History Of Science Fiction

The literary genre of science fiction is diverse, and its exact definition remains a contested question among both scholars and devotees. This lack of consensus is reflected in debates about the genre's history, particularly over determining its exact origins. There are two broad camps of thought, one that identifies the genre's roots in early fantastical works such as the Sumerian ''Epic of Gilgamesh'' (earliest Sumerian text versions c. 2150–2000 BCE). A second approach argues that science fiction only became possible sometime between the 17th and early 19th centuries, following the scientific revolution and major discoveries in astronomy, physics, and mathematics.

Question of deeper origins aside, science fiction developed and boomed in the 20th century, as the deep integration of science and inventions into daily life encouraged a greater interest in literature that explores the relationship between technology, society, and the individual. Scholar Robert Scholes calls the history of science fiction "the history of humanity's changing attitudes toward space and time ... the history of our growing understanding of the universe and the position of our species in that universe." In recent decades, the genre has diversified and become firmly established as a major influence on global culture and thought.

Early science fiction

Ancient and early modern precursors

There are a number of ancient or early modern texts including a great many epics and poems that contain fantastical or "science-fictional" elements, yet were written before the emergence of science fiction as a distinct genre. These texts often include elements such as a fantastical voyage to the moon or the use of imagined advanced technology. Although fantastical and science fiction-like elements and imagery exist in stories such as Ovid's ''Metamorphoses'' (8 AD), the Old English epic heroic poem '' Beowulf'' (8th–11th centuries AD), and the Middle German epic poem ''Nibelungenlied'' (c. 1230), their relative lack of references to science or technology puts them closer to fantasy rather than science fiction.

One of the earliest and most commonly-cited texts for those looking for early precursors to science fiction is the ancient Mesopotamian ''Epic of Gilgamesh'', with the earliest text versions identified as being from about 2000 BCE. American science fiction author Lester del Rey was one such supporter of using Gilgamesh as an origin point, arguing that "science fiction is precisely as old as the first recorded fiction. That is ''The Epic of Gilgamesh''." French science fiction writer Pierre Versins also argued that ''Gilgamesh'' was the first science fiction work due to its treatment of human reason and the quest for immortality. In addition, ''Gilgamesh'' features a flood scene that in some ways resembles a work of apocalyptic science fiction. However, the lack of explicit science or technology in the work has led some to argue that it is better categorized as fantastic literature.

Ancient Indian poetry such as the Hindu epic ''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. 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."
The ancient Hindu mythological epic, the ''Mahabharata'' (8th and 9th centuries BCE) 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.

One frequently cited text is the Syrian-Greek writer Lucian of Samosata's 2nd-century satire ''True History'', which 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 History'' include travel to outer space, encounter with alien life-forms (including the experience of a first encounter event), interplanetary warfare and planetary imperialism, motif of , 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.Fredericks, S.C.
"Lucian's True History as SF"
, ''Science Fiction Studies'', Vol. 3, No. 1 (March 1976), pp. 49–60 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.

However, since the text was intended to be explicitly satirical and hyperbolic, other critics are ambivalent about its rightful place as a science fiction precursor. For example, English critic Kingsley Amis wrote that "It is hardly science-fiction, since it deliberately piles extravagance upon extravagance for comic effect" yet he implicitly acknowledged its SF character by comparing its plot to early 20th-century space operas: "I will merely remark that the sprightliness and sophistication of ''True History'' make it read like a joke at the expense of nearly all early-modern science fiction, that written between, say, 1910 and 1940." Lucian translator Bryan Reardon is more explicit, describing the work as "an account of a fantastic journey – to the moon, the underworld, the belly of a whale, and so forth. It is not really science fiction, although it has sometimes been called that; there is no 'science' in it."

The early Japanese tale of "Urashima Tarō" involves traveling forwards in time to a distant future, and was first described in the '' Nihongi'' (written in 720). 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. The 10th-century Japanese narrative ''The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter'' may also be considered proto-science fiction. 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.

''One Thousand and One Nights''

Several stories within the '' One Thousand and One Nights'' (''Arabian Nights'', 8th–10th century CE) also feature science fiction elements. 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. (cf. ) 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.

Other medieval literature

According to Dr. Abu Shadi al-Roubi, the final two chapters of the Arabic theological novel ''Fādil ibn Nātiq'' (c. 1270), also known as '' Theologus Autodidactus'', by the Arabian polymath writer Ibn al-Nafis (1213–1288) can be described as science fiction. 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,Dr. Abu Shadi Al-Roubi (1982), "Ibn al-Nafis as a philosopher", ''Symposium on Ibn al-Nafis'', Second International Conference on Islamic Medicine: Islamic Medical Organization, Kuwait (cf.br>Ibnul-Nafees As a Philosopher
''Encyclopedia of Islamic World'

and he makes references to his own scientific discovery of pulmonary circulation in order to explain bodily resurrection. The novel was later translated into English as ''Theologus Autodidactus'' in the early 20th century.

