Science Fiction

Science fiction is often described as a genre of imaginative literature in which the events of the narrative are scientifically possible, as opposed to events that are magical, supernatural, or fantastical. Though not the most common genre historically used by US Latino writers, it has still had a strong presence. It has generally been overshadowed, though, by magical realism, a type of fantastic story in which magical events are seamlessly intertwined with a realistic narrative. The twenty-first century has, nevertheless, brought with it a burgeoning interest in Latino science fiction, as its creation has increased along with a body of scholarship that is recovering and critically analyzing past science fiction works. Science fiction is a large field and contains multiple subgenres (alien encounters, outer space voyages, dystopian fiction, and so on) and Latino writers have made use of them all. Furthermore, despite its designation as a “fiction,” science fiction is a multimedia field, and Latinos have been engaged in creating not only science fiction literature, but also comics, film, and television. Latino science fiction, as does much of science fiction, often takes current trends and extrapolates them into the future, and the themes that appear are of particular interest to Latino communities including migration, colonialism, and racism; Spanglish and code-switching; and encounters between Latinos and other ethnic groups. Latino writers are finding that science fiction is one of the most dynamic ways to imagine a Latino future.