Poe's Law

The Secret History of Science Fiction

Then felt I like some watcher of the skies
When a new planet swims into his ken;
- Keats

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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.

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