Advancement of technology and science and its influence on science fiction novelsThe rapid pace of technology and the advancement of scientific understanding in over the last hundred years are the basis of the distinctive twentieth century. genre: science fiction. Such rapid advancements in these technological areas have literally opened up worlds of possibilities for the future. A hundred years ago, the ability to simply fly from city to city seemed to most only a distant futuristic dream. Just sixty years later, the impossible was achieved: a human being on the moon. Since technology has brought as many changes as it has in the last hundred years, the next hundred years should be completely incomprehensible to everyone. Who knows what to expect? “Modern discoveries and applications of science throw deep into the shadow the old novels and fanciful legends of our childhood” (James 8), James observes. Technology has made what was once considered impossible, plausible, and whether or not technology is directly incorporated into a science fiction story as an obvious vehicle, the author knows it is always present in the reader's mind. It is this plausibility of what should not be conventionally acceptable that has led to the growing popularity of science fiction over the years. As James explains, “much of SF is concerned with the future and the possibilities presented by scientific and technological change” (James 3). In reality, the exploration and even colonization of other worlds by humans, the plot of many science fiction novels, has for many become inevitable. The successful series of Apollo moon landings in the 1960s and the knowledge that we already have the technology to send humans to other worlds leads many to believe that it is only a matter of time. Even such a respectable news source as Newsweek detailed future admissions of humans to Mars (September 23, 1996). When I look forward to the future, I find it hard to imagine the changes that will occur as a result of new scientific and technological discoveries. With so many possibilities for the future, science fiction is able to take advantage of them by showing audiences entirely new worlds and alternatives to our own. The technology presented in science fiction stories most often plays a very important role in the plausibility of the stories to the audience. While this does not mean that technology is necessarily at the center of such stories, it is often used as the vehicle for which such alternative and wondrous events occur. Without the advanced spacecraft, how could the Segnaut have reached the planet ?