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Slovenian SF&F book cover gallery.
Slovenian and foreign SF&F video content.
High-quality clips and those unavailable on YT.
Listverse – Top 10 Lists:
Emerald City
This is a webzine, devoted to SF&F literature, reviews and news. Its main distinction from other zines lies in its use of the web merely as a means for distribution, as it is created with paper in mind (you can download a printer-friendly version).
Aphelion: The Webzine od Science Fiction and Fantasy
Aphelion has developed at a Georgia university fan club as the successor of the webzine Dragon's Lair and accepts submissions by new authors.
Planet Magazine
Planet Magazine, dedicated to "wild SF&F", has been online since 1994. It publishes short literary and visual work by new authors.
Far Sector SFFH
This webzine, previously Deep Outside SFFH, calls itself "A Professional Web-Only Magazine of Speculative and Dark Fiction", which will cause a Gutenberg like revolution in the future. The final issue was posted in 2007, but plenty of good SF related chow remains.
Via Galactica
The first Croatian electronic SF fanzine was established in 1994 and soon found its way to the web. (HR)
INFO Online
Info, »Magazin za digitalno doba« (the magazine for the digital age), regularly posts articles on SF. (HR)
Axxón, Ciencia Ficción ene Bits
An Argentinian SFFH magazine with some translations into four other languages. (ES)
Baen Free Library
This publishing company understands today's circumstances and smartly offers free books by authors who agreed to publish and chose the title and the period of availability themselves. The website offers a nice collection of SF which causes no significant loss to the publisher.
Russian prose and science fiction in English translation
A collection of cult SF works by Russian authors (Strugatsky, Bulgakov etc.) in English.
Infinity Plus
Some stories are lucky enough to get translated or republished after their first edition, but certainly not all. Those can become very difficult to track down. Infinity Plus offers such literature as well as some original fiction.
Another Realm
Anotherrealm.com publishes a new dose of SFFH fiction twice monthly. Authors can send longer stories (up to 5000 words) or short stories (up to 1000 words), and they can also contend in special thematic contests.
Science Fiction Textfiles
A collection of reviews, commentary, lists and some amateur literature. Plenty of interesting texts.
SFera – društvo za znanstvenu fantastiku
Sfera, the Croatian SF society, a nonprofit cultural organisation, has been uniting (especially younger) SF, F, H and science fans since 1976. The society publishes its members' literary works, visual art, and Parsek, Paradoksalno sekularno glasilo ("the paradoxically secular paper"). It also follows video and film production of the genre, organises scientific and other lectures, discussions and speeches with famous experts, introduces the newest achievements in information technology, computer and other games, and organises many more similar activities. (HR)
SF&F klub Aurora i RIKON
Amongst other events the Aurora SF&F club organises the annual fan convention RIKON. The club has been grounded in 1996 by Petar Leko, Domagoj Herman and Mladen Ban. The members, around 50 in number, meet weekly. (HR)
Društvo ljubiteljev znanstvene fantastike in fantazije Prizma
The Slovenian SF&F fan society with active forums and a zine called Neskončnost (Infinity). (SI)
The Slovenian Tolkien Society Gil-Galad
Gil-Galad members run a library, organise many Tolkien related events and competitions and publish a fanzine called Sijoča zvezda.
NESFA – New England Science Fiction Association, Inc.
One of the oldest SF clubs in New England, established in 1967, which organises the annual convention Boskone and publishes SF literature under NESFA Press.
HRSFA – Harvard-Radcliffe Science Fiction Association
An undergraduate student SF&F society at Harvard University which organises many thematic activities.
CUSFS – Columbia University Science Fiction Society
A student run SFF society with a library, movie projections etc.
Update: 19 January 2012
Reflections on SF, its subgenres, functions, potentials, limitations and its position in the hierarchy of literature. It is interesting to compare the objectivism and subjectivism in authors' definitions, as well as the differences between their orientations with regard to the period in which their opinions were written.
Where no other source is cited, the quote originates from one of the following websites:
Science fiction doesn't exist.
Science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mould.
(in Billion Year Spree; 1973)
Is it any wonder that a new generation has rediscovered science fiction, rediscovered a form of literature that argues through its intuitive force that the individual can shape and change and influence and triumph; that man can eliminate both war and poverty; that miracles are possible; that love, if given a chance, can become the main driving force of human relationships?
Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities.
(in Elsewhere, Elsewhen, Elsehow; 1971)
Science fiction is that class of prose narrative treating of a situation that could not arise in the world we know, but which is hypothesized on the basis of some innovation in science or technology, or pseudo-science or pseudo-technology, whether human or extra-terrestrial in origin.
(in New Maps of Hell; London, 1961)
Science fiction reflects scientific thought; a fiction of things-to-come based on things-on-hand.
(in The Fantastic Mirror - SF Across the Ages; Panthenon 1969)
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.
Science fiction is that branch of literature which is concerned with the impact of scientific advance upon human beings.
(in Modern Science Fiction, edited by Reginald Bretnor; 1953)
Science fiction is that branch of literature wthat deals with human responses to changes in the level of science and technology.
