Science Fiction
Science Fiction is the fictional treatment of
the effects of science or future events on human beings. More precisely,
science fiction deals with events that did not happen, have not yet happened or
are impossible to happen now. It considers these events rationally in terms
both of explanation and of consequences for the human race. The most common
subjects for science fiction are the future, travel through space or time, life
on other planets, and crises created by technology or alien creatures and
environments.
The first major writer of science fiction in
English, however, and the man who may be considered the father of modern
science fiction is H.G. Wells. More interested in biology and evolution than in
the physical sciences and more concerned about the social consequences of
invention than the accuracy of the invention itself, Wells from 1894 on wrote
stories of science invested with irony and realistic conviction. His reputation
grew rapidly after the publication of The Time Machine in 1895.
Time travelling is as like as space travelling
a possibility to show the unreality, which is found in this kind of literature.
Referred to The Time Machine Wells is presenting time travelling as a result of
scientistic development. By this way it is easier for the reader to believe
that such a kind of machine could really exist.
The subjects of science fiction have been
touched upon by fantastic literature since ancient times. The Babylonian
Gilgamesh Epic dealt with a search for ultimate knowledge and the Greek myths
of Daedalus with the technology of flying just as there was the wish of flying
to the moon. Trips to the moon were described by figures as diverse as the
French writer Cyrano de Bergerac and the German astronomer Johannes Kepler in the
17th century and the British philosopher and novelist William Godwin in the
19th, among others. Another subject, the structure of better societies or
better worlds, which goes back at least to the 4th century BC with Plato's The
Republic, was reintroduced and given a generic name when Sir Thomas More wrote
'Utopia' in 1516. Stories of an imaginary voyage were usually written
for satirical purposes; perhaps the finest example is 'Gulliver's
Travels', written in 1726 by the English satirist Jonathan Swift. But
science fiction could not have existed in its present form without the
recognition of social change at the beginning of the Industrial Revolution,
which was around 1750. The first great specialist of science fiction was the
French author Jules Verne, who dealt with geology and cave exploration in
'Journey to the Center of the Earth' (1864), space travel in
'From the Earth to the Moon' (1865) and 'Off on a Comet'
(1877), and the submarine and underwater marvels in '20,000 Leagues Under
the Sea' (1870).
All in all science fiction is the lyrical way
to present things and/or conditions which aren't possible at the present
moment. For the author it isn't compelling to give explanations
