Before Science Fiction: Romances of Science and Scientific Romances

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BeforeScience Fiction: Romances of Science andScientific Romances (http://io9.com/5870883/science-fiction-before-science-fiction-romances-of-science-and-scientific-romances)

The origin of science fiction stories is well-known to both critics and the public: by

consensus, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein(1818) was the first SF novel. But the

origins of "science fiction" as a concept are neither well-known nor agreed-upon.

The phrase "science fiction," meaning the genre of scientifically-oriented fantastic

fiction, was popularized in 1929 by Hugo Gernsback. But "science fiction" had a

19th century predecessor: "scientific romance," a term used by H.G. Wells.

However, as we'll see, science fiction started decades before that, as did many of

the terms describing science fiction.

Before 1849 and the Death of Poe

Edgar Allan Poe (1809-1849) is generally recognized as the first significant

American author of science fiction. Gernsback himself, in defining "scientifiction"

(Gernsback's predecessor term before "science fiction'), said in 1926 that "By

'scientifiction,' I mean the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allan Poe type of

story." Poe was not the only writer of science fiction during these years, however,

nor the best-known to his contemporaries.

JESS NEVINS AND MICHELLE MARTINEZ SECRET HISTORY (/TAG/SECRET-HISTORY) 12/23/11 11:56am (8,574 1 5

Science and entertainment from the world of tomorrow.

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Mary Shelley's lesser-known follow-up to Frankensteinwas The Last Man(1826),

set at the end of the 21st century. In it a plague destroys much of humanity, and

conflict in Great Britain and between the United States and Europe takes care of

the rest. While not the most famous work of science fiction up to that point -

Frankenstein, Rudolf Erich Raspe's Baron Munchausen's Narrative of His

Marvellous Travels and Campaigns in Russia(1785) and William Godwin's St. Leon

(1799) were all better-known than The Last Man it attracted a great deal of

attention in Great Britain and the United States and was described as "a favorite

with admirers of the German school of romance." This reference to the German

genre of gory supernatural stories known as the schaeurroman, or "shudder

novel," indicates an understanding that The Last Man, with its futuristic settingand winged balloons capable of long-distance flights, belongs to a different

category of fiction from the usual genres of the time. However, "the German school

of romance" would become used primarily for works of emotional or narrative

extremity rather than just the fantastic.

The "Great Moon Hoax" grew out of six articles published in the New York Sunin

late August, 1835. Most likely written by Richard A. Locke, a reporter for the Sun,

the articles described aliens and unicorns living on the moon. The articles

attracted a great deal of attention, and though the Sundid not admit that they

were fictional for six weeks, others recognized them for what they were

immediately.

On September 9, the Baltimore Gazette and Daily Advertiserwrote this about

Locke and the Hoax articles:

Mr. Locke, the very ingenious author of the late story of the Moon and

the wonders, animate and inanimate, there to be seen, promises to

figure-if we are to believe the New York Herald-as an author of no little

celebrity. To explore new fields in science, has been quite a frequent

thing in the present age; but a new walk in literature, it has been

thought, almost until now, impossible for the shrewdest mind to

discover. This distinction seems to have been reserved for Mr. Locke;

who, in the intelligence he has brought us nether mortals from our

Earth's Satellite, has opened to us sources of the marvelous, the

delightful and the comic, which were never before so much as dreampt

[sic] of by either the genius of Swift or Fielding, of Scott or Bulwer. Mr.

Locke, we are given to understand by the Herald, has in preparation, or,

in the Herald's phrase, is putting on the stocks the frame of a new novel

on a subject similar to that of his recent able invention in Astronomy.

His peculiar and original talent will then be brought out in full relief.

As Sir Walter Scott was the author of the historical Novel of which he

had many imitators, so Mr. Locke is the inventor of an entirely new

species of literature, which may be called the "scientific novel." He, too,

may expect a few, not, like Sir Walter, many imitators; very few will be

at the pains, even supposing they should have the capacity to add totheir diversified literary acquirements the requisite scientific

attainments. Mr. L. possesses both. He and the very few who may soar

to the heights and sound the depths of science, who may delightedly

repose in the bowers of literature, who, to a masterly knowledge of

books, may join the vigor and raciness of immediate observation of

living characters and manners, he and those few only may hope to excel

in this new species of fictitious history.

Locke never finished his novel (if he began it at all), and "scientific novel" never

caught on as a descriptor of science fiction, most likely due to the comparative

lack of science fiction over the next ten years. Instead, "scientific novel" was

applied to books like Harriet Martineau's Illustrations of Political Economy(1832),

which use fiction to explore the ideas of science, and to the works of Zola, with

their "scientific contemplation of human corruption." Nonetheless, its use here

marks the first known occasion when science fiction was recognized as something

nce and entertainment from the world of tomorrow.

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unique and different from other genres of literature.

In 1847 William Henry Smith, in reviewing Tales, by Edgar Allan Poe, wrote that

Poe's poem "The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion," about the destruction of

Earth by a passing comet, was "a remarkable instance of that species of imaginary

matter of fact description, to which we have ventured to think that the Americans

show something like a national tendency." Smith has no single phrase to draw

upon to describe Poe's science fiction. "Imaginary matter of fact" appears

occasionally, but never in reference to science fiction. But it is clear that Smith

knows what science fiction is when he sees it, which was also critic and author

Damon Knight's preferred definition of science fiction. It is also clear that Smith is

aware of previous works of science fiction. I mentioned in the preceding paragraph

that there was a relative lack of science fiction published between 1835 and 1845.

