A Brief History of Science Fiction from Antiquity to 2024
A timeline of what was considered SciFi in the context of its historical moment.
Remember: it’s going to be a packed house at the Of Gods and Globes III reading on Tuesday night, with a special surprise famous guest. RSVP for the NYC reading here or to invite all of your tri-state area friends.
The old Theodore Sturgeon adage goes:
A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem, and a human solution, which would not have happened without its scientific content.
A fantasy story is similar. To me, the main difference between science fiction and fantasy is that science fiction favors this-world physics and speculative premises that build from more or less natural efficient causal chains that lead to alternate or future realities whereas for fantasy, as George MacDonald would say:
The natural world has its laws, and no man must interfere with them in the way of presentment any more than in the way of use; but they themselves may suggest laws of other kinds, and man may, if he pleases, invent a little world of his own, with its own laws; for there is that in him which delights in calling up new forms–which is the nearest, perhaps, he can come to creation. When such forms are new embodiments of old truths, we call them products of the Imagination; when they are mere inventions, however lovely, I should call them the work of the Fancy: in either case, Law has been diligently at work.
Perhaps these laws are a magic system or a sympathetic system or a prayer system, but they diverge — often significantly — from our own physical laws. Scifi-Fantasy, therefore, often blends the two. Everything, Everywhere, All At Once is arguably this as is the Marvel Universe.
In any case, when I’m here defining Science Fiction, I mean rational extrapolation out into the future — or an alternate world — based on scientific and philosophical truths known at the time of the given work’s composition.
That’s the only preamble. To the timeline, and we’ll start in the past. I’ll be pulling primarily from Science Fiction Before 1900 by Paul K. Alkon (1994) as well as The Extra Terrestrial Debate: Antiquity to 1911 by Michael Crowe (2008, that volume courtesy
).A couple of entries came from other sources ranging wikis (if you see links, assume I’m quoting the work’s entry in Wikipedia, though the entry often does not exist in any wiki timeline or history article) to close personal friends, and the one on Dante comes from C.S. Lewis’s Of Other Worlds.
B.C.E 2000 — The Noahnic flood / Epic of Gilgamesh. Both have fantastic elements to them, but the apocalypse featuring a boat of inordinate size rivaled by no known modern marvel (for the time) is arguably a science fiction element. It’s not unlike the “how tall is tall” tall tower project — how tall can we build using only steel?
B.C.E. 1700–1100 — Rigveda collection of Sanskrit hymns. In the first book of the Rigveda collection of Sanskrit hymns (1700–1100 BCE), there is a description of "mechanical birds" that are seen "jumping into space speedily with a craft using fire and water ... containing twelve stamghas (pillars), one wheel, three machines, 300 pivots, and 60 instruments"
B.C.E. 1000 - 900 — Mahabharata includes the story of King Kakudmi, who travels to heaven to meet the creator Brahma and is shocked to learn that many ages have passed when he returns to Earth, anticipating the concept of time travel.
B.C.E. 900 — Isaiah writes his prophecies which include lines like, “There will be a new heavens and a new earth, which I shall make to abide in my sight, saith the Lord.”
B.C.E. 450 — Ecclesiastes says “What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; there is nothing new under the sun. Is there a thing of which it is said, “See, this is new”? It has already been, in the ages before us.”
B.C.E. 400 — Leucippus and Democritus advocate for the existence of extra terrestrial beings. Hippolytus (3rd century CE theologian) says they spoke “as if… there are innumerable worlds, which different in size. In some there is no sun and moon, in others they are large than in our world, in others more numerous…. There are some worlds devoid of living creature or plants or any moisture.”
B.C.E. 375 — In Plato’s Republic, Socrates considers the natures of existing regimes and then proposes a series of hypothetical cities in comparison, culminating in Kallipolis (Καλλίπολις), a utopian city-state ruled by a class of philosopher-kings. They also discuss ageing, love, theory of forms, the immortality of the soul, and the role of the philosopher and of poetry in society.
B.C.E. 300’s — Ramayana (5th to 4th century BCE) includes Vimana, flying machines able to travel into space or under water, and destroy entire cities using advanced weapons.
