SF & Literary Terminology

You may employ any of these terms without a definition in your papers or exams or responses. The list will grow as we read. Note: where indicated, the above definitions are taken from Chris Baldick, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Literary Terms (Oxford UP, 1990) (CB) or C. Hugh Holman and William Harmon, A Handbook to Literature, 6th edition (Macmillan, 1992) (HH). Other definitions are written by Dr. Joe Essid.

Afro-Futurism: A dynamic sub-genre of SF that changed a theretofore white, male field for the better. Pioneers such as Octavia Butler and Samuel L. Delany led the way for protagonists of color, discussion of race and racism, and a lot more.

Allusion: "An indirect or passing reference to some event, person, place, or artistic work, the nature and relevance of which is not explained by the writer but relies on the reader’s familiarity with what is thus mentioned. The technique of allusion is an economical means of calling upon the history or the literary tradition that author and reader are assumed to share. . . ." (CB)

Ansible: A creation of Ursula K. Le Guin. This radio permits instantaneous communication over interstellar space, like subspace radio in Star Trek. Other SF writers have used the concept in their books, in homage to Le Guin.

Antihero: A central figure in a work that repels us by his or her actions or morality, yet who is not a villain. The Anti-hero accomplishes a useful purpose or even does heroic deeds. Max of The Road Warrior epitomizes the 1970-80s anti-hero.

Archetype: A term from Jungian psychology that has been applied to literature. Jung meant the symbolic figure of myth and legend, or even a racial memory that we carry in a "collective unconscious." Archetypes embody an entire type of character from many cultures. Thus Hercules is an archetypal flawed hero, Odysseus or the Native-American Coyote are archetypal trickster figures. In literature and film the term can be more broadly applied, so we have the suffering mother of sentimental fiction, the greedy landlord of stage and film, the doomed private writing a letter home the night before the D-Day invasion, and the kind-hearted "tough guy" in many works.

Backstory: For an invented world or a character, these are the deep histories that make a person who she is, or a world rich with half-mentioned hints. Think of Dune or Lord of the Rings here, in particular.

Catharsis: A process in which a character heals, though often the process is painful. It can be a process for the audience of a work, as well.

Clarke's Law: SF writer and professional astronomer Arthur C. Clarke came up with this, that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." Also called Clarke's Third Law.

Contact: The moment when humanity meets another species. Contact can have terrible consequences, even when no invasion occurs, as happens in War of the Worlds or Avatar. Religions and economies and customs can fall.

Cosmic Horror: Though associated with the work of Howard Philips Lovecraft, some of this goes back to a group of Victorian writers he admired. Simply put, humanity and our history is at best a temporary state of affairs. Entities, even a pantheon of them, far more powerful than us, and fated to destroy us utterly in some awful way, are trying to "break through" to our world again and wipe us out. Humans may worship them or fight them, but it's only a matter of time, "when the stars are right," as Lovecraft's stories have it, until they return and win. The horror in the tales may be personal (humans get dissolved, eaten, go mad, possessed, or turn into monsters) but the entities involved really don't care; they want humans, if they want them at all, for opening gateways, providing a hosts for their energies, or aiding in some dark plot.

It's a form of Einsteinian horror, really. Lovecraft knew something of Deep Time and the ways space and time themselves had been called into question by Einstein's work. Thus we get this introduction to his story "The Call of Cthulhu":

We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far. The sciences, each straining in its own direction, have hitherto harmed us little; but some day the piecing together of dissociated knowledge will open up such terrifying vistas of reality, and of our frightful position therein, that we shall either go mad from the revelation or flee from the deadly light into the peace and safety of a new dark age.

Denouement: The "end game" of a work of fiction. More than "how the plot comes out," the denouement (a French term using French pronunciation) suggests the ways in which several plot elements work out toward the end of a text or film.

Deus ex machina: The way of closing a story with an off-stage character who suddenly appears to bring about the denouement. This approach to ending a tale has its origins in ancient Greek theater, where an actor in the role of a god might suddenly appear on stage to help bring about the ending of the performance.

Epiphany: A flash of realization or enlightenment in a work of fiction.

Extrapolation: For fiction, the art of considering the consequences of a action or scientific discovery, such as "what if Virginia had not joined the Confederacy?" or "what if humanity discovered an alien monolith buried on the moon?" For student writers, too, it's a strong move in the conclusion of a Humanities essay to state the consequences of the topic, beyond the work studied. For instance, in a paper about Blade Runner and its portrayal of female androids, a student might note in the conclusion that it could still educate us about how we might treat a real artificial intelligence.

Fermi Paradox: If the universe is so big, "where are they?" We have not found signs of alien life, yet. There are many possible explanations. Read more here. Liu's Three-Body Problem trilogy explores one explanation: The Dark Forest Theory.

Foreshadowing: in fiction, nonfiction, or film, we may encounter moments that predict future events such as this instance, where Jack Kerouac's On the Road narrator, Sal, talks about his best friends in New York rushing "down the street together, digging everything in the early way they had, which later become so much sadder and perceptive and blank." The reader gets a strong hint that later on, the narrator will tell us, or the novel will show us, why the characters become sadder, wiser, and more jaded.

FTL: Faster than light.

Hard SF: Science fiction that makes sure of explaining its science. The grandfathers of SF, such as Asimov, were masters of the subgenre. So was Ben Bova, a later writer who explains the difference quite well here. Embassytown might be considered Hard SF, since China Mieville spends a lot of time exploring how the aliens' extraordinarily difficult tongue, Language, works and how humans use genetic manipulation and training to learn to speak it.

