Genre: Science Fiction

Here on Mibba, the genre of sci-fi is usually overshadowed by other genres such as romance and adventure. Needless to say, it's at the bottom of the food chain. But the more famous science fiction plots or stories have other genres tied in, such as fantasy and dystopia.

Science fiction stories are usually stories placed in the future, and are most often tied in with a corrupt government/way of life. The people live with advanced technology, such as robots or holographic projectors. Some characters may include aliens, mutants, synthetic humans, and robots. Settings mostly seen are in distant planets, outer space, and maybe even on Earth.

Technology

Technology is either slightly or highly advanced in sci-fi stories, though sometimes the technology pay play a smaller role in the plot itself. Some advancements one may see while reading (or writing) this genre are ray-guns, time travel, advanced space ships, teleporters, flying cars, humanoid computers, and anything of the like.

History

The science fiction genre has links going all the way back to ancient mythology. In one ancient text and painting, tells a story of flying objects in the sky, shooting objects at each other and crashing into the earth with an explosion. Some ancient astronaut theorists believe that this could mean that aliens had visited our ancestors, but that's an entirely different story.

A product of the budding Age of Reason and the development of modern science itself, Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels was one of the first true science fantasy works, together with Voltaire's Micromégas (1752) and Johannes Kepler's Somnium (1620–1630). Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan consider the latter work the first science fiction story.

Sub-genres

Hard SF

This subgenre of science fiction features hardcore and vigorous attention to all of the sciences, focusing on chemistry, biology, physics, and space. This is usually written by scientists and physicists themselves.

Soft and Social

This sub-genre focuses on the advancements in science, as well as social sciences such as psychology, economics, political science, sociology, and anthropology. Some authors who write Soft and Social SF blur the boundaries of Hard and Social SF by focusing on concepts of both.

Cyberpunk

This subgenre was created by the two terms 'cybernetics' and 'punk'. The sub-genre emerged in the 1980's with a short story called Cyberpunk. The sub-genre usually includes a dystopian society and focuses on misery. This usually focuses on advancements in information technology and the internet.

Note: This just touches on some of the subgenres.

All in all, science fiction is a genre characterized by the time period and the characters in the story. It is a wonderful genre, though it is usually overlooked by many readers and writers alike.