Genres of Science Fiction

Science fiction has developed a lot of different subgenres in it’s centuries-long history

SubGenres

Classic Science Fiction

Science fiction (sometimes shortened to sci-fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction which typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. It has been called the “literature of ideas”, and it often explores the potential consequences of scientific, social, and technological innovations.[1][2]

Science fiction can trace its roots back to ancient mythology,[3] and is related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction, and contains many subgenres. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers.

Science fiction, in literature, film, television, and other media, has become popular and influential over much of the world, and it is also often said to inspire a “sense of wonder”.[4] Besides providing entertainment, it can also criticize present-day society and explore alternatives.

Space Opera

Space opera has been defined as “a television or radio drama or motion picture that is a science-fiction adventure story”.[8] Some critics distinguish between space opera and planetary romance.[9] Both feature adventures in exotic settings, but space opera emphasizes space travel, while planetary romances focus on alien worlds. In this view, the Martian, Venusian, and lunar-setting stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs would be planetary romances (and among the earliest), as would be Leigh Brackett’s Burroughs-influenced Eric John Stark stories.

The term “space opera” was coined in 1941 by fan writer and author Wilson Tucker as a pejorative term in an article in Le Zombie (a science fiction fanzine).[10] At the time, serial radio dramas in the United States had become popularly known as soap operas because many were sponsored by soap manufacturers.[11] The term “horse opera” had also come into use to describe formulaic Western films. Tucker defined space opera as the science fiction equivalent: A “hacky, grinding, stinking, outworn, spaceship yarn”.[12][10] Fans and critics have noted that the plots of space operas have sometimes been taken from horse operas and simply translated into an outer space environment, as famously parodied on the back cover of the first issue of Galaxy Science Fiction.[7] During the late 1920s and early 1930s, when the stories were printed in science-fiction magazines, they were often referred to as “super-science epics”.[1]

Pushing Ice Novel By Alastair Reynold

Alastair Reynolds is one of the most popular space opera writers today

Beginning in the 1960s, and widely accepted by the 1970s, the space opera was redefined, following Brian Aldiss’ definition in Space Opera (1974) as – paraphrased by Hartwell and Cramer – “the good old stuff”.[6]: 10–18 Yet soon after his redefinition, it began to be challenged, for example, by the editorial practice and marketing of Judy-Lynn del Rey and in the reviews of her husband and colleague Lester del Rey.[6]: 10–18 In particular, they disputed the claims that space operas were obsolete, and Del Rey Books labeled reissues of earlier work of Leigh Brackett as space opera.[6]: 10–18 By the early 1980s, space operas were again redefined, and the label was attached to major popular culture works such as Star Wars.[6]: 10–18 Only in the early 1990s did the term space opera begin to be recognized as a legitimate genre of science fiction.[6]: 10–18

Hartwell and Cramer define space opera as:
… colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes.[6]: 10–18

Military Science Fiction

Traditional military values of courage under fire, sense of duty, honor, sacrifice, loyalty, and camaraderie are often emphasized. The action is typically described from the point of view of a soldier in a science fictional setting of or near battle.[1] Typically, the technology is more advanced than that of the present and described in detail. In some stories, however, technology is fairly static, and weapons that would be familiar to present-day soldiers are used, but other aspects of society have changed. Technology may not be emphasized in such stores as much as other aspects of the characters’ military lives, cultures, or societies. For example, women may be accepted as equal partners for combat roles, or preferred over men.

In many stories, the usage or advancement of a specific technology plays a role in advancing the plot, such as deploying a new weapon. Some works draw heavy parallels to human history and how a scientific breakthrough or new military doctrine can significantly change how war is fought, the outcome of a battle, and the fortunes of the combatants. Many works explore how human progress, discovery, and suffering affect military doctrine or battle, and how the protagonists and antagonists reflect on and adapt to such changes.

Military science fiction is also part of the “military and popular culture” subject field. [2]

Old Man's War Novel By John Scalzi

John Scalzi’s Humorous Take on Military SF

Many authors have either used a galaxy-spanning fictional empire as a background for the story, or have explored the growth and/or decline of such an empire. The capital of a galactic empire is sometimes a “core world,” such as a planet relatively near a galaxy’s centrally-located supermassive black hole, which has advanced considerably in science and technology compared to current human civilization. Characterizations of these empires can vary wildly from malevolent forces that attack sympathetic victims, to apathetic or amoral bureaucracies, to more reasonable entities focused on social progress.

Hard Science Fiction

Hard science fiction is a category of science fiction characterized by concern for scientific accuracy and logic.[1][2][3] The term was first used in print in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller in a review of John W. Campbell’s Islands of Space in the November issue of Astounding Science Fiction.[4][5][1] The complementary term soft science fiction, formed by analogy to hard science fiction,[6] first appeared in the late 1970s. The term is formed by analogy to the popular distinction between the “hard” (natural) and “soft” (social) sciences, although there are examples generally considered as “hard” SF, such as Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, built on mathematical sociology.[7] Science fiction critic Gary Westfahl argues that neither term is part of a rigorous taxonomy; instead they are approximate ways of characterizing stories that reviewers and commentators have found useful.[8]

The Three Body Problem Novel By Cixin Liu

Rememberence of Earth’s Past Trilogy is Hugely Popular

The heart of the “hard science fiction” designation is the relationship of the science content and attitude to the rest of the narrative, and (for some readers, at least) the “hardness” or rigor of the science itself.[16] One requirement for hard SF is procedural or intentional: a story should try to be accurate, logical, credible and rigorous in its use of current scientific and technical knowledge about which technology, phenomena, scenarios and situations that are practically or theoretically possible. For example, the development of concrete proposals for spaceships, space stations, space missions, and a US space program in the 1950s and 1960s influenced a widespread proliferation of “hard” space stories.[17] Later discoveries do not necessarily invalidate the label of hard SF, as evidenced by P. Schuyler Miller, who called Arthur C. Clarke’s 1961 novel A Fall of Moondust hard SF,[4] and the designation remains valid even though a crucial plot element, the existence of deep pockets of “moondust” in lunar craters, is now known to be incorrect.

There is a degree of flexibility in how far from “real science” a story can stray before it leaves the realm of hard SF.[18] Hard science fiction authors only include more controversial devices, when the ideas draw from well known scientific and mathematical principles. In contrast, authors writing softer SF use such devices without a scientific basis (sometimes referred to as “enabling devices”, since they allow the story to take place).[19]

Greg Egan's Novel, Schild's Ladder

Greg Egan is one of the most challenging Hard SF writers in history

Readers of “hard SF” often try to find inaccuracies in stories. For example, a group at MIT concluded that the planet Mesklin in Hal Clement’s 1953 novel Mission of Gravity would have had a sharp edge at the equator, and a Florida high-school class calculated that in Larry Niven’s 1970 novel Ringworld the topsoil would have slid into the seas in a few thousand years.[8] Niven fixed these errors in his sequel The Ringworld Engineers, and noted them in the foreword.

Films set in outer space that aspire to the hard SF label try to minimize the artistic liberties taken for the sake of practicality of effect. Such considerations to be made when shooting may include:

How the film accounts for weightlessness in space.
How the film depicts sound despite the vacuum of space.
Whether telecommunications are instant or are limited by the speed of light.