What is a fantastic story in literature? What is fantasy? You can also use combinations

Greek phantastike - the art of imagining) is a form of reflection of the world in which, based on real ideas, a logically incompatible picture of the Universe is created. Widespread in mythology, folklore, art, social utopia. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Science fiction is developing.

Excellent definition

Incomplete definition ↓

FANTASTIC

Greek phantastike - the art of imagining), a type of fiction where artistic fiction receives the greatest freedom: the boundaries of fiction extend from the depiction of strange, unusual, fictional phenomena to the creation of one’s own world with special patterns and possibilities. Fiction has a special type of imagery, which is characterized by a violation of real connections and proportions: for example, the severed nose of Major Kovalev in N.V. Gogol’s story “The Nose” itself moves around St. Petersburg, has a rank higher than its owner, and then miraculously finds itself back on its own place. At the same time, the fantastic picture of the world is not pure fiction: it transforms and raises to a symbolic level the events of real reality. Science fiction in a grotesque, exaggerated, transformed form reveals to the reader the problems of reality and reflects on their solution. Fantastic imagery is inherent in fairy tales, epics, allegories, legends, utopias, and satire. A special subtype of fantasy is science fiction, in which imagery is created by depicting fictitious or actual scientific and technological achievements of man. The artistic originality of fiction lies in the opposition of the fantastic and real worlds, therefore each work of fiction exists, as it were, on two levels: the world created by the author’s imagination is somehow correlated with reality. The real world is either taken outside the text (“Gulliver’s Travels” by J. Swift) or present in it (in “Faust” by J. V. Goethe, the events in which Faust and Mephistopheles participate are contrasted with the lives of the rest of the townspeople).

Initially, fantasy was associated with the embodiment of mythological images in literature: thus, ancient fantasy with the participation of gods seemed to authors and readers to be quite reliable (“Iliad”, “Odyssey” by Homer, “Works and Days” by Hesiod, plays by Aeschylus, Sophocles, Aristophanes, Euripides and etc.). Examples of ancient fiction can be considered Homer's "Odyssey", which describes many amazing and fantastic adventures of Odysseus, and Ovid's "Metamorphoses" - the story of the transformation of living beings into trees, stones, people into animals, etc. In the works of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, this trend continued: in the knightly epic (from Beowulf, written in the 8th century, to the novels of Chrétien de Troyes in the 14th century) images of dragons and wizards, fairies, trolls, elves and other fantastic creatures appeared. A separate tradition in the Middle Ages was Christian fiction, which described miracles of saints, visions, etc. Christianity recognizes evidence of this kind as authentic, but this does not prevent them from remaining part of the fantastic literary tradition, since extraordinary phenomena are described that are not typical for the usual course of events. The richest fantasy is also represented in Eastern culture: tales of the Arabian Nights, Indian and Chinese literature. During the Renaissance, the fantasy of chivalric novels was parodied in “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by F. Rabelais and in “Don Quixote” by M. Cervantes: Rabelais presents a fantastic epic that rethinks the traditional cliches of fantasy, while Cervantes parodies the passion for fantasy, his hero sees fantastic creatures everywhere, which do not exist, falls into absurd situations because of this. Christian fiction in the Renaissance is expressed in the poems of J. Milton "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained".

The literature of the Enlightenment and classicism is alien to fantasy, and its images are used only to give an exotic flavor to the action. A new flowering of science fiction began in the 19th century, during the era of romanticism. Genres based entirely on fantasy emerge, such as the Gothic novel. The forms of fantasy in German romanticism are diverse; in particular, E. T. A. Hoffmann wrote fairy tales (“The Lord of the Fleas”, “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”), Gothic novels (“The Devil’s Elixir”), enchanting phantasmagoria (“Princess Brambilla”), realistic stories with a fantastic background (“ The Golden Pot”, “The Bride’s Choice”), philosophical fairy tales-parables (“Little Tsakhes”, “The Sandman”). Fiction in the literature of realism is also common: “The Queen of Spades” by A. S. Pushkin, “Shtoss” by M. Yu. Lermontov, “Mirgorod” and “Petersburg stories” by N. V. Gogol, “The Dream of a Funny Man” by F. M. Dostoevsky etc. The problem arises of combining fantasy with the real world in the text; often the introduction of fantastic images requires motivation (Tatyana's dream in Eugene Onegin). However, the establishment of realism pushed fantasy to the periphery of literature. They turned to it to give a symbolic character to images (“The Portrait of Dorian Gray” by O. Wilde, “Shagreen Skin” by O. de Balzac). The Gothic tradition of fiction is developed by E. Poe, whose stories present unmotivated fantastic images and collisions. A synthesis of various types of fiction is presented by M. A. Bulgakov’s novel “The Master and Margarita”.

Incomplete definition ↓

Fantasy (from ancient Greek φανταστική - the art of imagination, fantasy) is a genre and creative method in fiction, cinema, visual and other forms of art, characterized by the use of a fantastic assumption, the “element of the extraordinary”, violation of the boundaries of reality and accepted conventions. Modern fiction includes genres such as science fiction, fantasy, horror, magical realism and many others.

Origins of fiction

The origins of fantasy lie in the post-myth-creating folklore consciousness, primarily in fairy tales.

Fantasy stands out as a special type of artistic creativity as folklore forms move away from the practical tasks of mythological comprehension of reality (the most ancient cosmogonic myths are essentially non-fantastic). The primitive worldview collides with new ideas about reality, the mythical and real plans are mixed, and this mixture is purely fantastic. Fantasy, as Olga Freidenberg puts it, is “the first generation of realism”: a characteristic sign of the invasion of realism into myth is the appearance of “fantastic creatures” (deities combining animal and human traits, centaurs, etc.). The primary genres of fantasy, utopia and fantastic travel, were also the oldest forms of storytelling as such, most notably in Homer's Odyssey. The plot, images and incidents of the Odyssey are the beginning of all literary Western European fiction.

However, the collision of mimesis with myth, which produces the effect of fantasy, has so far been involuntary. The first one to deliberately bring them together, and therefore the first conscious fantasist, is Aristophanes.

Fantasy in ancient literature

In the Hellenistic era, Hecataeus of Abdera, Euhemerus, and Yambulus combined the genres of fantastic travel and utopia in their works.

In Roman times, the moment of socio-political utopia characteristic of Hellenistic pseudo-travels had already evaporated; All that remained was a series of fantastic adventures in different parts of the globe and beyond - on the Moon, combined with the theme of a love story. This type includes “The Incredible Adventures on the Other Side of Thule” by Anthony Diogenes.

In many ways, a continuation of the tradition of a fantastic journey is Pseudo-Callisthenes’ novel “The History of Alexander the Great,” where the hero finds himself in the realm of giants, dwarfs, cannibals, freaks, in an area with strange nature, with unusual animals and plants. Much space is devoted to the wonders of India and its “naked sages”, the Brahmins. The mythological prototype of all these fabulous wanderings, a visit to the land of the blessed, has not been forgotten.

Fantasy in medieval literature

During the early Middle Ages, from approximately the 5th to the 11th centuries, there occurred, if not rejection, then at least suppression of the miraculous, the basis of the fantastic. In the 12th and 13th centuries, according to Jacques Le Goff, “there is a genuine invasion of the miraculous into scientific culture.” At this time, the so-called “books of miracles” appeared one after another (Gervasius of Tilbury, Marco Polo, Raymond Lull, John Mandeville, etc.), reviving the genre of paradoxography.

