Proto-sci-fi and Early Sci-fi

[Guttersnipe]

During the second century A.D., a Greek-speaking Assyrian named Lucian came out with a book called A True Story, a.k.a. True History. With its themes of interplanetary travel and extraterrestrial life, it has been considered by some to be the first work of science fiction. However, detractors say that it is mere satire and should be only categorized as such.

A True Story - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Then there's Somnium, a novel written in 1608 by Johannes Kepler. It describes viewing Earth from the moon. Like its early proto counterparts, it retains mythical creatures; demons inhabit the moon. This book is probably more well-known.

Somnium (novel) - Wikipedia

en.m.wikipedia.org

Of course, I'm only naming a few early sci-fi/proto-sci-fi stories; there are Japanese and Middle Eastern folktales that include extraterrestrials and automatons while maintaining a mythical background.

Lastly, there's Frankenstein, most popular and scientific of all, though I feel it's not "pure" because it is also a horror tale. Very peculiar, me.

Have any of you wondered about the creation and evolution of sci-fi? Have you read any such stories? What did you think of it?

 

[Venusian Broon]

Interesting. The first one actually reads a lot like most Greek Myth - which has plenty of strange hybrid creatures, bronze automon (a.k.a. robots) made by Hephaestus, and there are tales of men going outwith the Earth as well (I'm thinking of the myth of Phaethon - the first UFO crash story?!?) As such I think Lucian is just using story motifs that were very common at the time. To me it's clearly Fantasy.

The second one you've highlighted is edging towards SF, as it's Kepler partially trying to communicate his view of solar system, but again I'd put it more as a Fantasy, as the SF setting does not seem integral to the story. (Proto Space Opera?)

In my personal opinion, Frankenstein is the first (that I know of) story that focuses on the exploration of a theme in a way that I'd recognise as 'SF' - in this case, roughly 'what if mankind could produce artificial life...' and examining the consequences. It is this that makes it the first 'modern SF'.

(Yes, before you howl me down, she doesn't explain how Victor reanimated dead matter so 'where's the science?!'. But Alastair Reynolds Revelation series, which I think we can fully agree is SF, has big holes in not explaining how a lot of the important stuff, like lighthugger engines or the Inhibitors might work too. )

As for the horror aspect of Frankenstein. Meh. I've read much more horror-like stuff in SF, although I'll readily admit it's probably the time it was written. It's a child of Gothic horror of course so shows it's preceding influences. SF today is a broad church and we pilfer lots of others genres (and long may that continue!)

 

[tobl]

if you want the first recognized then you have cyrano de bergerac who wrote Histoire comique des Estats et empires de la Lune 1657 - and Histoire comique des Estats et empires de la Lune 1642-1655

 

[Finch]

I am interested in the history of science fiction. I have found there is no consensus were to start, and a lot depends on your definition of science fiction. Most old cultures, Hindu, Greek, Egyptian and what have you, have plenty of contenders. Personally, I believe most of the old stories are only science fiction to us. I would call them fantasy or mythology and just look like SF by accident.

In my personal opinion, Frankenstein is the first (that I know of) story that focuses on the exploration of a theme in a way that I'd recognise as 'SF' - in this case, roughly 'what if mankind could produce artificial life...' and examining the consequences. It is this that makes it the first 'modern SF'.
.

I basically support the idea that Mary Shelly wrote the first SF story

 

[tobl]

and there's always the
Mahabharata

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

As ever, Wikipedia has something to say on the matter

History of science fiction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Some interesting contenders - Gilgamesh, Ramayana, and One Thousand and One Nights to name but three.

 

[Venusian Broon]

As ever, Wikipedia has something to say on the matter

History of science fiction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Some interesting contenders - Gilgamesh, Ramayana, and One Thousand and One Nights to name but three.

The article itself states that "one...(can)... identify the genre's roots in early fantastical works such as the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh' (my italics)
suggests that story is really not a contender!

By the logic of finding roots in precursor work, then the Epic of Gilgamesh could be argued to be the start of any or all genres surely? (Or if in doubt, one can always trace your way back to it, as I don't think a detective subplot appeared in Gilgamesh's adventure, but...detective fiction must have came from something else...)

