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Technology in science fiction has helped create many common topics found in science fiction today. There have been authors who have taken innovations and have elaborated and created what they thought future technology would be and how it would be used. Today, new technology has brought about new theories and questions that authors have tried to explain in their writings. Due to the new breakthroughs in technology, Science Fiction has been able to create new genres for these discoveries and have allowed Science Fiction authors their own expansion on these new ideas.
E.E. “Doc” Smith: Skylark and Lensman series (1920s)
Science Fiction magazines: Astounding Science Fiction and Amazing Stories (1930s to 1950s)
Definition of terms in Doc’s SF about this topic:
Interstellar Travel: ships being “inertia-less”; inertia-less state makes travel effortless at huge multiples of the speed of light
Hyper Space: where infinite speeds are possible; a ship may jump to hyper space or star drive “clutching at the very fabric of time itself” thus making travel that would normally take thousands of years possible in no time at all
1903 - The Wright brothers invented the first gas motored and manned airplane, thus making human flight in any sense, possible
1920s - Robert Goddard’s development of liquid fueled rockets, later developed to be used as the V2 in World War II; long range sub-orbital rockets consuming either solid or liquid fuel that carried warheads (Was the first rocket the beginning idea of the space rocket?)
Early Era Space Exploration:
Space Race between the US and Soviet Union to reach the moon
The launch of the first man-made object to orbit Earth; USSR’s Sputnik 1 (October 4, 1957)
Soviet Union putting first man in space; Yuri Gagarin aboard Vostok 1 (1961)
First moon landing by America; Apollo 11 (July 20, 1969)
First space station; Salyut 1
With new developments in space exploration and technology the idea of space exploration became a reality. Though many writer’s explored space travel before these events and inventions, the reality of new technologies and the evidence that space exploration was now possible opened new doors to create more fantastical ideas of space travel. Many Science Fiction topics are born from reality, but turn these new technologies to create imagined realities, thus creating Science Fiction in itself.
Maria - Metropolis Film (1927)
Revolt of the Pedestrian by David H. Keller Novel (1932)
Asimov’s Robots Short Stories (1954-1992)
Robbie - The Forbidden Planet Film (1956)
Daleks - Doctor Who Television (1963)
Cybermen - Doctor Who Television (1966)
The Iron Man (novel) by Ted Hughes Novel (1968)
The Stepford Wives by Ira Levin Novel (1972)
The Questor Tapes Television-Movie (1974)
The Bicentennial Man by Isaac Asimov Novel (1976)
C-3PO- Star Wars Movie (1977)
Darth Vader- Star Wars Movie (1977)
K9- Doctor Who Television (1977)
Marvin the Paranoid Android- The Hitch-Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (1978)
Artificial Intelligence (also known as machine intelligence and often abbreviated as AI) is intelligence exhibited by any manufactured (i.e.) system. The term is often applied to general-purpose computers and also in the field of scientific investigation into the theory and practical application of AI.
A robot is an electro-mechanical or bio-mechanical device or group of devices that can perform autonomous or preprogrammed tasks.
An android is a robot made to resemble a human, usually both in appearance and behavior. The word derives from the Greek andr-, " meaning "man, male", and the suffix -eides, used to mean "of the species; alike" (from eidos "species").
A cyborg is a cybernetic organism which adds to or enhances its abilities by using technology. Other terms used commonly.
Machine Intelligence, which is derived up from Artificial Intelligence as you see in the definition above. How could development of technology over the decades help these different ideas in science fiction?
With these developments of Technology through machine engineering and companies that are fully devoted in making the technology, Authors have taken a great interest in this genre or Science Fiction to include technology and have their ideas that are derived from the influences of engineering companies as well as their own imaginations of their creations through technology. The technology that has been created over time has given writers as well as other forms of art the inspiration to create non-human characters.
Telepathy: the ability to read minds
Precognition: the ability to see the future
Telekinesis: the ability to move objects with mental force (Psychokinesis (PK for short) or "mind over matter")
Teleportation: the ability to move oneself from one place to the other, or back and forward in time
Telempathy: Emotion-reading
Remote Viewing/Clairvoyance/Scrying: the ability for seeing things not actually before your eyes
Psychometry: the ability to sense what has touched a certain physical object or the imprint it has left behind
Bilocation: the ability to be in two places at the same time.
Pyrokinesis: the capability to start fires by mental action alone
While ESP and belief in other powers were, in the beginning, mainly fueled by superstitions, religion and tradition, the dawn of science brought about a way to analyze and study these supposed “powers” giving them an anchor in reality. The Scientific Revolution featured ideas that life should be “led by reason” and that, “the universe as a mechanistic, deterministic system could eventually be known accurately and fully through observation and reason”. While new science and technology gave rise to skepticism towards the existence of psi phenomena, it also gave way for new technologies to be applied in either proving or disproving such phenomena. One of the first experimental approaches to Psi Phenomena started in the 1930s and was conducted under the direction of J.B. Rhine (1895–1980). Rhine popularized the now famous methodology of card guessing and dice rolling experiments in a laboratory in attempt to find statistical validation for ESP. In 1957 the Parapsychological Association was formed at the preeminent society for parapsychology. Openness to new parapsychology studies and occult phenomena continued to rise in the 1970s.
