A rose by any other name.

I just picked up my copy of The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction - no easy task, at 1395 pages and 2 and 7/8 inches thick in trade paperback it's big enough to use as a bookend - and, in a moment of whimsy, looked up the term "Science Fiction". Surprisingly, there's no entry, and I couldn't seem to find anything in the Introduction or the "Contents of This Book". 

Oddly enough, there are listings for alternative names, such as the British "scientific romance" of the pre-WWII years, and the original "Scientifiction" of Hugo Gernsback's invention - even a quick hit-and-run on "sci-fi", apparently now being pronounced "skiffy" - but no actual definatory entry on "science fiction". You'd think if you were going to knock off close to 1500 pages on a topic, you'd spare a word or two on what it was you were discussing. 

 All right, then, what is science fiction? 

 Many of the available definitions seem to aim more at distinguishing SF from fantasy than anything else. Chapters, the major Canadian book chain, separates the two genres into separate sections, albeit with mixed success. I recently suggested to an undeserving victim who was ringing up my purchases that, as a basic rule of thumb, the ones with space ships on the covers are often SF, and the ones with dragons are usually fantasy. (Not a hard distinction, but a useful filter for the uninitiated.) 

However, there are obviously more subtle distinctions in play at Chapters: Batman novelizations are in the science fiction section, whereas Spiderman is fantasy. Hmmm... 

But, I digress - space ships and dragons aside, is there a functioning definition of science fiction in play? Thanks to Google™, we are quickly presented with over two million links for the search terms "science fiction definitions". (Apparently a few people have an opinion on this.) For the most part, I suspect that most people, albeit unwittingly, use the Damon Knight definition:

Science fiction means what we point to when we say it.

In other words, whatever we want to be SF, is. Personally, in spite of all the involved, thoughtful, and philosophical definitions that have been put forward, I've always had a strong affection for Philip K. Dick's take on the question, from the introduction to The Golden Man:

The SF writer sees not just possibilities but wild possibilities. It's not just "What if–", it's "My God, what if–!"

And we shall proceed on that basis - it's not just "what if".

- Sid