(in Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine; March-April 1978)
The touchstone for scientific fiction, then, is that it describes an imaginary invention or discovery in the natural sciences. The most serious pieces of this fiction arise from speculation about what may happen if science makes an extraordinary discovery. The romance is an attempt to anticipate this discovery and its impact upon society, and to foresee how mankind may adjust to the new condition.
(in Pilgrims Through Space and Time; New York, 1947)
A piece of science fiction is a narrative of an imaginary invention or discovery in the natural sciences and consequent adventures and experience.
(in The SF Book of Lists, edited by Malcom Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski; New York: Berkeley, 1982; p. 256)
SF is a controlled way to think and dream about the future. An integration of the mood and attitude of science (the objective universe) with the fears and hopes that spring from the unconscious. Anything that turns you and your social context, the social you, inside out. Nightmares and visions, always outlined by the barely possible.
Science fiction is story-telling, usually imaginative as distinct from realistic fiction, which poses the effects of current or extrapolated scientific discoveries, or a single discovery, on the behavior of individuals of society.
Mainstream fiction gives imaginative reality to probable events within a framework of the historical past or present; science fiction gives reality to possible events, usually in the future, extrapolated from present scientific knowledge or existing cultural and social trends. Both genres ordinarily observe the unities and adhere to a cause-and-effect schema.
Science fiction is really sociological studies of the future, things that the writer believes are going to happen by putting two and two together.
Science Fiction: fiction based on rational speculation regarding the human experience of science and its resultant technologies.
[Fiction] in which the author shows awareness of the nature and importance of the human activity known as the scientific method, and shows equal awareness of the great body of knowledge already collected through that activity, and takes into account in his stories the effect and possible future effects on human beings of scientific methods and scientific fact.
(in The SF Book of Lists, edited by Malcom Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski; New York: Berkeley, 1982; p. 257)
[Science Fiction is] a subdivision of fantastic literature which employs science or rationalism to create an appearance of plausibility.
As its best, SF is the medium in which our miserable certainty that tomorrow will be different from today in ways we cant predict, can be transmuted to a sense of excitement and anticipation, occasionally evolving into awe. Poised between intransigent scepticism and uncritical credulity, it is par excellence the literature of the open mind.
Still I'm asked, what good is science fiction to Black people? [...] What good is any form of literature to Black people? What good is science fiction's thinking about the present, the future, and the past? What good is its tendency to warn or to consider alternative ways of thinking and doing? What good is its examination of the possible effects of science and technology, or social organization and political direction? At its best, science fiction stimulates imagination and creativity. It gets reader and writer off the beaten track, off the narrow, narrow footpath of what "everyone" is saying, doing, thinking--whoever "everyone" happens to be this year. And what good is all this to Black people?
(in Bloodchild and other Stories; 1995; 134-5)
The major distinction between fantasy and science fiction is, simply, that science fiction uses one, or a very, very few new postulates, and develops the rigidly consistent logical consequences of these limited postulates. Fantasy makes its rules as it goes along...The basic nature of fantasy is "The only rule is, make up a new rule any time you need one!" The basic rule of science fiction is "Set up a basic proposition--then develop its consistent, logical consequences."
(in Introduction, Analog 6; Garden City, New York, 1966)
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.
(in Introduction, Dream's Edge, Sierre Club Books, San Francisco, 1980)
Science fiction: the only genuine consciousness expanding drug.
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories.
(Quotations by Author Arthur C. Clarke)
I'm sure we would not have had men on the Moon if it had not been for Wells and Verne and the people who write about this and made people think about it. I'm rather proud of the fact that I know several astronauts who became astronauts through reading my books.
(in his address to US Congress, 1975)
Science fiction is a label applied to a publishing category and its application is subject to the whims of editors and publishers.
(in The SF Book of Lists, edited by Malcom Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski; New York: Berkeley, 1982; p. 257)
The best definition of science fiction is that it consists of stories in which one or more definitely scientific notion or theory or actual discovery is extrapolated, played with, embroided on, in a non-logical, or fictional sense, and thus carried beyond the realm of the immediately possible in an effort to see how much fun the author and reader can have exploring the imaginary outer reaches of a given idea's potentialities.
The best definition of science fiction is that it consists of stories in which one or more definitely scientific notion or theory or actual discovery is extrapolated, played with, embroided on, in a non-logical, or fictional sense, and thus carried beyond the realm of the immediately possible in an effort to see how much fun the author and reader can have exploring the imaginary outer reaches of a given idea's potentialities.
(in Best Science Fiction Stories, London, 1955)
It is my thesis that the spirit of wonder which led Blake to Christian mysticism, Keats to Arcadian myth and Yeats to Fenians and fairies, is the very same spirit that moves great scientists; a spirit which, if fed back to poets in scientific guise, might inspire still greater poetry. In support, I adduce the less elevated genre of science fiction. Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ray Bradbury and others have used prose-poetry to evoke the romance of scientific themes, in some cases explicitly linking them to the myths of antiquity. The best of science fiction seems to me an important literary form in its own right, snobbishly underrated by some scholars of literature. More than one reputable scientist has been introduced to what I am calling the spirit of wonder through an early fascination with science fiction.
