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Mad scientist

The mad scientist (also mad doctor or mad professor) is a stock character of a scientist who is perceived as "mad, bad and dangerous to know" owing to a combination of unusual or unsettling personality traits and the unabashedly ambitious, taboo or hubristic nature of their experiments. As a motif in fiction, the mad scientist may be villainous (evil genius) or antagonistic, benign, or neutral; may be insane, eccentric, or clumsy; and often works with fictional technology or fails to recognize or value common human objections to attempting to play God. Some may have benevolent intentions, even if their actions are dangerous or questionable, which can make them accidental antagonists.

The mad scientist figure appears in Gothic fiction after the Romantic period, reflecting Victorian society's fascination with science and their fear that scientific knowledge would lead to the destruction of society and morality. The roots of the mad scientist are surprisingly ancient. He is most closely descended from the kabbalists and alchemists of the Middle Ages; even in the Faust legend, writers had begun to develop the notion that any intrusion into the area of universal knowledge was an unholy act; condemned by the church just as much as black magic, performing autopsies, or challenging the purposes of the divine.

The prototypical fictional mad scientist was Victor Frankenstein, creator of his eponymous monster, who made his first appearance in 1818, in the novel Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus by Mary Shelley. Though the novel's title character, Victor Frankenstein, is a sympathetic character, the critical element of conducting experiments that cross "boundaries that ought not to be crossed", heedless of the consequences, is present in Shelley's novel. Frankenstein was trained as both an alchemist and a modern scientist, which makes him the bridge between two eras of an evolving archetype. The book is said to be a precursor of a new genre, science fiction, although as an example of gothic horror, it is connected with other antecedents as well.

The year 1896 saw the publication of H. G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau, in which the titular doctor—a controversial vivisectionist—has isolated himself entirely from civilization in order to continue his experiments in surgically reshaping animals into humanoid forms, heedless of the suffering he causes.

Mad scientists were most conspicuous in popular culture after World War II. The sadistic human experimentation conducted under the auspices of the Nazis, especially those of Josef Mengele, and the invention of the atomic bomb, gave rise in this period to genuine fears that science and technology had gone out of control. 

Absent-minded professor

The absent-minded professor is usually portrayed as a talented academic whose academic brilliance is accompanied by below-par functioning in other areas, leading to forgetfulness and mistakes. The archetype is sometimes mixed with that of the mad scientist, often for comic effect. However, a distinction is usually made that absent-minded professors are forgetful and careless rather than maliciously causing harm. These characters can be harmful if they are coded as individuals with autism.

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Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897)

Bram Stoker's Dracula has been the definitive description of the vampire in popular fiction for the last century. Its portrayal of vampirism as a disease (contagious demonic possession), with its undertones of sex, blood, and death, struck a chord in Victorian Britain where tuberculosis and syphilis were common. Although it has been claimed that the character of Count Dracula is based upon Vlad Draculesti III (Vlad the Impaler), also known as Vlad Ţepeş', a notorious 15th-century Wallachian (Romanian) warlord, or Voivode, this has been debunked by multiple scholars. Unlike the historical personage, however, Stoker located his Count Dracula in a castle near the Borgo Pass in Transylvania and ascribed to that area the supernatural aura it retains to this day in the popular imagination. Stoker likely drew inspiration from Irish myths of blood-sucking creatures. He was also influenced by Le Fanu's Carmilla. Le Fanu was Stoker's editor when Stoker was a theater critic in Dublin, Ireland. Like Le Fanu, Stoker created compelling female vampire characters such as Lucy Westenra and the Brides of Dracula.

Richard Matheson’s I Am Legend (1954)

Unlike earlier stories where vampires were typically revenants, Matheson’s vampires are the product of a pandemic similar to the flu or the bubonic plague. Here, vampirism is a disease spread through war and a plentiful mosquito population. The effectiveness of folkloric vampire propellants varies depending on the infected person involved. For example, a cross only affects vampires who were Christian before the plague struck.

Matheson’s novel is more of a science fiction novel than a Gothic tale, but the protagonist, Robert Neville, the only human allegedly unaffected by the sickness, attempts to research and cure the disease.

Indeed, the vampires in I Am Legend bear little resemblance to the literary vampire’s Gothic roots. In fact, Matheson’s work heavily influenced the zombie genre that would form in film. George A. Romero constantly cited I Am Legend as a prominent influence on his cinematic undead. Not only that, but Matheson’s novel has influenced apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction as well.

Anne Rice’s Interview with the Vampire (1976)

In earlier fiction, vampires embody the roles of antagonists, creatures to be defeated, but Interview with the Vampire situates the titular vampire as the main character. In this way, Louis’ viewpoint is unique as he tells his story to a reporter and allows an unheard perspective to be exposed. The vampire is no longer the monstrous entity meant to be defeated by mortal protagonists. There is no longer a clear divide between human heroes versus vampiric villains. (Granted, the vampires in this novel are still murderers.)

Rice's work also saw the beginning of the convergence of traditional Gothic ideas with the modern Gothic subculture and more explicit exploration of the transgressive sexualities that had always been implicit in vampire fiction.

Charlaine Harris’ Dead Until Dark (2001)

Harris’s novels in the “The Southern Vampire Mysteries” series continue the trend of vampires as love interests. The main character is Sookie Stackhouse, a young waitress who can read human minds. A notable facet of Harris’ books is the role of vampires as a marginalized group. She inverts the power dynamic between vampires and humans on a social level.

John Ajvide Lindqvist’s Let the Right One In (2004)

A bit different from its early 21st-century companions, Let the Right One In is a Swedish horror story and a pre-adolescent love story. The title derives itself from the Morrissey song “Let the Right One Slip In,” as well as the belief that vampires can only enter a dwelling if a resident invites them inside.

This particular novel does not follow the modern romantic trend, and instead focuses on a human-vampire friendship. Crucially, it retains many of the vampire traits popularized by Dracula. Bram Stoker's Dracula was hugely influential in its depiction of vampire traits, some of which are described by the novel's vampire expert Abraham Van Helsing. Dracula has the ability to change his shape at will, his featured forms in the novel being that of a wolf, bat, mist, and fog. He can also crawl up and down the vertical external walls of his castle in the manner of a lizard. One very famous trait that Stoker added is the inability to be seen in mirrors, which is not found in traditional Eastern European folklore, as Stoker combined the folklore of Jiangshi being terrified of their own reflection with the material fact of the silver-backed mirrors of the time. Dracula also had protruding teeth, though was preceded in this by Varney the Vampire and Carmilla. In Anne Rice's books, the vampires appear their best selves of the age they were turned into a vampire; for instance, when Claudia was turned into a vampire, her golden curls became tight and voluminous, her skin turned a pale but smooth and clear, and rids her of the rotting disease. But it also seems like a curse as she retains her child body for her entire vampire lifetime and any modifications on her body, such as even cutting her hair, grow it back to the same length as it was before. A similar occurrence can be observed in the Twilight series - when Bella is turned into a vampire, her wounds heal, hair becomes healthy and shiny, her broken back and ribs get mended, the color comes back to her skin, and her sunken eyes, cheeks and skinny body return to a healthy state; in fact, she is brought back to life from the brink of death by turning her into a vampire.

