A Thing that Cannot Be Put Back Again

Abstract

One of the most compelling features of the genre of science fiction is its configuration, “a curious mixture of invented gadgetry and archetypal narrative motifs very obviously derived from folk tale, fairy tale and Scripture, recycling the myths of Creation, Fall, Flood and a Divine Savior, for a secular but still superstitious age” (Lodge, 137). The narrative of myths which sought to explain the present by looking at the origins of the world might have given way to narratives that seek to explain the functioning of the present by predicting alternate futures (or alternate presents or alternate pasts). As Susan Napier has observed, an “intriguing aspect of science fiction [is] its ability to uniquely reflect and comment upon modern culture” (329).