Gothic science fiction is a subgenre of science fiction that, as the name suggests, also involves gothic conventions.
Some of the more obvious examples of the subgenre feature vampires explained in a science fiction context, commonly that vampires are aliens or those infected by a disease as in (Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend), or products of parallel evolution (George R. R. Martin's novel Fevre Dream) or in (Kate Nevermore's novel Blood of the Living). Some feature entire planets of vampires, or vampire-like creatures (such as the comic book Vampirella).
In his history of science fiction, Billion Year Spree, Brian Aldiss contends that science fiction itself is an outgrowth of gothic fiction-- pointing to Mary Shelley's novel Frankenstein as an example." Science fiction is the search for a definition of man and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science) and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode." The blend can also be detected quite explicitly in Jules Verne's novel Le Château des Carpathes.
Other examples of the subgenre feature other traditionally gothic tropes in new settings, such as:
- Damsels in distress in faraway future
- Gothic planetary romance
- Gothic futuristic romance
Famous quotes containing the words science fiction, gothic, science and/or fiction:
“Science fiction writers, I am sorry to say, really do not know anything. We can’t talk about science, because our knowledge of it is limited and unofficial, and usually our fiction is dreadful.”
—Philip K. Dick (1928–1982)
“In the woods in a winter afternoon one will see as readily the origin of the stained glass window, with which Gothic cathedrals are adorned, in the colors of the western sky seen through the bare and crossing branches of the forest.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“Being is a fiction invented by those who suffer from becoming.”
—Coleman Dowell (1925–1985)