Mid 20th Century Speculative Fiction, SciFi and Issacc Asimov's 'Nightfall'

Define the term ‘speculative fiction’ in the broadest possible term

A genre that imagines other worlds and hypothetical scenarios

Speculative Fiction is a - genre, a - genre and a - genre. (Name terms and explain why)

• EXPLORATORY GENRE (engages with possible ideas and imagines possible scenarios)

• ANTICIPATORY GENRE (imagines FUTURE possibilities)

• REACTIVE GENRE (Responds to CURRENT critical moments)

TRUE OR FALSE: Science Fiction is often more interested in the plot/characters of a story rather than the overarching idea

FALSE

Name 4 critical approaches to Science Fiction

• Science Fiction as a form of DISCOVERY

• Science Fiction as a PRESCIENT WARNING

• Science Fiction as a genre of ESTRANGEMENT AND COGNITION

• Science Fiction as an exploration of LIMITATIONS AND CONSTRAINTS

Name five common thematic elements of Science Fiction

• Exploration of spatial and temporal limits

• Utopian experimentation

• Satire of social conventions

• Gothic locations

• Scientific projection

Explain Science Fiction in broad broad terms

Form of speculative fiction in which the setting differs from our world and the difference is explained in scientific and rational terms (as opposed to supernatural terms)

Define and explain Post-Apocalyptic Speculative Fiction in broad terms

Subgenre of Science Fiction in which human technology and civilization have collapsed/ are on the verse of collapsing

Give two 19th Century examples of post-apocalyptic fiction

• The Last Man (1826) by Mary Shelley

• The War of the Worlds (1898) by H G Wells

Where did post-apocalyptic fiction come from?

Jewish scriptures in the 2nd Century BCE

Explain the difference between HARD SciFi and SOFT SciFi (2 points)

• Hard Science Fiction focuses on plausibility and exploring the science behind scenarios, future orientated

• Soft Science Fiction involves focusing on the psychological, social and personal IMPACT of possible events

What does Isaac Asimov’s Nightfall do BEFORE, DURING AND AFTER a crisis?

• BEFORE: Anticipates an apocalyptic planetary event

• DURING: Reacts the WW2 and potential new technological capacities for world destruction AND captures a critical event in ‘real time’ at a story level

• AFTER: Pointedly NO after in Nightfall

Where and when was Nightfall first published?

• First published in a a magazine edited by John Campbell

• First published in 1941

According to the Oxford Encyclopedia of American Cultural and Intellectual History, John Campbell viewed SciFi as “- a - - -”

“serving a moral and educative role”

Give 4 points of information about JOHN CAMPBELL

• Insisted on scientific accuracy in published sci-fi stories

• Encouraged examinations of hard and soft sciences

• Incredibly bigoted

• Viewed Sci-Fi as being predominantly about the human ramifications of science

When was the ‘first golden age of American Science Fiction?’

1940 - 1960

When was Isaac Asimov born and when did he die?

Born 1920

Died 1992

Give 4 points of information about Isaac Asimov

• Born to middle class Jewish parents in the USSR

• Family emigrated to New York in 1923

• Helped to popularize SCIENTIFIC RATIONALISM, vehemently opposed SCIENTIFIC CREATIONISM/ NATURAL THEOLOGY

• Degree in Chemistry, taught biochemistry after the war

Give two pieces of information that CONTEXTUALISE Asimov’s writing during the 1940s

• Countered and challenged editor John Campbell’s racist and segregationist views in 1940s US, a deeply divided and unequal nation

• Asimov was a Jewish writer during WW2, a time during which 6+ million European Jews were murdered in Nazi camps

Give 4 key points of information about the plot of Nightfall

• Set on a planet with 6 suns, ensuring inhabitants never experience total darkness

• Historical records show that once every 2000 years civilization collapses and the world is thrown into total chaos

• Scientists use mathematics and physics to calculate this is due to a total solar eclipse occurring every 2,000 years

• Scientists plan to record/capture this event and pass on the knowledge to survivors in order to help

In what why is both humanity and technology used to capture the critical event in Nightfall?

• Human journalist

• Cameras (technology)

Give 3 contrasting knowledge systems that emerge in the Nightfall civilization due to the world ending event every 2000 years

• Spiritual (end of days cult)

• Mythological

• Psychological (basis for scientific understanding)

Name 3 features of the encoded nature of Sci-Fi that lead to COGNITIVE ESTRANGEMENT for readers

• Style/Use of Tone

• Construction of story world with recognizable and unfamiliar aspects

• Lexical inventions

“- - is the sense that - in the - - is - with the - experienced -” - Farah Mendlesohn, Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction

“Cognitive estrangement is the sense that something in the fictional world is dissonant with the reader’s experienced world”

Explain how Nightfall (1941) achieves cognitive estrangement/dissonance at a LEXICAL LEVEL (2 points)

• Names/naming convention (EG Theremon 762, Aton 77)

• An act of TRANSLATION → Recognizable convention of having a name turns to ESTRANGEMENT due to strange naming convention

Explain how Nightfall (1941) achieves cognitive estrangement/dissonance at the LEVEL OF PLACE

• The six suns of the planet

Explain how Nightfall achieves cognitive estrangement/dissonance at the level of CAUSE/EFFECT

• World ending disaster (recognizable) due to the disappearance of all 6 suns (dissonance)

Name 4 fears/crises shaping Asimov’s life when writing Nightfall

• Anti-Jewish violence and persecution accelerating in Germany and across Europe

• Belief and hopes surrounding technological processes of modernity + scientific positivism being shattered by the violence of the world wars

• Ongoing secret development of nuclear fission which would eventually produce the atomic bomb (possibilities of world destruction, atmosphere of end-of-days)

• Imagery of war captured like never before due to advancing camera technology

Give three ways to understand Nightfall/ three things Nightfall is commenting on

• Nightfall as a recognition of the cyclical nature of civilization and therefore a counterforce to ideas of scientific modernism + human hubris

• Night as an exploration of the danger and potential madness that comes from seeing more (reminiscent of Plato’s Allegory of the Cave)

• Nightfall as an acknowledgement of our need/desire for a NARRATIVE to explain our existence

Give 3 ways that Nightfall reassures its audiences

• Reassurance in mathematic analysis and science’s ability to change and predict cycles and events

• Reassurance provided by anticipating and exploring worst case scenarios → Destruction of Society

• Explores and acknowledges the fragility of our civilization and the sense of our own cosmic insignificance

Quote from Marie Jakober about speculative fiction, what we know and imagination

Speculative Fiction “makes us re-imagine things we thought we knew”

What use is Speculative Fiction/Science Fiction during times of crisis? (4 points)

• Speculative Fiction can be a space to imagine the worst

• Examination of speculative scenarios reflects the uncertainties of crisis times

• Good for thinking about human agency - what actions can be taken in times of crisis?

• Examines the emotional REALITIES of a crisis

WHY do people write Speculative Fiction in response to crises?

Crisis scenarios force societies to change, thus inviting IMAGINARY EXPLORATIONS of change