Quote:
Originally Posted by Moejoe
His only work that edges near to science fiction is 1984, but it so transcends all the restrictions of genre, I don't believe it deserves that name. Just as Animal Farm is not a 'children's book', 1984 is not 'science-fiction'.
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I'm with weateallthepies here.
"Restrictions of genre"? That's (frankly) a stupid concept. No genre has
restrictions, any single literary work can and does belong to more than one genre.
Sience-fiction isn't defined by exclusion (it's sci-fi what is NOT <insert something>) but is defined by inclusion (it's sci-fi if it includes at least one of <insert list>), and so do any other genre, and by any I mean ANY.
The Iliad, for example, and the Odyssey, are both poetry and fiction, but also religious texts, political texts, propaganda and adventure.
1984 is science fiction. Hell yes, it is! Because it dabbles with so many typical sci-fi
topos, like possible futuristic technological advances (futuristic when compared to Orwell's times, of course), or like the control, by a higher political/social body, of the collective historical memory (it's the same ground that Asimov explored in his
Foundations series, even if he followed a different approach).
I'd like to point out also that Animal's Farm, while not a children book, is a
fable. Not a children book, I agree, but it remains a
fable, because it uses many typical
topos of the fable genre, and the plot development is typical of a fable.