Why Science Fiction?

Written by Martin Dolan

Why Science Fiction Art and Sculpture?

You know I never thought of Sci-Fi as some weird thing for geeks. I have heard people say that they “Hate Sci-Fi because it’s all make believe rubbish”.
Interesting thought... and a very limiting belief.

I see Science Fiction as Science Possibility.
I hope that shows through in my Art, Drawings and Sculpture. Especially the stories behind the works. Every artwork that I create, has been carefully thought out with the frame-work of "If this was real, what would it be like, how would it function, and what would it have to have..."

Science Fiction Art has always fascinated me. To me it really shows the future...
Keep in mind the fact that around 200 years ago we were all still dicking around in sailing ships. Now we have been to the moon, are planning manned trips to Mars...

Even though Einstein is quoted to have said words to the effect of “The more I learn, the more I realise I don’t know”.


1890: Ransom E. Olds second steam powered car, pictured above. One was sold to a buyer in India, but the ship it was on was lost at sea.		2008: Just 118 years later, Dodge made the first ZEO. A zero emission, electric car, with a 250 mile range, 0-60mph in under 6 seconds. . .

The ZEO is a cool looking car eh? Naturally it has satellite navigation. Try explaining that concept to Ransom E. Olds 120 years ago...

As technology races ahead like the ZEO, so does the speed at which we develop that technology. It’s a snowball effect. The only thing we have to do is make sure we don’t wipe ourselves out first!

So the people who say all that science fiction stuff is too far fetched. If they can’t see the possibility in the art and sculpture, and see the prophecy in the drawings I do, that’s fine.

I will just chuckle and understand that a few hundred years ago they would have been the ones saying it’s impossible to fly, talk to someone on the other side of the planet in real time, walk on the moon. . .

Here's what some others say about Sci-Fi,
Perhaps the future of mankind...

You might recognise a few of these names...

Benjamin Appel
Science fiction reflects scientific thought; a fiction of things-to-come based on things-on-hand.
The Fantastic Mirror-SF Across The Ages (Panthenon 1969)

Isaac Asimov
Modern science fiction is the only form of literature that consistently considers the nature of the changes that face us, the possible consequences, and the possible solutions. That branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings.
(1952)

Theodore Sturgeon
A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.
Definition given by: William Atheling Jr., (James Blish) in The issue at Hand: Studies in Contemporary Magazine Fiction (Chicago, 1964)

Ray Bradbury
Science fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together.

Reginald Bretnor
Science Fiction: fiction based on rational speculation regarding the human experience of science and its resultant technologies.

Terry Carr
Science Fiction is literature about the future, telling stories of the marvels we hope to see -- or for our descendants to see -- tomorrow, in the next century, or in the limitless duration of time.
Introduction, Dream's Edge, Sierre Club Books, San Fransisco, 1980

Edmund Crispin
A science fiction story is one which presupposes a technology, or an effect of technology, or a disturbance in the natural order, such as humanity, up to the time of writing, has not in actual fact experienced.
Best Science Fiction Stories (London, 1955)

L. Sprague De Camp
Therefore, no matter how the world makes out in the next few centuries, a large class of readers at least will not be too surprised at anything. They will have been through it all before in fictional form, and will not be too paralysed with astonishment to try to cope with contingencies as they arise.

Vincent H. Gaddis
Science fiction expresses the dreams that, varied and modified, later becomes the visions and then the realities in scientific progress. Unlike fantasy they present probabilities in their basic structure and create a reservoir of imaginative thought that sometimes can inspire more practical thinking.

Damon Knight
What we get from science fiction --- what keeps us reading it, in spite of our doubts and occasional disgust --- is not different from the thing that makes mainstream stories rewarding, but only expressed differently. We live on a minute island of known things. Our undiminished wonder at the mystery which surrounds us is what makes us human. In science fiction we can approach that mystery, not in small, everyday symbols, but in bigger ones of space and time.

