Science Fiction as a Worldwide Phenomenon: A Study of International Creation, Consumption and Dissemination

This paper examines the international nature of science fiction. The focus of this research is to determine whether science fiction is primarily English speaking and Western or global; being created and consumed by people in non-Western, non-English speaking countries? Science fiction's international presence was found in three ways, by network analysis, by examining a online retailer and with a survey. Condor, a program developed by GalaxyAdvisors was used to determine if science fiction is being talked about by non-English speakers. An analysis of the international Amazon.com websites was done to discover if it was being consumed worldwide. A survey was also conducted to see if people had experience with science fiction. All three research methods revealed similar results. Science fiction was found to be international, with science fiction creators originating in different countries and writing in a host of different languages. English and nonEnglish science fiction was being created and consumed all over the world, not just in the English speaking West. INTRODUCTION The main question addressed in this paper is if science fiction is primarily a English speaking Western phenomenon or are people actively creating science fiction cross culturally and in different languages? This question was asked as part of a larger research project 1 , and was asked in order to ascertain if a business tool derived from science fiction has potential global applications. During the course of doing research the author encountered few references to global science fiction. The author observed that most of the science fiction authors, H. G. Wells, Ray Bradbury, Isaac Asimov and so forth that were focused on came from the English speaking western world and science fiction was addressed as a genre of the western world (Rabkin, 1983). The Cambridge 1 This research was originally done as part of research for a Masters of Fine Arts thesis. This thesis was unpublished at the time when this was written. (Wells, 2013). Companion to Science Fiction almost exclusively focuses on American science fiction (James & Mendlesohn, 2003). Julies Verne is one of the few non-English speaking authors to be named in many of the books reviewed for this research. (Clarke, 1999; James & Mendlesohn, 2003; Kelly et al., 2009, p. 10). Does this mean that science fiction is a genre that is found primarily in the English speaking West 2 or are there science fiction stories being written all around the world that simply have not been addressed by the reviewed literature?