Fantasy in the Renaissance

The development of fantasy during the Renaissance is completed by M. Cervantes’ “Don Quixote,” a parody of the fantasy of chivalry and at the same time the beginning of a realistic novel, and F. Rabelais’ “Gargantua and Pantagruel,” which uses the profane language of a chivalric novel to develop a humanistic utopia and humanistic satire. In Rabelais we find (the chapters on the Abbey of Theleme) one of the first examples of the fantastic development of the utopian genre, although originally uncharacteristic: after all, among the founders of the genre, T. More (1516) and T. Campanella (1602), utopia gravitates towards a didactic treatise and only in “ New Atlantis" by F. Bacon is a science-fiction game of imagination. An example of a more traditional combination of fantasy with the dream of a fairy-tale kingdom of justice is “The Tempest” by W. Shakespeare.

Fantasy in the 17th and 18th centuries

By the end of the 17th century, mannerism and baroque, for which fantasy was a constant background, an additional artistic plane (at the same time, there was an aestheticization of the perception of fantasy, a loss of a living sense of the miraculous), was replaced by classicism, which was inherently alien to fantasy: its appeal to myth was completely rationalistic.

French “tragic stories” of the 17th century draw material from chronicles and depict fatal passions, murders and cruelties, possession by the devil, etc. These are distant predecessors of the works of the Marquis de Sade as a novelist and the “black novel” in general, combining the paradoxographic tradition with narrative fiction . Infernal themes in a pious frame (the story of the struggle with terrible passions on the path of serving God) appear in the novels of Bishop Jean-Pierre Camus.

Fantasy in Romanticism

For the romantics, duality turns into a split personality, leading to a poetically beneficial “sacred madness.” “Refuge in the realm of fantasy” was sought by all the romantics: among the “Jenians” fantasy, that is, the aspiration of the imagination into the transcendental world of myths and legends, was put forward as an introduction to higher insight, as a life program - relatively prosperous (due to romantic irony) in L. Tieck , pathetic and tragic in Novalis, whose “Heinrich von Ofterdingen” is an example of an updated fantastic allegory, comprehended in the spirit of the search for an unattainable and incomprehensible ideal-spiritual world.

Romantic fiction was synthesized by the work of E. T. A. Hoffmann: here is a Gothic novel (“The Devil’s Elixir”), a literary fairy tale (“Lord of the Fleas,” “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”), and an enchanting phantasmagoria (“Princess Brambilla”), and a realistic story with a fantastic background (“The Bride’s Choice”, “The Golden Pot”).

Fantasy in realism

In the era of realism, fiction again found itself on the periphery of literature, although it was often used for satirical and utopian purposes (as in Dostoevsky’s stories “Bobok” and “The Dream of a Funny Man”). At the same time, science fiction proper was born, which in the works of the epigone of romanticism J. Verne (“Five Weeks in a Balloon,” “Journey to the Center of the Earth,” “From the Earth to the Moon,” “Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea,” “The Mysterious island", "Robur the Conqueror") and the outstanding realist H. Wells is fundamentally isolated from the general fantasy tradition; it depicts the real world, transformed by science (for better or worse) and opening up to the researcher’s gaze in a new way. (True, the development of space science fiction leads to the discovery of new worlds, inevitably somehow related to the traditional fairy-tale world, but this is a coming moment.)

More about the genre

The question of isolating fantasy as an independent concept arose as a result of developments in the second half of the 19th and early 20th centuries. literature firmly connected with scientific and technological progress. The plot of science fiction works was based on scientific discoveries, inventions, technical foresights... Herbert Wells and Jules Verne became the recognized authorities of science fiction of those decades. Until the middle of the 20th century. science fiction stood somewhat apart from the rest of literature: it was too closely connected with science. This gave theorists of the literary process grounds to assert that fantasy is a completely special kind of literature, existing according to rules unique to it and setting itself special tasks.

Subsequently, this opinion was shaken. The statement of the famous American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury is typical: “Fiction is literature.” In other words, there are no significant partitions. In the second half of the 20th century. previous theories gradually retreated under the onslaught of changes taking place in science fiction.

Firstly, the concept of “fantasy” began to include not only “science fiction” itself, i.e. works that basically go back to the examples of Juulverne and Wells production. Under the same roof were texts related to “horror” (horror literature), mysticism and fantasy (magical, magical fiction).

Secondly, significant changes have also occurred in science fiction: the “new wave” of American science fiction writers and the “fourth wave” in the USSR (1950–1980s of the 20th century) led an active struggle to destroy the boundaries of the “ghetto” of science fiction, its merging with literature “mainstream”, the destruction of the unspoken taboos that dominated old-style classic science fiction. A number of trends in “non-fantastic” literature have in one way or another acquired a pro-fantasy sound and borrowed the ambiance of science fiction. Romantic literature, literary fairy tale (E. Schwartz), phantasmagoria (A. Green), esoteric novel (P. Coelho, V. Pelevin), many texts lying in the tradition of postmodernism (for example, Mantissa Fowles), are recognized among science fiction writers as “their "or "almost our own", i.e. borderline, lying in a wide zone, which is covered by the spheres of influence of both “mainstream” literature and fantasy.

At the end of the 20th and the first years of the 21st centuries. The destruction of the concepts of “fantasy” and “science fiction”, which are familiar to fantastic literature, is growing. Many theories were created that in one way or another assigned strictly defined boundaries to these types of fiction. But for the general reader, everything was clear from the surroundings: fantasy is where witchcraft, swords and elves are; Science fiction is where robots, starships and blasters are.

Gradually “science fantasy” appeared, i.e. “scientific fantasy” that perfectly combined witchcraft with starships, and swords with robots. A special type of fiction was born - “alternative history”, which was later supplemented by “cryptohistory”. In both cases, science fiction writers use both the usual ambience of science fiction and fantasy, and even combine them into an indissoluble whole. Directions have emerged in which belonging to science fiction or fantasy is not particularly important at all. In Anglo-American literature this is primarily cyberpunk, and in Russian literature it is turborealism and “sacred fantasy”.

As a result, a situation has arisen where the concepts of science fiction and fantasy, which previously firmly divided fantastic literature into two, have blurred to the limit.

Fantasy - genres and subgenres

It is known that science fiction can be divided into different directions: fantasy and science fiction, hard science fiction, space fiction, combat and humor, love and social, mysticism and horror.

Perhaps these genres, or subtypes of science fiction as they are also called, are by far the most famous in their circles. Let's try to characterize each of them separately.

Science fiction (SF)

So, science fiction is a genre of literature and film that describes events that occur in the real world and differ from historical reality in any significant respect.

These differences can be technological, scientific, social, historical and any other, but not magical, otherwise the whole intent of the concept of “science fiction” is lost. In other words, science fiction reflects the influence of scientific and technological progress on the everyday and familiar life of a person. Among the popular plots of works of this genre are flights to uncharted planets, the invention of robots, the discovery of new forms of life, the invention of new weapons, etc.

The following works are popular among fans of this genre: “I, Robot” (Azeik Asimov), “Pandora’s Star” (Peter Hamilton), “Attempt to Escape” (Boris and Arkady Strugatsky), “Red Mars” (Kim Stanley Robinson) and many other wonderful books.

The film industry has also produced many films in the science fiction genre. Among the first foreign films, Georges Milies' film “A Trip to the Moon” was released. It was made in 1902 and is truly considered the most popular film to be shown on the big screen.

You can also note other films in the science fiction genre: “District No. 9” (USA), “The Matrix” (USA), the legendary “Aliens” (USA). However, there are also films that have become classics of the genre, so to speak.

Among them: “Metropolis” (Fritz Lang, Germany), filmed in 1925, amazed with its idea and representation of the future of humanity.

Another film masterpiece that has become a classic is “2001: A Space Odyssey” (Stanley Kubrick, USA), released in 1968. This picture tells the story of extraterrestrial civilizations and is very much reminiscent of scientific material about aliens and their lives - for viewers back in 1968, this is truly something new, fantastic, something they have never seen or heard before. Of course, we can’t ignore Star Wars.