During the European Middle Ages, science fictional themes appeared within many chivalric romance and legends. Robots and automata featured in romances starting in the twelfth century, with ''Le Pèlerinage de Charlemagne'' and ''Eneas'' among the first. The ''Roman de Troie'', another twelfth-century work, features the famous Chambre de Beautes, which contained four automata, one of which held a magic mirror, one of which performed somersaults, one of which played musical instruments, and one which showed people what they most needed. Automata in these works were often ambivalently associated with necromancy, and frequently guarded entrances or provided warning of intruders. This association with necromancy often leads to the appearance of automata guarding tombs, as they do in ''Eneas'', '' Floris and Blancheflour'', and ''Le Roman d’Alexandre'', while in Lancelot they appear in an underground palace. Automata did not have to be human, however. A brass horse is among the marvelous gifts given to the Cambyuskan in Geoffrey Chaucer's "The Squire's Tale". This metal horse is reminiscent of similar metal horses in middle eastern literature, and could take its rider anywhere in the world at extraordinary speed by turning a peg in its ear and whispering certain words in its ear. The brass horse is only one of the technological marvels which appears in "The Squire's Tale": the Cambyuskan, or Khan also receives a mirror which reveals distant places, which the witnessing crowd explains as operating by the manipulation of angles and optics, and a sword which deals and heals deadly wounds, which the crowd explains as being possible using advanced smithing techniques.

Technological inventions are also rife in the Alexander romances. In John Gower's ''Confessio Amantis'', for example, Alexander the Great constructs a flying machine by tying two griffins to a platform and dangling meat above them on a pole. This adventure is ended only by the direct intervention of God, who destroys the device and throws Alexander back to the ground. This does not, however, stop the legendary Alexander, who proceeds to construct a gigantic orb of glass which he uses to travel beneath the water. There, he sees extraordinary marvels which eventually exceed his comprehension.

States similar to suspended animation also appear in medieval romances, such as the '' Histora Destructionis Troiae'' and the '' Roman d’Eneas''. In the former, King Priam has the body of the hero Hector entombed in a network of golden tubes that run through his body. Through these tubes ran the semi-legendary fluid balsam which was then reputed to have the power to preserve life. This fluid kept the corpse of Hector preserved as if he was still alive, maintaining him in a persistent vegetative state during which autonomic processes such as the growth of facial hair continued.

The boundaries between medieval fiction with scientific elements and medieval science can be fuzzy at best. In works such as Geoffrey Chaucer "The House of Fame", it is proposed that the titular House of Fame is the natural home of sound, described as a ripping in the air, towards which all sound is eventually attracted, in the same way that the Earth was believed to be the natural home of earth to which it was all eventually attracted. Likewise, medieval travel narratives often contained science-fictional themes and elements. Works such as Mandeville's Travels included automata, alternate species and sub-species of humans, including Cynoencephali and Giants, and information about the sexual reproduction of diamonds. However, Mandeville's Travels and other travel narratives in its genre mix real geographical knowledge with knowledge now known to be fictional, and it is therefore difficult to distinguish which portions should be considered science fictional or would have been seen as such in the Middle Ages.

Proto-science fiction in the Enlightenment and Age of Reason

In the wake of scientific discoveries that characterized the Enlightenment, several new types of literature began to take shape in 16th-century Europe. The humanist thinker Thomas More's 1516 work of fiction and political philosophy entitled ''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. The Faust legend (1587) contains an early prototype for the "mad scientist story".

In the 17th and 18th centuries, the so-called " Age of Reason" and widespread interest in scientific discovery fueled the creation of speculative fiction that anticipated many of the tropes of more recent science fiction. Several works expanded on imaginary voyages to the moon, first in Johannes Kepler's '' Somnium'' (The Dream, 1634), which both Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov have referred to as the first work of science fiction. Similarly, some identify Francis Godwin's ''The Man in the Moone'' (1638) as the first work of science fiction in English, and Cyrano de Bergerac's ''Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon'' (1656). Space travel also figures prominently in Voltaire's '' Micromégas'' (1752), which is also notable for the suggestion that people of other worlds may be in some ways more advanced than those of earth.