In the Dracula novel, the vampire hunter Van Helsing prescribes that a vampire be destroyed by a wooden stake (preferably made of white oak) through the heart, decapitation, drowning, or incineration. The vampire's head must be removed from its body, the mouth stuffed with garlic and holy water or relics, the body drawn and quartered, then burned and spread into the four winds, with the head buried on hallowed ground. Traditional vampire folklore, followed by Stoker in Dracula, does not usually hold that sunlight is fatal to vampires, though they are nocturnal. It is also notable in the novel that Dracula can walk about in the daylight, in bright sunshine, though apparently in discomfort and without the ability to use most of his powers, like turning into mist or a bat. He is still strong and fast enough to struggle with and escape from most of his male pursuers. Fatal exposure to sunlight of a vampire in their coffin dates at least as far back as The Story Of Yand Manor House (1898) by E. and H. Heron; such scenes in vampire films however, most especially 1922's Nosferatu and the closing scene of the 1958 film Dracula in which Count Dracula is burnt by the sun, were very influential on later vampire fiction. For instance, Anne Rice's vampire Lestat and Chelsea Quinn Yarbro's Count Saint-Germain both avoid the lethal effects of daylight by staying closeted indoors during the day.

A well-known set of special powers and weaknesses is commonly associated with vampires in contemporary fiction. There is a tendency, however, for authors to pick and choose the ones they like, or find more realistic ones, and have their characters ridicule the rest as absurd. Some vampires can fly. This power may be supernatural levitation, or it may be connected to the vampire's shape-shifting ability. Some traditions hold that a vampire cannot enter a house unless he or she is invited in. Generally, a vampire needs be invited in only once and then can come and go at will. Stephen King's novel Salem's Lot explored an unusual direction with this myth in having one of the protagonists revoke a vampire's invitation to a house; the vampire was forced to flee the building immediately.

Daywalker

A designation for vampires or half-vampires who are not vulnerable to sunlight

Dhampir

In Balkan folklore, a dhampir is a mythical creature that is the result of a union between a vampire and a human. This union was usually between male vampires and female humans, with stories of female vampires mating with male humans being rare.

Strigoi

Strigoi in Romanian mythology are troubled spirits that are said to have risen from the grave. They are attributed with the ability to transform into an animal, become invisible, and gain vitality from the blood of their victims.

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Vampire

A vampire is a mythical creature that subsists by feeding on the vital essence (generally in the form of blood) of the living. In European folklore, vampires are undead creatures that often visit loved ones and cause mischief or deaths in the neighborhoods that they inhabited while they were alive. They wore shrouds and were often described as bloated and of ruddy or dark countenance, markedly different from today's gaunt, pale vampire which dates from the early 19th century. In modern times, the vampire is generally held to be a fictitious entity, although belief in similar vampiric creatures (such as the chupacabra) still persists in some cultures. Early folk belief in vampires has sometimes been ascribed to the ignorance of the body's process of decomposition after death and how people in pre-industrial societies tried to rationalize this, creating the figure of the vampire to explain the mysteries of death. Porphyria was linked with legends of vampirism in 1985 and received much media exposure, but has since been largely discredited.

The Persians were one of the first civilizations to have tales of blood-drinking demons: creatures attempting to drink blood from men were depicted on excavated pottery shards. Ancient Babylonia and Assyria had tales of the mythical Lilitu, synonymous with and giving rise to Lilith and her daughters the Lilu from Hebrew demonology. Lilitu was considered a demon and was often depicted as subsisting on the blood of babies. Despite the occurrence of vampiric creatures in these ancient civilizations, the folklore for the entity known today as the vampire originates almost exclusively from early 18th-century southeastern Europe when verbal traditions of many ethnic groups of the region were recorded and published. In most cases, vampires are revenants of evil beings, suicide victims, or witches, but they can also be created by a malevolent spirit possessing a corpse or by being bitten by a vampire. Belief in such legends became so pervasive that in some areas it caused mass hysteria and even public executions of people believed to be vampires.The charismatic and sophisticated vampire of modern fiction was born in 1819 with the publication of "The Vampyre" by the English writer John Polidori; the story was highly successful and arguably the most influential vampire work of the early 19th century. Bram Stoker's 1897 novel Dracula is remembered as the quintessential vampire novel and provided the basis of the modern vampire legend, even though it was published after fellow Irish author Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu's 1872 novel Carmilla. The success of this book spawned a distinctive vampire genre, still popular in the 21st century, with books, films, television shows, and video games. The vampire has since become a dominant figure in the horror genre.

John Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819)

Polidori worked as Byron’s personal physician, much to his chagrin. However, his stint in this position allowed him the experience of spending three days at Villa Diodati, where a famous storytelling session took place. The company there consisted of Lord Byron, John Polidori, Mary Shelley, Percy Shelley, and Claire Clairmont. From the storytelling, Mary Shelley later created a story that would ultimately become her magnum opus, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus. As well as that, Polidori created a lesser-known Gothic novel called The Vampyre.

The Vampyre occurs in England. Aubrey, a young man, meets a nobleman named Lord Ruthven. Ruthven, inspired by Lord Byron, is a charismatic vampire who seduces women before draining them of blood. Ultimately, Ruthven marries the protagonist’s sister and kills her on their wedding night.

Lord Ruthven, while initially seeming appealing, is a decadent vampire who finds pleasure in remorseless predation; he kills his lovers and wives. In Polidori’s text, a vampire is not only a villain but an aristocrat who utilizes his supernatural and economic power to harm those with less means than himself.

Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872)

Le Fanu’s Carmilla occurs in Styria, which is located in southeast Austria. A young, lonely woman named Laura lives with her father in a solitary castle. She suffers from sleep troubles and longs for a friend. After another young woman’s mysterious death, Laura meets Carmilla, whom she’s dreamed about as a child.

Carmilla starts forcing unwanted romantic advances on Laura. Carmilla is known for its strong homoerotic element when it comes to Carmilla’s obsession with the main character. Carmilla is actually Countess Mircalla Karnstein, a vampire who stalks, feeds upon and slays female victims. Throughout the story, she manipulates Laura and preys upon her until her identity is revealed and she is staked and decapitated in her tomb.

The character of Carmilla is potentially inspired by Elizabeth Bathory, a highly wealthy and educated countess with an attraction to her sex who was convicted and immured for the torture and deaths of several women.

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As noted, a central concept in the myth’s earliest iteration is in its parable of the slave trade: the zombie is a metaphorization of human life that is deemed unworthy by others. Caribbean anti-colonial folktales and the myth’s transformation reflect capitalist abuses of the worker and the brain-dead consumerism of the public. In short, the original myth from which the literary zombie comes involves a metaphor in which some humans decide that others are less worthy of life and fair game to be used as an instrument to bring them profits.

Intimately tied to the concept of the modern zombie is that of the "zombie apocalypse": the breakdown of society as a result of an initial zombie outbreak that spreads quickly. This archetype has emerged as a prolific subgenre of apocalyptic fiction and has been portrayed in many zombie-related media after Night of the Living Dead. In a zombie apocalypse, a widespread (usually global) rise of zombies hostile to human life engages in a general assault on civilization. Victims of zombies may become zombies themselves. This causes the outbreak to become an exponentially growing crisis: the spreading phenomenon swamps normal military and law-enforcement organizations, leading to the panicked collapse of civilized society until only isolated pockets of survivors remain, scavenging for food and supplies in a world reduced to a pre-industrial hostile wilderness. Possible causes for zombie behavior in a modern population can be attributed to viruses, bacteria, or other phenomena that reduce the mental capacity of humans, causing them to behave in a very primitive and destructive fashion. Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006) is an example of a book that has no zombies in it but that might prove useful for a wider study of zombies. McCarthy’s novel is evocative of the zombie genre; one of the dangers that the characters must navigate is the threat of roving bands of cannibals, so the fear of being consumed, central to zombie stories, is part of this bleak novel. Furthermore, it contains the kind of apocalyptic dread that is associated with zombie fiction: Set in a world that has been decimated by an undetermined catastrophe, it follows a father and son’s journey across the desolate hellscape that the world has become.