Frederik Pohl
The future depicted in a good SF story ought to be in fact possible, or at least plausible. That means that the writer should be able to convince the reader (and himself) that the wonders he is describing really can come true... and that gets tricky when you take a good, hard look at the world around you.
The Shape of Things to Come and Why It Is Bad, SFC, December 1991

If anyone were to force me to make a thumbnail description of the differences between SF and fantasy, I think I would say that SF looks towards an imaginary future, while fantasy, by and large, looks towards an imaginary past. Both can be entertaining. Both can possibly be, perhaps sometimes actually are, even inspiring. But as we can't change the past, and can't avoid changing the future, only one of them can be real.
Pohlemic, SFC, May 1992

That's really what SF is all about, you know: the big reality that pervades the real world we live in: the reality of change. Science fiction is the very literature of change. In fact, it is the only such literature we have.
Pohlemic, SFC, May 1992

Does the story tell me something worth knowing, that I had not known before, about the relationship between man and technology? Does it enlighten me on some area of science where I had been in the dark? Does it open a new horizon for my thinking? Does it lead me to think new kinds of thoughts, that I would not otherwise perhaps have thought at all? Does it suggest possibilities about the alternative possible future courses my world can take? Does it illumunate events and trends of today, by showing me where they may lead tomorrow? Does it give me a fresh and objective point of view on my own world and culture, perhaps by letting me see it through the eyes of a different kind of creature entirely, from a planet light-years away? These qualities are not only among those which make science fiction good, they are what make it unique. Be it never so beautifully written, a story is not a good science fiction story unless it rates high in these aspects. The content of the story is as valid a criterion as the style.
Introduction--SF:Contemporary Mythologies (New York, 1978)

Brian Stableford
True science fiction [is] fiction which attempts to build logically coherent imaginary worlds based on premises licensed by the world-view of contemporary science.
(very slight editing from his GOH speech, ConFuse 91)

Science fiction is essentially a kind of fiction in which people learn more about how to live in the real world, visiting imaginary worlds unlike our own, in order to investigate by way of pleasurable thought-experiments how things might be done differently.
(from his GOH speech, ConFuse 91)

What is authentic about genuine science fiction, is that the science fiction writer should not stop with just saying: Well, the plot needs this to happen, therefore I'll just do it and I'll invent an excuse for it being able to be done. Proper science fiction ought to require people to begin to explore the consequences of what they've invented. And thus, I think that science fiction is, in a real sense, capable of being scientific. Not in the sense that it can foresee the future of science, but it can adopt a kind of variation of the scientific method itself, it does feel compelled to explore the consequences of hypotheses and the way things fit together.
(from an interview on Science in SF, ConFuse 91)

Jack Williamson
"Hard" science fiction ... probes alternative possible futures by means of reasoned extrapolations in much the same way that good historical fiction reconstructs the probable past. Even far-out fantasy can present a significant test of human values exposed to a new environment. Deriving its most cogent ideas from the tension between permanence and change, science fiction combines the diversions of novelty with its pertinent kind of realism.

Donald A. Wolleheim
Science fiction is that branch of fantasy, which, while not true to present-day knowledge, is rendered plausible by the reader's recognition of the scientific possibilities of it being possible at some future date or at some uncertain point in the past.
"The Universe Makers"

Tags: Technology Time Travel UFO or Alien Space Exploration Transport

Comments (1)

1 Tuesday, 03 August 2010 11:33

Mark Fiorillo

Forget about prediction for a moment and consider that science fiction allows both author and reader to question the present reality in every way. Religion, sex, politics...nothing is beyond the scope or satirical grasp of the genre.

Thursday, 05 August 2010 10:42

Martin Dolan

That is a fantastic point Mark.
Battlestar Galactica goes into religion and politics quite a bit, and also something that Philip K Dick ponders a lot in his books -
What is a 'life'. When does a machine stop being a machine and become a life.

Thanks so much for your comments!