Blackness. A starless sky. The vast emptiness of space.
Ever has the collective imagination of mankind been preoccupied with the heavens above our heads, and with the prospect of a future tied inextricably to our navigation of that infinite void. Perhaps it is an obsession with the unknown that drives our wonderment with space, and our desire to see it conquered. Only, the oceans upon our very planet remain a mystery to many of us. Our obsession with the seas, while it certainly peaked at various times during the course of human history, can hardly be said to be comparable to that of our obsession with the stars. Something else, then?
Perhaps it is the thought of technological advancement, and the opportunities such a society would afford us as individuals. Perhaps it is the thought of new challenges, new dangers and the new adventures such a frontier would offer.
Or, perhaps, as Max Weber suggested, it is something altogether more poignant. We have become disenchanted with our state of affairs, and so we turn to science fiction in an attempt to bring some mystery back into our world. Life, as it happens, has become mundane and boring—predictable, in the worst of ways. And so we have lost the wonder we may once have reserved for the environment around us. Weber’s assertion, while more nuanced than the summary I have provided here, certainly provides us with one conceivable explanation for our fascination with science fiction.
In a sense, then, it may not be too controversial to say that science fiction fulfils the same role that fantasy does. Some have gone further than that, and claimed that science fiction is, in fact, just fantasy dressed up with pseudo-science. The wizard has become the scientist, the mysterious island became the distant planet, and so on. If this claim held any weight, it would mean that science fiction stories are little different from fantasy, and aside from cosmetic changes, follow the same core structure. Of course, like any good fantasy story, this can be quite complex, with various characters and separate arcs. Nonetheless, one would be able to recognise trappings from the genre as it is translated into sci-fi.
Here’s the thing, though: science fiction almost always has more in common with horror or dystopian fiction than it does with fantasy. Inevitably, there will be a common strand between the two genres, as with any fiction. World-building, conflict and tensions, the antagonisms that drive the story onward, but these are necessary characteristics for any piece of genre fiction. It is in the details that the distinctions become more obvious.
A girl obsesses over the development of artificial intelligence. A colony wakes up to the realisation that they are just clones—spare parts for the affluent. A man links his brain with a computer, and loses his own sense of self. Virtual reality. The singularity.
Could these stories exist in any other genre? Perhaps, though it seems the role of modern fantasy, at least in part, is to grapple with the social issues we’re able to identify now and in the past, while science fiction grapples with a host of possible problems we may face in our future. Many of the obstacles science fiction confronts relate to our relationship with technology, and how society might operate in a hyper-advanced reality. That is to say that, many of the problems science fiction grapples with are self-made. The examples I gave in the above—of AI, and cloning and human modification—are, historically, issues that are unique to the realm of science fiction. Fling a reasonably sensible protagonist into the mix, and the stories almost write themselves. Of course, these days, such stories are as likely to be a part of a news report as they are to be part of some sprawling science fiction film. But doesn’t that say something about science fiction, too? Rarely, one would think, would the themes or ideas encompassed within historical fiction or fantasy suddenly appear as reality. Perhaps that is another reason we find the genre so appealing: it tells us of what might be, and very well could be.
The point here is that the genre can be characterised by many of the qualities commonly found in other genres, and yet it retains a number of traits unique to itself. Yes, sometimes the ideas are merely “magic paraded as science,” but other times… Well, other times it’s quantum. And isn’t that the same thing?