ABSTRACT
In its evolution the fictional genre of science fiction traces the anxiety and excitement raised by the development of (primarily) western technology and science. This chapter examines that evolution by reference to the social context in which this fiction was and is produced. In order to identify these relationships between the discursive and textual I am working with a Bakhtinian conceptualisation of genre such as that elaborated by Fredric Jameson when he noted that:
The strategic value of generic concepts…clearly lies in the mediatory function of the notion of genre, which allows the coordination of immanent formal analysis of the individual text with the twin diachronic perspective of the history of forms and the evolution of social life.
