SOURCE: "Science and Fiction," in Bridges to Science Fiction, George E. Slusser, George R. Guffey, Mark Rose, eds., Southern Illinois University Press, 1980, pp. 3-21.

In the following essay, Levin offers his view of the affinities between modern fiction and science.

Since my three-word title echoes those two nouns which denote the subject of this symposium, it should be self-evident that my own key-word is the conjunction between them. Not that I would wish to put asunder what has clearly been compounded with so much imagination, industry, and ingenuity. The copula is merely my confession that I have little right to expatiate on the compound. Though I have had frequent opportunity to read and write and talk about various forms of fiction, my encounters with the genre that we have been invited to discuss—enjoyable and instructive as they may have been—have been somewhat casual and slight. As...