ones being here now or in development, as shown below.

Items that first appeared in science fiction:

Common:

Mobile phones / cell phones — In 1973 Motorola introduced the DynaTAC. It was nicknamed “the brick,” weighed almost 2.5 pounds, and had a hefty price tag (about $1,000). The inventor, Martin Cooper, claimed in a 2015 interview that the idea was based on the 1946 comic strip “Dick Tracy” two-way wrist radio.

Videophone, video conferencing — The earliest reference to videophone was by Jules Verne in In the Year 2889 (1889). He called it a phonotelephote – a means of personal conversation involving the transmission and receipt of voice and pictures. The 1911 novel Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660 by Hugo Gernsback featured the “telephoto,” a video-conferencing device. In Metropolis (1927) and 2001: A Space Odyssey a wall-mounted videophone is used. Today we have Zoom, Facetime, and other options for connecting across distances.

Ear buds — Tiny radios that fit in a human ear and headsets for music and talk were part of the world of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451. They are a reality now in the form of ear buds.

Newscasts — Jules Verne, observing the technology of his day, let his imagination speculate on how they could evolve. The modern concept of a news broadcast came from In the Year 2889 (1889), which some think his son Michel Verne wrote, following his father's ideas. In the novel, news was read out loud to people.

Tasers — Jules Verne mentioned in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1875) a device for hunting underwater; it transferred a powerful electrical charge to the prey and was called the Leyden ball. In a 1911 novel titled Tom Swift and His Electric Rifle, a boy creates a blaster that stuns targets with electricity. NASA engineer Jack Cover claims this inspired the TASER which he patented in 1974.

Lasers — In H.G. Wells’ The War of the Worlds (1898), Martians use a heat-ray to incinerate humans with a flash of light. In 1960, Theodore Maiman fired up the first operational laser at California's Hughes Research Laboratory.

Atomic bombs — H.G. Wells introduced the atomic bomb in The World Set Free (1913), more as a warning and a justification for globalism – some all-powerful government that would assure world peace. Unlike actual atomic bombs, Wells had his exploding for days, week, or months while radiating energy and causing death and destruction.

Tablets — In 2001: A Space Odyssey, released in 1968, Stanley Kubrick and Sir Arthur C. Clarke introduced the electronic tablet where Dr. David Bowman and Dr. Frank Poole watch news updates from their flat-screen computers, which they called “newspads.” In 2010, Apple released the iPad.

Digital billboards — We see digital billboards everywhere now. They can be rather distracting to drivers. But when Blade Runner came out, no such thing existed, which made the movie look all the more futuristic. Now it looks modern day. Andrew Phipps Newman, the CEO of DOOH.com, was inspired by the movie and saw the potential for revolutionizing billboard advertising.

Drones — Dune (1965) by Frank Herbert had tiny assassin drones. Star Wars had various autonomous flying vehicles. Now drones are used for a variety of purposes as well as fun – aerial photography, emergency response and agricultural precision crop monitoring. The first commercial drone permit was issued by the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration in 2006. They issued 100,000 remote pilot certificates for operating drones in 2018. That same year Walmart filed a patent application for tiny drones that can detect and spread pollen, what the TV series Black Mirror calls “robo-bees.”

Medical:

Defibrillator — While the fictional Dr. Frankenstein used lightning jolts to reanimate a creature pieced together from several corpses, the real life Dr. Claude Beck jolted a teenage patient’s heart with 60 Hz with his homemade defibrillator, consisting of two silver paddles wired to an outlet. More advanced versions are now standard equipment in hospitals.

Bionic limbs — Luke Skywalker’s father chops off his hand, which is then replaced with a bionic version in Star Wars: Episode V — The Empire Strikes Back. Research is ongoing at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia, for an ultrasonic sensor that will enable the wearer of the prosthetic hand to move the fingers.

