Adjacent Words

science fiction definitions

	Tweet

WordNet (r) 3.0 (2005)

n
1: literary fantasy involving the imagined impact of science on society

Merriam Webster's

noun Date: 1851 fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component • science-fictional adjective

Britannica Concise

Fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals, or more generally, literary fantasy incl. a scientific factor as an essential orienting component. From beginnings in the works of J. Verne and H. G. Wells, it emerged as a genre in the pulp magazine Amazing Stories, founded in 1926. It came into its own as serious fiction in the magazine Astounding Science Fiction in the late 1930s and in works by such writers as I. Asimov, A. C. Clarke, and R. Heinlein. A great boom in popularity followed World War II, when numerous writers' approaches included predictions of future societies on earth, analyses of the consequences of interstellar travel, and imaginative explorations of intelligent life in other worlds. Much recent fiction has been written in the "cyberpunk" genre, which deal with the effects of computers and artificial intelligence on anarchic future societies.

Collin's Cobuild Dictionary

Science fiction consists of stories in books, magazines, and films about events that take place in the future or in other parts of the universe.

Moby Thesaurus

Marchen, Western, Western story, Westerner, adventure story, allegory, apologue, bedtime story, detective story, fable, fabliau, fairy tale, fantasy, fiction, folk story, folktale, gest, ghost story, horse opera, legend, love story, mystery, mystery story, myth, mythology, mythos, nursery tale, parable, romance, shocker, space fiction, space opera, suspense story, thriller, whodunit, work of fiction