Ganzfeld Experiment: homogenous, unpatterened, sensory stimulation to produce an effect similar to sensory deprivation
Development of statistical tools by R.A Fisher in the 1920s
E. Dawson Rogers hopes to gain new respectability for spiritualism and founds Society for Psychical Research in 1882
Government investigations in to parapsychology: Project Star Gate, formed in 1970 with cooperation from the Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Intelligence Agency, investigates remote viewing
With new developments in science and technology helping to study and promote parapsychology or Psi Phenomena, many SF writers felt the need to incorporate and elaborate on these subjects in their stories. While technology helped the investigation into Psi Phenomena it also created questions that many SF writers chose to answer, through their stories, in their own unique way. If we look at some of the examples of Psi Phenomena prominent in stories, they may have stemmed from how science would take this experimentation with Psi Phenomena and use it. In Stephen King’s “The Dead Zone”, we see how precognition was used to effect political candidates. The idea that someone could harness this power and use it for good or evil was one that many SF writer’s elaborated on. In “The Foreign Hand Tie” by Randall Garret espionage takes on a new form via telepathy through twins. When science and technology can be used to anchor something in reality, via experimentation or exploration, and yield results, it creates controversy that society may fear or even fantasize about. Throughout SF history, Psi Phenomena can be seen to be used for good and evil, and through new science and technological discoveries, this genre then becomes more real and more elaborate.
Martians, Go Home by Fredric Brown, 1956
The Moon that Vanished by Leigh Brackett, 1950
3 From Out There by Leo Margulies, 1959
To Outrun Doomsday by Kenneth Bulmer, 1957
Venus Stories by Edgar Rice Burroughs, 1955
This topic in Science Fiction is one of the most familiar ones. As soon as scientists realized that life is a natural phenomenon, people started to question whether there was life on other planets. Although there isn’t extensive proof that there is life on other planets, people started writing novels about it and it sparked a curiosity in people.Some of these novels were about friendly visits from the visitors where they got along with humans. Other novels showed a different side, where these beings would be warlike and wanted to conquer everything around them. It is well documented that the first UFO sighting was in 1561 in Germany.No one can ever know for sure what the object was back then, but it just shows how people were curious about the unknown. Although this was the first documentation of this, people didn’t coin the term, flying saucer until 1950. The 1950s is when a string of science fiction novels on this subject came out and also when technology started to boom.
UFO: Unidentified Flying Object
Flying Saucer: A certain kind of space ship
Sideways in Time by Murray Leinster Novel (1934)
Lest Darkness Fall By L. Sprague De Camp Novel (1939)
Horsesense Hank in the Parallel Worlds by Nelson S. Bond Magazine (1942)
The Alteration by Kingsley Amis Novel (1976)
The Anubis Gates By Tim Powers Novel (1983)
Parallel Universe Parallel universe or alternate reality in science fiction and fantasy is a self-contained separate reality coexisting with our own
Multiverse (science) Set of many universes. There are many specific uses of the concept, as well as systems in which a multiverse is proposed to exist in.
Parallel universe alternate universes, worlds, realities and dimensions in fiction.
Alternate reality alternate universes, worlds, realities and dimensions in fiction.
Alternate futureis a possible future which never comes to pass, typically because someone travels back into the past and alters it so that the events of the alternate future cannot occur.
The notion of parallel worlds have always intrigued different types of genres, especially the Science Fiction aspect. Many authors have toiled with the idea of travelling back in to prehistoric times or traveling forwards to an unknown universe. The idea of entering a world that has not been touched or entering a world that has evolved into a new incomprehnsible parallel, makes people ponder about what it could looks like or what it could be. Authors have used this notion of an alternate reality and have created their own worlds that have given readers a different view of alternate worlds.
Many myths and legends include gods, spirits, angels, and demons that are often invisible or can choose to become invisible at will.
Invisibility is a term that is usually used as a fantasy or science fiction term where objects are literally made unseeable by magical or technological means.
There is an undeniable link between science fact and the ideas that emerge in science fiction. Science fiction authors are inspired by actual scientific and technological discoveries, but allow themselves the freedom to project the possible future course of these discoveries and their potential impact on society, perhaps only weakly bound to the facts.
Authors are faced with obstacles presented by the realities of actual technology, however fiction allows a window for the opportunity of inventing completely imaginary technologies to move their storyline forward and maybe even still explore the outcomes of such power.
The idea of being unseen and hence undetectable has fascinated mankind for generations. This concept has generated scientific pursuit towards defying our physical parameters. Many authors have toyed with the idea of gaining invisibility via both science-based and fictional means. Invisibility in the actual scientific world will be a very difficult achievement, one that will involve much more complication than we have begun to delve into. Further technological developments bring us closer to our goal, while also broadening the horizon for science fiction authors performing thought experiments on the topic of invisibility.