Hard science fiction as a subgenre of SF

Science fiction has a so-called subgenre or subtype called “hard science fiction.” Hard science fiction differs from traditional science fiction in that scientific facts and laws are not distorted during the narrative.

That is, we can say that the basis of this subgenre is a natural scientific knowledge base and the entire plot is described around a certain scientific idea, even a fantastic one. The storyline in such works is always simple and logical, based on several scientific assumptions - a time machine, super-high-speed movement in space, extrasensory perception, etc.

Space fiction, another subgenre of SF

Space fiction is a subgenre of science fiction. Its distinctive feature is that the main plot takes place in outer space or on various planets in the Solar System or beyond.

There is a division of space fiction into types: Planetary novel, space opera, space odyssey. Let's talk about each type in more detail.

1. A space odyssey. So, A Space Odyssey is a storyline in which actions most often take place on space vessels (ships) and the heroes need to complete a global mission, the outcome of which determines the fate of a person.
2. Planetary novel. A planetary novel is much simpler in terms of the type of development of events and the complexity of the plot. Basically, all the action is limited to one specific planet, which is inhabited by exotic animals and people. A lot of works in this type of genre are dedicated to the distant future in which people move between worlds on a spaceship and this is a normal phenomenon; some early works of space fiction describe simpler plots with less realistic methods of movement. However, the goal and main theme of a planetary novel is the same for all works - the adventures of the heroes on a specific planet.
3. Space opera. Space opera is an equally interesting subtype of science fiction. Its main idea is the maturation and growth of a conflict between heroes with the use of powerful high-tech weapons of the future to conquer the Galaxy or liberate the planet from space aliens, humanoids and other space creatures. The characters in this cosmic conflict are heroic. The main difference between space opera and science fiction is that there is an almost complete rejection of the scientific basis of the plot.

Among the works of space fiction that deserve attention are the following: “Paradise Lost”, “The Absolute Enemy” (Andrei Livadny), “The Steel Rat Saves the World” (Harry Harrison), “Star Kings”, “Return to the Stars” (Edmond Hamilton ), “The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy” (Douglas Adams) and other wonderful books.

And now let’s note several bright films in the “space science fiction” genre. Of course, we cannot ignore the well-known film “Armageddon” (Michael Bay, USA, 1998); "Avatar" (James Cameron, USA, 2009), which blew up the whole world, is distinguished by unusual special effects, vivid images, and the rich and unusual nature of an unknown planet; “Starship Troopers” (Paul Verhoeven, USA, 1997), also a popular film in its time, although many film fans today are ready to watch this picture more than once; It’s impossible not to mention all the parts (episodes) of “Star Wars” by George Lucas; in my opinion, this masterpiece of science fiction will be popular and interesting to viewers at all times.

Combat fantasy

Combat fiction is a type (subgenre) of fiction that describes military actions taking place in the distant or not very distant future, and all actions take place using super-powerful robots and the latest weapons unknown to man today.

This genre is quite young; its origins can be dated back to the mid-20th century during the height of the Vietnam War. Moreover, I note that combat science fiction became popular and the number of works and films increased, in direct proportion to the increase in conflicts in the world.

Among the popular authors representing this genre are: Joe Haldeman “Infinity War”; Harry Harrison "Steel Rat", "Bill - Hero of the Galaxy"; domestic authors Alexander Zorich “Tomorrow War”, Oleg Markelov “Adequacy”, Igor Pol “Guardian Angel 320” and other wonderful authors.

A lot of films have been made in the genre of “combat science fiction”: “Frozen Soldiers” (Canada, 2014), “Edge of Tomorrow” (USA, 2014), Star Trek: Into Darkness (USA, 2013).

Humorous fiction

Humorous fiction is a genre in which unusual and fantastic events are presented in a humorous form.

Humorous fiction has been known since antiquity and is developing in our time. Among the representatives of humorous fiction in literature, the most striking are our beloved Strugatsky Brothers “Monday Begins on Saturday”, Kir Bulychev “Miracles in Guslyar”, as well as foreign authors of humorous fiction Prudchett Terry David John “I’ll Put on Midnight”, Bester Alfred “Will You Wait? ", Bisson Terry Ballantine "They are made of meat."

Romance fiction

Romance fiction, romantic adventure works.

This type of fiction includes love stories with fictional characters, magical countries that do not exist, the presence in the description of wonderful amulets with unusual properties, and, of course, all these stories have a happy ending.

Of course, we cannot ignore films made in the genre. Here are a few of them: “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” (USA, 2008), “The Time Traveler’s Wife (USA, 2009), “Her” (USA, 2014).

Social fiction

Social fiction is a type of science fiction literature where the main role is played by relationships between people in society.

The main emphasis is on creating fantastic motifs in order to show the development of social relations in unrealistic conditions.

The following works were written in this genre: The Strugatsky Brothers “The Doomed City”, “The Hour of the Bull” by I. Efremov, H. Wells “The Time Machine”, “Fahrenheit 451” by Ray Bradbury. Cinema also has films in the genre of social science fiction: “The Matrix” (USA, Australia, 1999), “Dark City” (USA, Australia, 1998), “Youth” (USA, 2014).

As you can see, science fiction is such a versatile genre that anyone can choose what suits them in spirit, by nature, and will give them the opportunity to plunge into the magical, unusual, terrible, tragic, high-tech world of the future and inexplicable for us - ordinary people.

What is the difference between fantasy and science fiction?

The word "fantasy" comes to us from the Greek language, where "phantastike" means "the art of imagining." “Fantasy” comes from the English “phantasy” (calque from the Greek “phantasia”). The literal translation is “idea, imagination.” The key words here are art and imagination. Art implies certain patterns and rules for constructing a genre, and imagination is limitless, flights of fancy are not subject to laws.

Science fiction is a form of reflection of the surrounding world in which a picture of the Universe that is logically incompatible with reality is created on the basis of real ideas about it. Fantasy is a type of science fiction, a type of fantastic art, the works of which depict fictional events in worlds whose existence is logically impossible to explain. The basis of fantasy is a mystical, irrational principle.

The fantasy world is a certain assumption. The author takes his reader on a journey through time and space. After all, the genre is based on a free flight of fantasy. The location of this world is not specified in any way. Its physical laws cannot be explained by the realities of our world. Magic and magic are the norm of the described world. The “miracles” of fantasy operate according to their own system, like the laws of nature.

The heroes of modern science fiction works, as a rule, oppose an entire society. They may be fighting a mega-corporation or a totalitarian state that rules society. Fantasy is built on the antithesis of good and evil, harmony and chaos. The hero goes on a long journey, seeking truth and justice. Often the plot begins with some incident that awakens the forces of evil. The hero is opposed or helped by mythical fictional creatures, which can be conditionally united into certain “races” (elves, orcs, gnomes, trolls, etc.). A classic example of the fantasy genre is “The Lord of the Rings” by J. R. R. Tolkien.

conclusions

1. The word “fantasy” is translated as “the art of imagining”, and “fantasy” is “representation”, “imagination”.
2. A characteristic feature of works of fiction is the presence of a fantastic assumption: what the world would become under certain conditions. A fantasy author describes an alternative reality that is not connected with existing reality. The laws of the fantasy world are presented as a given, without any explanation. The existence of magic and mythical races is the norm.
3. In science fiction works, as a rule, there is a conflict between the norms imposed on society and the protagonist’s desire for freedom. That is, the heroes defend their difference. In fantasy works, the main conflict is associated with the confrontation between light and dark forces.

