What is Science Fiction? It's harder to define than you think

Back when I still left my house to attend writer events, I attended a writer’s conference in Midland, Tx. I was waiting in line for the provided refreshments and a couple of fellow writers were discussing what was Science Fiction and what wasn’t. I don’t remember the full conversation, but one of their comments stuck with me. They said: “How can that be SciFi? It doesn’t even happen in space.”

This exchange got me thinking, SciFi doesn’t have to happen in space, right? There are plenty of stories with Earth settings that still count as part of this genre. Back then, I thought that as long as it had some sort of cool, plausible, and futuristic technology, then we could call it Science Fiction. And then, I started writing a novella set in the 80s without a trace of innovative tech. The story has some other speculative elements, but was that enough to call it SciFi?

I wondered then if my definition of Science Fiction was actually accurate.

Tale Foundry & The concept of Novum

I went on a search for a more accurate interpretation of SciFi and came across a very informative video Tale Foundry released in 2017. They did a deep dive into what Science Fiction is and how its definition has been an evasive topic for decades, but what stuck the most with me were the intricacies of the stigmatization of this genre.

Science Fiction has shifted its reputation across time. It’s gone from being a “not serious genre” to “high-brow literature” and back to “cheesy”. Perhaps these shifts in the public’s perception of Science Fiction make its definition so elusive.

Tale Foundry boiled the solution down to one sentence:

Science Fiction is any work with the presence of novum.

The word Novum is Latin for New Thing and is a term attributed to Science Fiction Croatian scholar Darko Suvin. He used this term to refer to cognitive estrangement, where something is familiar to the audience, but it’s made unfamiliar.

In terms of Fiction, we can say that Novum is “any fictional element that is not necessarily plausible, but is reconcilable with reality.”

Let’s take the idea of zombies, for example. There are Zombies in Fantasy who are brought back to life through spells and perhaps arts like necromancy. That idea of zombies is detached from reality. But what happens when a virus manufactured in a lab makes the dead come back to life? Here’s where Science Fiction and its novum come in: The concept of a virus is real and it tethers our idea of zombies to reality. The concept of a virus is familiar to us, the audience, but it’s made unfamiliar through the fictional idea of a virus bringing the dead back to life as monsters.

When Science Turns Into Magic

So now that we understand what novum is, we can use it to categorize a work under Science Fiction. Tale Foundry uses the concept of novum depending on how much novum rules the plot. If novum isn’t a major driving force for the plot or a key element of the setting, then the work is best categorized elsewhere. But if, like in Star Wars, the novum is everywhere in the setting while the magic of The Force drives the plot, then the work belongs in Science Fiction and Fantasy.

My favorite example of Science Fiction has to be the Thor movies. They are filled with concepts and tropes belonging to Fantasy, but there’s no real magic involved in the story. Instead of magic, there is novum attaching the setting of the Thor movies to reality through science, like the rainbow bridge guarded by Heimdall. This bridge might look magical, but it’s actually a wormhole.

In universes like the one presented in the Thor movies, science has become so advanced that it looks like magic. This concept of magical tech is backed by Arthur C. Clarke’s Third Law:

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

The Takeaway

Science Fiction is harder to define than we thought. Its definition has been muddled and warped by the public’s perception of the genre, but we can always go back to the concept of “novum” to categorize a work of fiction.