Genetic engineering — H.G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Moreau (1896) shows how the mad doctor used transplants and blood transfusions to create human-animal hybrids. Some very rational scientists are working on animal organs some day being transplanted into humans when a human donor isn’t available. So far, they have not conquered the human immune system rejection problem. What Wells didn’t realize is that it would take more than a pig’s heart beating in our chests to reduce us to a porcine level.

Space:

Space stations — Edward Everett Hale wrote of a ­skyscraper-​sized brick sphere and its passengers flung into space using a river-​­powered flywheel. That was in 1869. In 1971, the Soviets launched a 65-foot ­cylinder and crew. They took photos of Earth and conducted experiments. The movie 2001: A Space Odyssey comes into play again, portraying a large space station in low-Earth orbit where astronauts can bounce around in microgravity. Now we have the International Space Station (ISS), orbiting Earth since 1998 and inspired by that movie.

Ideas from Jules Verne — From the Earth to the Moon (1867) presented several items that became reality.

• Lunar Modules/Space Travel – launching in a way similar to that of a gun and a bullet – not quite what is used these days.

• Air Renewal – where air is re-oxygenated within the projectile spacecraft.

• Light Pressure Propulsion – light itself as a form of propulsion for spacecraft.

• Retro-Rockets – small boosters provide a thrust counter to the current velocity of the spacecraft, slowing it down or stopping its progress altogether.

• Splashdown – landing a space ship in water.

• Weightlessness – a space traveler’s weight seems to be reduced to zero in free fall.

• Solar Sails – a way of using light to propel a ship through space, currently planned for use in future missions around the world.

• Water-Springs – using water to cushion the living space of a spacecraft from the effects of acceleration.

• Launching Facility in Florida – a specific spot to support space launches.

Transportation:

Autonomous cars — In 1964 Isaac Asimov predicted that cars with “robot brains” would be featured in the World’s Fair in fifty years. Movies featuring Ian Fleming’s iconic character James Bond also show automobiles that drive themselves with a little human assistance. Tesla is now working on a self-driving feature for its vehicles. The technology isn’t perfect yet, but some expect that by 2025 it will be. NASA is helping develop these cars for use in exploring the Moon or planets.

Flying cars — A common idea with good reason. Flying cars get to their destination faster, being able to fly in a straight line, not over roads that curve and twist, as well as traveling at faster speeds. Flying cars have been in a slew of science fiction books, movies, and even cartoons such as The Jetsons, Hanna-Barbera (1962-1962, 1985-1987), Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang: The Magical Car (3 volumes), Ian Fleming (1964-1965), the movie Chitty Chitty Bang Bang, United Artists Pictures (1968), and the Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling (1997-2007). The military and NASA as well as private investors are developing “autonomous urban aircraft.” They would carry one or more human. Some predict them being in common use by 2040.

Hoverboard — Marty McFly uses a hoverboard to make a quick getaway in Back to the Future Part II. That was supposed to have been in 2015. Arx Pax in California actually did create a hoverboard in that year. It uses Magnetic Field Architecture (MFA™) to levitate the hoverboard.

Helicopter — Jules Verne sketched out various aircraft over the years. In Robur the Conqueror, he detailed a description of a machine made of pressboard controlled with high-speed rotors that propelled the aircraft upward. This may or may not be the precursor of the helicopter, since prototype sketches were around at the time. Whether he had had any opportunity to see them is unknown.

Other:

Diving Apparatus — Jules Verne described equipment used to go for walks on the seabed in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (1875). That equipment became the direct ancestor of modern scuba diving equipment.

Machine learning / artificial Intelligence (AI)— Machines that could think and even advance so far as to maintain themselves and build others have been forecast since Samuel Butler’s 1872 novel Erewhon and raised to nightmare level in The Terminator movie series. The technology going under the misnomer “artificial intelligence” is even more nightmarish, though, if not reined in. And it has been a reality since the 1950s when IBM’s Arthur Samuel coded a checkers player that could refine its approach until it could beat him. As for AI, Blade Runner has synthetic humans that run on AI. The movie has disastrous results, but there are some useful applications such as machines that can explore planets. The question is if humans will focus on that usefulness or resort to become totally dependent on things like ChatGPT, becoming intellectually stunted just as people who rely on calculators often can’t do even simple math.