Film fiction

Cinematography is a direction and genre of artistic cinematography that can be characterized by an increased level of convention. The images, events and surroundings of science fiction films are often deliberately removed from everyday reality - this can be done both to achieve specific artistic goals, which are more convenient for film creators to achieve through the means of fantasy than through the means of realistic cinema, or simply for the entertainment of the viewer (the latter is typical primarily for genre films). movie).

The nature of the convention depends on the particular movement or genre - science fiction, fantasy, horror, phantasmagoria - but all can be broadly understood as film fiction. There is also a narrower view of cinematic fiction as a mass purely commercial genre of cinema; According to this view, 2001: A Space Odyssey is not science fiction. This article uses a broad understanding of film fiction to provide a more complete understanding of the subject.

The evolution of film fiction has largely followed the evolution of the much more dynamically developing science fiction literature. However, cinema from the very beginning possessed a quality of visuality, which written literature is practically devoid of. The moving image is perceived by the viewer as authentic, existing here and now, and the feeling of authenticity does not depend on how fantastic the action unfolding on the screen is. This property of the viewer’s perception of cinema acquired particular significance after the advent of special effects.

Cinematic fiction actively uses the mythology of the technical era. Mythology is part of science fiction films.

In general, I am a big fan of science fiction and science fiction as well. At one time I read a lot, now much less due to the invention of the Internet and lack of time. While preparing my next post, I came across this rating. Well, I think I’ll go for a run now, I probably know everything here! Yeah! No matter how it is. I haven’t read half the books, but that’s okay. I’m hearing some authors almost for the first time! Look what it's like! And they are CULT! How are you doing with this list?

Check...

1. Time machine

A novel by H.G. Wells, his first major work of science fiction. Adapted from the 1888 story "The Argonauts of Time" and published in 1895. “The Time Machine” introduced into science fiction the idea of ​​time travel and the time machine used for this, which were later used by many writers and created the direction of chrono-fiction. Moreover, as noted by Yu. I. Kagarlitsky, both in scientific and general worldview terms, Wells “... in a certain sense anticipated Einstein,” who formulated the special theory of relativity ten years after the novel’s publication

The book describes the journey of the inventor of a time machine into the future. The basis of the plot is the fascinating adventures of the main character in a world located 800 thousand years later, in describing which the author proceeded from the negative trends in the development of his contemporary capitalist society, which allowed many critics to call the book a warning novel. In addition, the novel describes for the first time many ideas related to time travel, which will not lose their attractiveness for readers and authors of new works for a long time.

2. Stranger in a strange land

A fantastic philosophical novel by Robert Heinlein, awarded the Hugo Award in 1962. It has a “cult” status in the West, being considered the most famous science fiction novel ever written. One of the few works of science fiction included by the Library of Congress in its list of books that shaped America.

The first expedition to Mars disappeared without a trace. The Third World War postponed the second, successful expedition for a long twenty-five years. New researchers established contact with the original Martians and found out that not all of the first expedition perished. And the “Mowgli of the space age” is brought to earth - Michael Valentine Smith, raised by local intelligent creatures. A man by birth and a Martian by upbringing, Michael bursts like a bright star into the familiar everyday life of the Earth. Endowed with the knowledge and skills of an ancient civilization, Smith becomes the messiah, the founder of a new religion and the first martyr for his faith...

3. Lensman Saga

The Lensman saga is the story of a million-year confrontation between two ancient and powerful races: the evil and cruel Eddorians, who are trying to create a giant empire in space, and the inhabitants of Arrisia, the wise patrons of young civilizations emerging in the galaxy. Over time, the Earth with its mighty space fleet and the Galactic Lensman Patrol will also enter this battle.

The novel instantly became incredibly popular among science fiction fans - it was one of the first major works whose authors dared to take the action beyond the Solar System, and since then Smith, along with Edmond Hamilton, has been considered the founder of the “space opera” genre.

4. 2001: A Space Odyssey

“2001: A Space Odyssey” is a literary script for the film of the same name (which, in turn, is based on Clark’s early story “The Sentinel”), which has become a classic of science fiction and is dedicated to the contact of mankind with an extraterrestrial civilization.
2001: A Space Odyssey is regularly included in lists of the "greatest films in cinematic history." It and its sequel, 2010: Odyssey Two, won Hugo Awards in 1969 and 1985 for best science fiction films.
The influence of the film and book on modern culture is enormous, as is the number of their fans. And although 2001 has already arrived, A Space Odyssey is unlikely to be forgotten. She continues to be our future.

5. 451 degrees Fahrenheit

The dystopian novel by the famous American science fiction writer Ray Bradbury “Fahrenheit 451” has become, in a sense, an icon and guiding star of the genre. It was created on a typewriter, which the writer rented from a public library, and was first printed in parts in the first issues of Playboy magazine.

The epigraph of the novel states that the ignition temperature of paper is 451 °F. The novel describes a society that relies on mass culture and consumer thinking, in which all books that make you think about life are subject to burning; possession of books is a crime; and people who are capable of critical thinking find themselves outside the law. The novel's protagonist, Guy Montag, works as a "fireman" (which in the book implies burning books), confident that he is doing his job "for the benefit of mankind." But soon he becomes disillusioned with the ideals of the society of which he is a part, becomes an outcast and joins a small underground group of marginalized people, whose supporters memorize the texts of books in order to save them for posterity.

6. “Foundation” (other names - Academy, Foundation, Foundation, Foundation)

A science fiction classic, it tells the story of the collapse of a great galactic empire and its revival through the Seldon Plan.

In his later novels, Asimov connected the world of Foundation with his other series of works about the Empire and about positronic robots. The combined series, which is also called "Foundation", covers the history of mankind for more than 20,000 years and includes 14 novels and several dozen short stories.

According to rumors, Asimov's novel made a huge impression on Osama bin Laden and even influenced his decision to create the terrorist organization Al-Qaeda. Bin Laden likened himself to Gary Seldon, who controls the future society through pre-planned crises. Moreover, the title of the novel when translated into Arabic sounds like Al Qaida and, thus, could be the reason for the name of bin Laden's organization.

7. Slaughterhouse-Five, or the Children's Crusade (1969)

Autobiographical novel by Kurt Vonnegut about the bombing of Dresden during World War II.

The novel was dedicated to Mary O'Hair (and Dresden taxi driver Gerhard Müller) and was written in a “telegraphic-schizophrenic style,” as Vonnegut himself puts it. The book closely intertwines realism, grotesque, fantasy, elements of madness, cruel satire and bitter irony.
The main character is the American soldier Billy Pilgrim, an absurd, timid, apathetic man. The book describes his adventures in the war and the bombing of Dresden, which left an indelible imprint on Pilgrim’s mental state, which had not been very stable since childhood. Vonnegut introduced a fantastic element into the story: the events of the protagonist's life are viewed through the prism of post-traumatic stress disorder - a syndrome characteristic of war veterans, which crippled the hero's perception of reality. As a result, the comical “story about aliens” grows into some harmonious philosophical system.
Aliens from the planet Tralfamadore take Billy Pilgrim to their planet and tell him that time does not actually “flow”, there is no gradual random transition from one event to another - the world and time are given once and for all, everything that has happened and will happen is known . About the death of someone, the Trafalmadorians simply say: “That’s how it is.” It was impossible to say why or why anything happened - that was the “structure of the moment.”

8. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

Guide to The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. The legendary ironic science fiction saga of Douglas Adams.
The novel tells the story of the adventures of the unlucky Englishman Arthur Dent, who, with his friend Ford Prefect (a native of a small planet somewhere near Betelgeuse, who works in the editorial office of the Hitchhiker's Guide) avoids death when the Earth is destroyed by a race of Vogon bureaucrats. Zaphod Beeblebrox, Ford's relative and President of the Galaxy, accidentally saves Dent and Ford from death in outer space. Also on board Zaphod's improbability-powered ship, the Heart of Gold, are the depressed robot Marvin and Trillian, aka Trisha McMillan, whom Arthur once met at a party. She, as Arthur soon realizes, is the only surviving Earthling besides himself. The heroes are looking for the legendary planet Magrathea and trying to find a question that matches the Final Answer.

