Breaking down the sci-fi genre

[jbcohen]

I have always thought that there are four types of sci-fi books. Past - where someone from our time frame goes to earth's past for example TV's Land of the Lost; Present - where some one from the future or the past arrives in our time frame (I do not have an example of this); future - someone from our time frame goes to the future or someone from our past goes to the future (the classic novel the time machine is a good example here); and future/future - when someone from our future moves around within our future - star treck does this all the time. Can you come up with additional examples of each? What is your critique of my analysis.

[Steven Lyle Jordan]

You missed Present day: Characters in our present, story takes place in the present, but with technology involved that is beyond our present technology (examples, Men in Black, Torchwood, James Bond (pre-Craig) movies, Doc Savage, Johnny Quest).

Other than that, pretty good breakdown, though it seems to assume time travel in your scenarios. I'd say most sci-fi is either stories that take place in the present, with present-day characters, or in the future, with future characters... time travel is a common trope, but not predominant.

[fjtorres]

Misses entire sub-genres like Alternate histories, crosstime travel, stories about alien societies without humans...

Heinlein preferred to classify stories as:
- What if...
- If only...
- If this goes on...
- The little tailor...

The genre can be analyzed a zillion diferent ways and all are equally valid. More or less.

[Apache]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

Present - where some one from the future or the past arrives in our time frame (I do not have an example of this)

Sticking with your TV examples, The Second Hundred Years (ABC, 1967-1968).
A man is frozen in 1900 Alaska and thawed out in 1967. He goes to live with his Son and Grandson. His Son looks like his Grandfather.
Apache

[Blue Tyson]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Misses entire sub-genres like Alternate histories, crosstime travel, stories about alien societies without humans...

Heinlein preferred to classify stories as:
- What if...
- If only...
- If this goes on...
- The little tailor...

The genre can be analyzed a zillion diferent ways and all are equally valid. More or less.

Universes with no humans at all, etc... e.g. The Clockwork Rocket

[bill_mchale]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

I have always thought that there are four types of sci-fi books. Past - where someone from our time frame goes to earth's past for example TV's Land of the Lost; Present - where some one from the future or the past arrives in our time frame (I do not have an example of this); future - someone from our time frame goes to the future or someone from our past goes to the future (the classic novel the time machine is a good example here); and future/future - when someone from our future moves around within our future - star treck does this all the time. Can you come up with additional examples of each? What is your critique of my analysis.

Just some thoughts... I think you might be a bit over obsessed with trying to find broad time based categories. Sure many, if not most science fiction stories will fit into one of these categories, but they don't necessarily tell you a lot about the story otherwise. For example, stories set 100 years in the future and stories set 100,000 years in the future both might fit in the same one of your categories, but that doesn't mean they are at all alike.

--
Bill

[crich70]

There is also steampunk and cyberpunk Sci. Fi. Not to mention stories where robots and humans interact and the stories where a discovery is made and through some quirk of human nature it is lost to mankind again.

[heeby]

I got so flustered trying to categorise my mostly SciFi book collection by tags etc I just gave up and made them all "Science Fiction". There are so many sub genres and mixed sub genres I was getting a headache :P

[Andrew H.]

For me, the biggest problem with your labels (aside from missing alternate history) is that I don't find the labels very *useful*. I think that labels should help in meaningfully classifying the work, and I think that these labels aren't really that helpful in doing that.

Let's take Star Trek as an example. It is set in the future, but what it's really about is humans encountering aliens and refining what it means to be human. (When SF is about something, it's always about the present.) Star Trek's future is really kind of abstract and vague - we know next to nothing about human society, for example. But that does't really matter: the future tech in ST is pretty much just a vehicle to take the crew to different alien encounters.

Maybe think of this as human vs alien.


Other SF takes place in a much more detailed future, and it tends to be about what it's like to live in a future where X happens. I.e., people can be cloned; the police can read your mind; civilization has collapsed; only 1 in 10 women are fertile; etc. The focus of this kind of sf is about how humans would react in this kind of environment. Maybe this is human vs. future.

Alternate past stories are like an experiment where you've changed a variable. I.e., we know what happened historically, but what would society look like 70 years after WWII if the Nazis had won. Again, this is about the human response when the stimulus changes.
Some time travel fits into this category, too - those stories where the protagonists have to adjust to living in the past for some time period, for example.

We could call these human vs. past.

There is also a large body of SF that is not really "about" anything...or at least that doesn't use the trappings of SF to be about anything.

"Star Wars" is like this - it is an adventure story that is set in the future, but whatever themes it has (honor? loyalty? growing up?) don't really have much to do with the setting.

Some military science fiction falls into the "adventure" category, too (most David Weber, I think), but some doesn't - "The Forever War".

There may be a few more categories, but those are my initial thoughts on this.

[Ekaros]

Categorizing by time period really doesn't tell much. It's like naming current setting books with categories Europe, Asia, Africa, America, Australia and other.

Sci-Fi is overly large umbrella, even just time travel to past can be named as such... There is large amount of sub-genres or even regular genres which can be done under Sci-Fi, so labeling isn't realy easy or in some cases doable...

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by Ekaros

Sci-Fi is overly large umbrella, even just time travel to past can be named as such... There is large amount of sub-genres or even regular genres which can be done under Sci-Fi, so labeling isn't realy easy or in some cases doable...

Or necessary.
The only categorization I do for my Books is by author, alphabetically.

[Dulin's Books]

Originally Posted by Andrew H.

"Star Wars" is like this - it is an adventure story that is set in the future,

Actually its set " A long time ago..."

[Ekaros]

Originally Posted by fjtorres

Or necessary.
The only categorization I do for my Books is by author, alphabetically.

I use:
Finnish, not Finnish ;D

[Namekuseijin]

Originally Posted by jbcohen

I have always thought that there are four types of sci-fi books. Past - where someone from our time frame goes to earth's past for example TV's Land of the Lost; Present - where some one from the future or the past arrives in our time frame (I do not have an example of this); future - someone from our time frame goes to the future or someone from our past goes to the future (the classic novel the time machine is a good example here); and future/future - when someone from our future moves around within our future - star treck does this all the time. Can you come up with additional examples of each? What is your critique of my analysis.

you need to read more.

BTW, all fiction happens in some time frame. Time is not an interesting way to classify genres...

[Andrew H.]

Originally Posted by Dulin's Books

Actually its set " A long time ago..."

It's set in my future.

But I've already said too much...