Interesting. I hadn’t heard any of these before. I’ve actually heard the case that SciFi is an almost uniquely American thing (or atleast capitalist, which would explain the Gundum and other SciFi in Japan other asian countries). But it seems that with defining SciFi from the Greeks (or earlier) you would have figure out what the line between Scifi and Fantasy, but then again I just see SciFi as a subset off fantasy (a one with it’s own life, but still an offshoot)... so I see them inexorably linked in some ways.
The lecturer observed that the modern Western experience of myth (fiction, fantasy) is distinct from that of other cultures, including Asians, and she theorized that it’s because of our culture’s assimilation of the literary and (as it were) psychological assumptions of Greek and Roman myth, which until recently had a very large role in our literary and cultural dialogue: everyone knew the stories, and everyone used them to discuss and illustrate how we see the world and how it could be.
She mentioned science fiction specifically, as opposed to fantasy, among other reasons because the projection of our fears and imaginations “out there” beyond the currently-reached physical boundaries is a characteristic of classical myth.
It’s American because science fiction is about pushing back boundaries and borders, and that has been an American thing lately. In many ways, science fiction is the heir of the classic western, but there’s more to it than that. SF is a genre that can encompass any other genre and is one of the few mediums where you can have a novel that is A. genuinely entertaining and B. genuinely about Something. “Literary” books tend to be dull, and “exciting” books tend to be stupid, but in SF, you get both.