9. Dune (1965)

Frank Herbert's first novel in the Dune Chronicles saga about the sand planet Arrakis. It was this book that made him famous. Dune won the Hugo and Nebula Awards. Dune is one of the most famous science fiction novels of the 20th century.
This book raises many political, environmental and other important issues. The writer managed to create a full-fledged fantasy world and cross it with a philosophical novel. In this world, the most important substance is spice, which is needed for interstellar travel and on which the existence of civilization depends. This substance is found only on one planet called Arrakis. Arrakis is a desert inhabited by huge sandworms. On this planet live the Fremen tribes, in whose life the main and unconditional value is water.

10. Neuromancer (1984)

A novel by William Gibson, a canonical piece of cyberpunk that won the Nebula Award (1984), the Hugo Award (1985), and the Philip K. K. Prize. This is Gibson's first novel and opens the Cyberspace trilogy. Published in 1984.
This work examines concepts such as artificial intelligence, virtual reality, genetic engineering, transnational corporations, cyberspace (computer network, matrix) long before these concepts became popular in popular culture.

11. Do androids dream of electric sheep? (1968)

Science fiction novel by Philip K. Dick, written in 1968. Tells the story of "bounty hunter" Rick Deckard, who pursues androids - creatures almost indistinguishable from humans that have been outlawed on Earth. The action takes place in a radiation poisoned and partially abandoned future San Francisco.
Along with The Man in the High Castle, this novel is Dick's most famous work. This is one of the classic science fiction works that explores the ethical issues of creating androids - artificial people.
In 1982, based on the novel, Ridley Scott made the film Blade Runner with Harrison Ford in the title role. The script, which was created by Hampton Fancher and David Peoples, is quite different from the book.

12. Gate (1977)

A science fiction novel by American writer Frederik Pohl, published in 1977 and received all three major American awards of the genre - Nebula (1977), Hugo (1978) and Locus (1978). The novel opens the Khichi series.
Near Venus, people found an artificial asteroid built by an alien race called the Heechee. Spaceships were discovered on the asteroid. People figured out how to control ships, but they couldn't change their destination. Many volunteers have tested them. Some returned with discoveries that made them rich. But most returned with nothing. And some did not return at all. Flying on a ship was like Russian roulette - you could get lucky, but you could also die.
The main character is a researcher who got lucky. He is tormented by remorse - from the crew that was lucky, he was the only one who returned. And he tries to figure out his life by confessing to a robot psychoanalyst.

13. Ender's Game (1985)

Ender's Game won the Nebula and Hugo Awards for best novel in 1985 and 1986, some of the most prestigious literary awards in science fiction.
The novel takes place in 2135. Humanity has survived two invasions by the alien race of buggers, only miraculously surviving, and is preparing for the next invasion. To search for pilots and military leaders capable of bringing victory to Earth, a military school is created, to which the most talented children are sent from an early age. Among these children is the title character of the book - Andrew (Ender) Wiggin, the future commander of the International Earth Fleet and humanity's only hope for salvation.

14. 1984 (1949)

In 2009, The Times included 1984 in its list of the 60 best books published in the last 60 years, and Newsweek magazine ranked the novel second on its list of the 100 best books of all time.
The title of the novel, its terminology, and even the name of the author subsequently became common nouns and are used to denote a social structure reminiscent of the totalitarian regime described in “1984.” He repeatedly became both a victim of censorship in socialist countries and an object of criticism from left-wing circles in the West.
George Orwell's science fiction novel 1984 tells the story of Winston Smith as he rewrites history to suit partisan interests during the reign of a totalitarian junta. Smith's rebellion leads to dire consequences. As the author predicts, nothing can be more terrible than total lack of freedom...

This work, which was banned in our country until 1991, is called a dystopia of the twentieth century. (hatred, fears, hunger and blood), a warning about totalitarianism. The novel was boycotted in the West due to the similarity between the ruler of the country, Big Brother, and the real heads of state.

15. Brave New World (1932)

One of the most famous dystopian novels. A kind of antipode to Orwell's 1984. No torture chambers - everyone is happy and satisfied. The pages of the novel describe a world of the distant future (the action takes place in London), in which people are grown in special embryonic factories and are divided in advance (by influencing the embryo at various stages of development) into five castes of different mental and physical abilities, which perform different jobs. From “alphas” - strong and beautiful mental workers to “epsilons” - semi-cretins who can only do the simplest physical work. Depending on the caste, babies are raised differently. Thus, with the help of hypnopaedia, each caste develops reverence for the higher caste and contempt for the lower castes. Each caste has a specific color of costume. For example, alphas wear gray, gammas wear green, deltas wear khaki, and epsilons wear black.
In this society there is no place for feelings, and it is considered indecent not to have regular sexual intercourse with different partners (the main slogan is “everyone belongs to everyone else”), but pregnancy is considered a terrible shame. People in this “World State” do not age, although the average life expectancy is 60 years. Regularly, in order to always have a good mood, they use the drug “soma”, which has no negative effects (“soma gram – and no dramas”). God in this world is Henry Ford, they call him “Our Lord Ford,” and the chronology starts from the creation of the Ford T car, that is, from 1908 AD. e. (in the novel the action takes place in 632 of the “era of stability”, that is, in 2540 AD).
The writer shows the life of people in this world. The main characters are people who cannot fit into society - Bernard Marx (a representative of the upper class, alpha plus), his friend the successful dissident Helmholtz and the savage John from the Indian reservation, who all his life dreamed of getting into a wonderful world where everyone is happy.

source http://t0p-10.ru

And on the literary topic, let me remind you what I was and what I was like The original article is on the website InfoGlaz.rf Link to the article from which this copy was made -

In modern literary criticism and criticism, issues related to the history of the emergence of science fiction have been studied relatively little; the role of the experience of “pre-scientific” fiction of the past in its formation and development has been studied even less.

Characteristic, for example, is the statement of critic A. Gromova, the author of an article on science fiction in the “Concise Literary Encyclopedia”: “Science fiction was defined as a mass phenomenon precisely in the era when science began to play a decisive role in the life of society, relatively speaking - after the Second World War.” war, although the main features of modern science fiction were already outlined in the works of Wells and partly K. Capek" (2). However, while quite rightly emphasizing the relevance of science fiction as a literary phenomenon brought to life by the uniqueness of the new historical era, its urgent needs and demands, we must not forget that the literary genealogical roots of modern science fiction go back to hoary antiquity, that it is the legitimate heir to the greatest achievements of the world science fiction can and should use these achievements, this artistic experience in the service of the interests of our time.

The Small Literary Encyclopedia defines fantasy as a type of fiction in which the author's imagination extends from the depiction of strangely unusual, implausible phenomena to the creation of a special fictional, unreal, “wonderful world.”

The fantastic has its own fantastic type of imagery with its inherent high degree of conventionality, an outright violation of real logical connections and patterns, natural proportions and forms of the depicted object.

Fantasy as a special area of ​​literary creativity accumulates the creative imagination of the artist, and at the same time the imagination of the reader; at the same time, fantasy is not an arbitrary “realm of imagination”: in a fantastic picture of the world, the reader guesses the transformed forms of real, social and spiritual human existence.

Fantastic imagery is inherent in such folklore genres as fairy tale, epic, allegory, legend, grotesque, utopia, satire. The artistic effect of a fantastic image is achieved due to a sharp repulsion from empirical reality, therefore the basis of fantastic works is the opposition between the fantastic and the real.

