Monsters and Time Machines: Exploring Science Fiction's Questions About the Individual, the Community, and Technology

Abstract

Most writers on science fiction agree that the genre commonly deals with the technological world and its impact on our everyday lives; most would also stress the importance of imagination and temporal displacement. Where they differ is in the relative importance they grant these components. In Inquiry into Science Fiction, for instance, Basil Davenport defines science fiction as a "fiction based upon some imagined development off science, or upon the extrapolation of a tendency in society" (15). Though both possibilities contain within them "the idea that Homo Sapiens is destined to be superseded by some sort of Homo Superior" (15), for my purposes Davenport's account of speculative science fiction is most relevant. Such works "try to imagine the effects of certain changes and then ... try to work for or against them [because] ...man and society are ...so closely connected that a change in character in either one must lead to a corresponding change in the other".