Similar to McCarthy’s The Road, Tender is the Flesh (2020) by Argentinian writer Agustina Bazterrica is zombie-adjacent. There are no living dead in it, but it is set in an alternate reality in which a virus purportedly has contaminated all animals���the protagonist seems to doubt the government’s claims—and humans have begun raising other humans for food. It is a harrowing read and an obvious commentary on the cruelties of meat production and consumption, but it might be considered in this category for the way that it weaves together fears of virus and cannibalism and inculcates a critique of capitalism (specifically of the food industry), which after Romero’s 1978 Dawn of the Dead has become a mainstay of the genre.

Ling Ma’s Severance (2018) also deserves mention in this category. The “zombies” of the book are called “the fevered.” Although the fevered do not bite people, the characters self-consciously have a discussion about the difference between zombies and vampires as their world is falling apart. These zombie-like creatures become evacuated of all consciousness and just repeat rote behaviors from their life—like machines on a loop.The Reapers Are the Angels

Night of the Living Trekkies

Warm Bodies

Feed

Zero Day

The Forest of Hands and Teeth

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Zombie

Zombie is an undead creature frequently featured in works of horror fiction and film. The zombie belief has its roots in traditions brought to Haiti by enslaved Africans and their subsequent experiences in the New World. It was thought that the voodoo deity Baron Samedi would gather them from their grave to bring them to a heavenly afterlife in Africa ("Guinea"), unless they had offended him in some way, in which case they would be forever a slave after death, as a zombie.

Much of the rich archive of Caribbean literature that features zombies has not yet been translated or has only sporadically been translated into English. Two of the most crucial texts are Jacques-Stephen Alexis’s “Chronique d’un faux amour” from Romancero aux Etoiles (1960) and René Depestre’s Hadriana dans tous mes rêves (1988), both of which are retellings of a classic folktale in which a woman is zombified on her wedding day. It is difficult to divorce these retellings from the authors’ political goals: both were dissidents under Papa and Baby Doc; Alexis was assassinated in 1961 and Depestre was living in exile. As such, the zombification metaphor in each seems to reflect Papa Doc Duvalier’s regime and reclamation of the people’s power, respectively. A new version of the zombie, distinct from that described in Haitian folklore, emerged in popular culture during the latter half of the 20th century. This interpretation of the zombie is drawn largely from George A. Romero's film Night of the Living Dead (1968), which was partly inspired by Richard Matheson's novel I Am Legend (1954). The word zombie is not used in Night of the Living Dead but was applied later by fans. Modern media depictions of the reanimation of the dead often do not involve magic but rather science-fictional methods such as carriers, radiation, mental diseases, vectors, pathogens, parasites, scientific accidents, etc. Although the word zombie has been applied to different types of creatures, they generally share a few defining characteristics, perhaps most importantly a lack of free will. Zombies are usually wholly subordinate, either to an outside force, such as a sorcerer or to an overwhelming desire, such as the need for human flesh or revenge or simply to do violence. Another important distinction made by some is that a zombie is the animated corpse of a single being, usually a human. Zombies are frequently depicted as shambling and rotting, although in some instances their bodies may be preserved, especially when magic is involved, and they may sometimes display superhuman characteristics, such as increased strength and speed.

The essence of the zombie archetype is about humans who are no longer the person they once were. They may be transformed by means of reanimation as corpses or by virtue of a disease that makes them a vacant host or they may have otherwise become “depersonalized.”

It is generally accepted that the impulse and drive experienced by the walking dead reside in the brain. Therefore, removing the head or otherwise destroying the brain-body connection will stop them. Because zombies are in most cases already deceased, it is usually deemed impossible to kill them by conventional methods such as gunshot, poisoning, or stabbing, unless the brain is damaged or destroyed. In instances where zombification is caused by magic, a zombie may potentially be stopped by the death of its master. Romero's reinvention of zombies is notable in terms of its thematics; he used zombies not just for their own sake, but as a vehicle "to criticize real-world social ills—such as government ineptitude, bioengineering, slavery, greed, and exploitation—while indulging our post-apocalyptic fantasies".

In the 1990s, zombie fiction emerged as a distinct literary subgenre, with the publication of Book of the Dead (1990) and its follow-up Still Dead: Book of the Dead 2 (1992), both edited by horror authors John Skipp and Craig Spector. Featuring Romero-inspired stories from the likes of Stephen King, the Book of the Dead compilations are regarded as influential in the horror genre and perhaps the first true "zombie literature".

About the turn of the 21st century, zombies experienced a boom in popularity. Zombie books began to appear more and more frequently, with author Max Brooks releasing both the tongue-in-cheek The Zombie Survival Guide: Complete Protection from the Living Dead (2003) and the best-selling apocalyptic novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006; film 2013). Horror icon Stephen King even published a zombie novel during this time, Cell (2006). Also of note was Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies (2009), which took Jane Austen’s public-domain text and added a horror-spoof twist, and the comic book series The Walking Dead, which began in 2003 and was adapted for TV in 2010.

The late 2000s and 2010s saw the humanization and romanticization of the zombie archetype, with the zombies increasingly portrayed as friends and love interests for humans. Notable examples of the latter include American Gods by Neil Gaiman, Generation Dead by Daniel Waters, and Bone Song by John Meaney. In this context, zombies are often seen as stand-ins for discriminated groups struggling for equality, and the human–zombie romantic relationship is interpreted as a metaphor for sexual liberation and taboo-breaking (given that zombies are subject to wild desires and free from social conventions).

There has also been a shift towards an action approach, which has led to another evolution of the zombie archetype, the "fast zombie" or running zombie. In contrast to Romero's classic slow zombies, "fast zombies" can run, are more aggressive, and are often more intelligent. This type of zombie has origins in 1990s Japanese horror video games.

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Third person PoV

In the third-person narrative mode, the narration refers to all characters with third-person pronouns like he, she, or they, and never first- or second-person pronouns. Traditionally, third-person narration is the most commonly used narrative mode in literature. It does not require that the narrator's existence be explained or developed as a particular character, as would be the case with a first-person narrator.

The third-person modes are usually categorized along two axes. The first is the subjectivity/objectivity axis, with third-person subjective narration involving one or more characters' personal feelings and thoughts, and third-person objective narration not describing the feelings or thoughts of any characters but, rather, just the exact facts of the story. Third-person modes may also be categorized along the omniscient/limited axis. A third-person omniscient narrator conveys information from multiple characters, places, and events of the story, including any given character's thoughts, and a third-person limited narrator conveys the knowledge and subjective experience of just one character. Third-person narration, in both its limited and omniscient variants, became the most popular narrative perspective during the 20th century.

Third-person omniscient

The narrator speaks freely about everyone and everything. There are no limits to the time, space, or character the narrator can access.This third-person narrator can enter anyone’s mind, move freely through time, and give the reader their own opinions and observations as well as those of the characters. This narrator also knows more than the characters—think of the omniscient narrator as having a god’s-eye-view of the characters. (“He had been infected with the virus, but he didn’t know it yet.”)

Third-person limited (also called third-person close)

The author writes in third person but keeps the thoughts and feelings limited to one central character. The Harry Potter series is an example of third-person limited omniscient. The reader has access to scenes across time and space, but they are only ever in the head of Harry himself.

Third-person limited point of view is useful when you want to deeply develop a reader’s relationship with one character. It can also be used to generate suspense by keeping a reader from knowing what other characters in the story know.

Third-person objective

The narrator is a neutral entity, relying on observations of characters rather than getting in their heads. It’s writing from a fly-on-the-wall perspective. Ernest Hemingway was a master of third-person objective. Hemingway’s short story “Hills Like White Elephants” is the most popular example of this rare style in fiction.

Multiple third-person limited POVs

Multiple 3rd person POV still requires individual narrators to only know what’s in their heads. However, authors may switch the narrator between scenes or chapters.

Fourth-Person Point of View

4th person POV uses indefinite pronouns like “one,” “oneself,” “someone,” and “anyone.” Some say this refers to the collective perspective told in the pronouns “we” and “our” without the use of “I” and “me.” However, the more common use of the 4th person perspective is indefinite pronouns.