The poetics of the fantastic is associated with the doubling of the world: the artist either models his own incredible world, existing according to its own laws (in this case, the real “reference point” is present hidden, remaining outside the text: “Gulliver’s Travels” by J. Swift, “The Dream of a Ridiculous Man” by F. M. Dostoevsky) or parallel recreates two streams - real and supernatural, unreal being.

In the fantastic literature of this series, mystical, irrational motives are strong; the science fiction writer here acts as an otherworldly force, intervening in the fate of the central character, influencing his behavior and the course of events of the entire work (for example, works of medieval literature, Renaissance literature, romanticism).

With the destruction of mythological consciousness and the growing desire in the art of modern times to look for the driving forces of being in being itself, already in the literature of romanticism there appears a need for motivation for the fantastic, which in one way or another could be combined with a general orientation towards a natural depiction of characters and situations.

The most consistent techniques of such motivated fiction are dreams, rumors, hallucinations, madness, and plot mystery. A new type of veiled, implicit fiction is being created (Yu.V. Mann), which leaves the possibility of double interpretation, double motivation of fantastic incidents - empirically or psychologically plausible and inexplicably surreal (“Cosmorama” by V.F. Odoevsky, “Shtos” by M.Yu. Lermontov, “The Sandman” by E.T.A. Hoffmann).

Such conscious instability of motivation often leads to the fact that the subject of the fantastic disappears (“The Queen of Spades” by A.S. Pushkin, “The Nose” by N.V. Gogol), and in many cases its irrationality is completely removed, finding a prosaic explanation in the course of the development of the narrative .

Fantasy stands out as a special type of artistic creativity as folklore forms move away from the practical tasks of mythological understanding of reality and ritual and magical influence on it. The primitive worldview, becoming historically untenable, is perceived as fantastic. A characteristic feature of the emergence of fantasy is the development of an aesthetics of the miraculous, which is not characteristic of primitive folklore. A stratification occurs: the heroic tale and tales about the cultural hero are transformed into a heroic epic (folk allegory and generalization of history), in which the elements of the miraculous are auxiliary; the fabulously magical element is recognized as such and serves as a natural environment for a story about travel and adventure, taken beyond the historical framework.

Thus, Homer’s “Iliad” is essentially a realistic description of an episode of the Trojan War (which is not hampered by the participation of celestial heroes in the action); Homer’s “Odyssey” is, first of all, a fantastic story about all sorts of incredible adventures (not related to the epic plot) of one of the heroes of the same war. The plot images and incidents of the Odyssey are the beginning of all literary European fiction. In much the same way as the Iliad and the Odyssey relate to the heroic saga “The Voyage of Bran, son of Phebal” (7th century AD). The prototype of future fantastic travels was the parody “True History” by Lucian, where the author, to enhance the comic effect, sought to pile up as much incredible and absurd as possible and at the same time enriched the flora and fauna of the “wonderful country” with numerous tenacious inventions.

Thus, even in antiquity, the main directions of fantasy were outlined - fantastic wanderings, adventures and a fantastic search, pilgrimage (a typical plot is a descent into hell). Ovid in “Metamorphoses” directed the original mythological plots of transformations (transformations of people into animals, constellations, stones, etc.) into the mainstream of fantasy and laid the foundation for a fantastic-symbolic allegory - a genre more didactic than adventure: “teaching in miracles.” Fantastic transformations become a form of awareness of the vicissitudes and unreliability of human fate in a world subject only to the arbitrariness of chance or the mysterious higher will.

A rich body of literary processed fairy-tale fiction is provided by the tales of the Arabian Nights; the influence of their exotic imagery was felt in European pre-romanticism and romanticism. Literature from Kalidasa to R. Tagore is saturated with fantastic images and echoes of the Mahabharata and Ramayana. A unique literary amalgamation of folk tales, legends and beliefs are represented by numerous works of Japanese (for example, the genre of “story of the terrible and extraordinary” - “Konjaku monogatari”) and Chinese fiction (“Tales of Miracles from the Liao Cabinet” by Pu Songling).

Fantastic fiction under the sign of the “aesthetics of the miraculous” was the basis of the medieval knightly epic - from Beowulf (8th century) to Peresval (c. 1182) by Chrétien de Troyes and Le Morte d’Arthur (1469) by T. Malory. The fantastic plots were framed by the legend of the court of King Arthur, which was subsequently superimposed on the imaginative chronicle of the Crusades. Further transformation of these plots is demonstrated by the monumentally fantastic Renaissance poems “Roland in Love” by Boiardo, “Furious Roland” by L. Ariosto, “Jerusalem Liberated” by T. Tasso, and “The Fairy Queen” by E. Spenser, which have almost completely lost their historical-epic basis. Together with numerous chivalric novels of the 14th - 16th centuries. they constitute a special era in the development of science fiction. A milestone in the development of the fantastic allegory created by Ovid was the “Roman of the Rose” of the 13th century. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Men.

The development of fantasy during the Renaissance is completed by “Don Quixote” by M. Cervantes, a parody of the fantasy of knightly adventures, and “Gargantua and Pantagruel” by F. Rabelais, a comic epic on a fantastic basis, both traditional and arbitrarily reinterpreted. In Rabelais we find (chapter “The Abbey of Thélem”) one of the first examples of the fantastic development of the utopian genre.

To a lesser extent than ancient mythology and folklore, the religious mythological images of the Bible stimulated fantasy. The largest works of Christian fiction - “Paradise Lost” and “Paradise Regained” by J. Milton are based not on canonical biblical texts, but on apocrypha. This does not detract from the fact that works of European fantasy of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, as a rule, have an ethical Christian overtones or represent a play of fantastic images in the spirit of Christian apocryphal demonology. Outside of science fiction are the lives of saints, where miracles are fundamentally highlighted as extraordinary. However, Christian mythology contributes to the flowering of a special genre of visionary fiction. Starting with the apocalypse of John the Theologian, “visions” or “revelation” become a full-fledged literary genre: various aspects of it are represented by “The Vision of Peter the Plowman” (1362) by W. Langland and “The Divine Comedy” by Dante.

K con. 17th century Mannerism and Baroque, for which fantasy was a constant background, an additional artistic plane (at the same time, there was an aestheticization of the perception of fantasy, a loss of a living sense of the miraculous, characteristic of the fantastic literature of subsequent centuries), was replaced by classicism, which is inherently alien to fantasy: its appeal to myth is completely rationalistic . In novels of the 17th - 18th centuries. Motives and images of fiction are used to complicate the intrigue. The fantastic quest is interpreted as erotic adventures (“fairy tales,” for example, “Akaju and Zirfila C. Duclos”). Fantasy, without having any independent meaning, turns out to be a support for the picaresque novel (“The Lame Demon” by A.R. Lesage, “The Devil in Love” by J. Cazotte), a philosophical treatise (“Voltaire’s Micromegas”), etc. The reaction to the dominance of educational rationalism is characteristic of the 2nd sex. 18th century; the Englishman R. Hurd calls for a heartfelt study of fantasy (“Letters on Chivalry and Medieval Romances”); in “The Adventures of Count Ferdinand Fathom” T. Smollett anticipates the beginning of the development of fantasy in the 19th and 20th centuries. gothic novel by H. Walpole, A. Radcliffe, M. Lewis. By supplying accessories to romantic plots, fantasy remains in an auxiliary role: with its help, the duality of images and events becomes the pictorial principle of pre-romanticism.

