Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
- Keats
WHAT IS SCIENCE FICTION?
By Dr. Marco Bitetto
In
the total cumulative genre of fiction there exist five other genres.
These genres are the hard science fiction, soft science fiction,
speculative science, historic fiction and finally fantasy.
The
term speculative science was originally coined by Mr. Hugo Gernsbach
back in the early 1930's in his fiction magazine called "Amazing
Stories" and his other subsequent fiction magazine called "Amazing
Science Stories" that were sold during the 1930's up until the name of
these two magazines changed to "ANALOG SCIENCE FACT AND FICTION"
magazine.
In the 1950's, Mr. Hugo Gernsbach gave the editorial
control over to Mr. Joseph Campbell. After Mr. Joseph Campbell died the
editorial control of ANALOG magazine transferred over to Dr. Stanley
Schmidt and was under his control until for a brief time Dr. Ben Bova
was the editor in charge. Then Dr. Stanley Schmidt once again was the
editor. Presently, Dr. Stanley Schmidt has been replaced as editor of
ANALOG.
During the time of Dr. Schmidt's editorial control of
ANALOG magazine, he termed the phrase "historical fiction" to define a
newly emerging genre of fiction that was historically based.
It
should be noted that during the reign of Mr. Joseph Campbell, the term
hard science fiction replaced the old term speculative science and also
the term soft science fiction came to define the genre of science
fiction that dealt with all things relating to psychology and sociology
in fiction as a whole.
In all manner of science fiction stories
there exist three parts. The first part is the introduction this is
followed by the plot and then the ending of the story.
In the
story introduction, there reader is introduced to the characters in the
story, the brief backgrounds of the characters and the problem that the
characters must soft during the entire story.
The plot on the other hand consist of a brief synopsis of what the story is all about.
The
ending of the story tells the reader both that the characters in the
story have solved the problem and how they solved the problem.
The
best fictional stories of all kind make use of a twist in the ending of
the story. This technique is used to provide the reader with a surprise
ending that they could not have imagined by reading the previous parts
to the story.
These above detailed parts of all manner of fictional
story writing are what you should know as a new writer of fiction of any
sort.
