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

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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

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