'What If'

It is impossible to understand literature if we do not take in consideration the social context from where the authors are writing, and how this affect their point of view and ours. All the literary works in Occident is a prisoner of their own reality, and Science Fiction is not an exception. From the beginning of this ‘genre’, the topics and themes have been strongly related to the industrial reality, and in most of the cases they are in fact a discursive form of social criticisms and an advice for future events.
To define Science Fiction as a literary genre is not an easy task, because it is possible to find Science Fiction properties in all the genres in literature, as in narrative, poetry, all the different types of novels, etc. We can argue that there is Science Fiction in Arthur C. Clark, but also in Thomas Moro. Therefore Science Fiction is not a way of writing, is more a topic definition and how that concept is treated in light of their own circumstances. We can say that the live statues from the Greek myth of Icarus are some kind of robots, or that the Time Traveling of the Mark Twain’s Yankee into the King Arthur’s court is also a “fantastic” Science Fiction. So, the limits of the genre seem to be blurry and inaccurate. Is Shelley’s Frankenstein Science Fiction only because the doctor uses a machine to bring life to an inert dead body? No, but we can state that it is, in fact, a beginning. Science Fiction is a genre boosted by the Industrial Revolution, and the following machinery dependency of the human race. But not only that, the important astronomic and physics discoveries at the end of the XIX century are also a strong characteristic is type of work, where the ability of dream far beyond the known realm of the human being gives fuel to writers for exploring the fact that a little light in the sky is indeed a whole new world.
All these attempts to work on these ideas are nothing but assumptions and therefore not real, that’s why the last name of Science is Fiction. And for that, the construction of another world where something unthinkable as time traveling or artificial intelligence or invasion from another worlds is possible, is built on the straight reflection of the contextual society. In times of Twain or Shelley, time traveling or building an artificial life it was unthinkable, but for the Well’s era is different. Needless to say that for K. Dick, the standings where way more different. Therefore, Science Fiction starts always with the fact of possibility, the idea of a “what if”. And from that possibility we can unpin different constructions as in main topics. Distopia, utopia, alternate universe, contact with alien race, colonization in another planets, futurism; but at the end they are all different forms of stating something about the present. H. G. Wells could be presented as the main author behind the uprising of the Science Fiction at the beginning of the XX century. And in his case, his major works could be read as in an interpretation of the social context and the reality of that society with all the scientific breakthroughs of that time.
We cannot talk about Science Fiction without mentioning the faculty of this genre to foreseen changes in the human path. Often it is confused with a premonitory faculty, but this one is not only a premonition stage, it is more near to an extrapolation of events. That’s how colonialism can be associated to a topic within Science Fiction. During the XX century, when the vertiginous advances in the computers area, and all the software and hardware breakthroughs, were a strong fertilizer for the latest Science Fiction. While the one from the 50’s and 60’s concentrated more in the fusion of religious thematic in alternate words or futuristic apocalypse where salvation comes by the hand of scientific manipulation. Just like Asimov and Herbert in Foundation and Dune respectively, they conceive the technologic environment an important accessory for expressing a society in lack of values and religion guidance.
After the world wars, and all the others wars followed that horrible period humanity was indeed beaten by al this events. Hope was becoming an illusion, so it was projected into the future. But, what happens when the future is now? What happens to this genre when the human race already sent dozens of missions to the space looking for answers? The topics change into a more apocalyptic future, where the imminent decadence of the human race.
One of the main difficulties of writing Science Fiction, is when the topics became more important than the actual evolution of the characters. From Wells, we can se that the importance is the effect of these changes in the human character. In Herbert, the importance is the survival of an slaved race, and in Asimov, the main topic is how society will overcome darkness in an empire of technological advances. For Stranger in a Strange Land, the human exploration is deeper, but also the character developments are flat in comparison of the environment that surrounds the event. It is not crazy to believe in a more allegorical development in the classic Science Fiction, where the events, the inter textual allusions are in direct relation to the main theme of the book. But at the end, it always depends on the talent of the writer to be able to develop a stable and good prose to expand the ideas in not an straight vision. The talent of Asimov to foreseen space colonization and to, for example, resolve the energy problem in theory, is not doubtful; but the prose of the physics writer is in fact lacked from ‘fiction’. That’s why H. G. Wells will always stand like one of the most outstanding authors in this area of literature. His talent when he is building up scenarios is undeniable, and so is his vision of the human being.
Right now, libraries usually put fantastic literature with Science Fiction in the bookshelves. With time, the lack of thematic caused by the continue evolution in science; will kill those precious limits within the both ‘genres’. Are we in the presence of the decay of a whole century of richness in the Science Fiction novels? We have already seen aliens killing and conquering our planet, spaceships going into the deep space, planes crashing tall buildings, a whole planet suffering the symptoms of the over pollution and over populated countries. We are only left with the question of where is going to lead us the ‘what if’? What path will take Science Fiction to reassure itself as a literary genre? Or maybe we are only watching the slow death of what feed hope and illusion to thousands of readers.