Science fiction

Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginative content such as futuristic settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, time travel,parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. Exploring the consequences of scientific innovations is one purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas". Science fiction has been used by authors as a device to discuss philosophical ideas such as identity, desire, morality, and social structure.

The settings for science fiction are often contrary to consensus reality, but most science fiction relies on a considerable degree of suspension of disbelief, which is facilitated in the reader's mind by potential scientific explanations or solutions to various fictional elements. Science fiction elements include:

• A time setting in the future, in alternative timelines, or in a historical past that contradicts known facts of history or the archaeological record.
• A spatial setting or scenes in outer space, on other worlds, or on subterranean earth.
• Characters that include aliens, mutants, androids, or humanoid robots and other types of characters arising from a future human evolution.
• Futuristic or plausible technology such as ray guns, teleportation machines, and humanoid computers.
• New and different political or social systems, e.g. Dystopian, post-scarcity, or post-apocalyptic.
• Paranormal abilities such as mind control, telepathy, telekinesis, and teleportation.
• Other universes or dimensions and travel between them.

Science fiction as a literary sub-genre was born in the 20s and it was later used in films, television and in magazines. It enjoyed a boom in the second half of the twentieth century.

The first science fiction book was written by Mary Shelley, it's call Frankenstein.

Jules Verne is considered a master of the genre, mostly focused on the development of talents and scientific inventions. He wrote Around the Moon a book in wich there is a trip to the moon aboard a bullet, fired from a giant cannon.

Science fiction is in films since its beginnings, when "Le Voyage dans la Lune" (inspired by the work of Jules Verne) amazed with photographic effects. In the late 70s the new special effects films were very well received, such as "Star Wars" and "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" reached bestsellers. Later "ET the Extra-Terrestrial", "Blade Runner" and "Men in Black" came to cinemas.

In the early twentieth century began the Golden Age of science fiction, with the emergence of authors such as Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Aldous Huxley, George Orwell and Ray Bradbury.

Amazing Stories was the first magazine exclusively of science fiction. It was first published in 1926. Its founder was the first person to use the term "scientifiction" to describe this emerging genre.

Artículo escrito por Begoña Esteban San Narciso