B.C.E. 270 — Epicures says there are infinite worlds born far out into space (or ‘the heavens’). “Furthermore, we must believe that in all worlds there are living creatures and plants and other things we see in this world; for indeed no one could prove that in a world of one kind there might or might not have been included the kinds of seeds from which living things and plants and all the rest of the things we see are composed…”
B.C.E. 99-55 — Titus Lucretius Cares on De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of the Universe) says, “It is in the highest degree unlikely that this earth and sky is the only one to have been created… You have a store of atoms that could not be reckoned in full by the whole succession of living creatures… You are bound therefore to acknowledge that in other regions there are other earths and various tribes of men and breeds of beasts.”
100’s — Lucian of Samosata’s A True Story uses a voyage to outer space and conversations with alien life forms to comment on the use of exaggeration within travel literature and debates. Typical science fiction themes and topoi in True Historyinclude travel to outer space, encounter with alien life-forms (including the experience of a first encounter event), interplanetary warfare and planetary imperialism, motif of giganticism, creatures as products of human technology, worlds working by a set of alternative physical laws, and an explicit desire of the protagonist for exploration and adventure.[8] In witnessing one interplanetary battle between the People of the Moon and the People of the Sun as the fight for the right to colonize the Morning Star, Lucian describes giant space spiders who were "appointed to spin a web in the air between the Moon and the Morning Star, which was done in an instant, and made a plain campaign upon which the foot forces were planted". L. Sprague de Camp and a number of other authors argue this to be one of the earliest if not the earliest example of science fiction or proto-science fiction.
185-254 — Origin writes De Principiis. “Not then for the first time did God begin to work when He made this visible world; but as, after its destruction, there will be another world, so also we believe that others existed before the present world came into being. And both of these positions will be confirmed by the authority of holy Scripture.” He quotes the Isaiah and Ecclesiastes passages above. “It is not, however, to be supposed that several worlds existed at once, but that, after the end of this present world, others will take their beginning. It seems to me impossible for a world to be restored for the second time, with the same order and with the same amount of births, and deaths, and actions: but that a diversity of worlds may exist with changes of no unimportant kind.”
720 — Urashima Tarō. It was about a young fisherman named Urashima Tarō who visits an undersea palace and stays there for three days. After returning home to his village, he finds himself 300 years in the future, where he is long forgotten, his house is in ruins, and his family long dead.
900’s — One Thousand and One Nights. One example is "The Adventures of Bulukiya", where the protagonist Bulukiya's quest for the herb of immortality leads him to explore the seas, journey to the Garden of Eden and to Jahannam (Islamic hell), and travel across the cosmos to different worlds much larger than his own world, anticipating elements of galactic science fiction; along the way, he encounters societies of jinn, mermaids, talking serpents, talking trees, and other forms of life. In "Abdullah the Fisherman and Abdullah the Merman", the protagonist gains the ability to breathe underwater and discovers an underwater submarine society that is portrayed as an inverted reflection of society on land, in that the underwater society follows a form of primitive communism where concepts like money and clothing do not exist. Other Arabian Nights tales deal with lost ancient technologies, advanced ancient civilizations that went astray, and catastrophes which overwhelmed them. "The City of Brass" features a group of travellers on an archaeological expedition across the Sahara to find an ancient lost city and attempt to recover a brass vessel that the biblical King Solomon once used to trap a jinn, and, along the way, encounter a mummified queen, petrified inhabitants, lifelike humanoid robots and automata, seductive marionettes dancing without strings, and a brass robot horseman who directs the party towards the ancient city. "The Ebony Horse" features a robot in the form of a flying mechanical horse controlled using keys, that could fly into outer space and towards the Sun, while the "Third Qalandar's Tale" also features a robot in the form of an uncanny sailor. "The City of Brass" and "The Ebony Horse" can be considered early examples of proto-science fiction. Other examples of early Arabic proto-science fiction include al-Farabi's Opinions of the Residents of a Splendid City about a utopian society, and certain Arabian Nights elements such as the flying carpet.
