A Narratological Approach To Science Fiction

Science fiction,the overlay of romance,of fiction upon the hard rationality of science,is the literary embodiment of Western scientific thinking.In a sense,it is also the most mimetic of fictional forms,the one that best articulates the spirits of our times of radical epistemic change.The literary effect of estrangement,of defamiliarization is doubled in science fiction in its honor of the radically alien alternate worlds,yet the most significant service science fiction provides is its staging of the confrontation between contraries,the interrogation of the value systems we take for granted,and even of science itself.Science fiction forever maintains optimism about future,about technology,about change,and at the same time it displays true concerns,worries,and apprehensions in a most serious manner.Science fiction is always studied not for itself as a legitimate literary mode or form,but from a multitude of approaches,including the political,economical,cultural,social,philosophical,psychological,anthropological,and phenomenal ones.Given the abundant fruits of thoughts and reconceptualizations thus yielded,this treatment is not justifiable in that science fiction is,in the first place,a literary genre.As a literary form,it shares commonalities with other forms of literature in general,and at the same time it possesses qualities and features uniquely of its own which are generic-bound.The vast repertory of science fiction intertextuality demonstrates that it is a highly specialized mode which needs much apprenticeship.The apparent paradox is that on the one hand science fiction is not given close attention within literary criticism for its paraliterary status,and on the other hand science fiction study is a little bit intimidating even to literary readership.The reason is that the coding and decoding of science fiction follow its own protocols and mechanisms.The present study on science fiction is conducted from a narratological approach with the hope to shed more theoretical lights upon it.It tries to offer an exploration of science fiction with the intention to achieve a thoughtful,comprehensive,and constructive research.Mostly the focus of this study is on: the constituents of science fiction and their structuring principles;the aesthetic effects and cognitive functions of science fiction;the narrative strategies and tactics of science fiction;the themes and the narrative means for their realization in science fiction;and the governing principles and norms of world-building,characterization,and plotting in science fiction.Specifically,this study consists of eight chapters.Chapter 1 provides an introduction to the whole study.It is subdivided into the background of the study,the research purpose,the significance of the study,the research method of the study and organization of the study.Chapter 2 offers a bird-eye's view on science fiction and science fiction criticism.The theoretical trajectory of science fiction criticism is followed to the converging points of the construction of multifaceted analytical paradigms,each shedding light of its own on the object of science fiction texts.Among them,we find Cioffi's formulae of the anomaly,Todorov's model of the uncanny,Rabkin's diagramming of the fantastic,Suvin's hypothesis of the estranged,Delany's textual approach,generic criticism and ideational criticism.With respect to the most prominent theoreticians,Darko Suvin with his notion about the “novum” and Samuel Delany with his aesthetics of “reader reification” are selected for special attention due to their seminal conception of the mechanism of science fiction and their profound influence on science fiction criticism as a whole.In addition,the functions of science fiction are also discussed in this chapter.Chapter 3 concentrates on science fiction in the postmodern age.Postmodernism is the last category we can define now,for the “now” we are living is still in the way of evolving and changing.Among the discussions about and researches on postmodernism those of Fredric Jameson's are unquestionably the most eloquent and influential.Jameson's parameters about postmodern science fiction get introduced for their relevance and significance in the understanding of postmodern science fiction.The parameters involve flatness,absence of depth,disappearance of subjectivity,rejection of fine style for pastiche,tangled collage,and “hysterical sublime.” The shift of postmodern paradigms can be seen especially in the representative of postmodern science fiction — cyberpunk.In a sense,cyberpunk is not just a label for a special type of science fiction,but a literary embodiment of social change in the postmodern condition.Yet the oxymoronic mechanical aesthetics of cyberpunk reveals its simultaneous continuation and transcendence of science fiction tradition.Chapter 4 explores the world-building in science fiction.Most of the defining characteristics of science fiction come from its unique world-building,which to the readership constitutes the grandeur,the awe,the sublime feel in their enchantment for science fiction.Science fiction differs from other forms of literature mostly through its license in the construction of radically alien but deeply “realistic” worlds.The world-building in science fiction can also be viewed from a postmodern perspective through the comparison of traditional science fiction with postmodern texts.Postmodern texts