20th Century Speculative Fiction is a Graduate level course at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. We, the class of Fall '95, have speculated our way through past and future fiction from Wells to Leguin and beyond. In the course of this journey we have happened upon a variety of theoretical and ordinary terms which require special definition in regard to the study of Speculative Fiction, and others which we just didn't understand and felt the need to pin down. Source information is documented in a bibliography at the bottom of each web page; click the asterisk at the end of the welcome phrase. There is a possibility of future expansion and elaboration depending on the survival rate of participants in this course. This document was composed by Speculators Kelly Anderson, Rich Swenson, and Tiffany Trent. ~~ Hi Mom 8)

• Aesthetics -- This is the philosophy, or theory, of the perception of the beautiful in art and nature. Frequently connected with a refined taste, works that fall into the aesthetic category are seen as 'high' art and literature. Most literature is said to have aesthetic qualities, and these qualities place them in a particular, very selective, canon. This placement is often very subjective, especially when dealing with SF, which is considered part of 'popular culture'. High art and popular art have often been opposed to each other, though there are a few examples, such as Dickens and Shakespeare, which have been placed in both categories. More recent developments have proposed that art and literature can transcend the discrimination of defining works as either high or low art. In this case, works (such as SF) retain a value in and of themselves, and whether they are considered high or low art. (R. S.)
  
• Alien -- Aliens in science fiction have typically represented forms of life that are nonhuman and that hail from other planets. Oftentimes, aliens are seen as intelligent, but usually are also considered threatening. In Alien Encounters, Mark Rose suggests that a dilemma rises in using aliens as a literary device in science fiction due to the very nature of what the word Œalien¹ implies. ³...It is not possible to imagine something utterly alien but only to con ceive of something as alien by contrast or analogy with something already known...Since the literary alien must always be constructed on some principle of analogy or contrast with our world, it follows that the truly alien can never be actualized in a text² (78). Rose goes on to describe how, in a writer¹s choice in portraying aliens is significant because the ³writer is inevitably...writing about his own world, and it is precisely this that makes the aliens in science fiction so fascinating² (78). Some examples of these types of science fiction works that incorporate aliens would be: War of the Worlds, by H. G. Wells and Childhood¹s End by Arthur C. Clarke. [TLT]
  
• Alternate History -- Alternate history stories in science fiction tend to focus on a reinterpretation of time. ³In these stories time is conceived not as a single line but as an infinite number of branching lines, each representing a possible reality² (Rose 118). Not only does the time traveler of these novels move backward in time and change history, but he or she may also move laterally in time to histories which are taking place right alongside the one in which the character may currently reside. Rose suggests that this type of science fiction is concerned with ³free will and determinism² (119). Two examples of the alternate history would be: Philip K. Dick¹s The Man in the High Castle and Ward Moore¹s Bring the Jubilee. [TLT]
  
• Anarchy-- A theoretical social state in which there is no governing person or
  body of persons, but each individual has absolute liberty, without implication of disorder. This type of non-government is often seen in works, especially SF, which attempt to create a utopian style of living. In this social atmosphere, each individual takes according to his needs, but no more. Anarchy, though, can also apply to a state of lawlessness which promotes disorder. In this case, without a ruling body, there often arises feelings of unsettledness, and conflicts of opinion can occur. Here the case of anarchy connotes a very undesirable, destructive quality, mainly because it lacks the implied order inherent in the other form. These two conflicting ideas of anarchy are often why a true utopia is almost impossible to construct. Anarchy creates a resistance to its own validity. In Ursula K LeGuin, in The Dispossessed, devises an anarchical government on the planet of Annares, and defines it as an ambiguous utopia. (R. S.)
  