In modern times, the combination of fantasy and romanticism has proven especially fruitful. “Refuge in the realm of fantasy” (Yu.L. Kerner) was sought by all romantics: fantasy, i.e. the aspiration of the imagination into the transcendental world of myths and legends was put forward as a way of becoming familiar with higher insight, as a life program that is relatively prosperous (due to romantic irony) in L. Tieck, pathetic and tragic in Novalis, whose “Heinrich von Ofterdingen” is an example of an updated fantastic allegory , meaningful in the spirit of searching for an unattainable and incomprehensible ideal-spiritual world.

The Heidelberg school used fantasy as a source of plots, giving additional interest to earthly events (for example, “Isabella of Egypt” by L. A. Arnim is a fantastic arrangement of a love episode from the life of Charles V). This approach to fiction has proven particularly promising. In an effort to enrich the resources of fantasy, German romantics turned to its primary sources - they collected and processed fairy tales and legends (“Folk Tales of Peter Lebrecht” in Tieck’s adaptation; “Children’s and Family Tales” and “German Legends” by the brothers J. and W. Grimm). This contributed to the establishment of the literary fairy tale genre in all European literature, which remains the leading genre in children's fiction to this day. Its classic example is the fairy tales of H. C. Andersen.

Romantic fiction is synthesized by Hoffmann’s work: here is a Gothic novel (“The Devil’s Elixir”), a literary fairy tale (“The Lord of the Fleas,” “The Nutcracker and the Mouse King”), an enchanting phantasmagoria (“Princess Brambilla”), and a realistic story with a fantastic background. (“The Bride’s Choice”, “Pot of Gold”).

An attempt to improve the attraction to fantasy as an “abyss of the otherworldly” is represented by “Faust” by I.V. Goethe; Using the traditional fantastic motif of selling the soul to the devil, the poet discovers the futility of the spirit’s wanderings in the realms of the fantastic and, as the final value, affirms earthly life activity that transforms the world (i.e., the utopian ideal is excluded from the realm of fantasy and is projected into the future).

In Russia, romantic fiction is represented in the works of V.A. Zhukovsky, V.F. Odoevsky, L. Pogorelsky, A.F. Veltman.

A.S. turned to science fiction. Pushkin (“Ruslan and Lyudmila”, where the epic fairy-tale flavor of fantasy is especially important) and N.V. Gogol, whose fantastic images are organically fused into the folk poetic ideal picture of Ukraine (“Terrible Vengeance”, “Viy”). His St. Petersburg fantasies (“Nose”, “Portrait”, “Nevsky Prospekt”) are no longer associated with folklore fairy-tale motifs and are otherwise determined by the general picture of “escheat” reality, the condensed image of which, as it were, in itself gives rise to fantastic images.

With the establishment of critical realism, fiction again found itself on the periphery of literature, although it was often involved as a unique narrative context, giving a symbolic character to real images (“The Picture of Dorian Gray” by O. Wilde, “Shagreen Skin” by O. Balzac, the works of M.E. Saltykov-Shchedrin , S. Bronte, N. Hawthorne, A. Strindberg). The Gothic tradition of fantasy is developed by E. Poe, who depicts or implies a transcendental, otherworldly world as a kingdom of ghosts and nightmares that dominate the earthly destinies of people.

However, he also anticipated (The History of Arthur Gordon Pym, Descent into the Maelstrom) the emergence of a new branch of fantasy - science fiction, which (starting with J. Verne and H. Wells) is fundamentally isolated from the general fantasy tradition; she paints a real, albeit fantastically transformed by science (for better or worse), world, which opens up in a new way to the researcher’s gaze.

Interest in science fiction as such is being revived towards the end. 19th century among the neo-romantics (R.L. Stevenson), decadents (M. Schwob, F. Sologub), symbolists (M. Maeterlinck, prose of A. Bely, dramaturgy of A.A. Blok), expressionists (G. Meyrink), surrealists (G Kazak, E. Kroyder). The development of children's literature gives rise to a new image of the fantasy world - the toy world: in L. Carroll, C. Collodi, A. Milne; in Soviet literature: in A.N. Tolstoy (“The Golden Key”), N.N. Nosova, K.I. Chukovsky. An imaginary, partly fairy-tale world is created by A. Green.

In the 2nd half. 20th century The fantastic principle is realized mainly in the field of science fiction, but sometimes it gives rise to qualitatively new artistic phenomena, for example, the trilogy of the Englishman J.R. Tolkien “The Lord of the Rings” (1954-55), written in line with epic fantasy, novels and dramas by Abe Kobo, works of Spanish and Latin American writers (G. Garcia Marquez, J. Cortazar).

Modernity is characterized by the above-mentioned contextual use of fantasy, when an outwardly realistic narrative has a symbolic and allegorical connotation and gives a more or less encrypted reference to some mythological plot (for example, “Centaur” by J. Andike, “Ship of Fools” by K.A. Porter ). A combination of various possibilities of fiction is the novel by M.A. Bulgakov "The Master and Margarita". The fantastic-allegorical genre is represented in Soviet literature by the cycle of “natural philosophical” poems by N.A. Zabolotsky (“The Triumph of Agriculture”, etc.), folk fairy-tale fiction by the works of P.P. Bazhov, literary fairy tale - plays by E.L. Schwartz.

Science fiction has become a traditional auxiliary means of Russian and Soviet grotesque satire: from Saltykov-Shchedrin (“The History of a City”) to V.V. Mayakovsky (“Bedbug” and “Bathhouse”).

In the 2nd half. 20th century the tendency to create self-sufficiently integral works of fiction is clearly weakening, but science fiction remains a living and fruitful branch of various areas of fiction.

Research by Yu. Kagarlitsky allows us to trace the history of the “science fiction” genre.

The term "science fiction" is of very recent origin. Jules Verne did not use it yet. He entitled his series of novels “Extraordinary Journeys” and in correspondence called them “novels about science.” The current Russian definition of “science fiction” is an inaccurate (and therefore much more successful) translation of the English “science fiction,” that is, “scientific fiction.” It came from the founder of the first science fiction magazines in the USA and writer Hugo Gernsback, who in the late twenties began to apply the definition of “scientific fiction” to works of this kind, and in 1929 for the first time used the definitive term in the journal Science Wonder Stories, has since become entrenched. This term received, however, a very different content. When applied to the work of Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback, who closely followed him, it should perhaps be interpreted as “technical fiction”; for H. G. Wells, this is science fiction in the most etymologically correct sense of the word - he is not so much talking about the technical embodiment of old scientific theories , as much as about new fundamental discoveries and their social consequences - in today's literature, the meaning of the term has expanded unusually, and there is no need to talk about too strict definitions now.

The fact that the term itself appeared so recently and its meaning has managed to be modified so many times testifies to one thing - science fiction has traveled most of its path over the last hundred years, and has developed more and more intensively from decade to decade.

The fact is that the scientific and technological revolution gave science fiction a huge impetus, and it also created an unusually wide and diverse readership for it. Here are those who are drawn to science fiction because the language of scientific fact with which it often operates is their own language, and those who, through fiction, join the movement of scientific thought, perceived at least in the most general and approximate outlines. This is an indisputable fact, confirmed by numerous sociological studies and extraordinary circulations of fiction - a fact that is fundamentally deeply positive. However, we should not forget about the other side of the issue.

The scientific and technological revolution took place on the basis of centuries-old development of knowledge. It carries within itself the fruits of thought accumulated over centuries - in the full breadth of the meaning of this word. Science not only accumulated skills and multiplied its achievements, it rediscovered the world for humanity, forcing it from century to century to be amazed again and again by this newly discovered world. Every scientific revolution—ours first of all—is not only the rise of subsequent thought, but also an outburst of the human spirit.