Other works containing proto-science-fiction elements from the Age of Reason of the 17th and 18th centuries include (in chronological order):
*Shakespeare's '' The Tempest'' (1610–11) contains a prototype for the "mad scientist story".
*Francis Bacon's ''New Atlantis'' (1627), an incomplete utopian novel.
*Margaret Cavendish's '' The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World'' (1666), a novel that describes an alternate world found in the Arctic by a young noblewoman.
* Daniel Defoe's '' The Consolidator'' (1705) revolves around a voyage to the moon.
* Simon Tyssot de Patot's ''Voyages et Aventures de Jacques Massé'' (1710) features a Lost World.
* Simon Tyssot de Patot's ''La Vie, Les Aventures et Le Voyage de Groenland du Révérend Père Cordelier Pierre de Mésange'' (1720) features a Hollow Earth.
*Jonathan Swift's '' Gulliver's Travels'' (1726) contains descriptions of alien cultures and "weird science".
*Samuel Madden's '' Memoirs of the Twentieth Century'' (1733) in which a narrator from 1728 is given a series of state documents from 1997–1998 by his guardian angel, a plot device which is reminiscent of later time travel novels. However, the story does not explain how the angel obtained these documents.
* Ludvig Holberg's ''Niels Klim's Underground Travels'' (1741) is an early example of the Hollow Earth genre.
*Louis-Sébastien Mercier's '' L'An 2440'' (1771) gives a predictive account of life in the 25th century.
* Nicolas-Edmé Restif de la Bretonne's ''La Découverte Australe par un Homme Volant'' (1781) features prophetic inventions.
*Giacomo Casanova's ''Icosameron'' (1788) is a novel that makes use of the Hollow Earth device

19th-century transitions

Shelley and Europe in the early 19th century

The 19th century saw a major acceleration of these trends and features, most clearly seen in the groundbreaking publication of Mary Shelley's ''Frankenstein'' in 1818. The short novel features the archetypal "mad scientist" experimenting with advanced technology. In his book ''Billion Year Spree'', Brian Aldiss claims ''Frankenstein'' represents "the first seminal work to which the label SF can be logically attached". It is also the first of the "mad scientist" subgenre. Although normally associated with the gothic horror genre, the novel introduces science fiction themes such as the use of technology for achievements beyond the scope of science at the time, and the alien as antagonist, furnishing a view of the human condition from an outside perspective. Aldiss argues that science fiction in general derives its conventions from the gothic novel. Mary Shelley's short story " Roger Dodsworth: The Reanimated Englishman" (1826) sees a man frozen in ice revived in the present day, incorporating the now common science fiction theme of cryonics whilst also exemplifying Shelley's use of science as a conceit to drive her stories. Another futuristic Shelley novel, ''The Last Man'', is also often cited as the first true science fiction novel.

In 1836 Alexander Veltman published ''Predki Kalimerosa: Aleksandr Filippovich Makedonskii'' (The forebears of Kalimeros: Alexander, son of Philip of Macedon), which has been called the first original Russian science fiction novel and the first novel to use time travel. Albeit time travel achieved via a magical hippogriff rather than technological means. The narrator meets Aristotle, and goes on a voyage with Alexander the Great before returning to the 19th century.

Somehow influenced by the scientific theories of the 19th century, but most certainly by the idea of human progress, Victor Hugo wrote in '' The Legend of the Centuries'' (1859) a long poem in two parts that can be viewed like a dystopia/utopia fiction, called ''20th century''. It shows in a first scene the body of a broken huge ship, the greatest product of the prideful and foolish mankind that called it ''Leviathan'', wandering in a desert world where the winds blow and the anger of the wounded Nature is; humanity, finally reunited and pacified, has gone toward the stars in a starship, to look for and to bring liberty into the light.

Other notable proto-science fiction authors and works of the early 19th century include:

* Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville's ''Le Dernier Homme'' (1805, ''The Last Man'').
* Historian Félix Bodin's ''Le Roman de l'Avenir'' (1834) and Emile Souvestre's ''Le Monde Tel Qu'il Sera'' (1846), two novels which try to predict what the next century will be like.
* Jane C. Loudon's '' The Mummy!: Or a Tale of the Twenty-Second Century'' (1827), in which Cheops is revived by scientific means into a world in political crisis, where technology has advanced to gas-flame jewelry and houses that migrate on rails, etc.
* Louis Geoffroy's ''Napoleon et la Conquête du Monde'' (1836), an alternate history of a world conquered by Napoleon.
* C.I. Defontenay's ''Star ou Psi de Cassiopée'' (1854), an Olaf Stapledon-like chronicle of an alien world and civilization.
* Slovak (in that time Hungarian) author Gustáv Reuss'