• Android -- The term android comes from the Greek andro (man) + -eiÌdhj (like). It is commonly applied to an automated machine/robot resembling a human being. The OED records the first use of the word "1727-51 Chambers Cycl. s.v., Albertus Magnus is recorded as having made a famous androides." And in 1958, the _Spectator_ made note that "Today SF must be more than a blood-and-sex day-dream spattered with words like androids (robots made of flesh and bone)." One must wonder how far we have come from this presentiment. Androids have been referred to as automatons and "living statues," and the term is often applied (perhaps inaccurately) to cyborgs and robots (including those of non-human form as observed in _Star Wars_ where mechanized servants and mobile "appliances" are referred to as "'droids."). Gary Wolfe places androids on the mechanical continuum between the lower service robots and the higher order cyborgs. "At this stage, machines are capable of independent action, but action that is essentially no more than a simulation of human behavior. It is also at this stage that the computer and the robot often merge into one in science fiction, resulting in human-like actions independent of programming..." (154). ~~ K.A.A
  
• Barrier-- Any obstacle which stops or obstructs passage, prevents access, or produces separation, often along a boundary-line. It can be either physical or metaphorical. In SF, one barrier is created by limitation of the mind, which bases itself from one point of view, often being grounded in culturally inherent traditions. These cultural customs are the "known", and the barrier separates the "known" from the "unknown". The barrier "separates the human community from an unknown and hostile environment" (Wolfe 31). SF attempts to cross these culturally constructed barriers in order for humanity to see itself from another angle, and in doing so, the culture gains knowledge with which it can evaluate, and even reevaluate, itself. As Wolfe points out, many of the icons of SF are barriers themselves, such as the spaceship, monster, or wasteland motifs. A barrier also acts to protect one from the outside, the unknown, in a sense, placing in isolation those behind the barrier. In order to cross the barrier, one must expose oneself to whatever is on the other side, dangerous or not. (R. S.)
  
• Binary (opposition) -- A binary opposition in literary studies indicates two subjects that are in close association with one another in some sense, but which also have differences. A diagrammatic representation of this idea would be two circles that are hinged somehow at the middle, like the Chinese philosophy of the yin-yang. This idea may have its origins in astronomy in reference to binary stars - two stars which revolve around one another or a common center and are held together by their gravitational forces but are still physically different entities. [TLT]
  
• Byronic Hero -- In terms of SF literature, Byronism abounds in the lives of heroes throughout the genre, particularly in the early years. The Byronic Hero is well described in this quote from a biographical sketch in the Norton Anthology: ³Byron also seems to have had one attribute in common with the Byronic hero: a compulsion to try forbidden experience--including, as we now know, homosexual love affairs--joined with a tendency to court his own destruction² (482). The image one has of a Byronic Hero is that of a short, stout man at the edge of the world looking down over an abyss as the sun sets behind him surrounding him with a shimmering gilded aura as he thrusts his chest forward defiantly against the tribulations of the future, even as the dust of past trials and victories settles from his well-polished shoes. From whence came this remarkable figure?? George Gordon, Lord Byron, was born in 1788 and died in 1824 after a series of feverish attacks, just after his thirty-sixth birthday. He had been born with a clubfoot, which caused him physical and mental anguish throughout his life. However, he found in his lameness an opportunity to rise above through athletic prowess in cricket, boxing, fencing, horsemanship, and swimming (481). According to examples in the OED, ³When Byronism was at its height,...you could not be interesting unless you were miserable and viscious.² One entry refers to persons ³Wearing [their] shirt collar[s] Byronically tied in front with a slip of black ribbon,² and another states, ³Let others...fling their curls back from their brows, unbutton their shirt-collars, and thus Byronised, begin.² Lord Byron¹s life was peppered with personal tragedy and scandal including but not limited to sexual promiscuity and perversion. Deaths surrounded him to the point that one might wonder if the man were not jinxed. Still, he apparently acquired an almost cultish following not only because of his poetry but also his sexual prowess, physical achievements, and fashion sense. At the end of his life, he worked diligently for the cause of Greeks in their fight for independence from Turkish rule; his writings helped stir European advocacy for the cause, and he helped to train troops in the town on Missolonghi. Byron is still considered a national hero in Greece today (483). Heroes are commonly possessed of superhuman strength and mental acuity, and are generally the central figure in a literary work. Indeed, Byron seemed to fit such a category in real life. ~~ K.A.A.
  
