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Scientific Romance

Speculative and Fantastic Fiction

Scientific romance is an archaic, mainly British term for the genre of fiction now commonly known as science fiction. The term originated in the 1850s to describe both fiction and elements of scientific writing, but came to refer to the science fiction of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, primarily that of Jules Verne, H. G. Wells and Arthur Conan Doyle. In recent years the term has also come to be applied to science fiction written in a deliberately anachronistic style as homage to or pastiche of the original scientific romances.

Facts
Notable Example
The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle (1912) 1
Defining Trait
British writers minimised individual heroes, took an evolutionary perspective, held a bleak view of the future 1
Connections

Form Of Genre

Sources
1. Scientific romance, Wikipedia
  • 20th century section
    The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, published in 1912, is commonly referred to as a scientific romance.
  • Definitions section
    the British writers tended to minimise the role of individual 'heroes', took an 'evolutionary perspective', held a bleak view of the future, and had little interest in space as a new frontier.
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