HOW CAN WE DEFINE SCIENCE FICTION?

By Lindsey DeFrain and Kelsey Wood

3 (+1) Elements of Sci-FI

Fantastic Assumption- thinking about or assuming that things that have never happened before can happen

High Adventure- the action happening in the story

Intellectual Excitement- the science backup of the ideas in the story

Ambiguous Ending- “drop off ending”/an ending that makes you think about what might happen, or an ending that turns the story around

Short StoriesEach of the short stories “’Repent Harlequin!’ Said the

Ticktockman”, “The Nine Billion Names of God”, “Zero Hour”, and “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” help us to shape a definition of Science Fiction.

’Repent Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” is about a time system used to maintain the schedule of the city. The system limited the amount of life a person could have, depending on how many minutes a person had been late in their life. When a person’s “time had run out”, the Master Timekeeper would “turn them off”.

““The Nine Billion Names of God” is about advanced technology and a possible end of the world.

In the story, “Zero Hour” children play a game called “Invasion”. The young children talk to Martians about coming to earth. This story also includes different types of advanced technology such as an electro-duster magnet.

Lastly, “How to Talk to Girls at Parties” is about foreign tourists coming to parties on earth.

All of these stories have different aspects of science fiction, and these different ideas are part of our definition of science fiction.

“Dinosaur Feathers Found in Amber Reinforce Evolution Theories” is about using evidence to research what life may have been like in the past and what it may be like in the future.

 

AOW The Articles “Remote Control, With the Wave of a Hand”, “Kepler Spots a

Planet Orbiting Two Suns, Just Like Star Wars’ Tatooine”, and “Dinosaur Feathers Found in Amber Reinforce Evolution Theories” all have real life ideas about science fiction.

“Remote Control, With the Wave of a Hand” talks about the advancement in technology that can allow us to use human gestures to control electronic devices. I think that technology and pushing the limits to create new advancements in technology is a big part of science fiction.

“Kepler Spots a Planet Orbiting Two Suns, Just like Star Wars’ Tatooine” is about a planet that orbits two suns. In star wars, the planet Tatooine is part of a binary sun system. I think that it is cool that someone used their imagination to come up with this idea for a movie series without knowing if this idea is really realistic.

Francis

FrankensteinThe story of Frankenstein has many Sci Fi elements included in it.

For example, the Frankenstein monster himself is science fiction because :

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human life cannot be reconstructed.

The monster was pieced together with body parts from dead humans and was zapped to life with electricity.

There were real truths in the film also …

electric power

Scientific information

“Where would we be

without lo

oking

beyond?”

This has some truth to it because writers and scientists today are always looking ahead for new possibilities.

Overall, this film of “Frankenstein” had many elements of science fiction, but also had many realistic aspects.

Frankenstein

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkWbVUW6iy4

The Time Machine

The idea of traveling

through time pushes the

limits but may be possible one day. There could

be a 4th dimension, and we just don’t

know about it.

We don’t know what humans will turn into in the future, so it may be realistic that one day the human race could turn into creatures like the Morlocks and Eloi.

?We don’t have any way of knowing what future humans and their relationships will look like.

Some day we will know, but it’s the mystery of it is what makes it

science fiction.

The Twilight Zone: Episode 1 (The Invaders)

In this episode of The Twilight Zone, there are many elements of Science Fiction.

Fantastic Assumption happens when we assume that there could actually be such a thing as aliens or UFOs. Also when we assume that we could someday have those high tech spacecrafts.

High adventure occurs when the woman is battling the many aliens in her house.

Intellectual excitement takes place when we see that the “alien” spacecraft has the U.S. Air Force logo on it. We then find out that the aliens were actually us-people from Earth.

The Ambiguous Ending wraps up the story by showing us that we don’t know what Earth is going to do after being attacked by the woman or what the woman will do. We also do not know about this planet we visited or what it holds.

The Twilight Zone: Episode 2 (To Serve Man)

In this episode of The Twilight Zone, the elements of science fiction are pretty obvious. For example:

Fantastic Assumption happens when we believe that aliens will visit Earth, or we think that they could somehow know our culture and language.

There was not a lot of High Adventure happening, but it occurs when the woman from the translation office tells the main character that the alien’s book is a cookbook on how “To Serve Man”. They wanted to help the human race by preventing starvation and war so that they would have a healthy race to eat.

The Ambiguous Ending wraps up the story by showing the main character in the alien spacecraft. We assume the story ends with the ship making it to the alien planet and all the humans are eaten.

Childhood’s EndHow is this Sci Fi?

In this story an alien race appears on earth in starships.

The Overlords interact with the humans in a unique way. No one know what to expect from the Overlords presence.

The Overlords turn out to be the saviors of the human race. They benefit the humans.