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:
“I am still a victim of chess. It has all the beauty of art—and much more. It cannot be commercialized. Chess is much purer than art in its social position.”
—Marcel Duchamp (1887–1968)
“If you have science and art,
You also have religion;
But if you don’t have them,
You better have religion.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)
“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)