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Science fiction began in ancient times, when the line between myth and fact became blurred. The true story was written by the satirist Lucian in the 2nd century and has many themes and attractions characteristic of modern science fiction, such as travel to other worlds, extraterrestrial life, interplanetary warfare, and artificial life. Some think this is the first science fiction novel. Part of the story of the Arabian Nights, the 10th Century “Tale of Bamboo Cutting”, Ibn al-Nafis’s 13th Century Theologus Autodidactus also includes elements of science fiction.

Products of the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (1634), Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis (1627), Athanasius Kircher’s Itinerarium extaticum (1656), Cyrano de Bergerac’s national and imperial comical History Margaret Cavendish’s “The Blazing World” (1666), Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Ludwig Holberg’s Nicolai Klimii Iter Subterraneum (1741) and Voltaire’s Micromégas (1752) is considered the first true science fantasy work. Isaac Asimov and Karl Sagan considered Somnium to be the first science fiction story. It depicts a journey to the Moon and what the movement of the Earth looks like from it.

After the novel developed as a literary form in the 18th century, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) and Zalastman (1826) helped define the form of science fiction novels. Brian Ardis claimed that Frankenstein was the first piece of science fiction. Edgar Allan Poe has written a number of stories considered to be science fiction, including The Hanspfar’s Unrivaled Adventure (1835), which features a trip to the Moon. Jules Verne was noted for his attention to detail and scientific accuracy, particularly in the Undersea 2000 League (1870). In 1887, Spanish author Enrique Gaspari Limbau’s novel El anacronópete introduced the first time machine.

H. G. Wells

Many critics consider H.G. Wells to be one of the most important authors of science fiction, or even “SF’s Shakespeare.” Morrow (1896), Invisible Man (1897), and World War (1898). His science fiction imagined alien invasion, biotechnology, invisibility, and time travel. His work by nonfiction futurists predicted the arrival of planes, military tanks, nuclear weapons, satellite television, space travel, and something similar to the World Wide Web.

Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Princess of Mars, published in 1912, was the first of a three-year planetary romance series of Barsoom novels which were set on Mars and featured John Carter as the hero.

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