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Jules Verne was noted for his attention to detail and scientific accuracy, especially in Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870).
Edgar Allan Poe wrote several stories considered to be science fiction, including " The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" (1835) which featured a trip to the Moon.
Brian Aldiss has argued that Frankenstein was the first work of science fiction. įollowing the 17th-century development of the novel as a literary form, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (1818) and The Last Man (1826) helped define the form of the science-fiction novel. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan considered Somnium the first science-fiction story it depicts a journey to the Moon and how the Earth's motion is seen from there. Written during the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment, Johannes Kepler's Somnium (1634), Francis Bacon's New Atlantis (1627), Athanasius Kircher's Itinerarium extaticum (1656), Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon (1657) and The States and Empires of the Sun (1662), Margaret Cavendish's " The Blazing World" (1666), Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), Ludvig Holberg's Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum (1741) and Voltaire's Micromégas (1752) are regarded as some of the first true science-fantasy works. Some of the stories from The Arabian Nights, along with the 10th-century The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter and Ibn al-Nafis's 13th-century Theologus Autodidactus, also contain elements of science fiction. Some consider it the first science-fiction novel. Written in the 2nd century CE by the satirist Lucian, A True Story contains many themes and tropes characteristic of modern science fiction, including travel to other worlds, extraterrestrial lifeforms, interplanetary warfare, and artificial life. Some scholars assert that science fiction had its beginnings in ancient times, when the line between myth and fact was blurred. Illustration by Aubrey Beardsley for Lucian's A True Story Damon Knight summed up the difficulty, saying "science fiction is what we point to when we say it." Ultimately, it may be more useful to talk around science fiction as the intersection of other, more concrete, genres and subgenres. Part of the reason that it is so difficult to pin down an agreed definition of science fiction is because there is a tendency among science fiction enthusiasts to act as their own arbiter in deciding what exactly constitutes science fiction. Heinlein wrote that "A handy short definition of almost all science fiction might read: realistic speculation about possible future events, based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and significance of the scientific method." Main article: Definitions of science fictionĪmerican science fiction author and editor Lester del Rey wrote, "Even the devoted aficionado or fan-has a hard time trying to explain what science fiction is," and the lack of a "full satisfactory definition" is because "there are no easily delineated limits to science fiction." According to Isaac Asimov, "Science fiction can be defined as that branch of literature which deals with the reaction of human beings to changes in science and technology." Robert A. Besides providing entertainment, it can also criticize present-day society, and it is often said to inspire a " sense of wonder". Science fiction literature, film, television, and other media have become popular and influential over much of the world. Its exact definition has long been disputed among authors, critics, scholars, and readers. Science fiction can trace its roots back to ancient mythology, and is related to fantasy, horror, and superhero fiction, and contains many subgenres. It has been called the " literature of ideas", and it often explores the potential consequences of scientific, social, and technological innovations. Science fiction (sometimes shortened to sci-fi or SF) is a genre of speculative fiction that typically deals with imaginative and futuristic concepts such as advanced science and technology, space exploration, time travel, parallel universes, and extraterrestrial life. Space exploration, as predicted in August 1958 by the science fiction magazine Imagination