So, no, I don't buy such an argument

Sometimes a work comes along and by force of it's reach, brillance or ignominy recasts everything that comes after it. For example, I believe the Don Quixote is sometimes hailed as a founding work of Western literature and the 'first modern novel'. Such works start movements and conventions in styles, themes, subject matters etc. that I think are better starting places.

 

[AE35Unit]

Jules Verne was the first professional SF writer

 

[tobl]

As ever, Wikipedia has something to say on the matter

History of science fiction - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

Some interesting contenders - Gilgamesh, Ramayana, and One Thousand and One Nights to name but three.

sorry but gilgamesh and 1001 nights might be fantasy but not syfy. as for ramayana the syfy is in mahabarata. this is just an opinion of course

 

[M. Robert Gibson]

And we have another contender

Work from 1616 is 'the first ever science fiction novel'

The Chemical Wedding, a fantastical story of Rosicrucianism by Johann Valentin Andreae, pioneered the genre, says author who has written a new version

www.theguardian.com

Although later on in the article, the claim is refuted.

By the way, I am firmly in the camp of Frankenstein being the first. It's just interesting to read around.

Also, how does one become a "science fiction academic" like professor Farah Mendlesohn?

 

[Randy M.]

[...]In my personal opinion, Frankenstein is the first (that I know of) story that focuses on the exploration of a theme in a way that I'd recognise as 'SF' - in this case, roughly 'what if mankind could produce artificial life...' and examining the consequences. It is this that makes it the first 'modern SF'.

Brian Aldiss agreed. In Billion Year Spree and its revision he cites Frankenstein as the beginning of what we recognize now as science fiction. Not that earlier efforts didn't have an influence as the genre developed.

[...]As for the horror aspect of Frankenstein. Meh. I've read much more horror-like stuff in SF, although I'll readily admit it's probably the time it was written. It's a child of Gothic horror of course so shows it's preceding influences. SF today is a broad church and we pilfer lots of others genres (and long may that continue!)

[begin rant]
S.f. didn't borrow from Gothic, it was born from Gothic like Athena from Zeus's head, as were mystery/detective/crime fiction and horror fiction. IT's all a mishmash and there is no "pure".

If I've argued this before, Guttersnipe, please excuse the repetition, but Phooey! to the notion that s.f. can't be "pure" if it's tainted with acknowledgement of human fear and dread and that the unknown does sometimes have teeth (or tentacles, or just big feet and no inclination to care about what it's stomping on). S.f. often contains an element of the cautionary tale and cautionary tales easily verge on something like a horror story; if you only allow such work into the fold at a discount it pretty much reduces H. G. Wells from a central figure to a fringe component and who's willing to do that? (Go ahead, argue that The War of the Worlds, The Invisible Man, The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau aren't also horror. Ha!) Further, holding that an injection of fear and dread makes your s.f. impure suggests a story including humor would not be "pure", or featuring a romance would not be "pure," or offering a murder mystery would not be "pure", or if there's a horse -- and especially if it's saddled and, god forbid, there's a lariat or a six-shooter -- somewhere in the story, it would not be "pure". Perhaps this is reducto ad absurdum, but the end result of that view suggests if there are any of the elements of fiction about the behavior, attitudes and emotions of humans in science fiction it's somehow not "pure" and wouldn't you be better off reading a textbook?
[/end rant]

So.
There.

Randy M.
(Ever notice how much fun it is to argue vigorously about something with such low stakes?)

 

[Extollager]

I'd sympathize with a notion of science fiction that factors in the social prestige of "natural philosophy"/scientific method that arose, I suppose, in the English-speaking world at least, in the 17th century. I'd be doubtful about characterizing anything as "science fiction" that predated that social development. It could be "proto-sf," though. Though I didn't much care for Frankenstein (what a weepy book), I am pretty comfortable with the convenient notion of it as the first sf novel at least in English.

 

[Finch]

I'm sure all of the members of this site know that the name Science Fiction, comes from a blanket clarification for magazines published after 1926. One of the first being Amazing Stories, that contained a mix of fiction and articles on science and technology of the day. The market audience was largely young boys and the stories reflect that. So, you could argue that the expansion of the definition of SF way beyond its origins and to expand it respectably is actually wrong.

