Social Science Fiction - Social Science Fiction in English

Social Science Fiction in English

Some roots of the genre may lie in such social speculations as utopian and dystopian fiction, which could be considered as extreme special cases of the genre.

One of the first writers who used science fiction to explore sociological topics was H. G. Wells, with his classic The Time Machine (1895) revealing the human race diverging into separate branches of Elois and Morlocks as a consequence of class inequality: a happy pastoral society of Elois preyed upon by the Morlocks but yet needing them to keep their world functioning. Wells' The Sleeper Awakes (1899, 1910) predicted the spirit of the 20th century: technically advanced, undemocratic and bloody. In 1888, Edward Bellamy penned Looking Backward: 2000-1887, a hugely influential utopian novel with socialist themes that outsold all but two books of the era.

In the U.S. the new trend of science fiction away from gadgets and space opera and toward speculation about the human condition was championed in pulp magazines of the 1940s by authors such as Robert A. Heinlein and by Isaac Asimov, who coined the term social science fiction to describe his own work. The term is not often used today except in the context of referring specifically to the changes that took place in the 1940s, but the subgenre it defines is still a mainstay of science fiction.

Many of the best known dystopias were inspired by reality: Aldous Huxley's "negative utopia" Brave New World (1932) and, alluding to the Soviet Union, Animal Farm (1945) and the Western world in Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) by George Orwell. In 1921 Yevgeny Zamyatin wrote his bitter novel We, forecasting the "victory of forces of reason over forces of kindness" in Soviet Russia; prior to perestroika it was known only in the West and influenced both Orwell and Huxley. "The thought-destroying force" of McCarthyism influenced Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 (1953).

The Chrysalids (1955) by John Wyndham explored the society of several telepathic children in a world hostile to such differences. Robert Sheckley studied polar civilizations of criminal and stability in his 1960 novel The Status Civilization.

The modern era of social science fiction began with the 1960s, when authors such as Harlan Ellison, Brian Aldiss, and Ursula K. Le Guin wrote novels and stories that reflected real-world political developments. Ellison's main theme was the protest against increasing militarism. LeGuin in The Left Hand of Darkness (1969) explored non-traditional sexual relations. Kurt Vonnegut wrote Slaughterhouse-Five (1969), which used the science fiction storytelling device of time-travel to explore anti-war, moral, and sociological themes. Frederik Pohl's series Gateway (1977 — 2004) combined social science fiction with hard science fiction. Among the modern exponents of social science fiction in the Campbellian/Heinlein tradition is L. Neil Smith who wrote both The Probability Broach (1981) and Pallas, which dealt with alternative "sideways in time" futures and what a libertarian society would look like. He is considered the heir to Robert A. Heinlein's individualism and libertarianism in science fiction.

Kim Stanley Robinson explored different models of the future in Three Californias Trilogy (1984, 1988, 1990).

The Saga of Recluce (1991 — now), by L. E. Modesitt, Jr. represents a fusion of science fiction and fantasy that can be described as social science fiction. The 13 books of the series describe the changing relationships between two technologically advanced cultures and the cultures of a primitive world to which each is involuntarily transported. Themes of gender stereotyping, sexism, ethics, economics, environmentalism and politics are explored in the course of the series, which examines the world through the eyes of all its protagonists.

Doris Lessing won the 2007 Nobel Prize for literature. Although mostly known for her mainstream works, she wrote numerous notable works of social science fiction, including Memoirs of a Survivor (1974), Briefing for a Descent into Hell (1971) the Canopus in Argos series (1974–1983), and The Cleft (2007).