900’s — The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. The protagonist of the story, Kaguya-hime, is a princess from the Moon who is sent to Earth for safety during a celestial war, and is found and raised by a bamboo cutter in Japan. She is later taken back to the Moon by her real extraterrestrial family. A manuscript illustration depicts a round flying machine similar to a flying saucer.
1270 — Theologus Autodidactus by Ibn al-Nafis. The theological novel deals with various science fiction elements such as spontaneous generation, futurology, apocalyptic themes, eschatology, resurrection and the afterlife, but rather than giving supernatural or mythological explanations for these events, Ibn al-Nafis attempted to explain these plot elements using his own extensive scientific knowledge in anatomy, biology, physiology, astronomy, cosmology and geology. For example, it was through this novel that Ibn al-Nafis introduces his scientific theory of metabolism, and he makes references to his own scientific discovery of pulmonary circulation in order to explain bodily resurrection.
1277 — Etienne Tempier, Bishop of Paris, issues the Condemnation of 1277, which threatens excommunication to those who believe any of 219 propositions including “that God could make several worlds.”
1290 - 1382 — William of Ockham (1290-1349), John Buridan (1358), Nicole Oresme (1352-1382) all show themselves open to the idea that God created a plurality of worlds. In Le livre du cel et du sonde, Oresme argues for the idea of a succession of worlds in time or a nested series of worlds or a series of worlds in space, all of which could be inhabited. (It’s a fascinating text and worth anyone’s time who cares about speculative fiction — the best speculations are almost always in philosophical works).
1321 — Dante’s Inferno. Though mostly a fantastic work, in fact a work of self-insert Virgil fan fiction, C.S. Lewis points out that when Dante reaches the ninth circle of hell and climbs down Satan’s frozen body to his navel, he begins to climb upwards again. This is because, as Lewis points out, Dante has reached the center of gravity. He calls it a ‘perfect science fiction effect.”
1420 — Vraye ystoire du bon roy Alixandre (The True History of the Good King Alexander) has fanciful stories about him going underwater in a submarine and being carried aloft in a cage, carried by huge Griffins.
1516 — Sir Thomas More's Utopia. describes a fictional island whose inhabitants have perfected every aspect of their society. The name of the society stuck, giving rise to the Utopia motif that would become so widespread in later science fiction to describe a world that is seemingly perfect but either ultimately unattainable or perversely flawed.
1619 — Johann Valentin Andreae’s Christianopolis is an updated Utopia and Republic.
1623 — Tommaso Campanella’s The City of the Sun. The book is presented as a dialogue between "a Grandmaster of the Knights Hospitallerand a Genoese Sea-Captain". Inspired by Plato's Republic and the description of Atlantis in Timaeus, it describes a theocratic society where goods, women and children are held in common. It also resembles the City of Adocentyn in the Picatrix, an Arabic grimoire of astrological magic. In the final part of the work, Campanella prophesies—in the veiled language of astrology—that the Spanish kings, in alliance with the Pope, are destined to be the instruments of a Divine Plan: the final victory of the True Faith and its diffusion in the whole world. While one could argue that Campanella was simply thinking of the conquest of the New World, it seems that this prophecy should be interpreted in the light of a work written shortly before The City of the Sun, The Monarchy in Spain, in which Campanella exposes his vision of a unified, peaceful world governed by a theocratic monarchy.
1627 — Francis Bacon publishes New Atlantis. New Atlantis is an incomplete utopian novel by Sir Francis Bacon, published posthumously in 1626. It appeared unheralded and tucked into the back of a longer work of natural history, Sylva Sylvarum (forest of materials). In New Atlantis, Bacon portrayed a vision of the future of human discovery and knowledge, expressing his aspirations and ideals for humankind. The novel depicts the creation of a utopian land where "generosity and enlightenment, dignity and splendour, piety and public spirit" are the commonly held qualities of the inhabitants of the mythical Bensalem. The plan and organisation of his ideal college, Salomon's House (or Solomon's House), prefigured the modern research university in both applied and pure sciences.
