Science fiction explores the imagined consequences of scientific and technological change through settings, inventions or phenomena that extrapolate from real or plausible science. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818), whose protagonist is a practicing man of science working with the era's advanced study of galvanic electricity, is widely credited as the genre's first novel, predating Jules Verne's Extraordinary Voyages and H. G. Wells's scientific romances by decades. The genre's own name arrived later: the publisher and editor Hugo Gernsback coined scientifiction in 1923 and settled on science fiction by 1929, after founding Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted to the genre, in 1926.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) is widely credited as the genre's first novel, but some scholars date science fiction proper only from Jules Verne and H. G. Wells's later, more technologically explicit work, reading Frankenstein instead as Gothic or proto-science-fiction.
Facts
Place of Origin19th-century England; Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826) helped define the form, and Brian Aldiss has argued Frankenstein was the first true work of science fiction. 1 Notable ExampleJules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), noted for its attention to detail and scientific accuracy. 1 Defining TraitA genre of speculative fiction that imagines advanced and futuristic changes in technology, scientific knowledge or biological systems. 1 Connections
Associated With
Mary Shelley, Authors Frankenstein (1818) is credited with helping define, and by some accounts originate, the science fiction novel.
Source Science Fiction (Wikipedia)
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encompasses Form
Features Author
Source Blindness (Wikipedia)
Widely credited, including by scholar Brian Aldiss, as the first true science fiction novel.
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
Source Gulliver's Travels (Wikipedia)
Frankenstein (1818) is widely credited by scholars, including Brian Aldiss, as the first true science fiction novel, for grounding its horror in contemporary scientific debate over galvanism rather than the supernatural alone.
Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
Source Naked Lunch (Wikipedia)
Source Slaughterhouse-Five (Wikipedia)
Sources
1. Science Fiction (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationDefinitions section
Science fiction (often shortened to sci-fi or abbreviated SF) is the genre of speculative fiction that imagines advanced and futuristic changes in technology, scientific knowledge, or biological systems.
Literature, 19th century section
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826) helped to define the form of the science fiction novel. Brian Aldiss has argued that Frankenstein was the first work of science fiction. Jules Verne was noted for his attention to detail and scientific accuracy, especially in the novel Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870).
Associated With: Mary Shelley
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826) helped to define the form of the science fiction novel.
View the Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Encyclopaedia Britannica, Inc.- s.v. science fiction
- Associated With: Utopian and Dystopian Fiction, s.v. Utopian and dystopian fiction
View the Source The Norton Anthology of World Literature
W. W. Norton & Company- Features Author: Mary Shelley
- Features Author: Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus
Slaughterhouse-Five (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationFeatures Author: Slaughterhouse-Five, Lead section, genreQuote, Features Author: Slaughterhouse-Five, Lead section, genre
is a 1969 semi-autobiographic science fiction-infused anti-war novel by Kurt Vonnegut
Gulliver's Travels (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationFeatures Author: Gulliver's Travels, Lead section, genre (science fiction)Quote, Features Author: Gulliver's Travels, Lead section, genre (science fiction)
Satire, fantasy, Science fiction, traveller's tale
Blindness (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationFeatures Author: Blindness, Wikipedia categoriesQuote, Features Author: Blindness, Wikipedia categories
1995 science fiction novels; Social science fiction
Naked Lunch (Wikipedia)
Wikimedia FoundationFeatures Author: Naked Lunch, Infobox, Genre fieldQuote, Features Author: Naked Lunch, Infobox, Genre field
Science fiction
Reader Challenges (0)
No disputes yet. Spotted an error or a better source? Open the first one.
Sign in to dispute this or suggest a correction.