The first SF Story?

[knivesout]

Like I said, I think a prime criterion is whether a story was written as a conscious attempt to extrapolate a possible, or at least believable future. Or to follow up on speculative possibilities of technology - which is where Mary Shelley comes in!

[Stalker]

Originally Posted by Leto

Gilgamesh tales, and later Ovid ones were already perceived as fiction (involving mythological characters) but without religious undertone. Even some Plato's work could qualify too.

Disputable. Gilgamesh was a historical person for Sumers in spite of all his miraclous adventures in the search of immortality. Aeneus was a real proto_Roman for Romans and his history was taken for granted. Many of serious Roman historians simply included that story into their works and Romans were practical men but belived in those lotophagos or people with canine heads and even mapped them on the edges on the known world.

Originally Posted by Leto

If you think to Cyrano, you should mention first Rabelais's Gargantua, Pantagruel and Le tiers livres novels, about one century earlier. Or Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy in the XIIIth century.

Well, I like both naturalism of Francois Rabelais and dark poetic fantasies of Great Dante Alighieri but those books being fictional (that goes ithout saying) didn't possess one more feature that classical SF has. Description of technology and that what Cyrano's story has in abundance. Gargaintua is more a satire, a pamphlet, and Divine Comedy might fall within Gothic genre - so we may consider them as sch-fi in a way, but not as the classical sci-fi.

[Leto]

Originally Posted by Stalker

Disputable. Gilgamesh was a historical person for Sumers in spite of all his miraclous adventures in the search of immortality. Aeneus was a real proto_Roman for Romans and his history was taken for granted. Many of serious Roman historians simply included that story into their works and Romans were practical men but belived in those lotophagos or people with canine heads and even mapped them on the edges on the known world.

Aenus story was told by Virgil, not Ovid. And he didn't believe in it, was a political PR job done for the current Caesar.

[Stalker]

I alo suggest that we agree upon criteria of sci-fi. It will make our dispute easier.

My criterion for SF is Astounding stories about amazing or miraclous events that are related with attempt to construct or reconstruct technologies or rational reasons for above events that happened in the past or will happen in the future or the stories that use the above events as background for their on purpose (whatever it might be) and are persepted by readers as the product of pure fantasy.

[Stalker]

Originally Posted by Leto

Aenus story was told by Virgil, not Ovid. And he didn't believe in it, was a political PR job done for the current Caesar.

My bad! That was Virgil. Although Ovid also mentions Aeneus in his "Facts", Book Four. As to Virgil, he based his poem on earlier tesatments by Hellanicus and Damastus supported by Aristotle. So whatever PR action it was, it was published after Virgil's death in 19 AD when the Caesar already was Tiberius. So, my point is that Aeneus' story was rooted deeply in Roman consciousness.
If you meant "Metamorphos" by Ovid. Sorry, never read it.

[Leto]

Originally Posted by Stalker

My bad! That was Virgil. Although Ovid also mentions Aeneus in his "Facts", Book Four. As to Virgil, he based his poem on earlier tesatments by Hellanicus and Damastus supported by Aristotle. So whatever PR action it was, it was published after Virgil's death in 19 AD when the Caesar already was Tiberius. So, my point is that Aeneus' story was rooted deeply in Roman consciousness.
If you meant "Metamorphos" by Ovid. Sorry, never read it.

And what I meant is that Virgil and others before him certainly believed that a guy named Aeneus came to Latium, but he didn't think he was Venus' son not - more sacrilege - that Remus and Romolus were breastfed by a wolf. They thought it was allegorical tales to seduce the populace. In this precise case, to convince Roman population that the Caesar was of divine origine IIRC my law history lessons (was more interested in the private law part and its funny customs than public law)

Have a look at Ovid and Aesope's Fables, they worth the read.

Good idea to set a common criterium, but I'd try to get any religion out of the way.

[Stalker]

All right, your point of vew is understood. Inlike all Ancient people, Romans were purely practical people and took all the stories above as fictionous. Then we shoul seek the sources of SF in Roman literature because previous mythology was talen for real stories.


P.S. By the way, is here any thread dedicated to Francis Carsac?

[Leto]

Here ? Not that I'm aware of, but feel free to start. It's been years since I've heard of his work btw.

[Drachir]

Many of the posts on this topic seem to bog down on exactly what science fiction is. If a story was not believed to be a work of fiction when it was written can it be considered science fiction or fantasy? Perhaps the topic needs to be narrowed to define SF and Fantasy as deliberate works of fiction. In that case we could look at authors like Mary Shelley or even perhaps Gargantua and Pantagruel by Rabelais. In terms of more modern fiction look to the nineteenth century works of writers like Hawthorn, Poe, and Verne. Even earlier works might include the Arabian Nights or fantastic stories like Beowulf. However, one must guard against making the category too broad. Otherwise Aesop ends up being the first SF writer.

To me, myths legends, and the Bible do not fit the topic as they were never intended to be taken for fiction, fantastic as some of their ideas are.