However, some of that was written by Nathaniel Hawthorne and gained a great

deal of attention. While those stories were usually described in comparison to of

Hawthorne's other work they were clearly science fiction, as William Henry Smith

recognized.

From Post-Poe to Verne: 1849-1863

The period after Poe and before Verne had less science fiction than the 1835-1845

decade: E.F. Bleiler's Science Fiction: The Early Years lists 34 short stories,

anthologies, and novels from 1835 to 1845 and only 26 from 1849 to 1863.

Unsurprisingly, no agreed-upon term for science fiction appeared during these

years. The first, entirely isolated, use of the term "science fiction" was by WilliamWilson in 1851.

The "romance of science" is the phrase most often used during this period to

describe science fiction and the science fictional. Many times it is used in a more

modern sense. In 1849 the British "Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge"

wrote that "The hardships and adventures undergone in some of the great

trigonometrical surveys of the earth's surface belong almost to the romance of

science," but many other times it is used as a description of science-based

speculative thought, or a scientifically-informed flight of fancy, rather than as a

description of a literary genre. In 1841 the Eclectic Review, scathingly deriding

atheism, wrote:

It commences with an assumption of a living being endowed with

properties of the most extraordinary nature, and capable, according to

the hypothesis, of performing all the works usually attributed to aDeitywhich amounts to the same thing as making that lowest of

animals the very Deityand yet this is done by those who affect to think

there is no Deity. This romance of science baffles all parallel....

In 1849 The Literary Worlddescribed the unicorn as "taken from what may be

called the romance of science." In 1850 the Journal of the British Archaeological

Association described the phoenix using a similar phrase. Joseph Bullar, in his

Evening Thoughts, by a Physician(1850), says of Vestiges of the Natural History of

Creationthat:







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militaire et scientifique," but the English language translation has it as "I have a

little military and scientific romance for you."

After Verne's debut "scientific romance" became the standard phrase used to

describe science fiction. In 1865, in The Journal of Science, and theAnnals of

Astronomy, Biology, Geology,.... the Rev. Thomas Hincks wrote that the "Hydroid

Zoophytes,an Order of compound, plant-like animals, chiefly marine" have

"formed the staple of many a scientific romance in the pages of our popular

literature."

In 1866 the Nationdescribed Oliver Wendell Holmes' Elsie Venneras "a scientific

romance of the destiny which a physican can discern in blood and nervous tissue."

That same year Charles Dickens, inAll the Year Round, described Henri de

Parville'sAn Inhabitant of the Planet Mars(1865) as "a scientific romance." By

1875 "scientific romance" was accepted enough as a concept that it appeared in

advertisements: James de Mille's The Sunless Landwas advertised in Publishers

Weeklyas "a scientific romance that fairly rivals Jules Verne's best." "Scientific

romance" still retained its secondary meaning as a science-based flight of fancy

Darwin's Origin of Speciesis often described in this fashion but primarily it

meant science fiction.

The 1870s was a decade in which a number of science fiction stories and novels

were published, including George Chesney's The Battle of Dorkingand Bulwer-

Lytton's The Coming Race, and it is unsurprising that other terms besides

"scientific romance" were used in referring to science fiction. The Chicago PublicLibrary's Annual Report in 1873 said "Prose fiction is quite as harmless as poetical

fiction, historical fiction, biographical fiction, or scientific fiction." Mary Braddon,

in discussing her "Journey to the Sun" in Belgravia in 1876, described it as

"scientific fiction," and in that same year Caxton's Book described Verne as "that

master of scientific fiction."

Nonetheless, "scientific romance" was the commonly used term, and in 1884, when

C.H. Hinton published a two-volume set of collection speculative non-fiction and

science fiction, he entitled it Scientific Romances, beginning over a decade of its

steady use by critics.

Discuss(/posts/5870883/reply)

1 participant

Brainlock (http://brainlock.k

(/posts/93999593/reply)

domhanai (http://domhanai-

Am I being overly sensitive, but you

cite Hawthorne in passing, but

discount his works. In 1844 the

Romantic movement was de rigeur,

and Hawthorne was right there. That

was when he wrote "The Artist Of The

Beautiful" (robotics) and "Rappacini's

Daughter" (toxicology/medicine).

Before that, in 1837, he wrote "Dr.

Heidegger's Experiment"

(anagathics/psychology). Just these

stories alone used "science fiction"

themes before the term "scientific








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(http://cache.gawker.com/assets

/images/comment/8/2011

/12/991e531b186cbe3a321a19e40ff2bf

e7/original.jpg)

"This reference to the German genre

of gory supernatural stories known as

the schaeurroman, or "shudder

novel,""

[the-hobbitmovie.com] (http://the-

hobbitmovie.com/wp-content/uploads

/2010/05

/saruman.jpg

) 12/23/11 3:05pm (http://io9.com/5870883/before-science-fiction-romances-of-science-and-scientific-romances?comment=45481478#comments)

Corpsegoddess (http://corp

I love how German words seem to

perfectly capture phrases. This was a

new one for meI'm going to head on

over to The Gutenberg Project and see

if I can find anything that fits that

description

. 12/23/11 7:33pm (http://io9.com/5870883/before-science-fiction-romances-of-science-and-scientific-romances?comment=45485189#comments)


romances." All these pass an ancient

test of science fiction: remove the

scientific and the story is no longer

logical

.12/24/11 12:23pm (http://io9.com/5870883/before-science-fiction-romances-of-scienc

James Haviland (http://jame

1869 Edward Allan Hale (Man Without

A Country} published The Brick Moon.

The 1st depiction of a space station,

very Verne

like...

.12/23/11 3:54pm (http://io9.com/5870883/before-science-fiction-romances-of-science


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