1634 — Johannes Kepler's Somnium (The Dream). ull title: Somnium, seu opus posthumum De astronomia lunari — is a novel written in Latin in 1608 by Johannes Kepler. It was first published in 1634 by Kepler's son, Ludwig Kepler, several years after the death of his father. In the narrative, an Icelandic boy and his witch mother learn of an island named Levania (the Moon) from a daemon ("Levana" is the Hebrew word for the moon). Somnium presents a detailed imaginative description of how the Earth might look when viewed from the Moon, and is considered the first serious scientific treatise on lunar astronomy. Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov have referred to it as one of the earliest works of science fiction.
1638 — Francis Godwin's The Man in the Moone; or, A Discourse of a Voyage Thither by Domingo Gonsales. A "voyage of utopian discovery". Long considered to be one of his early works, it is now generally thought to have been written in the late 1620s. It was first published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym of Domingo Gonsales. The work is notable for its role in what was called the "new astronomy", the branch of astronomy influenced especially by Nicolaus Copernicus.
1657 — Cyrano de Bergerac's Histore comique des états et empires de la lune (Comic History of the States and Empires of the Moon). Cyrano travels to the Moon using rockets powered by firecrackers (it may be the earliest description of a space flight by use of a vessel that has rockets attached) and meets the inhabitants. The Moon-men have four legs, firearms that shoot game and cook it, and talking earrings used to educate children.
1659 — Jacques Guttin's Epigone, histoire du siècle futur (Epigone, a story of the future century). The novel describes the adventures of an unnamed man who, after engaging in a heated discussion with a philosopher friend about the injustices of Paris, falls asleep and finds himself in a Paris several centuries into the future. He wanders through the changed city, eventually ending up in the ruins of the Palace of Versailles.
1662 — Cyrano de Bergerac's Histoire comique des états et empires du soleil (Comic History of the States and Empires of the Sun). A sequel to the above.
1722 — Daniel Defoe's A Journal of the Plague Year. An account of one man's experiences of the year 1665, in which the bubonic plague struck the city of London in what became known as the Great Plague of London, the last epidemic of plague in that city.
1726 — Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels. Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World. In Four Parts. By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships.
1752 — Voltaire's Micromégas. The tale recounts the visit to Earth of a being from a planet circling the star Sirius, and of his companion from the planet Saturn.
1771 — Louis-Sébastien Mercier's L'An 2440 (The year 2440). The novel describes the adventures of an unnamed man who, after engaging in a heated discussion with a philosopher friend about the injustices of Paris, falls asleep and finds himself in a Paris several centuries into the future.
1798 — Thomas Malthus's An Essay on the Principle of Population. The book warned of future difficulties, on an interpretation of the population increasing in geometric progression (so as to double every 25 years) while food production increased in an arithmetic progression, which would leave a difference resulting in the want of food and famine, unless birth rates decreased. This ended up being one of the biggest failures in prophetic doomsaying in history.
1802 — Nicolas-Edme Restif de la Bretonne's Les Posthumes (The posthumous). The novel is narrated by the dead protagonist, Brás Cubas, who tells his own life story from beyond the grave, noting his mistakes and failed romances.
1805 — Jean-Baptiste Xavier Cousin de Grainville's LeNicolas-Edme Restif de la Bretonne s Les Dernier homme (The Last Man). The story is told by a spirit to a young man who comes upon its cave while traveling in Syria. The protagonist, Omegarus, is the son of the King of Europe and the last child born there in a far future in which the earth is becoming sterile and the human ability to reproduce is fading. He sees a vision of Syderia, the last fertile woman. She lives in Brazil, so he travels there in an airship.
1818 — Mary Shelley's Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus.
1826 — Mary Shelley's The Last Man. The narrative concerns Europe in the late 21st century, ravaged by the rise of a bubonic plague pandemic that rapidly sweeps across the entire globe, ultimately resulting in the near-extinction of humanity. It also includes discussion of the British state as a republic, for which Shelley sat in meetings of the House of Commonsto gain insight to the governmental system of the Romantic era.
1827 — James Webb's The Mummy: A Tale of the Twenty-Second Century.
1834 — Félix Bodin's Le Roman de l'avenir (The novel of the future) tries to predict what the next century will be like.
1835 — Edgar Allan Poe's "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall." The story traces the journey of a voyage to the moon.
