« Welcome to the real world »

Abstract

After presenting the mainstream perspectives of sociologists of literature towards science fiction, the article aims at developing an original approach that could account for the specificity of science fiction, i.e. seeing it as being positioned at the very boundaries of science and literature, reality and fiction, and technique and culture. Rather than confining science fiction into either poles of those dichotomies, this approach wants to invite sociology to fully embrace the « space between » that characterizes it. It also entails that science fiction may become one of the privileged loci from where the scholars can observe how the split between the categories mentioned above is being constituted, displaced, renewed or, conversely, consolidated and reinforced.

Keywords

• science fiction
• field theory
• literary field
• open-field theory
• sociology of literature
• Robert Escarpit