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Narration (1)

Narration is the use of a written or spoken commentary to convey a story to an audience. Narration is conveyed by a narrator: a specific person, or unspecified literary voice, developed by the creator of the story to deliver information to the audience, particularly about the plot: the series of events. Narration is a required element of all written stories (novels, short stories, poems, memoirs, etc.), presenting the story in its entirety.

The narrative mode encompasses the set of choices through which the creator of the story develops their narrator and narration:

Narrative point of view, perspective, or voice: the choice of grammatical person used by the narrator to establish whether or not the narrator and the audience are participants in the story; also, this includes the scope of the information or knowledge that the narrator presents

Narrative tense: the choice of either the past or present grammatical tense to establish either the prior completion or current immediacy of the plot

Narrative technique: any of the various other methods chosen to help narrate a story, such as establishing the story's setting (location in time and space), developing characters, exploring themes (main ideas or topics), structuring the plot, intentionally expressing certain details but not others, following or subverting genre norms, and using various other storytelling devices and linguistic styles.

Narrative point of view

An ongoing debate has persisted regarding the nature of narrative point of view. A variety of different theoretical approaches have sought to define point of view in terms of person, perspective, voice, consciousness, and focus. Narrative perspective is the position and character of the storyteller, in relation to the narrative itself. Point of view is the writer’s way of deciding who is telling the story to whom.

First person PoV

A first-person point of view reveals the story through an openly self-referential and participating narrator. First person creates a close relationship between the narrator and reader, by referring to the viewpoint character with first person pronouns like I and me (as well as we and us, whenever the narrator is part of a larger group). 

The strength of first person is in the way it shares emotional intensity. We feel what the narrator feels. We respond to events along with them. The weakness of first person is its lack of significant information. We only know what the narrator knows; we can’t get into the heads of other characters who are nearby. We also only see what that narrator sees; we can’t see what else is going on around them or even around the next bend in the road. The first person narrator’s knowledge of all the story’s events is limited. This means first person narrative is both biased and incomplete.

The most extreme use of this bias is called an unreliable narrator. Unreliable narration is a technique used by novelists to surprise the reader by capitalize on the limitations of first person narration to make the narrator's version of events extremely prejudicial to their side and/or highly separated from reality. For example, Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl pits two unreliable narrators against one another. Each relates their conflicting version of events, one through typical narration and the other through journal entries.

There are two ways to write in first person:

First-person central: The narrator is also the protagonist of the story. For example, in To Kill a Mockingbird, Scout is both the main character and the narrator, meaning this novel is written in first-person central.

First-person peripheral: The narrator is telling the story of the protagonist from close by. One famous example is F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby. The story of Gatsby is told not by Gatsby himself but by a narrator named Nick, a friend and neighbor of Gatsby’s. The narrator’s distance from the subject in The Great Gatsby creates a sense of intrigue about Gatsby.

Second person PoV

The second-person point of view is a point of view where the audience is made a character. This is done with the use of second-person pronouns like you. The narrator could be literally addressing the audience, but more often the second-person referent of these stories is actually some character within the story. Novels in second person are comparatively rare; rather, this point of view tends to be mostly confined to songs and poems. Nevertheless, some notable examples include the novel Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins, If on a winter's night a traveler by Italo Calvino.

The strength of second person is in a direct connection with narrator and reader; when reading second person, you feel as if you’re having a conversation with the narrator. This is especially effective when they are giving instructions. The weakness of second person is that it limits the audience by making it seem the narrator is talking to only one person. It can create a strange “dreamy” tone that may make the text feel strange. It can also feel aggressive or accusatory.  Short stories and short-form creative writing assignments are easier to incorporate 2nd person perspective into.

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Superpowers

This thematic term is chiefly associated with Comics, but the concept is widespread in general sf. Numerous Superheroes are effectively defined by their superpowers and, very often, corresponding weaknesses. Superman, a major twentieth-century archetype, has a large (though varying with character rewrites) assortment of special powers supposedly resulting from his Alien origin, the lesser Gravity of Earth compared to his homeworld Krypton, and the differing radiation of our Sun.

A significant fraction of the superhero fraternity lacks outright superpowers but excels in martial arts and exotic gadgetry, like Batman, the Blue Beetle, and both the elder and the younger Nite Owl of Watchmen.

Science fantasy

Science fantasy is a hybrid genre within speculative fiction that simultaneously draws upon or combines tropes and elements from both science fiction and fantasy. In a conventional science fiction story, the world is presented as being scientifically logical; while a conventional fantasy story contains mostly supernatural and artistic elements that disregard the scientific laws of the real world. The world of science fantasy, however, is laid out to be scientifically logical and often supplied with hard science–like explanations of any supernatural elements.

Distinguishing between pure science fiction and pure fantasy, Rod Serling claimed that the former was "the improbable made possible" while the latter was "the impossible made probable".

Rubber science

Rubber science is a science fiction term describing a quasi-scientific explanation for an aspect of a science fiction setting. Rubber science explanations are fictional but convincing enough to avoid upsetting the suspension of disbelief. Rubber science is a feature of most genres of science fiction, with the exception of hard science fiction. It is also frequently invoked in comic books.

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Superhero

A superhero or superheroine is a stock character that typically possesses superpowers, abilities beyond those of ordinary people, and fits the role of the hero, typically using their powers to help the world become a better place, or dedicating themselves to protecting the public from supervillains and fighting crime. Superhero fiction primarily falls between hard fantasy and soft science fiction spectrum of scientific realism.

DC Comics introduced the first costumed superhero, Superman, in Action Comics #1 (June 1938). Superman’s creators, writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster had unsuccessfully tried to sell the series to newspaper syndicates as a daily strip. DC then took an enormous risk in 1938 by publishing the untried character, given the depressed economic climate of the day. But Siegel and Shuster’s faith in their superpowered champion never faltered, and readers of the day reciprocated the creators’ enthusiasm: Action #1 sold phenomenally well.

Both superheroes and supervillains often use alter egos while in action. While sometimes the character's real name is publicly known, alter egos are most often used to hide the character's secret identity from their enemies and the public.

Comic books were the perfect entertainment form for Great Depression audiences: their heroic, larger-than-life characters stirred the demoralized masses, and the very format of the magazines themselves—usually 64 pages of original material at the mere cost of a dime—was a bargain during those times of economic hardship.

Many works of superhero fiction occur in a shared fictional universe, sometimes (as in the cases of the DC and Marvel Universes) establishing a fictional continuity of thousands of works spread over many decades. Changes to continuity are also common, ranging from small changes to established continuity, commonly called retcons, to full reboots, erasing all previous continuity. It is also common for stories and works of superhero fiction to contain established characters and setting while occurring outside of the main canon for those characters.

Crossovers often occur between characters of different works of superhero fiction. In comic books, highly publicized "events" are published featuring crossovers between many characters.

Discrimination against superheroes is a common theme and plot element in comic books and superhero fiction, usually as a way to explore the issue of superheroes operating in society or as commentary on other social concerns.

Comic book

A comic book is a publication that consists of comics art in the form of sequential juxtaposed panels that represent individual scenes. Panels are often accompanied by descriptive prose and written narrative, usually, dialogue contained in word balloons emblematic of the comics art form.

In the United States, the term comic book is generally used for comics periodicals and trade paperbacks while graphic novel is the term used for standalone books.

Manga are comics or graphic novels originating from Japan. Most manga conforms to a style developed in Japan in the late 19th century, and the form has a long history in earlier Japanese art. The term manga is used in Japan to refer to both comics and cartooning. Outside of Japan, the word is typically used to refer to comics originally published in the country.

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hero:

A hero (feminine: heroine) is a real person or a main fictional character who, in the face of danger, combats adversity through feats of ingenuity, courage, or strength. Like other formerly gender-specific terms (like actor), hero is often used to refer to any gender, though heroine only refers to women.

