Art, artists, and artistry in science fiction

Due to the obvious scientific orientation of science fiction and the presumed sub-literary nature of most of its narratives, criticism of the genre has primarily concentrated on such obvious themes as progress, technology, and science. Little criticism discusses the significance of fictional arts and artists to science fiction, and much work ignores the artistry with which many science fiction authors craft their works. When reading science fiction while alert to art and artists, however, we find myriad characters who create or experience works of art, from paintings, poems, and music to mechanized butterflies, synthesized disasters, and fabricated realities. Fictionally represented art and artists are as central to science fiction as are science and scientists.;What roles do art, artists, and artistry play in science fiction? What needs do they fill for authors and readers? My study begins to answer these questions by discussing two linked aspects of science fiction: the fictional portrayals of arts and artists, specifically the relations between art and science, art and politics, and art and economics, and the interplay between literary and scientific rhetorics as they create believable narrative worlds. This work explores themes about art and artists in a variety of science fictions and so attempts to define the ideology of the aesthetic in science fiction. The thesis also examines other genres (e.g., fantasy, horror, and children's literature) and media (e.g., poetry, film, and comic book) in order to illustrate the wide applicability of its arguments and the usefulness of science fiction for narrative inquiry.;My examination of science fiction shows that as object and subject art is vital to the genre so often viewed as scientific and that as a result science fiction crucially unites the humanities and sciences in our increasingly technological world. The ideology of the aesthetic enables science fiction authors and readers to reaffirm both their shared fictional enterprise and the unity of different human activities. Science fiction urges us to cultivate the most balanced and productive unions between art and science, politics, and economics and warns that without such unions our civilization will become a dystopia.