Lab-grown meat — Amazonians in the 1880 short story “Mizora” by Mary Bradley Lane described turning the chemical elements of beef into synthetic burgers. Bill Gates and others are now touting this lab-grown meat as a solution to what they call a “climate crisis.”

3D food printing — The Jetsons had a food machine in their home that created whole meals. Star Trek had a replicator, creating food out of thin air. Neither was very scientific. The real scientists at Columbia University created 3D printing technology that produces entire cooked meals from prepared ingredients, not from thin air. The technology is still being perfected.

3D holograms — In Star Wars, the robot R2D2 projects a holographic image of Princess Leia asking Obi-Wan Kenobi for help. At Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah, in 2018 researchers created a real hologram that is sort of like an Etch-A-Sketch toy but uses particles at high speeds. Lasers trap particles and move them into a designated shape. Another set of lasers emit red, green, and blue light onto those particles, creating an image. It’s very small for now, but many great things have started that way.

Virtual reality (VR)— Stanley G. Weinbaum’s 1935 story “Pygmalion’s Spectacles,” Steven Lisberger’s 1982 film “Tron,” and Neal Stephenson’s 1992 novel “Snow Crash” all deal with virtual reality. Facebook’s Metaverse (which has been set aside in favor of developing AI) and other VR developers describe their systems the same as those works did, escaping into alternate worlds using goggles that provide immersive 3D images and sound along with Haptic gloves that let us experience touch. Researchers are working on ways for you to experience flavors and aromas, too.

Significance

What does this mean to you, the writer, as you sit there typing up your work of fantasy or science fiction?

For one thing, being totally original is going to be very challenging. In my alternate future series about a nation called Freelan, I mention a vehicle that is like a car, truck, or van, depending on the model, but that flies through the air, ascending straight up and then heading off to the location on its navigation system. Oh, yes, it has a nuclear engine. About a year after I had put that vehicle in one of my WIPs, I also heard a radio personality describe that very thing right down to that nuclear engine. That’s fine. Frankly, I didn’t expect to be original. In fact, it helps the reader accept the rest of my story as very possible, which I want.

For another thing, don’t worry about it. The familiarity will help readers relate to your writing more. So type away about spaceships, submarines, and other now real inventions. Who knows? You might come up with something totally original that will be the next big reality. The main thing is to treat your inventions in a unique way, making it interesting for the reader. And don’t think of you novel or short story as “science fiction.” Today, such things are just fiction!

Total Fantasy Ideas

The bigger issue, in my opinion, is when a writer of a novel or short story classifies it as “science fiction” and uses a clearly non-scientific idea as the basis of his/her science fiction. I mean, we are past the time when such ideas could even seem to be possible. At least, I hope we are. (Remember, this is my opinion.) Just call your work “fantasy fiction” instead.

Time Travel

A popular staple of science fiction is the idea that time is a dimension, something through which people could travel back and forth like going from one train station to another, if they only had the right technology. Time is instead a manmade thing – a system for measuring change. Someone figured out how many hours constituted a day (one full revolution of the planet Earth), how long a year was (one full orbit around the Sun), and then divided each up. The concepts of seconds, minutes, and hours were created. Sixty seconds became a minute, sixty minutes became an hour, and twenty-four hours became a day. And that trip around the Sun was determined to be 365 days (actually, 365.25 days, so every four years we add a day to the February on the calendar and call it Leap Year). All we did was set up a way to measure between sunup and sundown to the next sunup and then count them out to determine how many of those orbits have seen us or others taking their fill of oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide. Nothing dimensional about it. Even if the Earth reversed rotation and then its orbit and we survived such a jolting, time would continue on, tracking change – nothing more.