The word hero comes from the Greek ἥρως (hērōs), "hero" (literally "protector" or "defender"), particularly one such as Heracles with divine ancestry or later given divine honors. The appearance of heroes in literature marks a revolution in thought that occurred when poets and their audiences turned their attention away from immortal gods to mortal men, who suffer pain and death, but in defiance of this live gallantly and fully, and create, through their own efforts, a moment’s glory that survives in the memory of their descendants.

A classical hero is a character who possesses a great talent or ability that separates them from the rest of their contemporaries. This could be a skill, such as the ability to fight, or it could be an internal quality such as bravery or cleverness. Usually, this hero type appears normal on the surface until their powers begin to reveal themselves, such as when Harry Potter learns he is a wizard with magical powers. Everyman heroes are ordinary people without any apparent heroic qualities or characteristics. They are underdogs placed in extraordinary circumstances that force them to act heroically.

Antihero:

An antihero (sometimes spelled as anti-hero) or antiheroine is a main character in a story who may lack conventional heroic qualities and attributes, such as idealism, courage, and morality. Although antiheroes may sometimes perform actions that most of the audience considers morally correct, their reasons for doing so may not align with the audience's morality.

An antihero typically exhibits one of the "Dark Triad" personality traits, which include narcissism, psychopathy, and Machiavellianism. The anti-hero’s struggle to overcome or reconcile these morally dubious qualities makes them relatable to an audience, emphasizing the very human conflict between right and wrong that we all experience.

Villain:

A villain (also known as a "black hat" or "bad guy"; the feminine form is villainess) is a stock character, whether based on a historical narrative or one of literary fiction. Random House Unabridged Dictionary defines such a character as "a cruelly malicious person who is involved in or devoted to wickedness or crime; scoundrel; or a character in a play, novel, or the like, who constitutes an important evil agency in the plot".

Villains in fiction commonly function in the dual role of adversary and foil to a story's heroes. In their role as an adversary, the villain serves as an obstacle the hero must struggle to overcome. In their role as a foil, they exemplify characteristics that are diametrically opposed to those of the hero, creating a contrast distinguishing heroic traits from villainous ones.

Others have pointed out that many acts of villains have a hint of wish-fulfillment, which makes some readers or viewers identify with them as characters more strongly than with the heroes. Because of this, a convincing villain must be given a characterization that provides a motive for doing wrong, as well as being a worthy adversary to the hero. As put by film critic Roger Ebert: "Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, only a great villain can transform a good try into a triumph."

Antivillain:

The sympathetic villain or anti-villain is one with the typical traits of a villainous character but differs in their motivations. Their intention to cause chaos or commit evil actions is driven by an ambiguous motivation or is not driven by an intent to cause evil. Their intentions may coincide with the ideals of a greater good, or even a desire to make the world a better place, but their actions are inherently evil in nature.

An anti-villain is the opposite of an anti-hero. While the anti-hero often fights on the side of good, but with questionable or selfish motives, the anti-villain plays a villain's game, but for a noble cause in a way that the audience or other characters can sympathize with. They may be more noble or heroic than an anti-hero, but the means to achieve their ends are often considered exploitative, immoral, unjust, or simply evil.

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Protagonists and antagonists are both essential characters in a story, but they propel the plot in different and usually opposite ways:

The protagonist works toward the central story's goals, while the antagonist works against the goals.

The words “protagonist” and “antagonist” are antonyms. In storytelling terms, this means that protagonists and antagonists are opposing forces in a story.

Protagonist

A protagonist (from Ancient Greek πρωταγωνιστής prōtagōnistḗs 'one who plays the first part, chief actor') is the main character of a story. Writers use the protagonist to drive the story forward—the protagonist’s goals reflect the overall story goals, the plot moves forward based on the protagonist’s decisions, and their character arc is what the readers follow throughout the story. The definition of protagonist has nothing to do with a character’s internal moral compass: a protagonist can be both a “good” character (i.e. full of moral integrity) or a “bad” character (i.e. lacking moral integrity).  The moment in which these characters and the things they want clash is called the climax.

Antagonist

An antagonist is the force of a story that the protagonist contends with; whether it be human, natural, or supernatural. Derived from the Greek word "agonizesthai," antagonist literally translates to English as “to contend with.” Every protagonist needs an antagonistic force. But that doesn't mean that force needs to be another character. The hero's main obstacle can be the environment, an animal like a killer shark, an idea, or something flawed within themselves.

The false protagonist

A false protagonist is presented at the start of the fictional work as the main character but then is eradicated, often by killing them (usually for shock value or as a plot twist) or changed in terms of their role in the story (i.e. making them a lesser character, a character who leaves the story, or revealing them to actually be the antagonist).

Deuteragonist

The definition of a deuteragonist (from the Greek deuteragōnistēs, for “second actor”) is the second most important and present character in a story—often called a secondary main character. A secondary protagonist can take on a different role in a story. Sometimes they support the main character. Other times, they oppose them. In many cases, they go back and forth within a single story. 

Dual protagonists

Can there be more than one protagonist? Yes, there are many examples of dual protagonists. For example, the buddy cop or romantic comedy sub-genres. In both categories, the main pair of characters carry equal weight, make decisions that drive the plot, and have their own character arcs.

False Antagonist

The false antagonist eventually reveals themselves to be on the side of the protagonist.

Hidden Antagonist

The hidden antagonist is the opposite of the false antagonist.

Foil

In any narrative, a foil is a character who contrasts with another character; typically, a character who contrasts with the protagonist, in order to better highlight or differentiate certain qualities of the protagonist. A foil to the protagonist may also be the antagonist of the plot.

Supporting character

A supporting character is a character in a narrative that is not the focus of the primary storyline, but is important to the plot/protagonist, and appears or is mentioned in the story enough to be more than just a minor character or a cameo appearance. Sometimes, supporting characters may develop a complex backstory of their own, but this is usually in relation to the main character, rather than entirely independently.

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Sex and sexuality in speculative fiction:

Science fiction and fantasy have sometimes been more constrained than non-genre narrative forms in their depictions of sexuality and gender. However, speculative fiction and soft science fiction also offer the freedom to imagine alien or galactic societies different from real-life cultures, making it a tool to examine sexual bias, heteronormativity, and gender bias and enabling the reader to reconsider their cultural assumptions.

By the late 1960s, science fiction and fantasy began to reflect the changes prompted by the civil rights movement and the emergence of a counterculture. Within the genres, these changes were incorporated into a movement called "the New Wave," a movement more skeptical of technology, more liberated socially, and more interested in stylistic experimentation. New Wave writers were more likely to claim an interest in "inner space" instead of outer space. They were less shy about explicit sexuality and more sympathetic to reconsiderations of gender roles and the social status of sexual minorities.

The bisexual female writer Alice Bradley Sheldon, who used James Tiptree, Jr. as her pen name, explored sexual impulse as her main theme. Some stories by Tiptree portray humans becoming sexually obsessed with aliens, such as "And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side" (1972), or aliens being sexually abused. The Girl Who Was Plugged In (1973) is an early precursor of cyberpunk that depicts a relationship via a cybernetically controlled body.

John Varley, who also came to prominence in the 1970s, is another writer who examined sexual themes in his work. In his "Eight Worlds" suite of stories and novels, humanity has achieved the ability to change sex quickly, easily and completely reversibly – leading to a casual attitude with people changing their sex back and forth as the sudden whim takes them. Homophobia is shown as initially inhibiting the uptake of this technology, as it engenders drastic changes in relationships, with bisexuality becoming the default mode for society.

After the pushing back of boundaries in the 1960s and 70s, sex in genre science fiction gained wider acceptance and was often incorporated into otherwise conventional science fiction stories with little comment.

