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- Technology: Technology in science fiction encompasses a wide range of equipment often designed with super-intelligent capabilities. This technology might currently exist, be a predicted invention with a basis in current technology, or be entirely speculative.
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Technology in science fiction is a crucial aspect of the genre. [1] [2] As science fiction emerged during the era of Industrial Revolution, the increased presence of machines in everyday life and their role in shaping of the society was a major influence on the genre.
Technology: Technology in science fiction encompasses a wide range of equipment often designed with super-intelligent capabilities. This technology might currently exist, be a predicted invention with a basis in current technology, or be entirely speculative.
Jul 26, 2018 · Literary and cultural historians describe science fiction (SF) as the premiere narrative form of modernity because authors working in this genre extrapolate from Enlightenment ideals and industrial practices to imagine how educated people using machines and other technologies might radically change the material world.
- Overview
- High technologies
Leo Marx, author of the techno-social study The Machine in the Garden (1964), coined the useful term technological sublime to indicate a quasi-spiritual haze given off by any particularly visible and impressive technological advance. Science fiction dotes on the sublime, which ruptures the everyday and lifts the human spirit to the plateaus of high imagination. Common models of the technological sublime include railroads, photography, aviation, giant dams, rural electrification (a particular Soviet favourite), atomic power and atomic weapons, space flight, television, computers, virtual reality, and the “information superhighway.” The most sublime of all technologies are, in reality, not technologies at all but rather technological concepts—time machines, interplanetary starships, and androids.
Humans quickly lose a sense of awe over the technological advancements that have been fully integrated into the fabric of everyday life. Technologies such as immunization, plumbing, recycling, and the birth control pill have had a profound cultural impact, but they are not considered sublime nor are they generally subjects for science fiction. The reason for this is not directly related to the scientific principles involved or any inherent difficulties of the engineering. It is entirely a social judgment, with distinctly metaphysical overtones. Science fiction is one of the arenas in which these judgments are cast.
Space flight is one high technology to which science fiction has shown a passionate allegiance. For the most part, the space shuttle remains sublime, even though it is three decades old and in its final years of operation. Were space shuttles as common as 747s, they would quickly lose their sublime affect.
Outer space and cyberspace—a science fiction term applied to computer networks and simulated spaces—are conceptual cousins, offering the same high-tech thrill through different instruments in different historical periods. Yet with cybertechnology rapidly achieving mass acceptance and becoming commonplace in many parts of the world, its SF allure is fading fast. Science fiction therefore has been once again making tentative overtures to biotechnology, although a relationship has existed at least since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published. Unlike computers, biotechnology is deeply rooted in ancient and highly conservative pursuits such as medicine and agriculture. Social resistance to gene-altered crops, animals, and especially human children is widespread.
The sheer novelty of computers masked their particular affinity for pornography, swindling, organized crime, and terrorist conspiracy until they were widely present in the home. By contrast, the potential social impact of cloning was easy to recognize and led to a spate of SF works, including Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), with its tank-born castes of workers. Czech “biopunk” stories of the 1980s used genetic parables to indict the moral warping of Czech society under Warsaw Pact oppression. Biologically altered “posthumans” are becoming an SF staple. First visualized as menacing monsters or Nietzschean supermen, the genetically altered were increasingly seen as people with unconventional personal problems.
Although many of the technologies that were first envisioned by science fiction have become reality—and become mundane aspects of mainstream fictional works—scientific knowledge is growing exponentially, leaving plenty of room for further speculation about its future impact on society and individuals. It is hard to imagine any contemporary society’s being fully immune to the prognosticating lure of science fiction.
Leo Marx, author of the techno-social study The Machine in the Garden (1964), coined the useful term technological sublime to indicate a quasi-spiritual haze given off by any particularly visible and impressive technological advance. Science fiction dotes on the sublime, which ruptures the everyday and lifts the human spirit to the plateaus of high imagination. Common models of the technological sublime include railroads, photography, aviation, giant dams, rural electrification (a particular Soviet favourite), atomic power and atomic weapons, space flight, television, computers, virtual reality, and the “information superhighway.” The most sublime of all technologies are, in reality, not technologies at all but rather technological concepts—time machines, interplanetary starships, and androids.
Humans quickly lose a sense of awe over the technological advancements that have been fully integrated into the fabric of everyday life. Technologies such as immunization, plumbing, recycling, and the birth control pill have had a profound cultural impact, but they are not considered sublime nor are they generally subjects for science fiction. The reason for this is not directly related to the scientific principles involved or any inherent difficulties of the engineering. It is entirely a social judgment, with distinctly metaphysical overtones. Science fiction is one of the arenas in which these judgments are cast.
Space flight is one high technology to which science fiction has shown a passionate allegiance. For the most part, the space shuttle remains sublime, even though it is three decades old and in its final years of operation. Were space shuttles as common as 747s, they would quickly lose their sublime affect.
Outer space and cyberspace—a science fiction term applied to computer networks and simulated spaces—are conceptual cousins, offering the same high-tech thrill through different instruments in different historical periods. Yet with cybertechnology rapidly achieving mass acceptance and becoming commonplace in many parts of the world, its SF allure is fading fast. Science fiction therefore has been once again making tentative overtures to biotechnology, although a relationship has existed at least since Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was published. Unlike computers, biotechnology is deeply rooted in ancient and highly conservative pursuits such as medicine and agriculture. Social resistance to gene-altered crops, animals, and especially human children is widespread.
The sheer novelty of computers masked their particular affinity for pornography, swindling, organized crime, and terrorist conspiracy until they were widely present in the home. By contrast, the potential social impact of cloning was easy to recognize and led to a spate of SF works, including Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World (1932), with its tank-born castes of workers. Czech “biopunk” stories of the 1980s used genetic parables to indict the moral warping of Czech society under Warsaw Pact oppression. Biologically altered “posthumans” are becoming an SF staple. First visualized as menacing monsters or Nietzschean supermen, the genetically altered were increasingly seen as people with unconventional personal problems.
Although many of the technologies that were first envisioned by science fiction have become reality—and become mundane aspects of mainstream fictional works—scientific knowledge is growing exponentially, leaving plenty of room for further speculation about its future impact on society and individuals. It is hard to imagine any contemporary society’s being fully immune to the prognosticating lure of science fiction.
- Bruce Sterling
Oct 14, 2024 · Science fiction is a form of fiction that deals principally with the impact of actual or imagined science upon society or individuals. The term ‘science fiction’ was popularized, if not invented, in the 1920s by one of the genre’s principal advocates, the American publisher Hugo Gernsback.
- Bruce Sterling
- The emergence of science fiction became most evident in the West, where the social transformations caused by the Industrial Revolution first led wr...
- The term science fiction was popularized, if not invented, in the 1920s by one of the genre’s principal advocates, the American publisher Hugo Gern...
- Science fiction gained popularity in the 1950s because developments in technology, such as nuclear energy and space exploration, coupled with the e...
- Science fiction differs from fantasy in that science fiction employs questions of scientific and technological plausibility while fantasy typically...
- Space colonization, on the Moon, Mars or space stations, is widely debated. Some argue humans have a moral duty to save our species from extinction...
When describing your technology, it's crucial to convey its functionality and design in a way that sparks the reader's imagination. Instead of simply stating what your invention does, paint a vivid picture that allows readers to visualize how it works and understand its purpose within the story.
Discover 10 examples of sci-fi technology from books, film, and television that have become a reality.
