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2.2. Defining Science Fiction 
The question what science fiction is can be hardly determined in a two-line 
definition. The answer is far more complex. This term paper does not aim at 

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finding the right definition of science fiction. It is rather based on the idea that 
science fiction is “multiple and constantly shifting ways of producing, 
marketing, distributing, consuming and understanding texts as [science 
fiction]” (Bould 1). 
Definitions are always depending and conceptual and as the science 
fiction genre turned out to very complex with a great variety of features which 
emerged in the process of pointing and naming, there cannot be a ‘neutral’ or 
‘objective’ definition. Bould calls science fiction “a fuzzily-edged, multi-
dimensional and constantly shifting discursive object” (5). 
Bailey defines in his work, Pilgrims through space and time (1947), 
science fiction as follows: 
[Science fiction is] a narrative of an imaginary invention or discovery in the natural 
sciences and consequent adventures and experiences. The discovery may take place in 
the interior of the earth, on the moon, on Mars, within the atom, in the future, in the 
prehistoric past, or in a dimension beyond the third (Bailey 10-11).
By imaginary invention, he refers to possible inventions, such as spaceships 
or atomic bombs, but inconceivable to be realized technologically at the time 
of writing. Whatever it is, it should be a scientific discovery – something at 
least the author regards to be scientifically possible. Additionally the author 
must include the society’s reaction to the extraordinary discovery it is 
confronted with and try “to foresee how mankind may adjust to the new 
condition” (Bailey 10-11).
Furthermore, Robert Heinlein defines in his essay, printed in The 
Science Ficton Novel (1969) science fiction as: 
a realistic speculation about the possible future events, based solidly on 
adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on the thorough 
understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method (Heinlein 
cited in Shippey 5). 
On the one hand, words such as ‘speculation’ and ‘possible’ are uttered, but 
on the other, words like ‘realistic’, ‘adequate’, ‘thorough’ and ‘scientific’, which 
seem to be contradictory. Kingsley Amis, another scholar in this field, 
emphasized in his New Maps of Hell (1961) the following point.
Science Fiction is that class of prose narrative treating of a situation that could 
not arise in the world that we know, but which is hypothesized on the basis of 
some innovation in science or technology, or pseudo-science or pseudo-
technology, whether human or extraterrestrial in origin (Amis cited in Shippey 
5).
Amis’s definition “sticks to safe ground” by using the careful term of ‘pseudo’ 
as one cannot either say what type of science is more unreal, that of Jurassic 
Park or that of Frankenstein. However, he includes the element of untruth, 

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such as ‘situation that could not arise in the world we know’ (emphasis added) 
which is as well the opposite of ‘science’, ‘technology’, ‘innovation’ and 
‘hypothesized’. To sum up both authors, they share the idea of science fiction 
as a world or setting which is known for its contemporary readers to be unreal, 
but which they could imagine to be not impossible (Shippey 5). 
Hugo Gernsback, American science fiction author and editor in the 
1920s, discussed in his magazine Amazing firstly the definition of science 
fiction, or how he used to call it first scientifiction. Thus, Gernsback thinks 
scientifiction to be ‘the Jules Verne, H. G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of 
story – a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic 
vision [that will] supply knowledge [in] a very palatable form’ (Gernsback cited 
in Bould 6). Opinions differ in the point whether Gernsback can be called the 
‘real father of science fiction’ (Moskowitz 242) or just “one of the worst 
disasters ever hit in the science fiction field” (Aldiss
1
237). Nevertheless just 
for the past ten years, science fiction has been enjoying an upsurge of 
popularity thanks to the American Pulp Magazine, published from the 1930s 
onwards containing short science fiction stories (Feige 15). 
According to Aldiss
1
, who rewrote both Dracula (1897) and Frankenstein 
(1818), science fiction is the 
search for a definition of man and his place in the 
universe that can survive our advanced, but unsettled state of science (Aldiss
1 
cited in Feige 6). 
In 1988, the high-time of science fiction, the editors of the Lexikon der 
Science Fiction Literatur state that “Science Fiction längst ein Label geworden 
[ist], unter dem ganz unterschiedliche literarische und triviale Produkte 
vermarktet werden, von denen man glaubt, dass sie eine vage umrissene 
Zielgruppe interessieren könnten, die Unwirkliches, Phantastisches und 
Kurioses schätzt. So bietet die Science Fiction Raum von Campanella bis 
Conan, von Edgar Allan Poe bis Doris Lessing, von Münchhausen bis 
Superman, von Barbarella bis Borges, von Orwell bis Oz” (Alpers et al. 912).
Shippey sums up modern definitions of science fiction which mostly refer 
to “both the need for novelty and the use of imagination”, which was an 
ancient demand of all sorts of the fantastic and to “the need for logic, rigor, 
and control by the strict requirements of science” which is a characteristically 
modern requirement (4).