Genre

Science Fiction

Also Known As sci-fi · SF

Speculative and Fantastic Fiction

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 Origin

19th-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 Example

Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Seas (1870), noted for its attention to detail and scientific accuracy. 1

Defining Trait

A genre of speculative fiction that imagines advanced and futuristic changes in technology, scientific knowledge or biological systems. 1

FAQs

What separates science fiction from fantasy and earlier speculative writing?

Plausible science and technology set it apart from earlier speculative writing and from fantasy and horror.

Scientific and technological plausibility. Britannica notes that writers in antiquity sometimes dealt with themes common to modern science fiction, but their stories made no attempt at scientific and technological plausibility, and that this is the feature that distinguishes science fiction from earlier speculative writings and from contemporary speculative genres such as fantasy and horror.

Who is seen as the clearest forerunner of science fiction?

Britannica names Cyrano de Bergerac as the genre's clearest forerunner.

Britannica names the 17th-century writer Cyrano de Bergerac as the clearest forerunner of the genre. It adds that earlier flights of fancy, or fantastic tales, offered a popular format for satirizing government, society and religion while evading libel suits, censorship and persecution.

Connections

Associated With

Mary Shelley

Frankenstein (1818) is credited with helping define, and by some accounts originate, the science fiction novel.

Source Science Fiction (Wikipedia)

Utopian and Dystopian Fiction

Source Encyclopaedia Britannica

Encompasses Form

Africanfuturism

Afrofuturism

Alternate History

Biopunk

Christian Science Fiction

Climate Fiction

Cyberpunk

Dieselpunk

Feminist Science Fiction

Hard Science Fiction

Hopepunk

Mecha

Merveilleux Scientifique

Military Science Fiction

Mundane Science Fiction

New Wave (Science Fiction)

Pastoral Science Fiction

Planetary Romance

Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

Science Fiction Comedy

Scientific Romance

Slipstream Fiction

Social Science Fiction

Features Author

William Gibson

Source Wikipedia: William Gibson

Yevgeny Zamyatin

Source Wikipedia: Yevgeny Zamyatin

Showing 51 to 52 of 52 in Features Author, page 2 of 2.

In the Other Atlases

Originated In

United Kingdom

Also in Geography Atlas: where this subject originated.

Source Encyclopaedia Britannicatier 1

Sources

1. Science Fiction (Wikipedia)

Wikimedia Foundation

Definitions 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.