Diana Bang's ETEC 531 e-portfolio

Some of the major sci-fi themes proposed by writers include:

– Utopias and dystopias where “idyllic” or self-destructive worlds abound (i.e. Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward, H.G. Wells’ A Modern Utopia, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984)

– Alternative, future societies (i.e. Robert Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land)

– Gender issues (i.e. Theodore Sturgeon’s Venus Plus X)

– Aliens and other “intelligent” lifeforms (i.e. Voltaire’s Micromegas, Frederic Brown’s Martians Go Home)

– Outer space travel (i.e. Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon)

– Time travel (i.e. H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine)

– Parallel universes and different versions of history (i.e. Murray Leinster’s Sidewise in Time)

– Technological advancements (i.e. the concept of invisibility as illustrated in H.G. Wells’ The Invisible man, Philip K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkley)

– Androids, Robots, Cyborgs (i.e. Robert Silverberg’s The Androids are Coming, Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot, Ed Naha’s Robocop)

– Cyberpunk (i.e. William Gibson’s Neuromancer)

– ESP and Psychic abilities (i.e. Robert Heinlein’s Time for the Stars)

Also, I think that the pre-cursors of the sci-fi genre included Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818), Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (1886), and Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726). Coupled with the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, the sci-fi genre continued to develop. Additional notable sci-fi writers include Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein, (among many others).