But progress is always dialectical. It remains the same in this case. The abundance of new information that befalls a person during such upheavals is such that he is in danger of being cut off from the past. And, on the contrary, awareness of this danger can in other cases give rise to the most retrograde forms of protest against the new, against any restructuring of consciousness in accordance with the present day. We must ensure that the present organically includes what has been accumulated by spiritual progress.

Until recently, one most often heard that science fiction of the 20th century was a completely unprecedented phenomenon. This view has held so strong and long in large part because even its opponents, who defend the deeper connections of science fiction with the past of literature, sometimes had a very relative idea of ​​\u200b\u200bthis past.

Criticism of science fiction was mostly carried out by people with a scientific and technical, rather than a humanities, education - people who came from among science fiction writers themselves or from amateur circles (“fan clubs”). With one, albeit very significant, exception (Extrapolation, published under the editorship of Professor Thomas Clarson in the USA and distributed in twenty-three countries), magazines devoted to the criticism of science fiction are organs of such circles (they are usually referred to as “fanzines”, that is, “amateur magazines”; in Western Europe and... the USA there is even an international “fanzine movement”; Hungary has recently joined it). In many respects these journals are of considerable interest, but they cannot compensate for the lack of specialized literary works.

As for academic science, the rise of science fiction also affected it, but prompted it to focus primarily on the writers of the past. Such is the series of works by Professor Marjorie Nicholson, begun in the thirties, devoted to the relationship between science fiction and science, such as the book by J. Bailey “Pilgrims of Space and Time” (1947). It took a certain amount of time to get closer to modernity. This is probably due not only to the fact that it was not possible, and could not be possible, to prepare positions for this kind of research in one day, to find methods that meet the specifics of the subject, and special aesthetic criteria (from science fiction, for example, one cannot demand that approach to the depiction of the human image, which is characteristic of non-fantastic literature. The author wrote about this in detail in the article “Realism and Fantasy”, published in the journal “Questions of Literature”, (1971, No. I). Another reason lies, one should think, in the fact that Only recently has a large period in the history of science fiction, which has now become the subject of research, ended. Previously, its tendencies had not yet been sufficiently revealed.

Now, therefore, the situation in literary criticism is beginning to change. History helps us understand a lot in modern science fiction, and the latter, in turn, helps us appreciate a lot in the old one. They write more and more seriously about science fiction. Of the Soviet works based on the material of Western science fiction, the articles by T. Chernyshova (Irkutsk) and E. Tamarchenko (Perm) are very interesting. Yugoslav professor Darko Suvin, now working in Montreal, and American professors Thomas Clarson and Mark Hillegas have recently devoted themselves to science fiction. Works written by non-professional literary scholars also become more profound. An international Association for the Study of Science Fiction has been created, uniting representatives of universities where science fiction courses are taught, libraries, writers' organizations in the USA, Canada and a number of other countries. This association established the Pilgrim Award in 1970 "for outstanding contributions to the study of science fiction." (The 1070 Prize was awarded to J. Bailey, 1971 - M. Nicholson, 1972 - Y. Kagarlitsky). The general trend of development now is from a review (which, in fact, was the often cited book by Kingsley Amis “New Maps of Hell”) to research, and historically based research.

Science fiction of the 20th century played a role in preparing many aspects of modern realism in general. Man in the face of the future, man in the face of nature, man in the face of technology, which is increasingly becoming a new environment of existence for him - these and many other questions came to modern realism from science fiction - from that fiction that today is called “scientific”.

This word characterizes a lot in the method of modern science fiction and the ideological aspirations of its foreign representatives.

An unusually large number of scientists who exchanged their occupation for science fiction (the list opens with H.G. Wells) or combine studies with science and work in this field of creativity (among them is the founder of cybernetics Norbert Wiener, and major astronomers Arthur Clarke and Fred Hoyle, and one of the creators of atomic bombs Leo Szilard, and the great anthropologist Chad Oliver and many other famous names), not by chance.

In science fiction, that part of the bourgeois intelligentsia in the West has found a means of expressing their ideas, which, due to their involvement in science, understands better than others the seriousness of the problems facing humanity, fears the tragic outcome of today's difficulties and contradictions, and feels responsible for the future of our planet.

Science fiction is one of the genres of literature, cinema and fine arts. It originates in the deep past. Even at the dawn of his appearance, man assumed the presence of mysterious and powerful forces in the world around him. The first science fiction is folklore, fairy tales, myths and legends. This genre is based on some incredible, supernatural assumption, an element of something unusual or impossible, a violation of the boundaries of human reality.

The beginning of the development of fantasy in cinema

From literature, the genre moved to cinema almost immediately after its inception. The first science fiction films appeared in France in the 19th century. In those years, the best director in this genre was Georges Méliès. His fantastic film “A Trip to the Moon” was included in the golden fund of world cinema masterpieces and became the first film about space travel. At this time, science fiction is an opportunity to show on the screen the achievements of human progress: amazing mechanisms and machines, vehicles.

Since the beginning of the 20th century, science fiction films have begun to gain increasing popularity, and audience interest in them is growing.

Types of fiction

In cinema, science fiction is a genre whose boundaries are difficult to define. Usually it is a mixture of different styles and forms of cinema. There is a division into types of film fiction, but it is largely arbitrary.

Science fiction is a story about incredible technical and other discoveries of traveling through time, crossing outer space, and using artificial intelligence to create.

The film “Prometheus” is an interesting picture with a philosophical meaning about man’s search for an answer to the main question: who are we and where did we come from? As a result, scientists received evidence that humanity was created by a highly developed humanoid race. A scientific expedition sets off to the edge of the solar system in search of its creators. Each team member has his own interest: some want an answer to why humanity was created, some are driven by curiosity, and some pursue selfish goals. But the creators also turn out to be not at all what people imagined them to be.

Space fiction

This view is very closely intertwined with science fiction. A striking example is the recently released film Interstellar, which received rave reviews from critics, about the possibility of traveling through black holes and the space-time paradoxes that arise from this. Like Prometheus, this picture is filled with deep philosophical meaning.

Fantasy is science fiction that is closely related to mysticism and fairy tales. The most striking example of a fantasy film is Peter Jackson's famous epic saga The Lord of the Rings. Among the most recent interesting works in this genre, we can note the “Hobbit” trilogy and the latest work of Sergei Bodrov “The Seventh Son”.

Horror - oddly enough, this genre is also closely related to fantasy. A classic example is the Alien film series.

Science fiction: films that have become classics of cinema

In addition to the films already mentioned, there are also a large number of magnificent films included in the list of the best works in the science fiction genre:

• Space saga "Star Wars".
• The Terminator film series.
• Fantasy series "The Chronicles of Narnia".
• The Iron Man trilogy.
• Series "Highlander".
• "Inception" with Leonardo DiCaprio.
• Fantastic comedy "Back to the Future".
• "Dune".
• The Matrix trilogy with Keanu Reeves.
• Post-apocalyptic film “I am Legend.”
• Fantastic comedy "Men in Black".
• "War of the Worlds" with Tom Cruise.
• Combat space science fiction "Starship Troopers".
• "The Fifth Element" with Bruce Willis and Milla Jovovich.
• The Transformers film series.
• The Spider-Man series.
• Batman film series.

Development of the genre today

Modern science fiction - films and animated films - continues to be interesting to viewers today.

Several large-scale and spectacular science fiction films have been announced for 2015 alone. Among the most anticipated films are the final film from the Hunger Games series, the second part of The Maze Runner, Star Wars Episode 7 - The Force Awakens, Terminator 5, Tomorrowland, the sequel to Divergent, a new a film from the Avengers series and the long-awaited Jurassic World.

Conclusion

Science fiction is what gives a person the opportunity to dream. Here you can be a superhero saving the world, admit the possibility of the existence of other worlds and fly into the depths of space. This is why audiences love science fiction films - they make dreams come true.