''Hviezdoveda alebo životopis Krutohlava, čo na Zemi, okolo Mesiaca a Slnka skúsil a čo o obežniciach, vlasaticiach, pôvode a konci sveta vedel ("The Science of the Stars or The Life of Krutohlav who Visited the Moon and the Sun and Knew about Planets, Comets and the Beginning and the End of the World" )'' (1856). In this book Gustáv Reuss sends his hero named Krutohlav, a scholar from the Gemer region, right to the Moon... in a balloon. When the hero comes back, he builds a sort of a dragon-like interstellar ship, in which the characters travel around the whole known Solar System and eventually visit all the countries of the Earth.
* Astronomer Camille Flammarion's ''La Pluralité des Mondes Habités'' (1862) which speculated on extraterrestrial life.
* Edward Bulwer-Lytton's ''The Coming Race'' (1871), a novel where the main character discovers a highly evolved subterranean civilization. PSI-powers are given a logical and scientific explanation, achieved through biological evolution and technological progress, rather than something magical or supernatural.
* Edward S. Ellis's ''The Steam Man of the Prairies'' 1868 The first novel starts when Ethan Hopkins and Mickey McSquizzle—a "Yankee" and an "Irishman"—encounter a colossal, steam-powered man in the American prairies. This steam-man was constructed by Johnny Brainerd, a teenaged boy, who uses the steam-man to carry him in a carriage on various adventures.

Verne and Wells

The European brand of science fiction proper began later in the 19th century with the scientific romances of H.G. Wells and the science-oriented, socially critical novels of Jules Verne. Verne's adventure stories, notably ''Journey to the Center of the Earth'' (1864), ''From the Earth to the Moon'' (1865), and ''Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea'' (1869) mixed daring romantic adventure with technology that was either up to the minute or logically extrapolated into the future. They were tremendous commercial successes and established that an author could make a career out of such whimsical material. L. Sprague de Camp calls Verne "the world's first full-time science fiction novelist."

Wells's stories, on the other hand, use science fiction devices to make didactic points about his society. In ''The Time Machine'' (1895), for example, the technical details of the machine are glossed over quickly so that the Time Traveller can tell a story that criticizes the stratification of English society. The story also uses Darwinian evolution (as would be expected in a former student of Darwin's champion, Huxley), and shows an awareness of Marxism. In ''The War of the Worlds'' (1898), the Martians' technology is not explained as it would have been in a Verne story, and the story is resolved by a deus ex machina, albeit a scientifically explained one.

The differences between Verne and Wells highlight a tension that has existed in science fiction throughout its history. The question of whether to present realistic technology or to focus on characters and ideas has been ever-present, as has the question of whether to tell an exciting story or make a didactic point.

Late 19th-century expansion

Wells and Verne had quite a few rivals in early science fiction. Short stories and novelettes with themes of fantastic imagining appeared in journals throughout the late 19th century and many of these employed scientific ideas as the springboard to the imagination. ''Erewhon'' is a novel by Samuel Butler published in 1872 and dealing with the concept that machines could one day become sentient and supplant the human race. In 1886 the novel The Future Eve by French author Auguste Villiers de l'Isle-Adam was published, where Thomas Edison builds an artificial woman. Although better known for Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle also wrote early science fiction, particularly using the character of Professor Challenger. Rudyard Kipling's contributions to the genre in the early 1900s made Campbell describe him as "the first modern science fiction writer". Other writers in the field were Bengali science fiction authors such as Sukumar Ray and Begum Roquia Sakhawat Hussain, who wrote the earliest known feminist science fiction work, '' Sultana's Dream''. Another early feminist science fiction work at the time was Charlotte Perkins Gilman' '' Herland''.
Wells and Verne both had an international readership and influenced writers in America, especially. Soon a home-grown American science fiction was thriving. European writers found more readers by selling to the American market and writing in an Americanised style.

American proto-science fiction in the late 19th century

In the last decades of the 19th century, works of science fiction for adults and children were numerous in America, though it was not yet given the name "science fiction."
There were science-fiction elements in the stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Fitz-James O'Brien. Edgar Allan Poe is often mentioned with Verne and Wells as the founders of science fiction although Mary Shelley's Frankenstein predates these. A number of his short stories, and the novel ''The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket'' are science fictional. An 1827 satiric novel by philosopher George Tucker ''A Voyage to the Moon'' is sometimes cited as the first American science fiction novel.

