Gothic Tales of Science to Scientific Romances

1. From gothic to scientific romance

2. There are two broad camps of thought regarding the development of science fiction writing • one camp identifies the genre's roots in early fantastical works such as the Sumerian Epic of Gilgamesh (earliest Sumerian text versions c. 2150–2000 BCE). • A second approach argues that science fiction only became possible sometime between the 17th and early 19th centuries, following the scientific revolution and major discoveries in astronomy, physics, and mathematics.

3. American science fiction author Lester del Rey • Uses Gilgamesh as an origin point, arguing that "science fiction is precisely as old as the first recorded fiction.“French science fiction writer Pierre Versins also argues that Gilgamesh was the first science fiction work due to its treatment of human reason and the quest for immortality. Gilgamesh features a flood scene that in some ways resembles a work of apocalyptic science fiction. However, the lack of explicit science or technology in the work has led many to argue that it is better categorized as fantastic literature.

4. Proto-science fiction from the Age of Reason of the 17th and 18th centuries includes: • Shakespeare's The Tempest (1610–11) contains a prototype for the "mad scientist story". • Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627), an incomplete utopian novel. • Simon Tyssot de Patot's Voyages et Aventures de Jacques Massé (1710) features a Lost World. • Ludvig Holberg's Niels Klim's Underground Travels (1741) is an early example of the Hollow Earth genre. • Louis-Sébastien Mercier's L'An 2440 (1771) gives a predictive account of life in the 25th century. • Nicolas-EdméRestif de la Bretonne'sLa DécouverteAustrale par un Homme Volant (1781) features prophetic inventions. • Giacomo Casanova's Icosameron (1788) is a novel that makes use of the Hollow Earth device

5. Brian Aldiss argues that science fiction • in general derives its conventions from the gothic novel. Alongside Frankenstein, Mary Shelley's short story "Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman" (1826) sees a man frozen in ice revived in the present day, incorporating the now common science fiction theme of cryonics. Another futuristic Shelley novel, The Last Man, is also often cited as an early science fiction novel.

6. Historical development of Science Fiction _______________________________________ • Precursors (19th century) • 1818 Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein • Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, H.G. Wells • It is not until 1929 that the term Science fiction is first used

7. Mummies and Moon Travel

8. Jane C. Loudon's • The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century (1827), describes the revival of Khufu a Pharaoh from Old Kingdom Egypt scientific means into a world in political crisis, where technology has advanced so far that women wear gas-flame jewelry and houses migrate on rails.

9. In 1835 Edgar Allan Poe published his short story, • "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" in which a flight to the moon in a balloon is described. It has an account of the launch, the construction of the sealed cabin, descriptions of the moon’s surface and many more scientific details.

10. In 1859 French novelist Victor Hugo • wrote The Legend of the Centuries, a long poem in two parts that can be viewed as a dystopian/utopian fiction. It shows in the first scene the body of a huge broken spaceship called Leviathan, the greatest product of a prideful and foolish mankind. After a time, a wounded humanity, finally reunited and pacified, has gone into the heavens in the starship, to look for liberty and peace.

11. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells:the shift from Gothic science to Scientific romance

12. The European brand of science fiction proper began later in the 19th century • with Jules Verne’s scientific adventure stories, notably Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), From the Earth to the Moon (1865), and Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1869) mixed daring romantic adventure with technology that was either up to the minute or logically extrapolated into the future. • They were tremendous commercial successes and established that an author could make a career out of such whimsical material. L. Sprague de Camp calls Verne "the world's first full-time science fiction novelist."

13. Verne was followed by the science-oriented, socially critical novels of H. G. Wells. • Wells's stories use science fiction devices to make didactic points about his society. In The Time Machine (1895), for example, the technical details of the machine are glossed over quickly so that the Time Traveler can tell a story that criticizes the stratification of English society.