Charting Problems through Stories and Science Fiction

When scholars tackle the theorical problems presented by fiction and stories, they usually do so either from a philosophical standpoint or from a narratological one. This normally results in a partial or incomplete analysis. In this paper the two perspectives will be combined to achieve a theoretical account of how fiction can help to explore and chart problems in a narrative framework, getting in touch with them before moving to a more structured analysis in more specialized fields. To this end, I will analyse the genre of Science Fiction, which, thanks to its peculiar combination of scientific material with fictional one, will be the perfect case study. This line of research will show how fiction and non-fiction can be used concurrently to better understand the theorical challenges scholars can face in their work.