Before science fiction (SF) there existed travellers' tales. Somewhere, out there, around the partially explored world, existed strange cultures, exotic fauna and flora, perhaps even sea monsters .
Science fiction was made possible only by the rise of modern science itself, notably the revolutions in astronomy and physics . Aside from the age-old genre of fantasy literature, which does not qualify, there were notable precursors:
Most notable of all is Mary Shelley 's Frankenstein , first published in 1818 . In his book Billion Year Spree, Brian Aldiss claims that Frankenstein represents "the first seminal work to which the label SF can be logically attached". It is also the first of the " mad scientist " subgenre. Another futuristic Shelley novel, The Last Man , is also often cited as the first true science fiction novel.
Early science fiction
Europe
The European brand of science fiction proper began, however, toward the end of the 19th century with the scientific romances of Jules Verne , whose science was rather on the level of invention , as well as the science-oriented novels of social criticism by H.G. Wells .
Wells and Verne had quite a few rivals in early science fiction. Short stories and novelettes with themes of fantastic imagining appeared in journals throughout the late 19th century and many of these employed scientific ideas as the springboard to the imagination. Erewhon is a novel by Samuel Butler published in 1872 and dealing with the concept that machines could one day become sentient and supplant the human race. Although better known for other works, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also wrote early science fiction. The only book in which Charles Dickens ventured into the territory of science speculation and strange mysteries of this nature (as opposed to the clearly supernatural ghosts of Christmas) was in his novel Bleak House ( 1852 ) wherein Dickens had one of his characters die by Spontaneous Human Combustion . Dickens carefully researched recorded cases of spontaneous combustion before writing about the subject and was able to answer the skeptics who were outraged by his novel.
Wells and Verne both had an international readership and influenced writers in America, especially. Soon a home-grown American science fiction was thriving. European writers found more readers by selling to the American market and writing in an Americanised style.
The next great British science fiction writer after H. G. Wells was Olaf Stapledon ( 1886 to 1950 ), whose four major works Last and First Men ( 1930 ), Odd John ( 1935 ), Star Maker ( 1937 ), and Sirius ( 1940 ), introduced a myriad of ideas that writers have since adopted.
Later, the works of John Wyndham (real name: John Wyndham Parkes Lucas Beynon Harris) ( 1903 to 1969 ) gained a great deal of popular and critical acclaim. Wyndham also wrote under the pen-names of John Beynon, John Beynon Harris, Johnson Harris, Lucas Parkes and Wyndham Parkes. John Wyndham also liked to refer to science fiction by the name logical fantasy .
Before the Second World War John Wyndham wrote almost exclusively for American pulp magazines but after the war he became famous, under the name John Wyndham, to the general public beyond the narrow audience of science fiction fans. This fame came initially from his novels The Day of the Triffids ( 1951 ), The Kraken Wakes ( 1953 ), The Chrysalids ( 1955 ), and The Midwich Cuckoos ( 1957 ) . America
In America Mark Twain wrote one novel which explores themes of science in a fictionalised form, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court . By means of "transmigration of souls", "transposition of epochs -- and bodies" Twain's yankee is transported back in time and all his knowledge of 19th century technology with him. The results are catastrophic as the chivalry of King Arthur's aristocracy is subverted by the increased killing power afforded by such things as Gatling Guns, barbed wire and explosives. Written in 1889 , A Connecticut Yankee seems to predict events which would take place 25 years later in 1914 , when Europe's old ideas of chivalry in warfare would be shattered beyond repair by the weapons and tactics of World War I .
Jack London wrote several science fiction stories, including The Red One (a story involving extraterrestrials), The Iron Heel (set in the future from London's point of view) and The Unparalleled Invasion (a story involving future germ warfare and ethnic cleansing ). He also wrote a story about invisibility and a story about an irresistible energy weapon .These stories impacted and began to change the features of science fiction.
Edgar Rice Burroughs ( 1875 - 1950 ) began writing science fiction for pulp magazines just before World War I, getting his first story Under the Moons of Mars published in 1912 . He continued to publish adventure stories, many of them science fiction, throughout the rest of his life. The pulps published adventure stories of all kinds. Science fiction stories had to fit in alongside murder mysteries , horror , fantasy and Edgar Rice Burroughs' own Tarzan .
The development of American science fiction as a self-conscious genre dates (in part) from 1926 , when Hugo Gernsback founded Amazing Stories magazine, which was devoted exclusively to science fiction stories. Since he is notable for having chosen the variant term scientifiction to describe this incipient genre, the stage in the genre's development, his name and the term "scientifiction" are often thought to be inextricably linked. Published in this and other pulp magazines with great and growing success, such scientifiction stories were not viewed as serious literature but as sensationalism. Nevertheless, a magazine devoted entirely to science fiction was a great boost to the public awareness of the scientific speculation story.