Suvin anchors science fiction on what he terms the Cards/Novum, the ==“strange newness”== at the heart of a science fiction work. The novum is the fantastic element of a text, the point of difference between a science fiction text and the reality in which the text exists.
A work can, of course, have multiple nova, ranging from people to creatures to technology to places to physical laws and phenomena.
The novum follows the logic of science fiction: in a good science fiction story, the novum has a ==“literary” resonance==–it carries a kind of social, cultural, or symbolic meaning with it–but exists in the world of the story through ==scientific logic and rules. ==
When we see Godzilla, we think of a metaphor for the atom bomb, a wild force of power and destruction, but he exists in the world of the text as a mutant creature, an accident of genetics. And the best science fiction stories ==portray the metaphorical and logical sides of the novum as in harmony with each other==: Godzilla is mutated, usually, by radiation from the atom bomb, so even in the world of the text, he is the embodied power of the weapon that he represents.