At the lower end of the science fiction market the same spirit has been abused for more sinister ends, but the bridge to mystical and romantic poetry can still be discerned. At least one major religion, Scientology, was founded by a science fiction writer, L. Ron Hubbard (whose entry in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations {27} reads, ‘If you really want to make a million . . . the quickest way is to start your own religion’). The now dead adherents of the cult of ‘Heaven's Gate’ probably never knew that the phrase appears twice in Shakespeare and twice in Keats, but they knew all about Star Trek and were obsessed with it. The language of their website is a preposterous caricature of misunderstood science, laced with bad romantic poetry.
The cult of The X-Files has been defended as harmless because it is, after all, only fiction. On the face of it, that is a fair defence. But regularly recurring fiction — soap operas, cop series and the like — are legitimately criticized if, week after week, they systematically present a one-sided view of the world. The X-Files is a television series in which, every week, two FBI agents face a mystery. One of the two, Scully, favours a rational, scientific explanation; the other agent, Mulder, goes for an explanation which either is supernatural or, at very least, glorifies the inexplicable. The problem with The X-Files is that routinely, relentlessly, the supernatural explanation, or at least the Mulder end of the spectrum, usually turns out to be the answer. I'm told that, in recent episodes, even the sceptical agent Scully is starting to have her confidence shaken, and no wonder.
But isn't it just harmless fiction, then? No, I think the defence rings hollow. Imagine a television series in which two police officers solve a crime each week. Every week there is one black suspect and one white suspect. One of the two detectives is always biased towards the black suspect, the other biased towards the white. And, week after week, the black suspect turns out to have done it. So, what's wrong with that? After all, it's only fiction! Shocking as it is, I believe the analogy to be a completely fair one. I am not saying that supernaturalist propaganda is as dangerous or unpleasant as racist propaganda. But The X-Files systematically purveys an anti-rational view of the world which, by virtue of its recurrent persistence, is insidious.
Another bastard form of science fiction converges upon Tolkien-ian faked-up myth. Physicists rub shoulders with wizards, interplanetary {28} aliens escort princesses sidesaddle on unicorns, thousand-port-holed space stations loom out of the same mist as medieval castles with ravens (or even pterodactyls) wheeling around their gothic turrets. True, or calculatedly modified, science is replaced by magic, which is the easy way out.
Good science fiction has no dealings with fairy-tale magic spells, but is premised on the world as an orderly place. There is mystery, but the universe is not frivolous nor light-fingered in its changeability. If you put a brick on a table it stays there unless something moves it, even if you have forgotten it is there. Poltergeists and sprites don't intervene and hurl it about for reasons of mischief or caprice. Science fiction may tinker with the laws of nature, advisedly and preferably one law at a time, but it cannot abolish lawfulness itself and remain good science fiction. Fictional computers may become consciously malevolent or even, in Douglas Adams's masterly science comedies, paranoid; spaceships may warp-drive themselves to distant galaxies using some postulated future technology, but the decencies of science are essentially maintained. Science allows mystery but not magic, strangeness beyond wild imagining but no spells or witchery, no cheap and easy miracles. Bad science fiction loses its grip on moderated lawfulness and substitutes the ‘anything goes’ profligacy of magic. The worst of bad science fiction joins hands with the ‘paranormal’, that other lazy, misbegotten child of the sense of wonder which ought to be motivating true science. The popularity of this kind of pseudo-science at least seems to suggest that the sense of wonder is widespread and heartfelt, however misapplied it may be. Here lies the only consolation I can find in the pre-millennial media obsession with the paranormal; with the immensely successful X-Files and with popular television shows in which routine conjuring tricks are misrepresented as violating natural law.
(in Unweaving the Rainbow: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder; full text in English)
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 paralyzed with astonishment to try to cope with contingencies as they arise.
We might try to define science fiction in this broader sense as fiction based upon scientific or pseudo-scientific assumptions (space-travel, robots, telepathy, earthly immortality, and so forth) or laid in any patently unreal though non-supernatural setting (the future, or another world, and so forth).
(in Science Fiction Handbook; 1953)
[Science fiction] is the myth-making principle of human nature today.
