Science fiction is very heavy on setting and character and imagining how they could be different than the reality today. For your final and a narrative grade, you are tasked with creating a character or a setting for a science fiction story and describing him, her or it. You need only do one either a character or a setting. You may opt to write a whole story. Type it if you choose or handwrite. You will have one day in class.
- Character (1/2-1 page, max grade 10 points)
Character questions to ask: who they are, what they look like, how old are they, what they want, where they come from, their past, are they motivated by positive or negative forces?—use lots of sensory details. That’s what makes a story interesting. OR
- Setting (1/2-1 page, max grade 10 points)
Setting questions: where is it, when is it, how might it be different than what the reader might expect, what is important to people there, what are the current problems, what is this place’s history? OR
- Whole story (max 2 pages, max grade 20 points).
As it is to be so short you are going to have to be very intentional in your word choice. Make sure the full plot graph is followed.
If you find your imagination is out of practice, read any one of the stories in the Sci-Fi packet. After reading one of the stories, identify a character, preferably, but not limited to the narrator, and fill in what the audience doesn’t know about that character. Whatever you don’t know, make it up (so long as it makes sense with the story).
Science fiction is a genre of fiction with imaginative but more or less plausible content such as settings in the future, futuristic science and technology, space travel, parallel universes, aliens, and paranormal abilities. Exploring the consequences of scientific innovations is one purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas". Science fiction has been used by authors as a device to discuss philosophical ideas such as identity, desire, morality, and social structure.
Science fiction is largely based on writing rationally about alternative possible worlds or futures. It is similar to, but differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation).
The settings for science fiction are often contrary to consensus reality, but most science fiction relies on a considerable degree of suspension of disbelief, which is facilitated in the reader's mind by potential scientific explanations or solutions to various fictional elements. Science fiction elements include:
- A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, or in a historical past that contradicts known facts of history or the archaeological record.
- A spatial setting or scenes in outer space (e.g. spaceflight), on other worlds, or on subterranean earth.
- Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoidrobots.
- Futuristic technology such as ray guns, teleportation machines, and humanoid computers.
- Scientific principles that are new or that contradict accepted laws of nature, for example time travel, wormholes, or faster-than-light travel or communication.
- New and different political or social systems, e.g. dystopian, post-scarcity, or post-apocalyptic.
- Paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation.
- Other universes or dimensions and travel between them.
As a means of understanding the world through speculation and storytelling, science fiction has antecedents back to mythology. Largely it is a product of the budding Age of Reason and the development of modern science itself, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travelswas one of the first true science fantasy works, together with Voltaire's Micromégas (1752) and Johannes Kepler'sSomnium (1620–1630). Following the 18th-century development of the novel as a literary form, in the early 19th century, Mary Shelley's books Frankenstein and The Last Man helped define the form of the science fiction novel;[ later Edgar Allan Poe wrote a story about a flight to the moon. More examples appeared throughout the 19th century.
Then with the dawn of new technologies such as electricity, the telegraph, and new forms of powered transportation, writers including Jules Verne and H. G. Wells created a body of work that became popular across broad cross-sections of society. Wells' The War of the Worlds (1898) describes an invasion of late Victorian England by Martians using tripod fighting machines equipped with advanced weaponry. It is a seminal depiction of an alien invasion of Earth. *This was later broadcast in 1938, narrated and directed by Orson Welles. The first two-thirds of the 60-minute broadcast were presented as a news bulletin and led to widespread outrage and panic by certain listeners who had believed the events described in the program were real.
In the early 20th century, pulp magazines helped develop a new generation of mainly American SF writers, influenced by Hugo Gernsback, the founder of Amazing Stories magazine. In 1912 Edgar Rice Burroughs published A Princess of Mars, the first of his three-decade-long series of Barsoom novels, situated on Mars and featuring John Carter as the hero. The 1928 publication of Philip Nolan's original Buck Rogers story, Armageddon 2419, in Amazing Stories was a landmark event. This story led to comic strips featuring Buck Rogers (1929), Brick Bradford (1933), and Flash Gordon (1934). The comic strips and derivative movie serials greatly popularized science fiction.
In the late 1930s, John W. Campbell became editor of Astounding Science Fiction, and a critical mass of new writers emerged in New York City in a group called the Futurians, including Isaac Asimov, Damon Knight, Donald A. Wollheim, Frederik Pohl, James Blish, Judith Merril, and others. Other important writers during this period and later, include E.E. (Doc) Smith, Robert A. Heinlein, Arthur C. Clarke, Olaf Stapledon, A. E. van Vogt, Ray Bradbury and StanisławLem. Campbell's tenure at Astounding is considered to be the beginning of the Golden Age of science fiction, characterized by hard SF stories celebrating scientific achievement and progress. This lasted until postwar technological advances, new magazines such as Galaxy under Pohl as editor, and a new generation of writers began writing stories outside the Campbell mode.
Innovation: Science fiction has criticized developing and future technologies, but also initiates innovation and new technology. This topic has been more often discussed in literary and sociological than in scientific forums. Cinema and media theorist Vivian Sobchack examines the dialogue between science fiction films and the technological imagination. Technology impacts artists and how they portray their fictionalized subjects, but the fictional world gives back to science by broadening imagination. How William Shatner Changed the World is a documentary that gave a number of real-world examples of actualized technological imaginations. While more prevalent in the early years of science fiction with writers like Arthur C. Clarke, new authors still find ways to make currently impossible technologies seem closer to being realized.