This PowerPoint discusses three science fiction concepts: the novum, cognition, and estrangement.

1. Science
Fiction

2. 3 Components
Novum
Cognition
Estrangement

3. Novum
Latin for “new thing”; novelty or innovation.

4. What do you think
the novum is in
H.G. Well’s The
Time Machine?

5. The novum is the
time machine: it is
the central
invention that
makes the rest of
the story possible.

6. Cognition
Unlike fantasy, the strange events in SF adhere to
the basic laws of our universe and have a rational
explanation.

7. How does the following passage fulfill SF’s requirement of cognition?

8. A series of violent and prolonged solar storms
lasting several years caused by a sudden
instability in the Sun had enlarged the Van Allen
belts and diminished the Earth’s gravitational hold
upon the outer layers of the ionosphere. As these
vanished into space, depleting the Earth’s barrier
against the full impact of solar radiation,
temperatures began to climb steadily […] The
majority of tropical areas rapidly became
uninhabitable. (Ballard 22-23)

9. Ballard uses a logical explanation and scientific
language (“solar storms,” “Van Allen belts,”
“ionosphere”) to explain how the events in his
novel Drowned World came to pass.
In contrast, consider the Bible’s non-cognitive
explanation for its drowned world: God flooded
the world as punishment for humankind’s sins.

10. Estrangement
To make the familiar strange; to present
everyday objects and situations in a new light.
The ultimate goal of estrangement is to allow the
reader to look at their own reality from a different
perspective and with new insight.

11. What is strange or unfamiliar in the
following two passages?

12. There was me, that is Alex, and my
three droogs, that is Pete, Georgie,
and Dim and we sat in the Korova
Milkbar making up our rassoodocks
what to do with the evening
(Burgess 5).

13. The language in this passage estranges the reader
because it is unfamiliar: what are “droogs” and
“rassoodocks”?
The strange language tells the reader that they
are in a world different from their own, a world
where normal rules may not apply.

14. My landlady, a voluble man,
arranged my journey into the
east. (Le Guin 47)

15. In this example, estrangement occurs on the
conceptual level, not the linguistic level.
“Landlady” and “man” are both recognizable
words, but we’re generally not used to
thinking of one person as being both at once.

16. This example of a male landlady raises interesting
questions: how would society change if there were no
longer two distinct genders?
It also encourages the reader to think about the way
gender roles shape their own society: might gender
roles be culturally constructed? If so, we would have the
power to change them and our society.
This thought process—turning the insights gained from
SF back onto our own world—is the ultimate goal of
estrangement.

17. Works Cited
Ballard, J. G. The Drowned World, Carroll and Graf, 1991.
Burgess, Anthony. A Clockwork Orange, Penguin, 2014.
Le Guin, Ursula. The Left Hand of Darkness, Ace, 1987.

18. Image Credits
• Slide 1: photo by Alessio Ferretti via Unsplash
• Slide 4 and 5: image via Rakuten kobo
• Slide 7: image via Book Marks