Obstajajo ljudje, ki nočejo brati znanstvene fantastike, obstajajo tudi ljudje, ki je ne znajo brati, in jih je treba razlikovati od ljudi, ki je enostavno nočejo brati. Sam vedno bolj pogosto naletim na ljudi, ki so dejansko poskusili brati znanstveno fantastiko, pa v njej niso našli smisla. Ko sem dejansko delal z ljudmi, ki so pokazali dobro voljo in so zelo resno trdili, da so poskusili ta ali oni znanstvenofantastični roman, pa je bil enostavno nerazumljiv – ko smo začeli brati zadevo stavek za stavkom, in si jo predelal tako, kot bi jo z otrokom, ki se šele uči brati, sem odkril, da enostavno niso znali sestaviti sveta. Niso dojeli majhnih namigov, majhnih prebliskov, majhnih drobcev, ki jih uporablja vsak pisatelj znanstvene fantastike, da naredi svet razumljiv, in iz njega sploh naredi svet. Dejansko so imeli težave, razen če je šlo za stran z razlago. Vsi tisti majhni namigi in podobno, ki so bistvo znanstvenofantastične zgodbe - s katerimi avtor naredi celo reč živo in bleščečo - dobesedno jih niso znali prav brati. In odkriješ tudi, da skozi delo z njimi, ko greš skozi zgodbo dobesedno frazo za frazo - saj veste, kaj »kaj to pomeni za ta svet« pomeni za zgodbo - odkriješ, da jim začne iti bolje in se sčasoma naučijo. Toda to je jezik; v tem smislu znanstvena fantastika zares je jezik [...]
(in the interview with Charles Platt in Dreammakers: The Uncommon People Who Write Science Fiction; New York: Berkley, 1980)
I will define science fiction, first, by saying what sf (science fiction), is not. It cannot be defined as "a story (or novel or play) set in the future," since there exists such a thing as space adventure, which is set in the future but is not sf: it is just that: adventures, fights and wars in the future in space involving super-advanced technology. Why, then, is it not science fiction? It would seem to be, and Doris Lessing (e.g.) supposes that it is. However, space adventure lacks the distinct new idea that is the essential ingredient. Also, there can be science fiction set in the present: the alternate world story or novel. So if we separate sf from the future and also from ultra-advanced technology, what then do we have that can be called sf?
We have a fictitious world; that is the first step: it is a society that does not in fact exist, but is predicated on our known society; that is, our known society acts as a jumping-off point for it; the society advances out of our own in some way, perhaps orthogonally, as with the alternate world story or novel. It is our world dislocated by some kind of mental effort on the part of the author, our world transformed into that which it is not or not yet. This world must differ from the given in at least one way, and this one way must be sufficient to give rise to events that could not occur in our society -- or in any known society present or past. There must be a coherent idea involved in this dislocation; that is, the dislocation must be a conceptual one, not merely a trivial or bizarre one -- this is the essence of science fiction, the conceptual dislocation within the society so that as a result a new society is generated in the author's mind, transferred to paper, and from paper it occurs as a convulsive shock in the reader's mind, the shock of dysrecognition. He knows that it is not his actual world that he is reading about.
Now, to separate science fiction from fantasy. This is impossible to do, and a moment's thought will show why. Take psionics; take mutants such as we find in Ted Sturgeon's wonderful MORE THAN HUMAN. If the reader believes that such mutants could exist, then he will view Sturgeon's novel as science fiction. If, however, he believes that such mutants are, like wizards and dragons, not possible, nor will ever be possible, then he is reading a fantasy novel. Fantasy involves that which general opinion regards as impossible; science fiction involves that which general opinion regards as possible under the right circumstances. This is in essence a judgment-call, since what is possible and what is not possible is not objectively known but is, rather, a subjective belief on the part of the author and of the reader.
Now to define good science fiction. The conceptual dislocation -- the new idea, in other words -- must be truly new (or a new variation on an old one) and it must be intellectually stimulating to the reader; it must invade his mind and wake it up to the possibility of something he had not up to then thought of. Thus "good science fiction" is a value term, not an objective thing, and yet, I think, there really is such a thing, objectively, as good science fiction.
I think Dr. Willis McNelly at the California State University at Fullerton put it best when he said that the true protagonist of a sf story or novel is an idea and not a person. If it is good sf the idea is new, it is stimulating, and, probably most important of all, it sets off a chain-reaction of ramification-ideas in the mind of the reader; it so-to-speak unlocks the reader's mind so that that mind, like the author's, begins to create. Thus sf is creative and it inspires creativity, which mainstream fiction by-and-large does not do. We who read sf (I am speaking as a reader now, not a writer) read it because we love to experience this chain-reaction of ideas being set off in our minds by something we read, something with a new idea in it; hence the very best science fiction ultimately winds up being a collaboration between author and reader, in which both create -- and enjoy doing it: joy is the essential and final ingredient of science fiction, the joy of discovery of newness.
(in a letter, 14th may 1981)
In short, the straw of a manufactured realism with which the sf writer makes his particular literary bricks must be entirely convincing to the reader in it own right, or the whole story will lose its power to convince.
Znanstvena fantastika je lahko okno v svetove, ki jih sicer ne bi nikoli videli, in ljudi in bitja, ki jih sicer ne bi nikoli poznali, nudi nam vpoglede v notranje delovanje naše družbe, ki jih je težko drugače pridobiti, zagotavlja nam perspektive v družbene norme in človeško naravo, ki je sama sicer večinoma nedosegljiva; lahko je neprecenljivo orodje, ki razstavi vnaprej ustvarjena mnenja in prejeto modrost na kosce in jih nato sestavi v nekaj novega, lahko nas pripravi na neizogibne in včasih osupljive spremembe pred nami ter se nam pomaga upreti vetrovom prihajajočega šoka; lahko je strašna in svarilna, lahko je grajajoča in jezna, lahko je otožna in elegična, lahko je modra in globokoumna - včasih pa je enostavno zabavna.