LGBT themes in speculative fiction:

From the 1980s onwards, homosexuality gained much wider mainstream acceptance and was often incorporated into otherwise conventional speculative fiction stories. Works emerged that went beyond simple representation of homosexuality to explorations of specific issues relevant to the LGBT community. This development was helped by the growing number of openly gay or lesbian authors and their early acceptance by speculative fiction fandom. Specialist gay publishing presses and a number of awards recognizing LGBT achievements in the genre emerged, and by the twenty-first century, blatant homophobia was no longer considered acceptable by most readers of speculative fiction.

In speculative fiction, extrapolation allows writers to focus not on the way things are (or were), as non-genre literature does, but on the way things could be different. It provides science fiction with a quality that science fiction critic Darko Suvin has called "cognitive estrangement": the recognition that what we are reading is not the world as we know it, but a world whose differences force us to reconsider our own with an outsider's perspective. When the extrapolation involves sexuality or gender, it can force the reader to reconsider their heteronormative cultural assumptions; the freedom to imagine societies different from real-life cultures makes SF an effective tool for examining sexual bias. In science fiction, such estranging features include technologies that significantly alter sex or reproduction.

Michael Moorcock was one of the first SF authors to depict positive portrayals of homosexual, lesbian and bisexual relationships and sex in his novels. For example, in his 1965 novel, The Final Programme, most of the leading characters, including the central 'hero' Jerry Cornelius, engage in same-sex relationships on multiple occasions, and same-sex relationships are depicted as entirely normal and without any moralizing, negative consequences or gratuitous titillation, this is the case in the whole Jerry Cornelius series and in Moorcock's fiction generally (particularly in the Dancers at the End of Time series) sexuality is seen as polymorphic and fluid rather than based in fixed identities and gender roles. A number of awards exist that recognise works at the intersection of LGBT and speculative fiction:

The Gaylactic Spectrum Awards honor works in science fiction, fantasy and horror which include positive explorations of gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender characters, themes, or issues. The awards were instituted in 1999 and are given for best novels, short fiction and other works of the previous year. Works produced before the awards' inception are eligible for entry into the Hall of Fame.

The Lambda Literary Awards include awards for science fiction, fantasy and horror. The awards were first presented in 1989, with separate categories for speculative fiction for lesbians and gay men. In 1993 these categories were merged and the combined award has undergone several name changes since then. Although the awards are given based on the quality of the writing and the LGBT themes, the author's sexual orientation is also a factor.

The James Tiptree, Jr. Award honors works of science fiction or fantasy that expand or explore one's understanding of gender. Thus, it often goes to works that deal directly or tangentially with gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender issues.

Golden Crown Literary Society Awards (or "Goldies") are given to works containing lesbian themes or depictions of lesbian characters. Awards are given in numerous categories, including speculative fiction (or "SciFi/Fantasy/Horror") and paranormal romance.

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Women in speculative fiction:

The role of women in speculative fiction has changed a great deal since the early to the mid-20th century. There are several aspects to women's roles, including their participation as authors of speculative fiction and their role in science fiction fandom. Regarding authorship, in 1948, 10–15% of science fiction writers were female. Women's role in speculative fiction (including science fiction) has grown since then, and in 1999, women comprised 36% of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America's professional members. Frankenstein (1818) by Mary Shelley has been called the first science fiction novel, although women wrote utopian novels even before that, with Margaret Cavendish publishing the first (The Blazing World) in the seventeenth century. Early published fantasy was written by and for any gender. However, speculative fiction, with science fiction in particular, has traditionally been viewed as a male-oriented genre. Nine women have been named Grand Master of science fiction by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America:

Andre Norton (1984)

Ursula K. Le Guin (2003)

Anne McCaffrey (2005)

Connie Willis (2012)

C.J. Cherryh (2016)

Jane Yolen (2017)

Lois McMaster Bujold (2020)

Nalo Hopkinson (2021)

Mercedes Lackey (2022)

Doris Lessing, who wrote the five-novel science fiction series Canopus in Argos, received the 2007 Nobel Prize in Literature.Women writers involved in the utopian literature movement of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could be considered the first feminist SF authors. Their texts, emerging during the first-wave feminist movement, often addressed issues of sexism through imagining different worlds that challenged gender expectations. In 1881, Mizora: A Prophecy described a women-only world with technological innovations such as parthenogenesis, videophones, and artificial meat.

In 1892, poet and abolitionist Frances Harper published Iola Leroy, one of the first novels by an African American woman. Set during the antebellum South, it follows the life of a mixed race woman with mostly white ancestry and records the hopes of many African Americans for social equality—of race and gender—during Reconstruction. The Sultana's Dream (1905), by Bengali Muslim feminist Rokeya Sakhawat Hussain, engages with the limited role of women in colonial India. Through depicting a gender-reversed purdah in an alternate technologically futuristic world, Hussain's book has been described as illustrating the potential for cultural insights through role reversals early on in the subgenre's formation.

By the 1960s, science fiction was combining sensationalism with political and technological critiques of society. With the advent of second-wave feminism, women's roles were questioned in this "subversive, mind-expanding genre". Three notable texts of this period are Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969), Marge Piercy's Woman on the Edge of Time(1976) and Joanna Russ's The Female Man(1970). Each highlights what the authors believe to be the socially constructed aspects of gender roles by creating worlds with genderless societies.

Feminist science fiction continues on into the 1980s with Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale(1985), a dystopic tale of a theocratic society in which women have been systematically stripped of all liberty.

Perhaps the most obvious attraction of science fiction to women writers – feminist or not – is the possibilities it offers for the creation of a female hero. The demands of realism in the contemporary or historical novel set limits which do not bind the universes available to science fiction. Although the history of science fiction reveals few heroic, realistic, or even original images of women, the genre had a potential recognized by the women writers drawn to it in the 1960s and 1970s.

Gary Westfahl points out that "Heinlein is a problematic case for feminists; on the one hand, his works often feature strong female characters and vigorous statements that women are equal to or even superior to men; but these characters and statements often reflect hopelessly stereotypical attitudes about typical female attributes. It is disconcerting, for example, that in Expanded Universe Heinlein calls for a society where all lawyers and politicians are women, essentially on the grounds that they possess a mysterious feminine practicality that men cannot duplicate."

Reproduction and pregnancy in SF:

Speculative and science fiction writers have often addressed the social, political, technological, and biological consequences of pregnancy and reproduction through the exploration of possible futures or alternative realities.

As real-world reproductive technology has advanced, SF works have become increasingly interested in representing alternative modes of reproduction. Among the uses of pregnancy and reproduction themes regularly encountered in science fiction are:

other modes of sexual reproduction;

parthenogenetic reproduction;

inter-species reproduction;

the use of technology in reproduction;

gender issues and political concerns around reproduction;

large-scale infertility;

horror themes relating to parasitism and slavery.

gender politics.

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Race in SF:

Racial matters have long been a very highly charged category of Politics. Early science-fictional discussions of the problems of race relations would often distance the issues by a metaphorical transfer to the imaginary or Alien societies of Lost Worlds and other planets.

Fantastic Racism:

Fantastic Racism is a subset of the old trick of dealing with thorny issues through metaphor. Instead of having The Hero encounter racism between, say, white and black people in the American Deep South, they encounter "racism" between two-headed aliens and three-headed aliens.

Gender in SF:

Gender has been an important theme explored in speculative fiction. Like all literary forms, the science fiction genre reflects the popular perceptions of the eras in which individual creators were writing; and those creators' responses to gender stereotypes and gender roles.

Single-gender world:

Women-only worlds: There is a long tradition of female-only places in literature and mythology, starting with the Amazons and continuing into some examples of feminist utopias. In speculative fiction, women-only worlds have been imagined to come about, among other approaches, by the action of disease that wipes out men, along with the development of technological or mystical methods that allow women to reproduce parthenogenically. The societies may not necessarily be lesbian, or sexual at all—a famous early sexless example is Herland (1915) by Charlotte Perkins Gilman.

