SOURCE: “Counter-Projects: William Morris and the Science Fiction of the 1880s,” in Socialism and the Literary Artistry of William Morris, edited by Florence S. Boos and Carole G. Silver, University of Missouri Press, 1990, pp. 88-97.

In the following essay, Suvin contends that utopian fiction is a subgenre of science fiction, using William Morris's News from Nowhere and Victorian science fiction of the 1880s as evidence to support this position.

Historically, there is a very intimate connection between utopian fiction and other forms of what I have called science fiction in a larger sense, such as the extraordinary voyage, technological anticipation, anti-utopia and dystopia, among others. I have in fact argued that if science fiction is taken in that sense, then utopian fiction is not only, beyond a reasonable doubt, one of the historical roots of science fiction, but it can also be, logically if retroactively, subsumed into science...