(in The Good Old Stuff; 1998; xv)
We talk a lot about science fiction as extrapolation, but in fact most science fiction does not extrapolate seriously. Instead it takes a willful, often whimsical, leap into a world spun out of the fantasy of the author [...].
In fact, one good working definition of science fiction may be the literature which, growing with science and technology, evaluates it and relates it meaningfully to the rest of human existence.
Science fiction frequently tries to imagine what life would be like on a plane as far above us as we are above savagery; its setting is often of a kind that appears to us technologically miraculous. It is thus a mode of romance with a strong tendency to myth.
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.
By "scientifiction" I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells and Edgar Allan Poe type of story -- a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision.
(in Amazing Stories; April 1926)
Science Fiction is that class of fiction which contains the currents of change in science and society. It concerns itself with the critique, extension, revision, and conspiracy of revolution, all directed against static scientific paradigms. Its goal is to prompt a paradigm shift to a new view that will be more responsive and true to nature.
(in The Cosmic Dancers; New York, 1983)
Science Fiction is the branch of literature that deals with the effects of change on people in the real world as it can be projected into the past, the future, or to distant places. It often concerns itself with scientific or technological change, and it usually involves matters whose importance is greater than the individual or the community; often civilization or the race itself is in danger.
(in Introduction, The Road to Science Fiction, Vol 1, NEL; New York, 1977)
Science fiction is what you find on the shelves in the library marked science fiction.
Science fiction in the hand of character-draughtsman can create a new contemporary tension-of-choice, new moral decisions, and so indicate how they may be faced or flunked.
In its [science fiction's]aim it is bound, by its extrapolation of science and its use of dramatic plot, to view man and his machines and his environment as a three-fold whole, the machine being the hyphen. It also views man's psyche, man's physique and the entire life process as also a threefold interacting unit. Science fiction is the prophetic ... the apocalyptic litterature of our particular culminating epoch of crisis.
A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the scientific method. To make this definition cover all science fiction (instead of 'almost all') it is necessary only to strike out the word 'future'.
(in Science Fiction: its nature, faults and virtues, in The Science Fiction Novel, Advent; Chicago, 1969)
Science Fiction is speculative fiction in which the author takes as his first postulate the real world as we know it, including all established facts and natural laws. The result can be extremely fantastic in content, but it is not fantasy; it is legitimate--and often very tightly reasoned--speculation about the possibilities of the real world. This category excludes rocket ships that make U-turns, serpent men of Neptune that lust after human maidens, and stories by authors who flunked their Boy Scout merit badge tests in descriptive astronomy.
(in Ray Guns and Spaceships, v Expanded Universe, Ace; 1981)
Science fiction represents the modern heresy and the cutting edge of speculative imagination as it grapples with Mysterious Time---linear or non-linear time.
Our motto is Nothing Secret, Nothing Sacred..
Napak bi bilo sestaviti apologijo za ZF v smislu specifično visokih literarnih vrednot [...] ZF je podžanr s kompleksno in zanimivo lastno formalno zgodovino, s svojo lastno dinamiko, ki ni tista visoke kulture, vendar pa je v komplementarnem in dialektičnem odnosu z visoko kulturo in modernizmom kot takim.
Prav malo knjig o znanosti se spomnim, za katere bi rekel, da so koristne. Mnoge so bile čudovite. Dale so mi občutek, da je svet okrog mene mnogo bogatejši, mnogo čudovitejši, mnogo osupljivejši, kot sem si mislil dotlej. To je zame čudo znanosti. To je razlog, da je znanstvena fantastika še vedno tako privlačna. Zato je premik znanstvene fantastike v biologijo tako zanimiv. Mislim, da je zgodba, ki jo lahko pove znanost, čudovita.
(in Richard Dawkins: Razpletanje mavrice: Znanost, praznoverje in moč domišljije (45); prevedel Alojz Kodre)
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.
Če ima znanstvena fantastika velik dar, ki ga lahko ponudi literaturi, je to po mojem mnenju zmožnost soočanja z odprtim vesoljem. Fizično odprtim, psihično odprtim. Brez zaprtih vrat. Znanost, od fizike in astronomije do zgodovine in psihologije, nam je podarila to odprto vesolje: kozmos, ki ni enostavna, ustaljena hierarhija, temveč silno zapleten proces v času. Vsa vrata so odprta, od predčloveške preteklosti, do neverjetne sedanjosti do grozne in obetajoče prihodnosti. Vse povezave so možne. Vse alternative so pojmljive. To ni udoben, pomirjujoč prostor. To je zelo velika hiša, z veliko prepiha. Toda to je hiša, v kateri živimo. In zdi se, da je znanstvena fantastika tista moderna literarna oblika, ki je zmožna živeti v tej ogromni, prepišni hiši in se počutiti doma, se igrati na stopnicah, od kleti do podstrešja.
(Escape Routes; str. 90)
Fantastika je, končno, najstarejša vrsta narativne fikcije in najbolj univerzalna.
Fikcija, kot jo trenutno razumemo; roman in kratka zgodba, kakršna obstajata od 18. stoletja; ponuja enega najboljših načinov za razumevanje ljudi, drugačnih od nas samih, z izjemo izkustva. Fikcija je pogosto v resnici veliko bolj uporabna od doživete izkušnje; vzame veliko manj časa, nič ne stane (v knjižnici) in obstaja v bolj obvladljivi, urejeni obliki. Lahko jo je razumeti. Izkušnje te povozijo in šele leta kasneje ugotoviš, če sploh, kaj se je zgodilo. Fikcija veliko bolje od resničnosti zagotavlja uporabno dejansko, psihološko in moralno razumevanje.
A realistična fikcija je kulturno specifična. Če sodi v tvojo kulturo, v tvoje desetletje, dobro; a če se zgodba odvija v drugem stoletju ali v drugi državi, jo lahko razumemo samo skozi premestitev, prevod, česar mnogi bralci niso sposobni ali pripravljeni narediti. Način življenja, jezik, morala in temeljna prepričanja, neizgovorjene predpostavke, vse podrobnosti navadnega življenja, ki so bistvo in moč realistične fikcije, lahko postanejo nejasni in nerazumljivi bralki iz drugega časa in prostora. Pisatelji, ki hočejo, da bi njihovo zgodbo razumeli ne le njihovi sodobniki in rojaki, temveč tudi ljudje iz drugih dežel in obdobij, lahko poiščejo način pripovedovanja, ki je bolj univerzalno razumljiv; taka je fantastika.Fantastika je pogosto postavljena v navadno življenje, a njena snov je bolj trajna in univerzalna resničnost od družbenih običajev, s katerimi ima opravka realizem. Snov fantastike je psihološka, človeška konstanta: situacije in podobe, ki jih prepoznamo brez preučevanja ali razumevanja o današnjem New Yorku, Londonu leta 1815 ali Kitajski pred 3000 leti.
(The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination, 2004; str. 43)
Meni ni pomembno, da ponujam specifično upanje ali izboljšavo, temveč izmišljeno, a prepričljivo alternativno resničnost, da premestim svoj um, in s tem tudi bralkinega, stran od lenega, malodušnega mišljenja, da je naš trenutni način življenja edini možen. Ta inercija omogoča nepravičnim institucijam obstoj, ne da bi vanje podvomili.
Fantastika in znanstvena fantastika v svojem bistvu ponujata alternative bralkinemu sedanjemu, dejanskemu svetu. Mladi ljudje na splošno pozdravljajo tovrstne zgodbe, saj zaradi svoje vitalnosti in želje po izkustvu pozdravljajo alternative, možnosti, spremembe. Ker se bojijo celo zamišljenih pravih sprememb, mnogi odrasli zavračajo vso domišljijsko literaturo in so ponosni na to, da ne vidijo dlje od tega, kar že vedo ali za kar mislijo, da že vedo.
A kot da bi se bali lastnih razburljivih moči, je veliko znanstvene fantastike in fantastike plašne in reakcionarne pri invenciji družbenega; fantastika se oklepa fevdalizma, znanstvena fantastika vojaške in imperialne hierarhije. Obe običajno nagradita svojega junaka, moškega ali žensko, le za opravljanje izrazito moških dejanj (tudi sama sem leta tako pisala. V Levi roki teme je moj junak brezspolen, a njegova dejanja so skoraj izključno moška). Še posebej v znanstveni fantastiki pogosto srečamo zgoraj omenjeno idejo, da je vsakdo na podrejenem položaju – če ni upornik, kadar koli pripravljen izboriti svobodo z drznimi in nasilnimi dejanji – ali vreden prezira ali enostavno nepomemben.
Če suženj v tako moralno poenostavljenem svetu ni Spartak, ni nihče. To je neusmiljeno in nerealno. Večina sužnjev, večina zatiranih ljudi, predstavlja del družbene ureditve, ki je zaradi samih pogojev zatiranja nimajo priložnosti niti dojemati kot take, ki jo je možno spremeniti.
Uporaba domišljije je nevarna tistim, ki imajo korist od obstoječega stanja, ker lahko pokaže, da obstoječe stanje ni trajno, ni univerzalno in ni nujno.
Ker ima to resnično, čeprav omejeno moč, da omogoči dvom v uveljavljene institucije, je domišljijska literatura tudi odgovorna zanjo. Pripovedovalka zgodbe je pripovedovalka resnice.