 

[Timebender]

Really, the whole science fiction/fantasy distinctions is very blurry, so it's hard to find the first "science fiction that isn't fantasy" story. Concepts that seem like fantasy to us today were really believed by people long ago, so by their standards they were the stuff of science fiction. Even toady, fantasy works with magic systems where there are strict rules, and pseudo-cosmological sources for the magic, could be argued as a kind of science fiction.

 

[Guttersnipe]

Really, the whole science fiction/fantasy distinctions is very blurry, so it's hard to find the first "science fiction that isn't fantasy" story. Concepts that seem like fantasy to us today were really believed by people long ago, so by their standards they were the stuff of science fiction. Even toady, fantasy works with magic systems where there are strict rules, and pseudo-cosmological sources for the magic, could be argued as a kind of science fiction.

That last bit: Robert A. Heinlein wrote a series in which there were strict rules to magic and it's basically an energy; it's been categorized as science fantasy.

 

[tobl]

That last bit: Robert A. Heinlein wrote a series in which there were strict rules to magic and it's basically an energy; it's been categorized as science fantasy.

oh? which book is that? magic inc.?

 

[Guttersnipe]

oh? which book is that? magic inc.?

I believe so.

 

[Don]

Here's the first Chronology page from The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction:

1516 Thomas More, Utopia
1627 Francis Bacon, New Atlantis
1634 Johannes Kepler, A Dream
1638 Francis Godwin, The Man in the Moone
1686 Bernard de Fontenelle, Discussion of the Plurality of Worlds
1741 Ludvig Holberg, Nils Klim
1752 Voltaire, Micromégas
1771 Louis-Sebastien Mercier, The Year 2440
1805 Cousin de Grainville, The Last Man
1818 Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
1826 Mary Shelley, The Last Man
1827 Jane Webb Loudon, The Mummy! A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century
1848 Edgar Allan Poe, Eureka
1865 Jules Verne, From the Earth to the Moon
1870 Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas
1871 George T. Chesney, ‘The Battle of Dorking’
1871 Edward Bulwer-Lytton,The Coming Race
1887 Camille Flammarion, Lumen
1887 W. H. Hudson, A Crystal Age
1888 Edward Bellamy, Looking Backward, 2000–1887
1889 Mark Twain, A Connecticut Yankee at King Arthur’s Court
1890 William Morris, News from Nowhere
1895 H. G. Wells, The Time Machine
1896 H. G. Wells, The Island of Dr Moreau
1897 Kurd Lasswitz, On Two Planets
1898 H. G. Wells, The War of the Worlds
1901 H. G. Wells, The First Men in the Moon
1901 M. P. Shiel, The Purple Cloud

http://assets.cambridge.org/97805218/16267/frontmatter/9780521816267_frontmatter.pdf

 

[pogopossum]

Finch's comment is to the point.
As is the choice of either Mary Shelley or Jules Verne.
To be legitimate any retro catagorization of a work or author as being "The first" should link the creation with what later became a recognized genre. You can take elements of historic literature and call it science fiction. But unless you connect it to later work as either inspiration or a continuity of creation you are pointing to similar elements, not the start of a type of literature.
As a popular inspiration to later writers you could include Wells. But Verne wrote From The Earth - - - 25 years before Time Machine. And any literate writer read it and/or other Vernes. As had many fans.
Frankenstein has too many SF elements to ignore. And even if you could argue that a lot of later creators & fans had not read it, still it was popular and was in the general domain of readers/writers.
So why even argue "The First?" I could use a different line of argument & credit Verne even more strongly. He used the term, ""Roman de la Science". Sounds pretty familiar hmm?
The discussion is interesting to me not in terms of specific credit, but as an acknowledgement that what became known with a specific handle had (as described in lots of the above posts) lots of approaches and/or ideas that were common to earlier literature and myth.

 

[tobl]

Here's the first Chronology page from The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction:

utopia is not syfy. and they're missing the works of cyrano de bergerac