In 1835 Edgar Allan Poe published a short story, "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall" in which a flight to the moon in a balloon is described. It has an account of the launch, the construction of the cabin, descriptions of strata and many more science-like aspects. In addition to Poe's account the story written in 1813 by the Dutch Willem Bilderdijk is remarkable. In his novel ''Kort verhaal van eene aanmerkelijke luchtreis en nieuwe planeetontdekking'' (Short account of a remarkable journey into the skies and discovery of a new planet) Bilderdijk tells of a European somewhat stranded in an Arabic country where he boasts he is able to build a balloon that can lift people and let them fly through the air. The gasses used turn out to be far more powerful than expected and after a while he lands on a planet positioned between earth and moon. The writer uses the story to portray an overview of scientific knowledge concerning the moon in all sorts of aspects the traveller to that place would encounter. Quite a few similarities can be found in the story Poe published some twenty years later.

John Leonard Riddell, a Professor of Chemistry in New Orleans, published the short story ''Orrin Lindsay's plan of aerial navigation, with a narrative of his explorations in the higher regions of the atmosphere, and his wonderful voyage round the moon!'' in 1847 on a pamphlet. It tells the story of the student Orrin Lindsay who invents an alloy that prevents gravitational attraction, and in a spherical craft leaves earth and travel to the moon. The story contains algebra and scientific footnotes, which makes it an early example of hard science fiction.

William Henry Rhodes published in 1871 the tale ''The Case of Summerfield'' in the Sacramento Union newspaper, and introduced weapon of mass destruction. A mad scientist and villain called Black Bart makes an attempt to blackmail the world with a powder made of potassium, able to destroy the planet by turning its waters into fire.

Charles Curtis Dail, a Kentucky lawyer, published in 1890 the novel ''Willmoth the Wanderer, or The Man from Saturn'', had his protagonist travel through the solar system by covering his body with an anti-gravity ointment.

The newspaper man Edward Page Mitchell would publish his innovative science fiction short stories in '' The Sun'' for more than a decade, except for his first story which was published in ''Scribner's Monthly'' in 1874. His stories included invisibility, faster than light travels, teleportation, time travel, cryogenics, mind transfer, mutants, cyborgs and mechanical brains.

One of the most successful works of early American science fiction was the second-best selling novel in the U.S. in the 19th century: Edward Bellamy's ''Looking Backward'' (1888), its effects extending far beyond the field of literature. ''Looking Backward'' extrapolates a future society based on observation of the current society.

In 1894, Will Harben published "Land of the Changing Sun," a dystopian fantasy set at the center of the earth. In Harben's tale, the earth's core is populated by a scientifically advanced civilization, living beneath the glow of a mechanical sun.

Mark Twain explored themes of science in his novel ''A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court''. By means of ''"transmigration of souls", "transposition of epochs – and bodies"'' Twain's Yankee is transported back in time and his knowledge of 19th-century technology with him. Written in 1889, ''A Connecticut Yankee'' seems to predict the events of World War I, when Europe's old ideas of chivalry in warfare were shattered by new weapons and tactics.

American author L. Frank Baum's series of 14 books (1900–1920) based in his outlandish Land of Oz setting, contained depictions of strange weapons (Dorothy and the Wizard in Oz, Glinda of Oz), mechanical men (Tik-Tok of Oz) and a bevy of not-yet-realized technological inventions and devices including perhaps the first literary appearance of handheld wireless communicators (Tik-Tok of Oz).

Jack London wrote several science fiction stories, including "The Red One" (a story involving extraterrestrials), ''The Iron Heel'' (set in the future from London's point of view) and "The Unparalleled Invasion" (a story involving future germ warfare and ethnic cleansing). He also wrote a story about invisibility and a story about an irresistible energy weapon. These stories began to change the features of science fiction.

Edward Everett Hale wrote ''The Brick Moon'', a Verne-inspired novel notable as the first work to describe an artificial satellite. Written in much the same style as his other work, it employs pseudojournalistic realism to tell an adventure story with little basis in reality.

Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950) began writing science fiction for pulp magazines just before World War I, getting his first story ''Under the Moons of Mars'' published in 1912. He continued to publish adventure stories, many of them science fiction, throughout the rest of his life. The pulps published adventure stories of all kinds. Science fiction stories had to fit in alongside murder mysteries, horror, fantasy and Edgar Rice Burroughs' own Tarzan.

Early 20th century

The next great science fiction writers after H. G. Wells were Olaf Stapledon (1886–1950), whose four major works ''Last and First Men'' (1930), ''Odd John'' (1935), '' Star Maker'' (1937), and ''Sirius'' (1944), introduced a myriad of ideas that writers have since adopted, and J.-H. Rosny aîné, born in Belgium, the father of "modern" French science fiction, a writer also comparable to H. G. Wells

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