During the pulp era, matriarchal dystopias were relatively common, in which women-only or women-controlled societies were shown unfavorably. In John Wyndham's Consider Her Ways (1956), male rule is shown as being repressive of women, but freedom from patriarchy is only possible in an authoritarian caste-based female-only society. Themyscira, the home island of DC Comics' Amazon superheroine Wonder Woman, was created by William Moulton Marston to allegorize the safety and security of the home where women thrived apart from the hostile, male-dominated workplace. It is governed by "Aphrodite's Law", which states: "Penalty of death to any man attempting to set foot on Themyscira." Kameron Hurley's The Stars are Legion (2017) is set somewhere on the outer rim of the universe, into a mass of decaying world-ships known as the Legion traveling in the seams between the stars. There are no males anywhere in the Legion. Women are given birth by, and live inside, biological entities called Worlds. Women living inside the Worlds become pregnant without sex and give birth to various biological beings and spare parts which are used to keep the Worlds, and thus their civilization, alive and functioning.

Men-only worlds: Men-only societies are much less common. Joanna Russ suggests this is because men do not feel oppressed, and therefore imagining a world free of women does not imply an increase in freedom and is not as attractive.

Ethan of Athos (1986) by Lois Bujold, inspired by the real-world men-only religious society of Mount Athos, shows a world in which men have isolated their planet from the rest of civilization to avoid the "corrupting" effect of women. Children are grown in uterine replicators, using ova derived from tissue cultures; the novel's plot is driven by the declining fertility of these cultures. The main character in Frank Herbert's The White Plague loses his family to terrorist action in Ireland. He responds by developing a biological weapon that kills only women. He warns the world to isolate Ireland to avoid spread of the disease. World leaders do not take the threat seriously and the disease is spread around the world.

Sex segregation: Segregation of the sexes is another relatively common trope of speculative fiction—physical separation can result in societies that are essentially single-sex, although the majority of such works focus on the reunification of the sexes, or otherwise on links that remain between them, as with Sheri S. Tepper's The Gate to Women's Country and David Brin's Glory Season.

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Uplift:

In science fiction, uplift is a developmental process to transform a certain species of animals into more intelligent beings by other, already-intelligent beings. This is usually accomplished by cultural, technological, or evolutional interventions like genetic engineering but any fictional or real process can be used. The earliest appearance of the concept is in H. G. Wells' 1896 novel The Island of Doctor Moreau, and more recently appears in David Brin's Uplift series and other science fiction works. Uplift, most usually through Genetic Engineering, is a useful sf lens through which to re-examine human exploitation of animals.

Prime Directive:

In the fictional universe of Star Trek, the Prime Directive is a guiding principle of Starfleet that prohibits its members from interfering with the natural development of alien civilizations. The Prime Directive protects unprepared civilizations from the dangerous tendency of well-intentioned starship crews to introduce advanced technology, knowledge, and values before they are ready. Since its introduction in the first season of the original Star Trek series, the Prime Directive has been a key plot element of many episodes of the various Star Trek series and served as a recurring moral question over how best to establish diplomatic relations with new alien worlds. The only time the Prime Directive does not apply is when The Omega Directive has been activated.

Elder race:

An elder or progenitor race, in science fiction, fantasy, or horror fiction, is an ancient race that not only preceded but helped shape the races that followed, often playing a significant role in the basis of the story. Humanity may have been descended from them, or they may be a different fictional race, such as elves, dwarves, or aliens. While in some cases, whether they currently exist is unclear, in other instances, members of an elder race still inhabit the world, either openly or in secret. In order to hide their existence, they may make use of a wainscot society, inhabit a parallel universe, only visiting the current one occasionally, or disguise themselves as a fool, deity, magician or trickster.

Elder races are typically either technologically or spiritually powerful, as well as wise. While sometimes benevolent, assisting younger races, they can also often be amoral. They are usually presented as having drifted apart from humanity in the present of the story, sometimes as lost empires whose inhabitants either left their former home for a new one, or were destroyed by a catastrophe and only live on in legend, such as Atlantis. They may appear both as enemies, or as allies against a greater threat.

The idea of an extraterrestrial elder race has been compared to panspermia, the hypothesis that human life may have been extraterrestrial in origin.

Ancient astronauts:

Ancient astronauts (or ancient aliens) refers to a pseudoscientific hypothesis that holds that intelligent extraterrestrial beings visited Earth and made contact with humans in antiquity and prehistoric times. Proponents suggest that this contact influenced the development of modern cultures, technologies, religions, and human biology. A common position is that deities from most, if not all, religions are extraterrestrial in origin and that advanced technologies brought to Earth by ancient astronauts were interpreted as evidence of divine status by early humans. The idea that ancient astronauts existed and visited Earth is not taken seriously by academics and archaeologists, who consider it to be pseudoarchaeological and/or unscientific. It has received no credible attention in peer reviewed studies.

Popularized by Erich von Däniken's 1968 book Chariots of the Godsand its various sequels, which stridently insist that a careful blend of selected archaeological evidence will reveal that this very scenario happened in reality. This theory is often crossed over with Atlantis.

The idea that aliens visited Earth in the past is frequently seen in works of fiction. For example, the comic book Thor considers that all the Norse mythology is based on actual beings living in other dimensions, who were worshipped as gods by the Vikings and who reappear on Earth in modern times. Blood of the Heroes Dragon's Egg Giants series

UFOs:

A common item of Terminology, both inside and outside sf: UFO is an acronym for Unidentified Flying Object. Ufology itself has changed over decades, and may now be thought of almost as three separate disciplines or interpretations of the phenomenon, one of which (the extraterrestrial hypothesis) despite legitimate attempts at scientific investigation, is often straightforward Pseudoscience. The second is a hybrid of aspects of geology and meteorology, and the third deals with Psychology.

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Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence:

Communication with extraterrestrial intelligence (CETI) is a branch of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) that focuses on composing and deciphering interstellar messages that theoretically could be understood by another technological civilization.

Alien language:

The research in these hypothetical languages is variously called exolinguistics, xenolinguistics or astrolinguistics.

Bypassing the issue of language:

Universal translators: In some cases, authors avoid linguistic questions by introducing devices into their stories that seamlessly translate between languages, to the point that the concept of different languages can largely be excluded from the narrative. While a universal translator seems unlikely, scientists continue to work towards similar real-world technologies involving small numbers of known languages.

Universal language: In some cases, the question of language is dealt with through the introduction of a universal language via which most, if not all, of the franchise's species are able to communicate. In some franchises this universal language is an intermediary language; one that different species can easily translate to and from their own languages, thus allowing simple communication between races.

Telepathy:Some science fiction stories imagine communication through telepathy.

Alien Invasion: 

The alien invasion or space invasion is a common feature in science fiction stories and film, in which extraterrestrial lifeforms invade the Earth either to exterminate and supplant human life, enslave it under an intense state, harvest people for food, steal the planet's resources, or destroy the planet altogether.

There are a few ways this can go: The All-Out Attack, The Infiltration, or A combination of the two. Often an allegory for some Earth-based conflict, either one that's happened in the past or one that people fear may happen. The Infiltration is especially popular as a metaphor for the Red Scare.

Voltaire's Micromégas (1752) includes two aliens, from Saturn and Sirius, who are of immense size and visit the Earth out of curiosity. Initially, they believe the planet is uninhabited, due to the comparatively microscopic size of human beings. When they discover the haughty Earth-centric views of Earth philosophers, they are very much amused by how important Earth beings think they are compared to actual titans such as themselves. H. G. Wells's novel The War of the Worlds extended the invasion literature that was already common when science fiction was first emerging as a genre.