[Stalker]

Yes, of course, that's what I suggested to agree the criteria. To narrow our search. Verne, Poe, Mary Shalley - here we may not even argue, although the term "Science Fiction" hadn't been introduced then, they were taken as fiction writers, sure enough. By the way, ho knows, when was the very term "Science Fiction" introduced into literature? Was it the case associated with Jules Verne of a little bit later - with Herbert Wells?

[Glen C]

The big killer with any discussions like this is defining science fiction to begin with. Someone mentioned Wells yet Vern didn't get picked even though both share similar approaches to their science fiction writing.

Up until Gernsback came along, the vast majority of science fiction, didn't rely on the application of a scientific principle..rather they argued the role technology had to play in human affairs. Are either approach valid or wrong?...who knows.

Just for my two cents I am a cyrano supporter. The idea of making a basket out of iron, then throwing a lode stone into the air to power your space vehicle has a wonderful charm

[Carter]

Science fiction really centres on the role of science and technology in human history, and so is a rather more limited genre that speculative fiction, which is more fuzzily defined. "Speculative" can include all sorts of possibilities, from wormholes to werewolves. Whether something is speculative, and where it falls within the spectrum of SF, depends on whether it is written as fiction, and how possible the speculative elements are. If the author is writing about heroes and gods that are actually believed in, then it's probably not fiction. If it is fiction, but the "unreal" elements are possible (lost continents, aliens, exotic technologies, etc), then one might think of it as science fiction. If they manifestly aren't possible (magic, vampires, and so on), then that sounds more like fantasy.
From this point of view, some Roman authors could be considered to have written speculative fiction, since they were certainly writing fiction, and it contained (theoretically) possible events, such as travels to the moon (Lucian) or impossible magical transformations (Apuleius).

[K. Riehl]

To revive a long dormant thread I like the definition of Science Fiction as explained by Neil Barron in his excellent book Anatomy of Wonder.

"...First, writers of SF make use of the discoveries, theories , and speculations in the fields of science that appeal to the imagination at the time the the story is written. So long as something is thought to be scientific at the time the story is written, it should not be discarded subsequently as mere fantasy.
Second, no society can develop a science fiction until it reaches a certain stage of scientific inquiry and and technological development....One other ingredient is necessary to the emergence of a science fiction: belief in ongoing change."
When the static mythos of religion began to be questioned during the Renaissance and people began to see politics and world as something man could change through effort and application of reason.

So he starts the SF Story with Thomas More's Utopia with credit to the "travel stories" of Marco Polo and Sir John Mandeville leading to the "imaginary voyage" tales of uncounted other writers.
Anatomy of Wonder is required reading for anyone who wants a good overview of Science Fiction. Most libraries probably have a copy as it is in it's 4th edition.

[Blue Tyson]

Actually found Anatomy of Wonder at the library last year, as you say.

Quite interesting.

[Dusk]

zorka wrote:

"I do think the story needs to have a reasonably rational use of science to explain some of the actions of the plot or characters. This would rule out some of the earliest so-called science fiction such as Murtagh McDermot's 'A Trip to the Moon' which involves a character thrust into space circling the earth."

Ah, but which science are we talking about? Most of the arguments I've heard in favor of the nineteenth century being the start of SF have assumed that modern science must form the basis of science fiction. If we accept pre-modern science as the basis, science fiction clearly goes much further back. I'm willing to compromise and call the earlier stuff proto science fiction. :)

So I agree with Neil Barron (as quoted by K. Riehl) when he says that "so long as something is thought to be scientific at the time the story is written, it should not be discarded subsequently as mere fantasy." However, I disagree with his dating of the first proto-SF. In the West, science first developed with the Ancient Greeks (though one could make the case that it was embryonic in earlier cultures). I think that anything written from Pythagoras onwards is fair game as proto-SF.

One of these days I'll get around to finishing an essay in which I trace the development of a proto-SF passage over two millennia. It started with Plato describing the solar system at the end of the Republic, in a passage about a man's journey through the afterlife. Plato was sort of interested in science, but much more interested in using the natural world as a way to talk about ethics. So what you get in the Republic is the same sort of weird quasi-SF passage that turned up in children's books when I was growing up - a mixture of fantasy and scientific observation.

This passage was adapted by Cicero in De Republica, in his version of a man going into the solar system in his afterlife. Again, the focus was on ethics, but Cicero tried to make his depiction of the solar system scientifically accurate.

Skipping over a late classical reference, we find Dante using this exact same image in The Divine Comedy, a trilogy which, despite being about the afterlife (you notice the trend here), tried to be as scientifically accurate as possible; there are several passages in The Divine Comedy that you really have to be grounded in the history of science to understand.

Skipping again over the plagiarism - *cough, cough*, I mean, respectful imitation of this passage by two Dante fans (Boccaccio and Chaucer) we come to the Somnium, which is considered by some to be the first work of proto-SF, since it was written by a scientist, Johannes Kepler. But if you look at his introduction, all that Kepler has done is use the earlier "man visiting the solar system" image that was used by so many earlier authors. In fact - the real giveaway - the novel begins with the protagonist reading the portion of De Republica that contained the solar system journey: Somnium Scipium.

*Ahem*. I seem to have written that essay. :)