Žalostno je, da bi toliko zgodb lahko nudilo resnično videnje, a se zadovoljijo s patriotskimi ali religijskimi puhlicami, tehnološkimi čudeži ali zidanjem gradov v oblake, pisci si ne poskušajo zamisliti resnice. Modno temačna antiutopija le preokrene puhlice in uporabi kislino namesto saharina, a se še naprej izogiba ukvarjanju s človeškim trpljenjem in pristnimi možnostmi. Domišljijska fikcija, ki jo občudujem, predstavlja alternative statusu quo, ki ne dvomijo le v vseprisotnost in nujnost obstoječih institucij, temveč razširijo področje družbenih možnosti in moralnega razumevanja. To lahko naredijo tako naivno in upajoče kot prve tri televizijske serije Zvezdne steze ali s tako zapletenimi, prefinjenimi in dvoumnimi miselnimi konstrukcijami kot romani Philipa K. Dicka ali Carol Emshwiller; a gibanje je prepoznavno isto – impulz delanja spremembe zamisljive.
Lastne nepravičnosti ne bomo prepoznali, če si ne moremo zamisliti pravice. Ne bomo svobodni, če si ne zamislimo svobode. Ne moremo zahtevati, da poskusi doseči pravico in svobodo nekdo, ki ni imel priložnosti, da bi si ju zamislil kot dosegljivi.
(A War without End; in The Wave in the Mind: Talks and Essays on the Writer, the Reader, and the Imagination, 2004; str. 218-220)
S sposojanjem od drugih literarnih oblik [ZF] pusti avtorjem odvaditi od znanega in napraviti novo in čudno znano. Ti dve možnosti, navidez protislovni (toda ZF je polna protislovij) nudita velikansko področje pisateljicam, ki se tako osvobodijo vezi realizma. Družbene in spolne hierarhije sodobnega sveta lahko raziskujemo skozi proces »odtujitve« in s tem izzivamo normativne ideje spolnih vlog; vizije drugačnih svetov lahko ustvarimo, naredimo znane bralcu skozi pripovedni proces. ZF pripoved lahko razbije, ali zgradi. [...] Sodobna znanstvena fantastika nudi ta subverzivni potencial, osnovan na einsteinovskem modelu vesolja, v katerem je osrednji trop entropija. ZF nudi jezik za pripoved o sanjah, za razgradnjo sebe in za zasliševanje kulturne ureditve.
(in Feminism and Science Fiction; Indiana University Press, 1988; 21-3)
A simplified definition would be that the author of a "straight" science fiction story proceeds from (or alleges to proceed from) known facts, developed in a credible way [...]
The branch of fiction that deals with the possible effects of an altered technology or social system on mankind in an imagined future, an altered present, or an alternative past.
(in Collier's Encyclopedia; 1981)
Science fiction offers two options: either they describe the future – it will not necessarily turn out that way, but it will surely differ from our present – this attracts me very much, or they exaggerate the good and the bad so greatly, you have to understand, even if you are an utter fool.
(Neža Maurer: Znanstveno fantastiko imam neskončno rada, Dnevnik; 23 December 2011)
Speculative fiction: stories whose objective is to explore, to discover, to learn, by means of projection, extrapolation, analogue, hypothesis-and-paper-experimentation, something about the nature of the universe, of man, of 'reality'.
(in The SF Book of Lists, edited by Malcom Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski; New York: Berkeley, 1982; p. 257)
So-called "science fiction" is speculative or extrapolative literature (or sometimes visual art or music) dealing in some way with the idea of change--most often changing human responses to the altered, or shifting, environment of some alternative reality. Most often, simply, "future fiction."
Znanstvena fantastika je oblika fantastične fikcije, ki razlaga umišljene perspektive moderne znanosti.
Science Fiction is a branch of fantasy identifiable by the fact that it eases the 'willing suspension of disbelief' on the part of its readers by utilizing an atmosphere of scientific credibility for its imaginative speculations in physical science, space, time, social science, and philosophy.
(in Explorers of the Infinite; 1963)
Facts and a concern with change are the stuff that science fiction is made of; science fiction that ignores facts and change can be made less frightening and more popular, but inasmuch as it is superficial, stupid, false-to-fact, timid foolish or dull, it is minor in another and more important way, and it is certainly bad as science fiction.
[Science fiction's] attraction lies [...] in the unique opportunity it offers for placing familiar things in unfamiliar contexts, and unfamiliar things in familiar contexts, thereby yielding fresh insights and perspective
(in The SF Book of Lists, urednika Malcom Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski; New York: Berkeley, 1982; str. 256)
It is that thing that people who understand science fiction point to, when they point to something and say 'That's science fiction!
(in The SF Book of Lists, edited by Malcom Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski; New York: Berkeley, 1982; p. 257)
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.
(in 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.
(in Pohlemic, SFC; maj 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.
(in Pohlemic, SFC; maj 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 illuminate 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.
(in Introduction--SF: Contemporary Mythologies, New York, 1978)
I've always liked the idea of a special Hugo to be awarded (by force, perhaps) to literary authors who write books dripping with themes filleted from mainstream SF and then deny that it's science fiction "because it's not about robots and spaceships".
A work belongs in the genre of science fiction if its narrative world is at least somewhat different from our own, and if that difference is apparent against the background of an organized body of knowledge.
