Science Fiction

Science Fiction
By Sheryl Vint

This is the second pocket overview of science fiction I’ve looked at recently, the other being David Sneed’s Science Fiction: A Very Short Introduction. Sheryl Vint’s book is part of the MIT Press Essential Knowledge series (basically the same sort of thing as the Very Short Introductions) and goes in a slightly different direction while covering many of the same basic tropes and themes.

As one would expect, definitions are front and center. For Vint SF is a genre driven by “engagement with how science and technology change the world, and imagining different worlds in response to social and political issues.” From here things get mushier, as she sees SF as “a way of thinking and perceiving, a toolbox of methods for conceptualizing, intervening in, and living through rapid and widespread sociotechnical change.” She’s less concerned with compiling a catalogue of important authors and titles (though there’s some of that) and more with looking at SF as a “tool for thinking about and intervening in the world” and trying to see “what science fiction can do.”

That’s a big ask for any genre, but Vint took me along with many of her arguments. Her focus is on contemporary SF and its relations to various current anxieties over things like genetic modification, AI, economic change, and even post-colonial theory. Less an introduction and history than an appreciation of the state of science fiction today, including the growing amount of critical writing on it, I found this to be a nice complement to Sneed’s book and one that does a good job covering the essentials.