Darko Suvin proposes a definition that is somewhat similar to Gunn's with some
differences. Suvin describes science fiction as literature of “cognitive estrangement” (“SF and the Genological Jungle” 24). Cognition, for Suvin, is the “aspect of SF that prompts us to try and understand, to comprehend, the alien landscape of a given SF book, film or story” (Roberts 8). Estrangement is the presence of one or more “novum,” elements that distinguish the fictional world from our own empirical reality; a galaxy-traveling starship would be an example. For Suvin, “realistic” literature, such as Tom Jones, Madame Bovary, and Intruder in the Dust, satisfies the cognitive aspect, but is not estranged; myth, folk tales, and fantasy are estranged, but lack a cognitive element (“SF and the Genological Jungle” 61-3). Suvin's definition, while providing a handy taxonomy for different types of literature, raises a few of the same objections that Gunn's does. First, as Le Guin and Delany note, realistic fiction is not always that “realistic.” Second, as with Gunn's concept, there is not really a consensus as to what reality is, so, to many
readers, estrangement based on the presence of dragons or hobbits may often be the equivalent of estrangement based on teleportation or time travel; the cognitive element may not always be apparent.
Third, what if some elements in a text are scientifically, rationally plausible, and some are not? Take Frank Herbert's 1965 novel Dune, for instance. Much of Dune seems sociologically and ecologically possible, but what of the precognition and other psychic abilities exhibited by characters in the novel? Also, doesn't it seem highly “unrealistic” that a boy 20,000 years in the future is living a life that, at times, suspiciously parallels those of Hamlet and Henry V? Need we repossess Herbert's Hugo and Nebula Awards? Also, Gunn and Suvin (and others who have defined science fiction) place great emphasis on cognition/science/plausibility, but this in turn places a great burden on the reader, not to mention the author. Gunn himself notes that the reader is important and must “ask the right questions” (“Toward a Definition of Science Fiction” 9) of a given genre text: “When we read science fiction, we realize that it applies to the real world, and we ask it real questions. The first one is: How did we get there from here? If the question is irrelevant or whimsical, then the fiction is fantasy. On the other hand, if we insist that the fantasy answer our real-world questions, we cannot read it” (9). The problem here is, what is a “real- world question?”
As readers, we would have to know enough to ask the “right” questions. For example, I know a little about Alcubierre's theoretical warp drive model, so I suppose I could ask the correct questions of a text that featured something like it, but I am deficient when it comes to the
theoretical physics of dimensional travel. Logically, I would have to consider those texts using warp drives to be science fiction, and those featuring hyperspace drives to be fantasy, which seems absurd. Suvin, in a rant containing a backhanded compliment to Isaac Asimov's
Foundation novels, makes a statement which actually undercuts the cognition/plausibility/real- world standard:
Unfortunately a majority of what is published as SF is still in that pre-natal, or, better, regression-to-womb stage...the science is treated as a metaphysical and not physical, supernatural and not natural activity, as gobbledygook instead of rational procedure. From Ralph, Buck Rogers, and the post-Stapledonian supermen to Asimov's psychohistory (which has at least the advantage of identifying the proper field of modern destiny, social relations).
(“SF and the Genological Jungle” 66)
If the “proper field of modern destiny” is social relations (and not physics or biology), why couldn't fairy tales or fantasy fiction explore the issue as well as science fiction? Or Gothic fiction? What Suvin acknowledges (and seems to be disgusted by) is the fact that much science fiction appears to use science as a metaphorical way to explore how humans interact with each other and their world, which, arguably, is the point of literature.
A story centered only on its plausible technology might be pure science fiction, but it will probably fail as plain old fiction if it minimizes human experience. Lastly, as Adam Roberts notes,
It might be argued perhaps that 'cognitive' is almost a synonym for 'scientific' that his phrase 'cognitive estrangement' is just another way of restating the phrase to be defined, 'science fiction.' One of the strengths of Suvin's definition is that it seems to embody a certain common-sense tautology, that science fiction is scientific fictionalising. But, as we have seen, science is just as frequently represented in the SF novel by pseudo-science, by some device outside the
boundaries of science that is none the less rationalised in the style of scientific discourse...several of the frequently deployed 'nova' of SF are things that 'science' has specifically ruled out of court as literally impossible. The most obvious example of this is faster-than-light travel, a staple of a great many SF tales but something that scientists assure us can never happen. (8)