Named But Not Defined byJeff Paris

So, fiction containing science seems too narrow a definition, the limits it places too severe. How about: fiction about science?
Regarding the tachyon example I gave, consider the fact that I’m not a scientist. I first learned about tachyon particles in a “weird science” article that discussed their odd properties. I don’t really understand them. Long before I read that article, the first hundred (thousand?) stories had been written, mailed, read by editors, and some of them published. Which doesn’t mean I couldn’t write one—I’d just have to somehow find a fresh angle. I’d probably de-emphasize the tachyons—try and write a really good story in which they were just a part, not the point. Which suggests a wholly different kind of science fiction....
Now imagine a story that has spaceships, but no discussion of how they work (and “warp drive” or “antimatter” don’t count). The idea that we can travel through space has been demonstrated. The idea that we can travel fast, far, or even surpass light speed has been explored so exhaustively within the genre, that proposing it is not scientific, or even original—it is what we could call a “trope” of the genre. You can fill a story with lasers, aliens, spaceships traveling at warp 7, planets of water, gas, fire, etc., drawing entirely on your experience with science fiction stories, movies, games, etc., and not one bit on scientific hypothesis, technical knowledge, or observation of the real world. Where is the science in this science fiction? It lacks even the conceit of the previous examples—a leaping-off point of scientific speculation. And set aside whether such a story would be well written or even interesting (a story that only recycles genre tropes probably won’t be)—quality alone cannot determine a story’s place within a genre. A bad donut is still a donut. These stories would still feel like science fiction. Further, many science fiction stories are set in the future, but otherwise are concerned chiefly with themes and ideas from disciplines as varied as theology, philosophy, or art. So, even if we say a science fiction story must include science as, if not the central theme, we are still setting limits that exclude all kinds of stories (where, for example, would you place Star Wars?). Hence the problem with saying science fiction is anything. You’ll have excluded that one story your gut tells you belongs.
All that said, I’ll admit most science fiction stories are inspired by or respond to issues, themes, and questions related to science. I’d even call that a good description of science fiction, because it includes so much. Good, but not perfect—it’s still too limited to serve as a definition.
 Perhaps not the case when the term was coined, but science fiction these days need not have any science in it, and the amount or even accuracy of the science is not directly linked to its quality (examples include work from before the 80’s, 70’s, or 30’s… full of disproved speculation, but still rewarding and important works). There are subgroups, or camps of opinion, in science fiction that consider “hard” science fiction—that is, fiction in which the how is as important as the what—to be of the superior and more admirable set. Some would love—and might even argue—to change the name of the genre, or its definition, to reflect this… or to create a new genre and deport all “soft” science fiction to it, tidying up the cluttered domain of what we currently call science fiction.
A viewpoint they are welcome to, of course. And one that itself prompts interesting discussions about science fiction. But most such arguments, to change a genre, rename it, alter it in some fundamental way, stem from a misplaced sense of ownership. Changes in a genre are not determined by vote, and no individual or group has any mandate or investiture to demand or insist anything.
Consider an alternate example: a story about a brilliant and beautiful young chemist who discovers, by accident, an incredibly powerful catalytic substance that could power the world—or destroy it. Enter the rugged ex-Green Beret cable repairman, who happens to be checking the lab’s broadband connection when a team of masked and menacing men attempt to kidnap the chemist. The two escape… but who can she trust? Is some knowledge best hidden from the world, or never known at all?
The way I pitch that story, it sounds very Hollywood to me, more of a techno-thriller or suspense story. It doesn’t feel like science fiction, for all that it suggests a science-y theme. But I could probably restate the plot to make it sound much more like science fiction... or like a mystery, or even a romance.
But how could the same story, if recast and retold with different intent, move between such disparate genres? I’ll quote from Samuel R. Delany’s Silent Interviews, wherein he proposes that: “... Science Fiction is—as are all practices of writing, as are all genres […]—a way of reading.[1]” And that one way to look at this is: “The only meaningful things we can say about SF as a genre tend to be about the way in which the way of reading that is SF differs from the way of reading that is [for instance] poetry.[2]”
 To argue that a genre cannot be defined is not to imply it doesn’t actually exist. Science fiction and horror exist—we don’t have to prove that. The difficulty in defining them is that they, by nature, defy it. To say a genre is “a way of reading” suggests a genre is a lens, a way of perceiving or speaking... that these are not fixed things we are trying to observe, not sea creatures or a disease or even an exotic particle like a tachyon, they are... well, let me quote Delany again: “Genres exist as vast and complex sets of codes, shared by thousands, if not millions, of people. It is not necessary that everybody shares all of the codes (indeed, nobody does), or shares them in exactly the same way. It’s sufficient merely that any two or more people share an unspecified ‘enough’ of them, for those people to be able to talk together in a way they find more or less satisfactory about texts their codes tell them belong to the genre.[3]” So genres could be thought of like language itself—a tool, whose basic nature allows it to grow and adapt over time, existing as something more than the sum of its parts, because it has movement, it is dynamic in time and space, in constant dialogue with itself.
This line of thought sits well with me. I feel on solid ground when I talk about why I like science fiction, or when I defend it against a misconception, but as soon as I try and describe what it is... my brain spills over with countless, ultimately unsatisfying, suggestions. And so let’s call it a consensual reality, a shared process, a way of reading that we all agree upon because it is so complex and abstract, more complex than we could rationally create, a sublime thing that produces fiction that pleases us so deeply.
More telling—whenever someone says “science fiction is...” I feel creatively confined, like they are trying to limit the territory my imagination can explore. The restrictions of genre are, as my co-editor puts nicely, akin to the constrictions of language. Language is at any given moment a finite thing, but a millisecond later it is something different than what it just was. Definitions change, slang becomes official, atrophied words wither and die, and to make it even more mind-bogglingly complex—no individual will share exactly the same meaning of a word with another. Subjectively, there will be subtle or major differences in even the most basic of concepts. Language must be constantly on the move to be able to usefully connect those who use it. The history of language tends towards order; the future loves chaos. So with science fiction, and so with horror, and so with any genre—each has a rich and marvelous history, a body of work that is fixed in time. This body of work allows us to not only look at what the genre was, but to get a sense of its movement forward, its constant change. If it were possible to define science fiction or horror, it would mean it was no longer changing, that its borders had been closed and no further exploration was permitted or possible. It would no longer be a genre. But it would then also be dead.
[1] pg 273, Samuel R. Delany, Silent Interviews, Wesleyan University Press, 1994
[2] ibid, pg 273-274
[3] ibid, pg 275