Science Fiction As A Genre Of Literature

Science fiction is a genre of fiction in which the stories have a relationship with the principles of science involving true fictitious laws or theories of science. In addition, it has a relation with human elements, explaining what effect new discoveries, happenings, and scientific developments will have on us in the future. 

Throughout the years there have been a lot of controversies referring to the concept of science fiction as literature. Many scholars defend that science fiction should not be considered literature because it focuses on fantastical technology rather than characters and social issues. Even though this genre can be entertaining, its topics are not serious enough for literary discussion for some people. On the other hand, there are people who believe that what is unique about science fiction is that many works are stories that are not likely to happen in real life, allowing the reader to escape into another world. So it absolutely should be considered serious literature because of the important part that it takes in the literary community. Just because someone doesn’t like to read about it, or doesn’t believe in any of the content, doesn’t serve as grounds for considering it not literature. And I personally admire and agree with this group of people that don’t just look at it superficially but actually go deeper and critically think about what they are reading. 

My whole life I’ve looked at science fiction in an unfair way, I thought that this genre was all about mad authors that wrote nonsense because I just couldn’t understand how anyone could get anything from stories that talk about impossible things. But after I read “A Sound of Thunder” I realized that there is art and feelings and teaching after science fiction too. I believe that this genre is like modern art, you can go to an exhibition and just look at a landscape for hours and not be able to see anything represented on it or you can take a closer look and find out the author’s emotions and feelings when he painted the work, and actually be able to see clearly what is going on, what will get you extremely amazed. There is always a deeper meaning that you must look for to fully understand the work. 

I consider that science fiction should definitely be considered literature due to the own definition that has of this term. To me, it is all of the written or oral works that had an enduring impact over time written to express a point, feelings, theories, and universal truths that will cause an everlasting change in the reader and his way to look at the world. 

The problem is a very basic one, people give an art form the care and attention they think it deserves, you get out of a book what you bring to it. You can just take a science fiction book and read it just for the fun of it, or you can take such an extremely short story like “A Sound of Thunder” and actually analyze it and learn one of the most important universal truths which are that everything we do impacts the world, every action we perform acts as a butterfly effect and may affect someone from the other opposite side of the world. I think that it was extremely curious how many people considered this story stupid, dumb, or nonsense just because of the fact that the story didn’t directly apply to them, which made them disconnect and not pay attention to the part that actually mattered. I understand that time travel and space voyages may not be something possible as right now but the story uses those concepts in order to set up the storyline for what is to come which is the actual aspect that we were supposed to pay attention to, the butterfly effect. 

I used to think that the events that changed the world were things like big bombs, huge earthquakes, or vast population movements, but I have now realized that the things that really change the world, are the tiny things just like a butterfly flaps its wings in the Amazonian jungle, and subsequently a storm ravages half of Europe. We have been created in order that you might make a difference. We have within us the power to change the world.