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Abstract
Science fiction, as a genre or division of literature, distinguishes its fictional world to one degree or another from the world in which we actually live; a fiction of the imagination rather than observed reality; a fantastic literature.
Science fiction reconfigures symbolism for our materialist age. It is this materialism once again that distinguishes the effectiveness of the science fiction’s use of symbol from the widespread use of symbolism in other literature. E.g. the trope of the Invisible Man is one we might think of as a classical science fiction novum. H.G.Wells wrote a short novel on this theme in 1897. The difference between this science fiction and Ralph Ellison’s celebrated novel of Black American experience, also called Invisible Man (1952) a book never described as science fiction- has to do with the operation of this novum in the text itself. Ellison’s protagonist is invisible because people simply don’t see him, and they don’t see him because he is black. His point, in other words, is to express metaphorically through the trope of the invisible man, the social invisibility and alienation that are part of the experience of being black in America.