High Fantasy: A subgenre that Lord of the Rings best fits. It includes heroic journeys, larger-than-life heroes, and magic and wonder in a world less gritty, violent, and sexual than, say, Sword and Sorcery. The writing may be literary, as with Tolkien, or hackneyed.

Hubris: the sort of pride that is so inflated that it blinds, even destroys a character, even an entire people. Many characters in classical literature and Shakespeare's plays are so prideful that it destroys them. So is Satan in Milton's Paradise Lost.

Interior Monologue: A look into a character's head, where the reader hears thoughts or has an offstage narrator tell us what a character thinks at a given moment.

Metaphor: A figure of speech "in which one thing, idea, or action is referred to by a word or expression normally denoting another thing, idea, or action, so as to suggest some common quality shared by the two." The term, "metaphor" is often reserved for figures of speech in which the comparison is implicit or phrased as an "imaginary identity," but it has become more common in recent years to refer to all figures of speech that depend upon resemblances as metaphors. You will therefore sometimes hear similes, where the comparison is explicit and no identity is implied, referred to as metaphorical figures. All metaphors, in any case, are based on the implicit formula, phrased as a simile, "X is like Y." The primary literal term of the metaphor is called the "tenor" and the secondary figurative term is the "vehicle." "[I]n the metaphor the road of life, the tenor is "life" and the vehicle is "the road" (CB).

Multiverse: Michael Moorcock's work often includes this concept. Imagine a series of parallel universes, some like our own, others very different, all connected. In some magic might exist and physics be different. Certain characters might travel between universes. Multiverse-based fiction might be fantasy or SF. I would consider the Hawkmoon novels to be fantasy, based upon magical events such as Bowgentle's use of a "rune" in a poem to disable The Black Jewel; the Jewel itself seems the product of some odd science, which may be so alien as to fall under Clarke's Law.

New Wave SF: This school of science-fiction writing emerged around 1960; I see The Stars My Destination as an early example. Instead of focusing on the scientific aspects of the tale, as Hard SF does, New Wave explores the psychology and sociology of characters and their worlds. Mieville's Embassytown might also be considered New Wave SF, since we learn a lot about our protagonist's emotions and those of the Terran Ambassadors and aliens she meets.

Protagonist: Central figure(s) in a text or film.

Secondary World Fiction: Hat-tip to Fran Wilde for this term. These stories take place not just on another planet, but on a world with no reference made to our earth. The setting may be an alternate version of Earth with different physical laws, a distant world unlike our own, or even a world in two dimensions such as in the 1884 novel Flatland. Updraft would be one such work.

Slipstream: fiction that may incorporate elements of fantasy or horror into an SF setting. The original Alien film might be considered slipstream. Much of Mieville's work falls into that category, though he prefers a term he coined, "The New Weird." I would argue that Fran Wilde's Updraft is slipstream and not pure fantasy fiction, since a city made of growing bones places an element of fantasy into a world that is otherwise scientifically imaginable. We'll be sure to ask Wilde what she thinks when she teaches class.

Space Opera: Star Wars or Star Trek exemplify this subgenre. Here we have recurring melodramas of human tragedy and heroism, usually around a central group of characters who appear in many stories. It's "soft SF" where the science or outer-space setting provide merely a backdrop. Space Opera can be greatly entertaining and explore serious themes, but rarely have critics considered it art, in the way more serious SF has been considered.

Story Arc: the manner in which films and fiction proceed. These works may have a "turning point" or several of them, a climax, and then an "end game" or denouement.

Sword & Sorcery: A subgenre of fantasy focusing on strong protagonists, often male warriors or amazons, in a world of magic that often as not is evil in nature and the world shown is dangerous and realistic, even a bit grubby around the edges. There's a robust, energetic quality to the writing, often the point of manly-man parody: imagine Hemingway's Nick Adams with a battle axe. The stories of Conan the Barbarian, by Robert E. Howard, and Conan's imitators and spin-offs (films and comics, in particular) exemplify this type of work and literary style. Essid's test for this genre: Tolkien's Aragorn dreams of his love, waiting decades to marry her, and their lovemaking is not described. When Aragorn kills a pack of orcs, that's that. Conan, on the other hand, seduces a women in a well described scene and in the next story, it's on to a different girlfriend. Conan's battles, atop a mountain of dead bodies, are described in great and gruesome detail. Sword and Sorcery is a guilty pleasure of mine.

Symbol: "[S]omething that is itself and also stands for something else. . . . In a literary sense, a symbol combines a literal and sensuous quality with an abstract or suggestive aspect" (HH).

Telling Detail: language or a visual element, sometimes seemingly minor, that shows a great deal about a character, setting, or an event. When Ahab tosses his pipe into the sea in Moby Dick, it signals his mania to chase the white whale, even if it means surrendering the domestic comforts of his prior life. Some instances of foreshadowing provide telling details to readers or viewers.

Tension: in most texts and films we study, several tensions may exist. These are dramatic or even melodramatic elements of plot, setting, or character that serve to "move things along" well.

Theme: "A salient abstract idea that emerges from a literary work’s treatment of its subject-matter; or a topic occurring in a number of literary works" (CB).

Tragic Flaw: A character trait that leads to tragedy, both in characters who are otherwise quite admirable and in terrible villains. Examples include King Lear's blind trust in his daughters, Eve's desire for knowledge, Ahab's thirst for revenge, Darth Vader's will to power, or Pandora's curiosity. Also known as a fatal flaw.

Trope: A metaphor used like a saying. In SF or Fantasy, it occurs frequently, often to mark how groups in societies strange to us think. So in Dune, the Fremen do not waste words. They say "Truth" when someone impresses them by word or deed.