Christoph Ewen: Science Fiction And Fantasy [PDF]

Seminar paper from the year 2013 in the subject English Language and Literature Studies – Literature, grade: 2, 0, University of Trier, language: English, abstract: What makes a text a science fiction text? What makes it a fantasy text? In
this study, I would like to discuss why it is impossible to clearly draw a line
between these two genres. In order to do so, I am going to focus on the
“justification” of the unreal, respectively, the supernatural elements of a
story. I shall be discussing why a text can be considered a science fiction
text or a fantasy text – and why, in some cases, there is no clear answer to
the question of which genre a text is belongs to. While one might answer the
two questions put at the beginning of this study rather quickly by stating a
rule of thumb – scientific elements make a text a science fiction text,
magical ones make it a fantasy text – it is obvious that this would lead to a
very broad definition. It is thus necessary to go into detail, which I am going
to do. In order to investigate what, apart from the technical and the magical
elements, are the characteristics of the respective genres mentioned at the
beginning, I am going to give the definitions of these terms which can be
found in standard reference texts. In order to go into detail, I shall add more
information from academic literature about the fantastic genre, which both
science fiction and fantasy are part of. I would then like to go a step further
by testing the definitions with the help of three texts – H.G. Wells’s The
War of the Worlds as an example for the science fiction genre and Bram
Stoker’s Dracula as an example for a fantasy text. In addition, I shall be
discussing Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley’s Frankenstein. In this text, there
are elements of both science fiction and of fantasy. After this, I would like to
conclude my study.
Any selection of texts will necessarily be arbitrary, as it is impossible
to include everything into a study like this. I chose three texts from
approximately the same period, as this will provide a sound basis. In
addition, these texts are widely known, and there is generally no dispute
over the fact that they are part of the fantastic genre.