tend to blend fiction and reality,narration and fiction,the artificial and the real,with the boundaries being blurred,while in science fiction the empirical world and fictional world remain distinct,with no hanging ontological doubt about their status.To illustrate this point about the world building in science fiction,a section of this chapter is devoted to analyzing the world-building in William Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy.Gibson's creation of cyberspace opens a new frontier where alternate modalities of human existence to those of the conventional survive and thrive,while the materialization in Sprawl Trilogy of the near future empirical world achieves a new realism for science fiction which is set to work by Gibson's powerful and visionary neo-epic wrought through understatements,ellipsis,and allusions.Chapter 5 analyzes the plotting and plot devices in science fiction.The contrasts in plot structure between science fiction and postmodern fiction reveal different effects which are theme-related and intentionally aimed at.In science fiction,a jump into the past,the future or into other synchronous time sequences is feasible,and thus an inversion of the linearity of time is rather practical.Accordingly,alternate time opens alternate world,which is theme-oriented.A special section of this chapter is given to the discussion of Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy in terms of its plotting,which is heading for a closure and a solution.The plotting of the three novels in the trilogy manifests a transit from posthumanist stance to a humanized one in Gibson's narrative subject and ideological orientation,which can be seen as typical of postmodern science fiction.Chapter 6 dwells on characterization in science fiction,which is notable for its staging of the confrontation between Self and Other through a defamiliarized perspective.Some misconceptions about the characterization in science fiction,for example,stereotypical men and women,fake “aliens”,etc.,are clarified.The active,resolute,and resourceful heroes in science fiction are the stark opposite to the anti-heroes in postmodern fiction.The characterization in Sprawl Trilogy is both a continuation and transcendence of the hero-type in science fiction tradition for its blending of postmodern anti-hero qualities.The trilogy also poses a challenge in terms of the paradoxical status of beings in cyberspace where the conventional binaries — live/dead,organic/inorganic,physical/mental,realistic/imaginary — are brutally smashed out.Chapter 7 is spaced out for the variations and transcendence in science fiction.Science fiction is a genre for change and variation,yet there is a structurally defined contradiction between the formal characteristics of a genre and the subject matter of an individual work.Science fiction maintains a conservation of conventional motifs,while simultaneously it has its themes expanded for the stabilization of its generic identity.The concept of man as stable goes through some modifications in the way to be more multivalent,protean,and changeable.Fictionalization of the reader and the narrator is experimented to some degree.Time as a narrative technique is tried on.The resulting plot structures are more open,ambivalent,and irresolute.The transformations of individual elements in the composition manifest themselves in various manners,but none of them undermines the presumptions that science fiction is built upon.Crossing of borders and change of paradigms do occur,which constitutes the fuzzy field of alluring,innovative hybrids.Gibson's Sprawl Trilogy is used for a summary of the variations and transcendence of science fiction at the end of this chapter,which focuses on its borrowings of motifs and linguistic choices from both hard-sf and soft-sf for parody,its anti-hero and active and resolute hero at the same time,the relative position of the narrator,the deployment of mismatch in time experience,and the closure still lingering with doubts.Chapter 8 winds to the conclusion of this study.Following the findings of this study with respect to the cognitive functions,the aesthetic values,the narrative features and elements in terms of world-building,plotting,and characterization,there comes the conclusion: firstly,science fiction is a realistic mode of fiction which determines its plotting,characterization and linguistic choice;secondly,science fiction,like science itself,is given to the object,to the environment,and to the world-building;thirdly,science fiction is distinctive for its “cognitive estrangement,” which grants it special license in fiction-making in its free summon of oxymorons,discontinuities,and miscellaneous elements cross-modally,appealing both to our “hearts” and “minds” — to let us have both ways;and lastly,science fiction is really a “novel” in its capability to absorb various modes of not only literary forms,but also miscellaneous forms or un-forms of consciousness or subconsciousness.Science fiction is a genre of awe,of change,of innovation,of creation.Its representation of the unknown for the known,the estranging of the familiar in the form of unfamiliar,offers invaluable experience and service to us.It can be serious and playful;it can be utopia and dystopia;it provides ration and myth;it has faith in science yet permits challenge;it is nourishing and subverting.In this sense,it embodies perfectly the things that should be and continue to be.