There is a case to be made. The challenge is defining terms and distinguishing between fantasy and science fiction (or even what counts as a novel). Samuel R. Delany has argued against these earlier works being considered science fiction, as I recall - even HG Wells and Co.
What about the historical Cyrano de Bergerac, who had a story about a trip to the moon in a firecracker powered ship in ... 1657 (I had to look up the date)?
@AspiringLuddite
Precisely. "Histoire comique des empires et états de la lune et du soleil".
Mary Shelley is a giant, but people exist outside of the English speaking world, they've invented writing and did things in literature before it happened in English...
So, sure, erasing women sucks. Erasing the whole of the non English speaking world sucks, I would argue, even more.
Maybe more than one person vcan "invvent" a genre because the world is just big that way (bigger in the past than now for sure). But can we agree that Shelley's work had a big effect on the genre?
@iinavpov@AspiringLuddite@icastico@NickEast@sciencefiction@writers@writingcommunity@writing I think the difference between Shelley (and her non-English counterparts) and earlier works is that Shelley moved from fantasy to science fiction. Today, traveling to the moon is fact, and before that it enjoyed some decades as science fiction. Prior to that, it was total fantasy.
Frankenstein goes into detail as to how the doctor builds the monster, and that's what makes it science fiction.
@eyrea
I agree, but although Lucian is fantasy, Bergerac describes a rocket ship (and lands in Eden... So there's that, too)
I don't want to diminish Shelley, merely to point out that there are precedents, and also that there are other science fiction traditions than the English language one!
I'll also add there's arguably a Chinese SF novel from around 1640 AD, Xī Yóu Bǔ (西游补), a humorous sequel to 'Journey to the West' which includes time travel and time travel paradoxes, and which wasn't translated into English until 2000.
That seems solid evidence for the multiple independent inventions of SF. There can be more than one.
True. What they don't usually tell you is that her husband Percy Shelley, was an established poet and novelist but without much success early on. He was not too happy when his young wife, got acclaim and fame - more than his - on her first novel.
Tim Powers' novel 'The Stress of Her Regard' also completely recontextualizes that vacation, the vampirism, and more, within a weird dark fantasy/SF setting.
It's one of his weirder books, and for Powers, that's saying a lot.
@alexf24@NickEast@sciencefiction@writers@writingcommunity@writing
They also don't tell you that the story line was dreamed up when here husband and another couple were sitting around a cave smoking opium and telling ghost stories.
Maybe Byron's lover Ada Lovelace learned how to program in opium soaked dreams.
@Ralph058 If we're talking about the English poet George Gordon Byron, 6th Baron Byron FRS (1788 – 1824), I surely hope that English mathematician and writer Augusta Ada King (née Byron), Countess of Lovelace (1815 – 1852) wasn't his lover, as she was already his daughter.
@stevesebban Frankenstein is not a "rewrite" of the Golem of Prague, and saying so erases both Mary Shelley's contribution and the distinctive Jewishness of the golem story. The golem was built not by scientifically-explained means but by a Rabb Loew's religious/ritual power to protect the Jewish community from pogrom, putting it in the long tradition of myth and religious fable. Frankenstein's eponymous protagonist on the other hand is a scientist, and explicitly disavows mystical methods like alchemy before applying his study of chemistry and other scientific fields to the creation of the Creature. It is this aspect that makes the work science fiction, not the creation of an artificial being. The two stories have very little in common other than an artificial animated construct that goes out of control--different materials, different methods, plots, motivations, endings, etc. @NickEast@macmanx@sciencefiction@writers@writingcommunity@writing
Anyway, I respectfully disagree. I see it as the same underlying story but told with different tools to different audiences. You are entitled to see it differently, of course.
Also, you’re doing a great job at appropriating my culture to yourself by trying to patronize me and explaining it back to me.
@stevesebban Lol hit a nerve with what--by being sexist and wrong on the internet? Too many others have that distinction for you to stand out in particular, I'm afraid.
It's Jewish people who have been pointing out that the Golem is a distinctly Jewish tale, and to say it's basically the same thing as Frankenstein erases that aspect even if you're Jewish yourself. And on that note, have a good rest of your life 👋 @sciencefiction@writers@writingcommunity@writing
@stevesebban Lol hit a nerve with what--by being sexist and wrong on the internet? Too many others have that distinction for you to stand out in particular, I'm afraid. Congratulations for being wrong about the meaning of "cultural appropriation" among many, many other things and have a good rest of your life. @sciencefiction@writers@writingcommunity@writing
Frankenstein; or The Modern Prometheus - published in 1818
The first written account of The Golem of Prague - published in 1834
According to the person who claimed Frankenstein is a rewriting of The Golem of Prague, evidently Mary Shelley didn't just write science fiction--she lived it, by "rewriting" a story that hadn't been written down yet.
@NickEast@sciencefiction@writers@writingcommunity@writing Lucian of Samosata wrote about a lunar voyage. A satirist, his sarcastically named 'True Story' ridiculed the equally fantastical, (Greek) religious myths and fables of the time. I think this rationalism is what distinguishes it from say, Gilgamesh. Various others wrote about travelling to the Moon - after Shakespeare, 'The Man in The Moon' by Bishop Godwin. Kepler's 'Dreams'! Sadly I am too ignorant of Asian sources.
@NickEast@sciencefiction@writers@writingcommunity@writing I think she generally gets less mentioned than she deserves? Though I haven't seen much discuasion about the first scifi novel, admittedly.
Maybe people are more occupied with the horror part?
@writers@writing@writingcommunity@NickEast@sciencefiction I’d assume that it’s kind of pointless to try to find “the first” as it’s pretty unlikely that people have never imagined and told stories about what the future might be like before a certain point.
@writing@writers@NickEast@sciencefiction@writingcommunity and even with genres that are somewhat more new there are often many people who never got well known who preceded the well-known works that popularize the concept of the genre
And then there's the other connection: she sketched the plot of the book during the really grey and rainy summer 1816, which was due to the eruption of the #Tambora#volcano in Indonesia. "The summer that wasn't there" in Europe also led to mis-harvests and the rise of a new means of transportation: the #bicycle.
Ahhh, come onnnnn.... when U.Calgary EngLit dept decided to have an SF novel course in 1978, the first thing the prof taught was Frankenstein, I had to write a paper on Shelley.
And Gulliver's Travels invented Star Trek - every story, a new island with a new variant on humanity, exaggerated. Just like Kirk visiting exaggerated-problem planets that comment on our race wars or whatever.
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