1836 — Louis-Napoléon Geoffroy-Château's Napoléon et la conquête du monde (Napoleon and the conquest of the world).Villiers de l'Isle Adam is born. The British steamship Sirius makes the first transatlantic crossing under continuous steam power.
1838 — Edgar Allan Poe's "The Balloon Hoax" and "Mesmeric Revelation.""Mesmeric Revelation."
1846 — Emile Souvestre's Le Monde tel qu'il sera (The world as it will be).
1849 — Edgar Allan Poe's "Mellonta Tauta"; Poe dies.
1854 — Charlemagne-Ischir Defontenay's Star ou psi de Cassiopée (Star: Psi Cassiopera).
1859 — Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
1861 — Transcontinental telegraph is established in North America.
1863 — Jules Verne's Cinq Semaines en ballon (Five Weeks in a Balloon).
1865 — Jules Verne's De la Terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon).
1866 — H. G. Wells is born. Transatlantic telegraph isJules Verne's De la Terre à la lune (From the Earth to the Moon).
1870 — Vingt mille lieues sous les mers (Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea): Jules Verne's Autour de la lune (Around the Moon).
1871 — Sir George T. Chesney's The Battle of Dorking.
1872 — Samuel Butler's Erewhon; or, Over the Range.
1873 — Le Tour du monde en quatre-vingts jours (Around the World in Eighty Days).
1874-1875 — Jules Verne's L'Ile mystérieuse (The Mysterious Island).
1877 — Jules Verne's Hector Servadac.
1879 — Jules Verne's Les Cinq Cents Millions de la Bégum (The Bégum's Fortune), Thomas A. Edison invents the electric light with carbon filament.
1883 — Albert Robida's Le Vingtième siècle (The twentieth century); La Vie électrique (The electric life), Edwin A. Abbott's Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions.
1886 — Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, a book based on the real man and the false man of Romans 7, the man of the law of death and the man of the law of life. Jules Verne's Robur le conquérant (The Clipper of the Clouds). Villiers de l'Isle-Adam's L'Eve future (Tomorrow's Eve).
1887 — Albert Robida's La Guerre au vingtième siècle (War in the twentieth century). J. H. Rosny Ainé's Joseph-Henri Honoré Boëx] "Les Xipéhuz" (The Xipehuz). Sir Henry Rider Haggard's She.
1888 — Edward Bellamy's Looking Backward: 2000-1887.
1889 — Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court. Jules Verne's Sans dessus dessous (The Purchase of the North Pole), Villiers de l'Isle-Adam dies.
1891 — Nicolas Camille Flammarion's La Fin du monde (Omega: The Last Days of the World). George Griffith's The Angel of the Revolution.
1895 — H. G. Wells's The Time Machine; The Stolen Bacillus and Other Incidents.
1896 — H. G. Wells's The Island of Doctor Moreau.
1897 — Kurd Lasswitz's Auf zwei Planeten (Two Planets). H. G. Wells's The Invisible Man.
1898 — Garrett Putnam Serviss's Edison's Conquest of Mars. H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds.
1899 — H. G. Wells's When the Sleeper Wakes: A Story of Years to Come; Tales of Space and Time.
1903 — Wilbur and Orville Wright's biplane makes first flight, at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina.
1904 — H. G. Wells's The Food of the Gods, and How It Came to Earth.
1905 — Jules Verne dies. H. G. Wells's A Modern Utopia.
1906 — H. G. Wells's In the Days of the Comet.
1907 — Jack London's The Iron Heel.
1908 — H. G. Wells's The War in the Air.E[dward] M[organ] Forster's "The Machine Stops."
1911 — H.G. Well's’s The Country of the Blind and Other Stories
1912 — Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World.
1914 — H. G. Wells's The World Set Free.
1915 — Charlotte Perkins Gilman's Herland.
1917 — Edgar Rice Burroughs's A Princess of Mars.
After this, the Wikipedia timeline gets rather accurate, so I’ll refer you there from here:
Wow, thank you for sharing this research! I don't know why, but on first thought I think if science fiction as having started in the 1960's. It is so fascinating to see all of the science fiction from so long ago!