My take on "What is science fiction?"

Last year in Professor Cox's science fiction class, we tried to tackle the big questions like "What is science fiction?" and "What was the first work of science fiction?" And this year is no different, except we'll be covering more books. I think what I like most about science fiction as a genre is that there is no set definition. Science fiction authors and enthusiasts try make their definitions as inclusive and specific as possible, but something doesn't work with it. I agree with Darko Suvin's idea of combining estrangement and cognition, but there must be a simpler way to say it than Suvin's definition.

I don't have a definition of science fiction yet. I haven't read enough and some science fiction classic would surely disprove my definition or something like that. But from our brainstorming in class, I thought the idea of a circus mirror fit the best. It presents the reality we know with a few very obvious changes. The mirror exaggerates the problems and catches your attention. A nose the size of your face is hard to miss. However, the definition of science fiction is not simply "circus mirror." That would not be very helpful in a dictionary.

Since I don't have my own definition to end this post with, I'll borrow Tom Shippey's definition: "Science fiction is hard to define because it is the literature of change and it changes while you are trying to define it." Hopefully by the end of this course I'll have more of an idea of what I think science fiction is.