Social Science Fiction

Social science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction concerned less with technology and space opera and more with sociological speculation about human society. In other words, it "absorbs and discusses anthropology", and speculates about human behavior and interactions.

Exploration of fictional societies is a significant aspect of science fiction, allowing it to perform predictive (H. G. Wells, The Final Circle of Paradise) and precautionary (Fahrenheit 451) functions, to criticize the contemporary world (Antarctica-online) and to present solutions (Walden Two), to portray alternative societies (World of the Noon) and to examine the implications of ethical principles (the works of Sergei Lukyanenko).

Read more about Social Science Fiction:  Social Science Fiction in English, The Genre in The Eastern Bloc, Examples From The 1940s

Famous quotes containing the words social, science and/or fiction:

    Without metaphor the handling of general concepts such as culture and civilization becomes impossible, and that of disease and disorder is the obvious one for the case in point. Is not crisis itself a concept we owe to Hippocrates? In the social and cultural domain no metaphor is more apt than the pathological one.
    Johan Huizinga (1872–1945)

    Vanity of science. Knowledge of physical science will not console me for ignorance of morality in time of affliction, but knowledge of morality will always console me for ignorance of physical science.
    Blaise Pascal (1623–1662)

    A fiction about soft or easy deaths ... is part of the mythology of most diseases that are not considered shameful or demeaning.
    Susan Sontag (b. 1933)