(in The Fantastic In Literature; Princeton University Press, 1976)
At its best, science fiction has no peer in creating another universe of experience, in showing us what we look like in the mirror of technological society or through the eyes of a non-human.
(in Critical Encounters; New York, 1978)
Spekulativna fikcija kombinira fantastiko in znanstveno fantastiko, saj »raziskave ženskih študij in nova fizika kažeta, da so takšni konvencionalni koncepti (ne)verjetnosti omejeni in obremenjeni z vrednotami«.
Znanstvena fantastika je »kaj če« literatura, ker ne prikazuje stvari, kakršne so, temveč stvari, kakršne bi lahko bile, in za ta »lahko bile« mora avtor ponuditi racionalno, resno, dosledno razlago, ki ne (po besedah Samuela Delanyja) greši proti tistemu, za kar je znano, da je znano.
(in What If ... Literature v Contemporary Literary Scene, ur. F. V. Magill; 1973; str. 197)
Znanstvena fantastika, kot srednjeveško slikarstvo, naslavlja um, ne očesa. Ne predstavi nam reprezentacije tistega, za kar iz neposrednih izkušenj vemo, da je resnično; namesto tega nam ponudi tisto, za kar vemo, da je resnično na druge načine - ali v primeru znanstvene fantastike tisto, za kar vemo, da je najmanj možno. Zato lahko pisatelj znanstvene fantastike upodobi Jupiter tako enostavno kot srednjeveški slikar nebesa; noben od njiju tam še ni bil, toda to ni važno. Obrniti se od moderne fikcije k znanstveni fantastiki je nenavadno podobno temu, če bi se obrnili od renesančnega slikarstva, z vso tisto čutnostjo in perspektivo, k jasnosti in razumljivosti idejnih slikarjev. Iz tega razloga se znanstvena fantastika, podobno kot srednjeveška umetnost, lahko ukvarja s transcendentalnimi dogodki. Od tu izvira nagnjenost znanstvene fantastike k čudenju, strahospoštovanju in religioznemu ali kvazireligioznemu odnosu do vesolja.
(in How To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction; 1995; 9)
A literary genre developed principally 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.
(in in Encyclopedia Britannica, 15the Edition; 1979)
ZF lahko »ustvari moderno zavest za človeško raso«, vendar pa vsebuje tudi »trivialna, kratkotrajna popularna fikcijska dela, ki so komaj berljiva«.
[Science fiction has] the humanistic assumption that the laws of nature are amenable to the interpretation of human logic and, more than this, amenable to logical extrapolation.
Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it.
(in The SF Book of Lists, edited by Malcom Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski; New York: Berkeley, 1982; p. 258)
A revealing way of describing science fiction is to say that it is part of a literary mode which one may call "fabril" "Fabril" is the opposite of "Pastoral". But while "the pastoral" is an established and much-discussed literary mode, recognized as such since early antiquity, its dark opposite has not yet been accepted, or even named, by the law-givers of literature. Yet the opposition is a clear one. Pastoral literature is rural, nostalgic, conservative. It idealizes the past and tends to convert complexities into simplicity; its central image is the shepherd. Fabril literature (of which science fiction is now by far the most prominent genre) is overwhelmingly urban, disruptive, future-oriented, eager for novelty; its central images is the "faber", the smith or blacksmith in older usage, but now extended in science fiction to mean the creator of artefacts in general--metallic, crystalline, genetic, or even social.
(in Introduction, The Oxford Book of Science Fiction; Oxford, 1992)
There is only one definition of science fiction that seems to make pragmatic sense: 'Science fiction is anything published as science fiction'.
(in The SF Book of Lists, edited by Malcom Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, p. 257; New York: Berkeley, 1982)
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.
(iz intervjuja na Science in SF, ConFuse 91)
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 amended by Damon Knight in The Century of Science Fiction; 1962)
It [science fiction]should be defined as a fictional tale determined by the hegemonic literary device of a locus and/or dramatis personae that (1) are radically or at least significantly different from empirical times, places, and characters of "mimetic" or "naturalist" fiction, but (2) are nonetheless--to the extent that SF differs from other "fantastic" genres, that is, ensembles of fictional tales without empirical validation--simultaneously perceived as not impossible within the cognitive (cosmological and anthropological) norms of the author's epoch.
(in Preface, Metamorphoses Of Science Fiction; Yale University Press, New Haven, 1979)
SF is, then, a literary genre whose necessary and sufficent conditions are the presence and interaction of estrangement and cognition, and whose main formal device is an imaginative framework alternative to the author's empirical environment.
(in Chapter 1 of Metamorphoses Of Science Fiction; Yale University Press, New Haven, 1979)
Isn't it interesting that the same people who laugh at science fiction listen to weather forecasts and economists?
(Quotations by Author Kelvin Throop III)
By challenging anthropocentricism and temporal provincialism, science fiction throws open the whole of civilization and its premises to constructive criticism.
"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.
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.
(in The Universe Makers and The SF Book of Lists, urednika Malcom Edwards & Maxim Jakubowski, p. 258; New York: Berkeley, 1982)
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