Sense of wonder

Feeling invoked when appreciating works of science fiction

A sense of wonder (sometimes jokingly written sensawunda) is an intellectual and emotional state frequently invoked in discussions of science and biology, higher consciousness, science fiction, and philosophy. TOC

This entry focuses on one specific use of the phrase "sense of wonder." This phrase is widely used in contexts that have nothing to do with science fiction. The following relates to the use of "sense of wonder" within the context of science fiction. In Brave New Words: The Oxford Dictionary of Science Fiction the term sense of wonder is defined as follows:

Jon Radoff has characterised a sense of wonder as an emotional reaction to the reader suddenly confronting, understanding, or seeing a concept anew in the context of new information. In the introductory section of his essay 'On the Grotesque in Science Fiction', Istvan Csicsery Ronay Jr., Professor of English, DePauw University, states:

John Clute and Peter Nicholls associate the experience with that of the "conceptual breakthrough" or "paradigm shift" (Clute & Nicholls 1993). In many cases, it is achieved through the recasting of previous narrative experiences in a larger context. It can be found in short scenes (e. g., in Star Wars (1977), it can be found, in a small dose, inside the line "That's no moon; it's a space station.") and it can require entire novels to set up (as in the final line to Iain Banks's Feersum Endjinn.) George Mann defines the term as "the sense of inspired awe that is aroused in a reader when the full implications of an event or action become realized, or when the immensity of a plot or idea first becomes known;" and he associates the term with the Golden Age of SF and the pulp magazines prevalent at the time. One of the major writers of the Golden Age, Isaac Asimov, agreed with this association: in 1967 commenting on the changes occurring in SF he wrote,

Sharona Ben Tov in her book The Artificial Paradise: Science Fiction and American Reality explores science fiction's (SF) 'sense of wonder' from a feminist perspective. Her book is a "thought provoking work of criticism that provides a new and interesting perspective on some basic elements in science fiction," including the 'sense of wonder'. In his review of Ben Tov's work for the SF critical journal Extrapolation David Dalgleish, quoting from the text, points out that: