ABSTRACT
Just as the subject — in both senses of the word — of the novel is the modern individual, so the time of the novel is the time of personal development and the historical time of social change. For the novel, time is of the essence and its narratives recount a future past which is a past present for the reader. Novels find their meaning in their conclusions. Science fiction shares this premise but where the novel looks back to a past made present, science fiction looks back from a future made present. This means that science fiction can never confine itself to the private worlds of individuals since its raison d’être is a possible future that concerns everyone. Science fiction is thus not simply the time-travelling companion of the novel, it signifies the end of the time of the novel, the end of the time of the modern individual. The present chapter traces the self-transformation of the novel into science fiction under the pressure of the crisis of time that opened the history of the present. Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and Elias Canetti’s Auto da Fe stand on the threshold between the novel and science fiction. What appeared as prophecy around 1930 is presented at the end of the century in Michel Houellebecq’s Atomised as the already completed narrative of the end of the novel and of the modern subject.
