Science fiction studies

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This article is about the field of science fiction studies. For the journal of the same title, please see Science-Fiction Studies.

Science fiction studies is the common name for the academic discipline that studies and researches the history, culture, and works of science and, more broadly, speculative fiction.

1 History of the field as a discipline
2 Degree-granting programs
3 Significant SF scholars (in chronological order)
4 Principal journals, conferences, and societies
5 Significant works
6 Significant research resources, databases, and archives
- 6.1 Popular culture collections with strong SF
- 6.2 Important databases and portals
7 Notes
8 General references

[edit] History of the field as a discipline

The modern field of science fiction studies is closely related to popular culture studies, a subdiscipline of cultural studies, and film and literature studies. Because of the ties with futurism and utopian works, there is often significant overlap with these fields as well. The field also has spawned subfields, such as feminist science fiction studies.

However, the field's roots go back much further, to the earliest commentators who studied representations of the sciences in the arts and literature, and explorations of utopian and social reform impulses in fantastic and visionary works of art and literature.

Modern science fiction criticism may have started with Dorothy Scarborough, who in 1917 included a chapter on "Supernatural Science" in her doctoral dissertation, published as The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction.^[1]

As the pulp era progressed, shifting science fiction ever further into popular culture, groups of writers, editors, publishers, and fans (often scientists, academics, and scholars of other fields) systematically organized publishing enterprises, conferences, and other insignia of an academic discipline. Much discussion about science fiction took place in the letter columns of early SF magazines and fanzines, and the first book of commentary on science fiction in the US was Clyde F. Beck's Hammer and Tongs, a chapbook of essays originally published in a fanzine.^[2]

The 1940s saw the appearance of three full-scale scholarly works that treated science fiction and its literary ancestors: Philip Babcock Gove's The Imaginary Voyage in Prose Fiction (1941), J. O. Bailey's Pilgrims Through Space and Time (1948), and Marjorie Hope Nicholson's Voyages to the Moon (1949).^[3]

Peter Nicholls credits Sam Moskowitz with teaching "what was almost certainly the first sf course in the USA to be given through a college": a non-credit course in "Science Fiction Writing" at City College of New York in 1953. The first regular, for-credit courses were taught by Mark Hillegas (at Colgate) and H. Bruce Franklin (at Stanford) in 1961.^[4] During the 1960s, more science fiction scholars began to move into the academy, founding academic journals devoted to the exploration of the literature and works of science fiction.^[5] The explosion of film studies and cultural studies more broadly granted the nascent discipline additional credibility, and throughout the 1970s and 1980s, mainstream scholars such as Susan Sontag^[6] turned their critical attention to science fiction.

[edit] Degree-granting programs

University of Glamorgan (Wales), BSc (Hons) in Science and Science Fiction (program analyzes relationship between science and the arts)^[7]
University of Kansas, Center for the Study of Science Fiction
University of Liverpool, M.A. in Science Fiction Studies (Liverpool program description and courses) (program looks at leading writers in the field)
University of Reading, M.A. in Science Fiction: Histories, Texts, Media

[edit] Significant SF scholars (in chronological order)

[edit] Principal journals, conferences, and societies

Societies:

Science Fiction Research Association (SFRA)
Society for Utopian Studies
International Association for the Fantastic in the Arts (IAFA)

General journals:

Review journals:

Internet Review of Science Fiction (IROSF)
New York Review of Science Fiction (NYRSF)

[edit] Significant works

Sam Moskowitz. The Immortal Storm: A History of Science Fiction Fandom. Atlanta: Atlanta Science Fiction Organization, 1954; reprinted Westport, CT: Hyperion Press, 1974.
Kingsley Amis. New Maps of Hell: A Survey of Science Fiction. New York: Harcourt, 1960.
Robert Scholes. Structural Fabulation: An Essay on Fiction of the Future. Notre Dame, Indiana: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975.
Neil Barron, ed. Anatomy of Wonder: Science Fiction. New York: Bowker, 1976 (first ed.); numerous editions since.
Samuel R. Delany. The Jewel-Hinged Jaw: Notes on the Language of Science Fiction. Elizabethtown, New York: Dragon, 1977.
Ursula K. Le Guin, The Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. New York: Perigee, 1980.
Donna Haraway, "A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and Socialist-Feminism in the Late Twentieth Century." 1985. (established cyborg feminism)
Bruce Sterling, "Preface," in Mirrorshades: The Cyberpunk Anthology New York: Arbor, 1986. (defined the term cyberpunk)
Gary K. Wolfe. Critical Terms for Science Fiction and Fantasy: A Glossary and Guide to Scholarship. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986. (work in librarianship establishing a thesaurus)
Marleen Barr, Alien to Femininity Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1987. (definitive first book-length work of feminist science fiction scholarship)
John Clute and Peter Nicholls, eds. The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1993.

[edit] Significant research resources, databases, and archives

J. Lloyd Eaton Collection of Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and Utopian Literature (University of California, Riverside) (Collection guide)
The Science Fiction Foundation Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Sydney Jones Library, University of Liverpool
M. Horvat Collection of Science Fiction Fanzines, University of Iowa Libraries, Special Collections Dept.
The Judith Merril Collection of Science Fiction, Speculation and Fantasy, Toronto Public Library
Michigan State University Libraries, Science Fiction Collection; includes collection of Tiptree Award, Clarion archives, and Science Fiction Writers Association depository
MIT Science Fiction Society ("the world's largest open-shelf collection of science fiction"); local index
Paskow Science Fiction Collection, Temple University Libraries, including a significant collection of fanzines

[edit] Popular culture collections with strong SF

Bowling Green State University Popular Culture Collection
Dime Novel and Story Paper Collection, Stanford University Library ("Dime Novels and Penny Dreadfuls")

[edit] Important databases and portals

SF Hub, the University of Liverpool Library's "Science Fiction Foundation" collection
Center for the Study of Science Fiction, University of Kansas
ISFDB, the Internet Speculative Fiction DataBase
[http://www.locusmag.com/index/0start.html Locus Index to Science Fiction (1984-1999)

[edit] Notes

^ Dorothy Scarborough, "Supernatural Science," in The Supernatural in Modern English Fiction. New York: Putnam, 1917, pp. 251-280. See also the Scarborough entry in "Horny Toads and Ugly Chickens: A Bibilography on Texas in Speculative Fiction," by Bill Page, Texas A&M Cushing Library, 2001.
^ Peter Nicholls, "Critical and Historical Works About SF," in Clute, John, Peter Nicholls, eds., The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (St. Martin's Press, 1995) ISBN 0-312-13486-X.
^ Nichols, "Critical and Historical Works About SF"; and "Chronological Bibliography of Science Fiction History, Theory, and Criticism" at http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/biblio.htm
^ "SF in the Classroom" in the Clute & Nicholls Encyclopedia
^ See, e.g., Science-Fiction Studies, founded 1973.
^ See, e.g., Susan Sontag, "The Imagination of Disaster," in Against Interpretation (New York: Farrar, 1966), pp. 209-225.
^ Leander Kahney, "BS in Science Fiction, Literally", Wired (July 14, 1999).