• Canon -- The canon acts as a standard of judgment, often using certain criteria, in which to place works which live up to the expected quality. Works within such a system are often seen to be representative of at least a part of the whole. The canon provides a place of contention not only between SF and outside, 'high' literature, but also within the genre of SF itself. Since the genre of SF has been around for a relatively short period of time. Huntington has a long debate about the canon as he tries to choose what works to use in a critical analysis of SF. (R. S.)
  
• Capitalism -- An economic system that advocates privately owned businesses and production companies, and which praises the initiative of the individual. It is a system based on competition. Basically, this is a system in which every person is out for him or her self, and screw everybody else on the way to the top. A very important system in SF, since this is how most of our own world works. If SF is to make us look at our own world critically, it must create ways in which we can view capitalism from outside of our own reality. Anarchy, utopia, and dystopia are some of the speculative systems with which SF evaluates the effectiveness of capitalism. (R.S.)
  
• Chaos -- referring to a physical state , it can indicate a vast nothingness, a gulf or chasm, empty space, an abyss. Referring to a condition, it indicates confusion, disorder, disconnectedness of parts, a state of entropy. Personified, Chaos was the oldest of the Greek gods, and through him came the universe as we know it. Chaos, however, is not a destructive force. It is instead a condition from which new forms can arise. Chaos is the result of conflict, of destruction, of armageddon, of disintegration of social, political, physical, and mental order. From the ashes rises the phoenix, but where would he be and how would he continue without the stage of chaos through which he must pass? ~~ K.A.A.
  
• City -- The icon of the city has quite an interesting history in science fiction. Gary Wolfe suggests that early science fiction viewed the future city as a techological wonder in which people lived safe, happy, and productive lives. Over time, this vision has changed to portray the city as ³an unmanageable, cacophonous, barely conceivable environment that has long since shifted from the communal imperative to the survival imperative: cities that once were social organizations to promote the protection of the individual from a hostile and chaotic environment now must devote more and more of their resources to the protection of the individual from the hostile and chaotic environment that the city itself has become² (Wolfe 87). Interestingly enough, the history of the word itself reflects this primal shift. Where once the idea of city meant basically meant people living together in common: ³its primary sense was therefore `citizenship'; thence concretely `the body of citizens, the community'; only in later times was the word taken as urbs, the town or place occupied by the community. The historical relation between the Roman ciÙvitaÙs and ciÙvis was thus the reverse of that between our city and citizen..² (OED). An early example of the city in science fiction would be Hugo Gernsback¹s Amazing Stories magazine (August 1939), while a later example would be The City of Gold and Lead trilogy by John Christopher. [TLT]
  
• Cognitive Estrangement -- This term is a combination of two words which describes one of the devices through which SF forces itself on the reader. Cognition is the action or faculty of knowing, taken in its widest sense, including "sensation, perception, and conception" (OED). Estrangement is the process of feeling separated (withdrawal, alienation in feeling or affection) from one's natural self, "such as is thought to result from the alienating development of consciousness or from involvement in a complex industrialized culture" (OED). Mark Rose writes "science fiction comes into being not only as a medium for
  exchange of expression of the feeling of separation from physical nature... but also for expression of the feeling of social disconnection" By combing these two elements, SF is attempting to create a way for the individual to step outside the known, to become separated from the normal self. By doing this, the individual can then attempt to conceive of the unknown and make it a part of his or her known world. By creating an experience distinctly outside of a person's known world, that person is allowed to learn and gain knowledge not only about the outside world, but also achieves a different viewpoint of the known world. (R. S.)
  
