History of Science Fiction (eBook)

Adam Roberts is Professor of Nineteenth-century Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, UK. He is also the author of more than a dozen science fiction novels: his most recent, Jack Glass (2012) won the BSFA and Campbell awards for the year's best science fiction novel. He has published a number of critical and academic works on science fiction, 19th-century and other topics.

Preface to Second Edition 6
Preface to the First Edition (2006) 10
Works Cited 20
Contents 22
chapter 1: Definitions 24
Three Definitions 24
The Scientific and the Technological I: The Scientific 28
The Scientific and the Technological II: The Technological 33
‘In Real Life’ and ‘in SF’ 38
Conclusion 41
Notes 44
Works Cited 45
chapter 2: SF and the Ancient Novel 47
The Ancient Cosmos 48
Early Novels 51
Conclusion 56
Works Cited 56
chapter 3: From Medieval Romance to Sixteenth-Century Utopia 58
Sixteenth-Century Utopias 62
Systematisation and the Material: 16th-Century Science 66
Note 70
Works Cited 70
chapter 4: Seventeenth-Century SF 72
The Copernican Cosmos and the Sense of Wonder 75
17th-Century Science Fictional Prose Romances 77
Kepler’s Somnium 78
Interplanetary Travel 81
Cyrano de Bergerac and the Plurality of Worlds 84
Neo-Latin Writing 88
Terrestrial Utopias 91
Future Tales and Alternate History 95
Developments in Science 99
Works Cited 101
chapter 5: Eighteenth-Century SF: Big, Little 105
Swift’s Travels 112
Little and Big: Voltaire’s Aliens 116
18th-Century Voyages Extraordinaires 120
Subterranean Adventures and Interplanetaries 122
The 18th-Century Moon 128
SF and Gothic Fiction 130
Pre-Revolutionary and Revolutionary SF 132
Conclusion 135
Notes 136
Works Cited 137
chapter 6: Early 19th-Century SF 140
Visions of the Future and ‘Last Man’ Fictions 140
Extraordinary Voyages and Automata 144
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein (1818) 146
SF of the 1820s and the 1830s 152
Edgar Allan Poe 156
Geoffroy and the Invention of Alternate History 162
Notes 166
Works Cited 167
chapter 7: SF 1850–1900: Mobility and Mobilisation 169
The 1850s 169
Antigravity: Mobility’s Objective Correlative 173
Contemporaries of Verne 175
Mystical Science Fiction 179
Future War and Invasion Fantasies: Militaristic Extrapolation 184
Albert Robida 186
Late Century Utopias 188
L’Ève Future (1884): Edison’s Android 191
Science Fiction in the 1890s 194
‘Will’ 196
Notes 197
Works Cited 198
CHAPTER 8: Verne and Wells 201
Verne 203
Wells 217
Works Cited 241
CHAPTER 9: The Early 20th Century, 1: High Modernist SF 244
Anti-machinists 249
Mystical and Religious SF 255
Zamiatin 258
?apek and Bulgakov 259
Stapledon 261
High Modernism: Proust and Richardson 263
Conclusion 266
Works Cited 268
CHAPTER 10: The Early 20th Century, 2: The Pulps 270
Pulps 271
The Magazine Era 277
Edgar Rice Burroughs 281
E E ‘Doc’ Smith 283
European Pulps 287
Visual Texts 288
SF Cinema: The Silent Era 292
SF Cinema in the 1930s 295
1930s Film Serials 298
Welles’ War of the Worlds (1938) 300
Notes 300
Works Cited 301
CHAPTER 11: Golden Age SF: 1940–1960 303
Asimov 304
Early Heinlein 308
North American Golden Age Writers 311
The Postwar British Scene 323
‘Cosy Catastrophe’ and Alien Children 325
Golden Age ‘Religious’ Fictions 330
European SF of the 1940s and 1950s 334
Films 336
Visual Artists 339
Comics 340
European Comics 344
Conclusion 345
Notes 346
Works Cited 346
CHAPTER 12: The Impact of the New Wave: SF of the 1960s and 1970s 348
New Wave SF 349
Heinlein, Herbert, Barth, Moorcock 352
Philip K Dick 361
Le Guin 371
Brian Aldiss 373
Anglophone SF 376
European SF of the 1960s and 1970s 388
Japanese SF 391
Conclusion 392
Notes 393
Works Cited 394
chapter 13: SF Screen Media, 1960–2000: Hollywood Cinema and TV 397
Early 1960s SF Cinema 399
2001: A Space Odyssey 402
TV SF: Star Trek and Doctor Who 404
Film from 2001 to Star Wars 410
Star Wars 414
After Star Wars: Alien, Blade Runner, The Matrix 416
SF Blockbusters of the 1980s 422
1990s 427
Time Travel 428
Notes 431
Appendix: All-Time Top 20 Movies by Global Box Office (gross in dollars) as of End of 2015 432
World gross 433
Works Cited 433
chapter 14: Prose SF of the 1980s and 1990s 434
SF Fandom 439
SF Prose Fiction of the 1980s 441
Gene Wolfe’s The Book of the New Sun (1980–3) and Its Sequels 447
William Gibson’s Neuromancer (1984) and Cyberpunk 452
Non-genre Writers 455
Major SF of the 1980s: Pride, Free Will and Atonement 459
The 1990s 464
Iain M Banks 467
Mars and Confluence 470
Notes 474
Works Cited 475
chapter 15: Late 20th Century SF: Multimedia, Visual SF and Others 476
Comics and Graphic Novels 476
Visual Art: Painting, Sculpture, Performance Art 478
Arcade, Video and Computer Games 481
Audio SF 484
UFOs 488
Works Cited 491
chapter 16: 21st-Century Science Fiction 492
The Genre Novel in the 21st Century 500
Visual Texts 509
Genre Versus Mainstream 512
Steampunk 513
Coda: Protestantism Redux 516
Works Cited 524
Index 526