Yet, time travel remains a very popular idea in fiction – pure fantasy, not scientific – no possibility of ever being real.

One of the most famous works featuring this dimensional idea of time is H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine where travel is by machine. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol (1843) has Scrooge traveling to Christmas Past and into Christmas Yet to Come by virtue of the “magic” of two spirits. Mark Twain’s A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court (1889) has time travel occurring as a dream. The idea has popped up in countless other works of fiction, episodes of the old TV series The Twilight Zone and The Outer Limits, and as the basis for the newer TV series Quantum Leap (both the original and the remake). Other time-travel films include Back to the Future (1985), Looper (2012), Primer (2004), Slaughterhouse-Five (1972), Time Bandits (1981), Terminator (1984), and Twelve Monkeys (1995).

The accompanying idea to visiting the past or the future is that going back in the past has two hazards: meeting oneself and thus causing a cataclysmic event, and making changes that adversely affect the future, possibly causing a paradox such as killing one’s own ancestor (grandfather or father before you are conceived) and thus not existing in the present. Authors seem consistently to be sure things don’t work out well or that attempts to correct things go awry and end in futility. In Stephen King’s 11/22/63 (2011; television series 2016), the goal is to stop the assassination of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, hoping that it would result in a better future. Things don’t quite go that way. In the Twilight Zone episode “No Time Like the Past” Dana Andrews goes back in the past to stop the bombing of Hiroshima, to assassinate Hitler, and to warn the Captain of the Lusitania that they are about to be torpedoed but fails at all three. In the episode “Back There” Russell Johnson (the professor on Gilligan’s Island) goes back to the night that Lincoln is assassinated at Ford’s Theatre, tries to warn him, and again fails.

Physical objects jumping from one point in time to another is seen in several time travel stories. C.M. Kornbluth’s The Little Black Bag (1950) where a doctor’s bag from the future appears in the present. Poul Anderson’s Guardians of Time (1960) and Fritz Leiber’s The Change War (1978) have warring groups of time travelers battling one another back and forth through time. Barrington J. Bayley’s Fall of Chronopolis (1974) is described as a “time opera.” In John Kessel’s Corrupting Dr. Nice (1997), major historical figures are kidnapped by people from the future and used as lackeys and other degrading positions.

One of the most famous time travel series is Doctor Who (1963–89, 2005– ) where a phone booth (called a Tardis) is the means of travel. The long-standing success of the series shows that the appeal of the idea of time travel, despite the scientific impossibility, is undeniable.

Parallel Universes

This is another common element in science fiction and goes quite contrary to reality (but of course, that is often done in fiction). It is better to be called “fantasy fiction.” In addition to being very unscientific, it is often done poorly with trite or cliché results, such as a man and woman stuck in a parallel universe and becoming the new Adam and Eve.

Parallel universes are the ultimate “what if” stories – conjectural and hypothetical. The movie Sliding Doors shows what would happen if a young woman had caught the subway train in parallel with what happened when she didn’t. Eventually, the two universes join. It was refreshingly clever. Usually, parallel universes deal with minor changes between characters. In a Twilight Zone episode, an astronaut returns to Earth to find his house now has a fence, his rank is now Lt. Colonel instead of Major, and his wife and daughter sense something very different in him. He has to go back up into space to return to his own universe.

Bottom Line

Technology has advanced so much that scientific musings and so-called futuristic developments in novels don’t have the impact they once did. Also, the main plot elements fit into other genres, such as mystery/crime, adventure, horror, thriller/suspense, urban, romance, and even western (remember West World?), with a bent toward science. I consider my Freelan series to be literary fiction/fantasy (alternate future) with mentions of naturally occurring technological advances as a result of that future. It seems to be the new way to see these things.

But again, that is my opinion. Your thoughts always welcome.

See my article: Publisher Agent Fiction Genres Defined (complete with downloadable PDF).

Please check out my works in progress (WIPs). And thanks for reading.

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