“At the core of SF lies the experience of science” (Gregory Benford)
Hard SF is indeed a special branch of literature and it seems to be attached to some specific beliefs.
First, SF is from its beginning firmly anchored to a strong belief in science and technology: the soaring of SF matched the industrial development of the occidental countries. It is no coincidence that the pioneers of the genre, like H. G. Wells, wrote their books while the burgeoning industrialization was advancing at a fast pace. And nowadays, as ecological problems are rising and science is sometime regarded defiantly, more and more SF fans are turning toward Fantasy, a subgenre that uses more magic than science and dwells in some nostalgia of the past.
Second, SF wants to deal with worlds which are not metaphors in the first place, but real things. The described universe has to be realistic, so the reader can say: “If I could go to that planet, to that star, things would be indeed like that.” SF stands firmly upon empirical grounds, it deals with something to be done, to realize: it deals more with action than with dreams – even if this action represents often the fulfillment of a dream.
Thinking about these two premises, it occurred to me that the Anglo-Saxon world seems to be more attuned to action than the Latin one. In a sense that seems strange, because these countries were heavily influenced by the Roman who were rather men of action, as opposed to the Greek who provided the best philosophers, poets and artists. But the influence of Greek culture around the Mediterranean Sea was probably heavier than the Latin’s one. We can see the difference between Latin and Anglo-Saxon way of thinking emerging centuries ago, during the Middle-Age. For example, Northern Europe referred to written language whereas Southern Europe preferred the oral one. If I take the history of France as an example, there was the quarrel between Oil language in the North and Oc language in the South. The Langue d’Oc was the tongue of the ballades used by minstrels and troubadours who went from castle to castle singing songs and poems. It is said that eventually the Oil officially won, but I wonder if at heart the French people did not remain romantic troubadours thinking in Oc and dreaming of the good old times… In any case, that is the way most people see them nowadays, isn’t it?
In my opinion, SF has something to do with utilitarianism, which was an English idea invented by Jeremy Bentham in 1781, and then this philosophy was developed by John Stuart Mill. But Bentham himself was inspired by two empiricist philosophers: David Hume and John Locke. Hume, who wrote A Treatise of Human Nature in 1739, strove to create a total naturalistic "science of man" that examined the psychological basis of human nature. John Locke, known as the Father of Liberalism, wrote Questions Concerning the Law of Nature toward 1664.
The fact that these ideas are somewhat far from the main philosophical currents in Southern Europe could explain why the seeds of SF could find a rich ground in the Anglo-Saxon literary soil and grew quickly there, while they vegetated poorly in the Latin countries.
