User:Christina.moore2/HUMN 4472 Journal C. Moore HUMN 4472 Journal

August 16, 2019: Science Fiction

Science Fiction takes the ideas of new technology and advancement in science, as well as in civilization, to make a new and futuristic world come to life. The genre uses things like time travel, space exploration, robots, and advanced civilizations to create an idea of what life might be like in the future. For example, a Science Fiction story might show the hero traveling back to a time that, in reality is current but, seems distant, to fix a problem that has caused some issue in the future. The reasoning for a story like this would be to show there are things that need fixing now to prevent a disaster in the future as well as the steps that can be taken to improve future civilization.

August 23, 2019: Science Fiction

The genre of Science Fiction is one that is difficult to accurately define. That being said, one definition of the genre comes from Fred Saberhagen in the Encyclopedia Britannica 1st edition in which he stated that Science Fiction is a "genre developed in the 20th century, dealing with scientific discovery or development that, whether set in the future, or the fictitious present, or in the putative past, is superior to or simply other than that known to exist." Ursula K. Le Guin questioned in her introduction to The Norton Book of Science Fiction whether or not "the non-definability of Science Fiction" is "perhaps an essential quality of it?" Perhaps she was on to something with this question. It certainly seems as though a main theme throughout the genre involves ideas that seem so far from present that they become otherworldly to those reading or watching them, but are actually not that unbelievable. Science fiction uses fears and problems of the present and creates solutions that may not exist yet. For example, in Le Guin's detailed introduction she mentions Science Fiction in the 1960's, and how it explored "failures, limits, ends, and final things." While many works throughout the genre mention things like time travel, robots, and advanced technologies, many works also mention things that non formulaic, such as alternate history, psychology, and parallel worlds. James Gunn mentioned in his article Toward a Definition of Science Fiction that "realistic questions are essential for full understanding and enjoyment" of the genre. So, while certain things within Science Fiction may seem outlandish it is important to really think about them because they not be as crazy as they seem. The documentary The Truth about Science Fiction is a great place to really understand the previous point. The documentary talks a lot about the predictions in Science Fiction works that ended up coming true. For example, the documentary mentions how H.G. Wells wrote about air warfare, atomic bombs, and watch telephones before any of those things actually existed. They seemed scary and crazy at the time, but it was not long before they became fact instead of fiction.