A similar trope depicts humans in the role of the "alien" invaders, where humans are the ones invading or attacking extraterrestrial lifeforms.

Beneficial alien invasion:

This theme has also been explored in fiction on rare occasions. With this type of story, the invaders colonize the planet in an effort to spread their culture and "civilize" the indigenous "barbaric" inhabitants or secretly watch and aid earthling,s saving them from themselves. The former theme shares many traits with hostile occupation fiction, but the invaders tend to view the occupied peoples as students or equals rather than subjects and slaves. The latter theme of the secret watcher is a paternalistic/maternalistic theme. In this fiction, the aliens intervene in human affairs to prevent them from destroying themselves.

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First Contact:

First contact is a common science fiction theme about the first meeting between humans and extraterrestrial life, or of any sentient species' first encounter with another one, given they are from different planets or natural satellites. The theme allows writers to explore such topics such as xenophobia, transcendentalism, and basic linguistics by adapting the anthropological topic of first contact to extraterrestrial cultures.

Murray Leinster's 1945 novelette "First Contact" established the term "first contact" in science fiction, although the theme had appeared earlier. Its roots lie in colonial narratives from the Age of Discovery onward.

The potential changes from extraterrestrial contact could vary greatly in magnitude and type, based on the extraterrestrial civilization's level of technological advancement, degree of benevolence or malevolence, and level of mutual comprehension between itself and humanity. The medium through which humanity is contacted, be it electromagnetic radiation, direct physical interaction, extraterrestrial artifact, or otherwise, may also influence the results of contact.

The physical distance between the two civilizations has also been used to assess the cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact. Historical examples show that the greater the distance, the less the contacted civilization perceives a threat to itself and its culture. Therefore, contact occurring within the Solar System, and especially in the immediate vicinity of Earth, is likely to be the most disruptive and negative for humanity. On a smaller scale, people close to the epicenter of contact would experience a greater effect than would those living farther away, and a contact having multiple epicenters would cause a greater shock than one with a single epicenter. Many writers have speculated on the ways in which a friendly civilization might interact with humankind. Albert Harrison, a professor emeritus of psychology at the University of California, thought that a highly advanced civilization might teach humanity such things as a physical theory of everything, how to use zero-point energy, or how to travel faster than light. They suggest that collaboration with such a civilization could initially be in the arts and humanities before moving to the hard sciences, and even that artists may spearhead collaboration.

Futurist Allen Tough suggests that an extremely advanced extraterrestrial civilization, recalling its own past of war and plunder and knowing that it possesses superweapons that could destroy it, would be likely to try to help humans rather than to destroy them. He identifies three approaches that a friendly civilization might take to help humanity:

Intervention only to avert catastrophe: this would involve occasional limited intervention to stop events that could destroy human civilization completely, such as nuclear war or asteroid impact.

Advice and action with consent: under this approach, the extraterrestrials would be more closely involved in terrestrial affairs, advising world leaders and acting with their consent to protect against danger.

Forcible corrective action: the extraterrestrials could require humanity to reduce major risks against its will, intending to help humans advance to the next stage of civilization.

Science fiction films often depict humans successfully repelling alien invasions, but scientists more often take the view that an extraterrestrial civilization with sufficient power to reach the Earth would be able to destroy human civilization with minimal effort. Operations that are enormous on a human scale, such as destroying all major population centers on a planet, bombarding a planet with deadly neutron radiation, or even traveling to another planetary system in order to lay waste to it, may be important tools for a hostile civilization.

It is also speculated that highly advanced civilizations are unlikely to come to Earth to enslave humans, as the achievement of their level of advancement would have required them to solve the problems of labor and resources by other means, such as creating a sustainable environment and using mechanized labor. Moreover, humans may be an unsuitable food source for extraterrestrials because of marked differences in biochemistry. An extraterrestrial civilization may choose to communicate with humanity by means of artifacts or probes rather than by radio, for various reasons. While probes may take a long time to reach the Solar System, once there they would be able to hold a sustained dialogue that would be impossible using radio from hundreds or thousands of light-years away. Radio would be completely unsuitable for surveillance and continued monitoring of a civilization, and should an extraterrestrial civilization wish to perform these activities on humanity, artifacts may be the only option other than to send large, crewed spacecraft to the Solar System.

Given the age of the Milky Way galaxy, an ancient extraterrestrial civilization may have existed and sent probes to the Solar System millions or even billions of years before the evolution of Homo sapiens. Thus, a probe sent may have been nonfunctional for millions of years before humans learn of its existence. Such a "dead" probe would not pose an imminent threat to humanity, but would prove that interstellar flight is possible. However, if an active probe were to be discovered, humans would react much more strongly than they would to the discovery of a probe that has long since ceased to function. The confirmation of extraterrestrial intelligence could have a profound impact on religious doctrines, potentially causing theologians to reinterpret scriptures to accommodate the new discoveries. However, a survey of people with many different religious beliefs indicated that their faith would not be affected by the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence, and another study, conducted by Ted Peters of the Pacific Lutheran Theological Seminary, shows that most people would not consider their religious beliefs superseded by it. Tim Folger speculates that news of radio contact with an extraterrestrial civilization would prove impossible to suppress and would travel rapidly, though Cold War scientific literature on the subject contradicts this. Media coverage of the discovery would probably die down quickly, though, as scientists began to decipher the message and learn its true impact. Different branches of government (for example legislative, executive, and judiciary) may pursue their own policies, potentially giving rise to power struggles. Even in the event of a single contact with no follow-up, radio contact may prompt fierce disagreements as to which bodies have the authority to represent humanity as a whole.

Apart from the question of who would represent the Earth as a whole, contact could create other international problems, such as the degree of involvement of governments foreign to the one whose radio astronomers received the signal. The United Nations discussed various issues of foreign relations immediately before the launch of the Voyager probes, which in 2012 left the Solar System carrying a golden record in case they are found by extraterrestrial intelligence. Among the issues discussed were what messages would best represent humanity, what format they should take, how to convey the cultural history of the Earth, and what international groups should be formed to study extraterrestrial intelligence in greater detail.

Even in the absence of close contact between humanity and extraterrestrials, high-information messages from an extraterrestrial civilization to humanity have the potential to cause a great cultural shock. Sociologist Donald Tarter has conjectured that knowledge of extraterrestrial culture and theology has the potential to compromise human allegiance to existing organizational structures and institutions. Contact with extraterrestrial civilizations would raise legal questions, such as the rights of the extraterrestrial beings. An extraterrestrial arriving on Earth might only have the protection of animal cruelty statutes. Much as various classes of human being, such as women, children, and indigenous people, were initially denied human rights, so might extraterrestrial beings, who could therefore be legally owned and killed. If such a species were not to be treated as a legal animal, there would arise the challenge of defining the boundary between a legal person and a legal animal, considering the numerous factors that constitute intelligence.

If contact were to take place through electromagnetic signals, these issues would not arise. Rather, issues relating to patent and copyright law regarding who, if anyone, has rights to the information from the extraterrestrial civilization would be the primary legal problem. The scientific and technological impact of extraterrestrial contact through electromagnetic waves would probably be quite small, especially at first. However, if the message contains a large amount of information, deciphering it could give humans access to a galactic heritage perhaps predating the formation of the Solar System, which may greatly advance our technology and science. A possible negative effect could be to demoralize research scientists as they come to know that what they are researching may already be known to another civilization.

On the other hand, extraterrestrial civilizations with malicious intent could send information that could enable human civilization to destroy itself, such as powerful computer viruses or information on how to make extremely potent weapons that humans would not yet be able to use responsibly. An extraterrestrial civilization might bring to Earth pathogens or invasive life forms that do not harm its own biosphere. Alien pathogens could decimate the human population, which would have no immunity to them, or they might use terrestrial livestock or plants as hosts, causing indirect harm to humans.