Suvin, On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre (1972)

Suvin famously argues for the definition of SF as 'the literature of cognitive estrangement' (372). Suvin connects the subject-matter of the genre to a human curiosity of the unknown, whether it be a new space or, as has been more frequently the case since the industrial revolution, a new time. Further, a defining desire of the genre has been the 'hope of finding in the unknown the ideal environment, tribe, state, intelligence, or other aspect of the Supreme Good' (374). Suvin explains that at all costs, the SF genre holds up the possibility of other systems (374). These other systems are postulated through a fictional hypothesis and developed in SF with scientific rigor (374). It is this combination of 'factual reporting of fictions' aimed at 'implying a new set of norms' that can be said to define the attitude of estrangement (374). In other words, that which estranges is must be familiar enough to be recognized but it also is strange enough to hint towards the creative. It is this particular quality, or formal framework, that Suvin argues distinguishes SF from other genres. Suvin clarifies that his use of the words 'cognitiveness' or 'cognition' emphasizes a reflection on reality and 'implies a creative approach tending toward a dynamic transformation rather than toward a static mirroring of the author's environment' (377). In other words, for Suvin, the category of the cognitive in SF is infused with a creative pull towards movement and change.

In comparison with other literary genres, Suvin argues that it is this mix of cognitive and creative that distinguishes SF. First, myth is opposed to the scientific, cognitive approach of SF because of the way it fixes human relations and offers explanations of essences. Suvin argues that SF, in contrast to myth, 'does not ask about The Man or The World, but which man?: in which kind of world?: and why such a man in such a kind of world?' (375). Second, SF is differentiated from the fairy tale precisely because the latter occurs in a world that is 'indifferent toward cognitive possibilities' (375). In other words, it does not use imagination to refer back to and understand reality. Third, the fantasy genre is aggressively opposed to the cognitive, 'committed to the interposition of anti-cognitive laws into the empirical environment' (375). Fourth, Suvin argues that of all the comparisons, the pastoral is closer to SF in the way it imagines worlds without money, urbanization, etc., and thus can distill to important human motivations: 'erotics and power-hunger' (376). However, Suvin prefers to think of the pastoral as an early but unsophisticated approach to SF.

Suvin also clarifies that each of these genres has a unique relationship to time that is not compatible with SF. 'The myth is located above time, the fairy-tale in a conventional grammatical past which is really outside time, and the fantasy in the hero's abnormally disturbed present' (378). SF, on the other hand, 'concentrates on possible futures and their spatial equivalents, but it can deal with the present and the past as special cases of a possible historical sequence seen from an estranged point of view' (378). So while Suvin asserts that SF is indeed oriented 'futurologically' (379), he does seem to be suggesting that this temporal orientation might be bound up with pasts and presents.

Suvin again and again asserts that the challenge of SF is precisely the mix of the cognitive and creative. It is this mix that distinguishes it from other literary genres as well as gives it its unique relationship to time, imagination, and science.