The Top Ten Big Ideas in SF?

[newnumber6]

At work somebody saw me reading the first Riverworld book and asked me about it, and when I was trying to describe what it was about, I mentioned that it's probably in the Top Ten "Big Ideas" in Science Fiction, although, unfortunately, the story doesn't quite live up to the idea.

Now, I sort of said that as a flippant way, not really knowing what the others were, but it got me thinking. What would you say are the Top Ten Big Ideas in Science Fiction?

I think the qualifiers must be: 1) It should have been either created or popularized by pretty much one person maybe two, through some kind of visionary leap (Space Travel doesn't count, since there were stories before we knew that Space was an airless, impassable void... Time Travel might because for all of human experience man has only gone one way). There might be other examples before or after, but you should be able to point to an originating source of the TREND with some sort of authority. 2) It has to have been widely imitated since (which MIGHT leave Riverworld out, but we might be able to slip it in under a wider category... or, maybe the top 5 would have to be, and from 5-10 might be specific ideas that are unique and specific enough that it's hard to imitate, or ripe for exploitation but yet hasn't happened yet). 3) It has to be a science fictional idea, as opposed to a fantasy one (for example, Time Travel through 'magic' might have been done before Wells, but to qualify for the list we're looking at the Science Fictional view of Time Travel).

Here's what I've come up with (this is an unordered top ten... or at least Top 5, because ordered "Top" lists always tend to annoy me)...

1) Time Travel (originator/popularizer: HG Wells)
2) Alternate Universes (Murray Leinster)
3) The Singularity (Vernor Vinge)
4) Zombie Apocalypse (George Romero and/or Richard Matheson... a bit iffy... I'd give it to Matheson, because his was more deliberately science fictional, I Am Legend's plague being caused by a virus... the big idea here being a a world-destroying virus that turns people into monsters and the victims of the monsters join the horde... really there's elements of both)
5) Artificial Intelligence/Robotics (Karel Capek)

We might be able to squeeze Riverworld either under the 6-10 rule, or as a general "Everybody In History Returns to Life together", though I'm not sure that's been especially widely imitated (Some Singularity fiction proposes the idea of everyone being simulated after their death, but other than that I can't think of any good examples... I do think it's RIPE for exploration).

Any other examples people on my flist can think of?

Comments

[fiddlersgreen.livejournal.com]

This is all just off the top of my head, mind.

Hmm, the thing of people being uploaded into a wholly virtual environment probably falls as a subset of the Singularity category, doesn't it? (Also, I don't know who invented that.) For that matter, some of the earlier 'humanity evolves into some kind of godlike entity in the far future' stories by Clarke and others could probably be read as precursors to the Technological Singularity. (Clarke is, after all, the one who coined the famous phrase about magic and sufficiently-advanced technology).

Resurrection/immortality via cloning/memory uploads, maybe. (John Varley's stuff is the earliest I recall encountering that, though I'm sure it's older than that.)

Actual colonization of other planets (as opposed to just space travel), which I think is probably Bradbury and then Heinlein. Similarly, intergalactic civilizations (Asimov, in his Foundation work).

Pychohistory (as a science fictional version of prophecy) might be a big enough idea to stand on its own, though I can't honestly think of anyone *but* Asimov (and other people who wrote in the Foundation universe) who's used it.

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

I dunno, I don't think colonization and intergalactic civilizations on their own particularly count as visionary... they seem to be just "more of the same pattern of human progress, just on a bigger scale" ideas. Now Terraforming, that might well be one.

Singularity often comes coupled with a lot of posthuman/transhuman concepts, but I think transhumanism came before it, so it might work as a separate thing. Not sure who to 'blame' for it though. I kinda WANT to include them together, just to eliminate excess things, but that's not entirely fair either.

Cloning/Memory Uploads is also a good idea. Nanotechnology is another one I left off, although I'm not sure it really works since it was a scientist not a SF author who made the leap, and then just a bunch of SF writers all glommed onto it at once. (Technically something similar might be said about Multiple Universe theory, but there I think Liester has a really good claim on being the first one to REALLY pounce on it (though Wells touched on the idea too).

Psychohistory's definitely a potential one, except for the imitative thing... I have seen it used occasionally outside of the Foundationverse, but never to that degree of specificity, usually more like predicting broad trends, and even then it's rare. But then, same goes for Riverworld.

Maybe Big SF ideas are too big for such a simplistic list, really, though, there are too many subcategories and such. Or maybe we need two separate lists, one specifically for the "Top Ten (or 5, or whatever we can wind up coming up with) Awesome SF Ideas that Have been Rarely Picked Up On By Other Authors" (where we could include Psychohistory and Riverworld-esque everybody in history gets to meet at once) and one for the big visionary ideas that leap the field forward.

The "rarely picked up on by other authors" category interests me a little more, because the others have, by definition, been done to death. Hmmm...

So, looking at that one, I'd say Riverworld (or mass human resurrection), Psychohistory... I can't justify the Singularity since it's all over the place now, but could maybe squeeze Vinge (and more accurately, Anderson) in with Zones of Thought which is a cool idea but very few examples of anybody exploiting the concept in a different way.

[celisnebula.livejournal.com]

Interesting question...

What about the Apocalypse or Armageddon without Zombies and the world trying to piece itself together? I'm thinking in terms of like Hyperon by Dan Simmons... there are other's I can think of but my brain is drawing a blank.

Or mutants - or the evolved us - something in those terms.

Plus there's the whole wacked future element like in Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury.

[newnumber6.livejournal.com]

Hmmm... I'm not sure the kind of apocalypse(s) you're talking about really counts as a visionary imititable idea that has a particular source. Likewise, wacked out dystopian futures seem like a standard, 'obvious' subgenre of SF (if you're going to be thinking of the future at all, ones in which the future is bad are an obvious story-generator)... unless you mean specifically 'Thought Police' type futures, which might qualify as such a 'big idea'.

Mutants are definitely one though... From Olaf Stapledon's "Odd John", and Sturgeon's "More than Human", Van Vogt's "Slan"... not sure which one really qualifies as the originator/popularizor of the subgenre (I believe Stapledon was first), but it's definitely an idea that left a big mark, and even today what with X-Men still going on. :)