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2.3. Distinguishing Science Fiction from Other Genres
According to Bould “[g]enres are best thought of as ongoing processes of 
negotiation rather than fixed entities that pre-exist their naming. Science fiction 
[…] is no exception” (1). Bould argues in the following way. 

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Genres are not objects that exist in the world and are then studied by critics, 
but fluid and tenuous constructions made by the interaction of various claims 
and practices. They come into being ‘after the fact’, as writers, producers, 
fans, critics and other discursive and material actants select and emphasise 
certain elements of various texts and connect them to similar features in other 
texts (Bould 2). 
Feige claims that science fiction is a child of Gothic literature. Both genres 
have a lot in common: Gothic literature exactly as science fiction put its main 
emphasis on the alien and spacey (Feige 16). The Gothic genre started in the 
18
th
century and is a child of the European Romantic period. It is characterized 
by the rejection of rationalism and devoted itself to the Enlightenment. With 
Horace Walpole’s short novel The Castle of Otranto (1765) begins the history 
of a literary genre that was soon called Gothic Novel or Gothic Romance. In 
this context, the term Gothic connotes something bizarre and extraordinary 
(Feige 16). 
At the beginning of the 19
th
century, Gothic Novels went out of fashion 
and a new branch grows out of it: the Weird Fiction, the later horror literature. 
However, horror, secrets and the delightful shiver, i.e. topoi of the Gothic 
Novel, are still today elements of science fiction (Feige 16). It goes for both 
authors, those of Gothic and science fiction literature that a huge distance 
holds a great fascination for the readership. If something incredible and 
improbable is supposed to happen, then one rather makes it happen at a 
place where readers do not immediately judge the events by their own 
experiences. Science fiction novels are often set some time far in the future, 
on earth or on other planets of the solar system or somewhere in the Galaxy, 
or even in another distant galaxy. Sometimes, they also make use of different 
levels of probability or another timeline (Feige 17). 
Feige finally names another common ground of the Gothic Novel and the 
science fiction, i.e. the interest to escape from the Enlightenment assumption, 
regarding scientific advances and education as the highest possibilities of 
mankind, and instead to experience something wondrous, marvelous and 
fantastic (Feige 17). This statement seems to contradict the definition of 
science fiction as it basically aspires after progress. However, the 
Enlightenment assumption considers scientific knowledge to be valuable, but 
excludes the search for alternatives and negates the use of imagination. 
Therefore, science fiction writers at that time somewhat opposed the idea of 
Enlightenment (Rider 231). Clayton, too regards ‘the matter [to be] confusing 
[as] […] even the Enlightenment attitudes found in the 1818 version [of 
Shelley’s Frankenstein] contain critiques of scientific inquiry” (Clayton 87). 

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This will be elucidated in the following paragraphs dealing with Shelley’s novel 
in particular.
Science fiction has to be separated from a broader fantastic literature 
and from the emerging genres of fantasy and horror (Bould xi), even though 
some authors nowadays try to cross the boundaries between fantasy and 
science fiction (
Shippey
10). They simultaneously developed, but with distinct 
features (Kelleghan xix). 
Wilfert tells the difference between the three genres in a pertinent way.
Die Horror-Literatur beschreibt im Roman zuerst die reale Welt und dann, wie 
in diese ein dahinterliegender übernatürlicher Kosmos mit Gespenstern und 
Dämonen einbricht, deren Existenz ja die reale Welt negiert. Science Fiction 
entwirft eine nichtreale Welt, in der aber Elemente der Lebenserfahrung des 
Lesers – nur weitergedacht und in die Zukunft verlegt – ihren Platz haben. 
Fantasy, zumindest in ihrer genuinen Form, zeigt nur eine nicht-reale Welt 
ohne Bezüge zu unserem lebensweltlichen Kosmos. Schauplatz, Zeit und 
Figuren dieser Romane sind ohne Bezug zur Erfahrung des Lesers. Der Autor 
schafft hier sein eigenes System von Wahrheiten, das keine empirische 
Grundlage mehr besitzt (Wilfert cited in Wuckel, 11). 
According to De Camp, there is no sharp line between the genres of science 
fiction and fantasy as both are branches of imaginative fiction. Usually the 
term fantasy refers to stories based upon supernatural phenomena, such as 
“the existence of demons, ghosts, witches, and workable magic spells” (5). On 
the other hand, science fiction incorporates stories containing scientific or 
pseudo-scientific assumptions, such as “revolutionary new inventions, life in 
the future, or life on other worlds”. However, there are stories that fall on the 
border between the two genres and thus are not clearly definable (De Camp 
5).
Not only academics, but also readers, fans, editors and reviewers, by 
means of a critical reception of science fiction, still have the longing to fix the 
genre as one unmistakably defined entity. Brian Aldiss’ Billion Year Spree 
(1973) wrote one of the most influential critical works of science fiction as an 
academic field. The problem that scholars have to face is whether one “should 
[…] delineate the history of the genre so as to know which texts to theorise 
about, or theorise the genre so as to establish which texts it should include” 
(Bould 3). Aldiss preferred the first approach, claiming that “no true 
understanding of science fiction is possible until its origin and development are 
understood” (Aldiss
1
2).
Aldiss is one of the strongest advocates of gothic fiction being the roots 
of science fiction literature (Bould 4). Some scholars call Wells the ‘father of 
science fiction’ (Gunn 219). Thus, Aldiss supported by several other scholars 
considers Shelley with her Frankenstein to be the ‘mother of science fiction’, 

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as in “combining social criticism with the new scientific ideas, while conveying 
a picture of her own day, [she] anticipates the methods of H. G. Wells when 
writing his own scientific romances and of some of the authors who followed 
him” (Aldiss
1
26). Bernays goes further and claims that Frankenstein was not 
only the first science fiction novel, but also “often […] mis-identified as merely 
another ‘gothic’ novel“ (Bernays ix).