• Communitas -- The idea of communitas has its earliest origins in Latin, meaning ³fellowship or communion² (OED). In Le Guin¹s essay ³A Non-Euclidean View of California as a Cold Place to Be,² Le Guin explores the idea of communitas in light of her feelings about utopia. She uses several quotes from Victor Turner, which would be useful here to describe what is meant by communitas. ³[S]tructure in society, in his terms, is cognitive, communitas existential; structure provides a model, communitas a potential; structure classifies, communitas reclassifies; structure is expressed in legal or political institutions, communitas in art and religion² (Le Guin 88). Communitas is often seen in terms of the sacred, ³...possibly because it transgresses or dissolves the norms that govern structured or institutionalized relationships and is accompanied by experiences of unprecedented potency² ( qtd. in Le Guin 88). Therefore, communitas can best be seen as a utopian experience, an experience of human interactions and spiritual relationships that defys normal attempts to try to classify it or explain it. It is ever-renewing itself, yet its potency is always manifested in its ways of connecting human beings with one another and their world. [TLT]
  
• Cosmos -- This word was first used in terms of ³order, ornament, harmony, world, or universe² (OED). Cosmos, then, refers to seeing ³the world or universe as an ordered and harmonious system.² [TLT]
  
• Cosmology -- In correlation with the above definition, cosmology deal with seeing the world as an ³ordered whole.² In philosophical circles, cosmology means ³a branch of metaphysics which deals with the idea of the world as a totality of all phenomena in space and time ² (OED). In science fiction, these ideas can perhaps best be demonstrated as a worldview, in which order is plainly more prevalent than chaos. Many science fiction writers create such beliefs within the structures of their works. [TLT]
  
• Cybernetics -- The term cybernetics comes from the Greek kuberna, which means "to steer." It is essentially "The theory or study of communication and control in living organisms or machines" (OED online). However, in SF, the term is commonly associated with interactive capabilities of robots, cyborgs, and androids. Christian W. Thomsen references the work of Norbert Weiner and Michael Kandel in a discussion of cybernetics: "Weiner also points out how human feelings and human consciousness could originate from cybernetic processes. Indetermination makes autonomous actiossible and opens the opportunity of free will, hence uniqueness, individuality. Thus cybernetics guarantees man's humanity, simultaneously promoting the 'humaneness' of machines, provided they have passed the necessry 'threshold of complexity.' What Michel Kandel means by this 'threshold of complexity' is the point past which the thinking of such machines can no longer be restricted to clear functions, where something like consciousness could arise, of which the designing engineer would not have dreamed in the least" (Dunn and Erlich, Eds. _The Mechanical God_ 28). The concept of conscious, sentient machines has provided a hearty stew of possibilities for science fiction authors since the birth of the genre. ~~ K.A.A.
  
• Cyborg -- "cyborg" is literally a combinatin of "cybernetic" and "organism." The term is generally applied to any combination of a human being with machinery, but there are gray areas which defy such a simple definition. In 1060, Clynes and Kline proposed the term "cyborg" to apply to "the exogenously extended organizational complex functioning as an integrated homeostatic system unconsciously," additionally, "the Cyborg deliberately incorporates exogenous components extending the self-regulatory control function of the organism in order to adapt it to new environments" (OED online). The adaptability is essential; in creating a liivng machine, we must ensure its ability to survive under ordinary conditions without supervision, and often the integrated technology increases the adaptive capacity of the new being such that it can endure and work in environments fatally hostile to human beings. They become our colonizing, military, and labor forces and in turn often occupy the position of slave, resulting in their expendablility. However, machine and computer technology can be integrated with living human systems within a liberal ratio range. At what point, though, does man cross the line into mech and vice versa? As long as the human half of the equation is evident enough to evoke compassion, the status of the integrated being rises upwards on the heirarchical scale. Gary Wolfe considers this transformation: "...[The machines learn to behave completely independently, no longer imitating human activities and in fact demonstrating that mechanical functions are in many ways superior to organic ones; humity is becoming obsolete" (155). ~~ K.A.A
  
• Diagetic --This has to do with design of the work by the author. This entails the narrative point of view, what type of language and imagery are used, how the author constructs not only the written text, but also how the work is put together, such as in what order the chapters are placed, and how the plot progresses. An example of such an authorial decision is Walter Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz, in which the narrative is broken into three parts, each 600 years apart, or legion's The Dispossessed, in which she alternates chapters between present and past. (R.S.)
  
