Science Fiction As A Literary Genre

Science fiction as a literary genre has come a long way from Verne's search for the center of the earth and Wells' travel through time in his time machine. Contemporary science fiction is more willing to challenge the limits of possibilities and more eager to push the boundaries of human imagination. More importantly, science fiction often acts as a precursor to scientific thought, and forebodes new research; projects such as Google Glass can be traced to similar ideas presented much earlier in print fiction and other media. Science fiction thus consists not only of flights of idle fancy, but is in fact an indication of human endeavour to investigate new ways to enhance and improve the quality and duration of human life. An example of this …show more content…
Popular depictions in this context include references to super human strength and elevation of the senses to extraordinary levels through the use of surgical implants or replacement of parts of the body itself. Fiction of this kind often revolved around the creation of superhuman warriors or soldiers, who could save their fellow man from doom, either metaphorical or literal. The amalgamation of man and machine often manufactured monsters as well, who had as a peculiar distinction that in their case the fact that the human element in them was overshadowed by artificial affliction, and without emotions, empathy and affect that are generally considered to be the hallmark of the human condition, the monsters were depicted as cold, lifeless and …show more content…
In Neuromancer he talks about ‘mega-corporations’ which viewed technology as a weapon, and the information superhighway as a battlefield, and who hired hackers and coders to help them control information, which would in turn bring financial gains and the power to secure them from future loss. Stone reiterates that Gibson’s predictions about the consequences of technological evolution were surprisingly accurate, and that this fact provides ample food for thought about what the future might have in store for a generation now completely dependent on information, and continuously connected to the internet, in particular to services provided by companies which are strikingly similar to Gibson’s ‘mega-corporations’: “The major thrust of the industrial and institutional commitment to cyberspace research was still focussed on data manipulation – just as Gibson’s zaibastu did in Neuromancer. Gibson’s cowboys were outlaws in a military-industrial fairyland dominated by supercomputers, artificial intelligence devices and databanks. Humans were present, but their effect was minimal. There is no reason to believe that the cyberspaces being designed at NASA or in Florida would be any different” (444). Gibson’s vision of Cyberspace revolves around the concept of “jacking in” to the virtual world, or simply put, transferring