Without wanting to give a precise definition of "science fiction" (please God let me refrain from this temptation!) we can, however, underline that a science-fiction story is supposed to contain at least one scientific component - idea, theory, invention, paradox - which is intimately interwoven into the tale. In fact, the adherents of classical science fiction even claim that a science-fiction story can only be told through a link with this scientific component, which should generate the story, provide its originality and contribute to its resolution.

When I use the word "science", I embrace all sciences: nuclear physics as well as linguistics or anthropology, the cognitive sciences and the human sciences, the mathematical sciences or the aesthetic theories. The important aspect is that there should be a reasoning and a corpus of rules or axioms, a way to justify or to comprehend the world.

I want to return to this notion of science intimately mixed with fiction. We can use fiction as a scenery, as an image generator, as a catalyst of situations. Where does the limit lie between science fiction and the rest ? It is sometimes difficult to be precise. Romeo and Juliette simply relocated to another planet is not really science fiction. Romeo and Juliette transcended - or twisted - by the fact that Romeo is an android or that Juliette is an extra-terrestrial entity trapped within a virtual Verone is not necessarily science fiction either - unless and except if the incorporation of the scientific component compels us to understand the story differently.

We can normally recognise science fiction if the underlying scientific idea generates a metamorphosis or a renewal of the story. The movie "Outland" (with Sean Connery) is a Western which takes place in a space station - an OK Corral in Space, if you prefer. The faint science-fiction aspect (here the space station) helps to add some striking images and to renew the scenery. It has no other purpose whatsoever and the same movie could have been filmed in a different epoch and in a different locality. Other Westerns exist that support this point. "Blade Runner", on the contrary, is indisputably science fiction, because the scientific idea of the "replicant" (or artificial human) compels us to comprehend differently the very notion of humanity.

In a science-fiction work, the science is not only there for embellishing things. It is the magic wand that can transcend the story!

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