• Dialectic -- The idea of Œdialectic¹ has roots in the ancient study of rhetoric and the critical search for truth. ³In modern Philosophy..[The idea of dialectic is]... [s]pecifically applied by Kant to the criticism which shows the mutually contradictory character of the principles of science, when they are employed to determine objects beyond the limits of experience (i.e. the soul, the world, God); by Hegel (who denies that such contradictions are ultimately irreconcilable) the term is applied (a) to the process of thought by which such contradictions are seen to merge themselves in a higher truth that comprehends them; and (b) to the world-process, which, being in his view but the thought-process on its objective side, develops similarly by a continuous unification of opposites² (OED). In other words, in ³any complex system of things, people, or thoughts, opposing forces or tendencies are at work, so that processes are likely to oscillate first one way then another between extremes² (OED). Dialectical interplays often take place in science fiction, such as in Jules¹ Verne¹s Master of the World where human and machine, seemingly at first at odds and completely different beings become merged in the obsessive personality of the scientist, Robur. [TLT]
  
• Displacement -- Displacement has at its roots the ³master trope of irony² (Huntington 39). Displacement in science fiction ³throws the reader abruptly into a world which is strange but is nevertheless treated as familiar² (39). This is different from mainstream fiction which typically refers to worlds that are or were historical. With science fiction, displacement is considered a given, as far as its readership is concerned, and is really part of the thrill of the genre. The reader expects the worlds he or she encounters not only to be different in the sense of historicity, as might be the case in popular fiction, but to be completely unfamiliar, as well. See also estrangement. [TLT]
  
• Dystopia --Taken in the extreme sense, dystopia is an imaginary place or condition in which everything sucks. This is an undesirable place which, in terms of the future, the human race is attempting to avoid. Examples of dystopia are works such as George Orwell's 1984, and Aldous Huxley's A Brave New World. Dystopias, according to Rose, are often concerned with the human in conflict with the non-human. In this sense, a dystopia might be a world in which machines control and the humans are slaves. These undesirable realities act to as icons through which the reader evaluates certain theoretical systems. (R. S.)
  
• Entropy -- From the Greek "troph" meaning transformation, or literally turning. Entropy is the second of the thermodynamic laws of the universe, and indicates a trend toward disorder, dissolution, decay. It is the state of matter in which particles, parts, or subsets tend toward dissociation from the whole; in social context this may represent the emergence of anarchy or isolationism. It signifies a transformation from the current form into something new, perhaps a turn from one ideological direction to another. In literature, entropy may manifest itself in apocalyptic themes as in _A Canticle for Liebowitz_ by Walter Miller. Mark Rose professes that "entropy, is finally more powerful than man" (9). However, the term is not entirely negative, nor does it apply literally to most situation; from the desolation of an entropic state, new beings, ideologies, and institutions arise. The process of the universe is fundamentally cyclical, engineered by the alternating harmonics of unity and disunity. See also chaos. ~~ K.A.A.
  
• Euclidean -- This defines the space and area around us that is known. Euclid was a mathematician who wrote a treatise on geometry. This view of the world is based on provable truths. A non-Euclidean view of something would be a hypothetical situation because one or more of the fundamental principles would be false. i.e. Utopia is "not accessible to Euclidean reason" (LeGuin 81). (R.S.)
  
• Extrapolation -- Within the realms of science fiction, extrapolation is a common occurrence. Many early science fiction novels, like Jules Verne¹s Master of the World, are extrapolations of historical fiction into the future. In essence, extrapolation in science fiction refers to taking ³selected factors from the present² and extending them into the future (Rose 110). Science fiction writers are the quintessential experts of this type of writing; their visions see into the future or human history and attempt to explore the possibilities of technology, science, and social and philosophical institutions. [TLT]

20th Century Speculative Fiction Homepage

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Page design and coding by Kelly Anderson. Definitions complied in a joint effort by Rich Swenson, Tiffany Trent, and Kelly Anderson. Send mail regarding questions, comments, errors, etc. to blackatz@vt.edu.