A History of Science Fiction:
Pioneers and Kissing Cousins
Pioneers and Kissing Cousins: (1814-1890): dominated by the
gothic strain of the Romantic as embodied by Shelley, Hawthorne,
and Poe
Pioneers and Kissing Cousins
Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley (1797-1851) was just 19 when she wrote
Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818) as her entry in
a competition to tell ghost stories.
Frankenstein is generally recognized as the first true
science fiction novel.
The monster is a product of a scientific experiment gone bad.
The novel combines social criticism with new scientific
ideas
Edgar Allen Poe
Edgar Allen Poe (1809-49), a gothic writer is considered the
father of both the short story and the detective story.
His best stories are horror or detective fiction. However,
he did contribute to the genre:
* "The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar" deals with the quasi-
scientific theory of mesmerism
* The Narrative of A. Gordon Pym (1836)--is a novel about
a sea voyage into the unknown with science fiction trappings
Nathanial Hawthorne
Nathanial Hawthorne (1804-64) was a writer of gothic fantasy
and also a master of the short story.
Both "The Birthmark" (1843) and "Rappaccini's Daughter"
(1844) contain elements of scientific experiments; however,
Hawthorne was always more concerned with guilt and innocence
than with science
Jules Verne
Jules Verne (1828-1905), a Frenchman, was influenced by Poe
in his use of scientific details and his choice of the outsider
as hero. His novels are full of scientific gadgetry.
He did not invent science fiction but was the first to
succeed at it commercially with novels such as:
* Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864)
* Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870)
Lewis Carroll
Lewis Carroll 1832-98) was the pen name of the Victorian
mathematician Charles Lutwidge Dodgson. His most famous works:
* Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865)
* Through the Looking Glass (1871
are not science fiction, but in their surrealism relate to
several aspects of science fiction.
Alice, like Gulliver demonstrates C. S. Lewis' dictum: "To
tell how odd things strick odd people is to have an oddity too
many."
Edwin A. Abbott
Edwin A. Abbott wrote Flatland (1884), about a
two-dimensional society. The work is science fiction in content,
but not in form, being straight expository prose
Robert Louis Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson's contribution to science fiction is
the novella
"The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde" (1886)
Edward Bulwer-Litton
Bulwer-Litton is the author of The Coming Race (1871), a
utopia about an underground race of supermen.
Samuel Butler
Butler wrote Erewhon [nowhere spelled backwards](1872), a
satirical utopia.
Edward Bellamy
Bellamy (1850-98) wrote Looking Backward (1888), about a man
who wakes up in the year 2000 in the Boston of the future.
In this work Bellamy predicts future technological
developments without grasping their possible social
repercussions.
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