The Sword and Laser discussion

When I was young, I thought Jules Verne created sci-fi. As an adult, I realized Mary Shelley's Frankenstein beat him by several decades. I recently heard of A True Story: Parallel English and Greek. It was written about 1,500 years before Shelley was born.

Reading the novella (under an hour), most of it was mythological parody. However, I think it's claim to first Sci-Fi is genuine because Lucian travels to space, helps aliens from the sun and moon in a war, and lives in an artificial atmosphere.

Have any of you read this? It is a fascinating debate on what counts as sci-fi. How about other books that predate Frankenstein?

We could probably credit anything mythological with a vehicle if we go that route. Icarus comes to mind right away. Anything with Apollo's chariot or Ra's daily trip. Or monster stories like Gilgamesh.

John (Taloni) wrote: "We could probably credit anything mythological with a vehicle if we go that route. Icarus comes to mind right away. Anything with Apollo's chariot or Ra's daily trip. Or monster stories like Gilgam..."

It depends on the framing, I think. If the story is told with the understanding of “we know this isn’t true but hey what if”, then it’s SFF. But if they actually believe it, that’s a different kettle of fish.

What we call mythology others called religion, so older stories that we call Science Fiction could very well be the same. I mean, Scientologists and Mormons actually believe the stuff in their religion, and many of those beliefs sound straight out of sci-fi to me. (In Scientology’s case, it was literally so.)

I haven’t read the story you reference, Phillip. Are there clues that he was making stuff up for fun? Or conversely that this was something to take seriously?

Trike wrote: "I haven’t read the story you reference, Phillip. Are there clues that he was making stuff up for fun? Or conversely that this was something to take seriously?"

He literally starts the story by saying he's lying about all of it. It's a parody of "true" stories from other writers. Some show up in the story, including Homer, Odysseus, and Penelope. He definitely made it clear he was making up stuff in a "what if"/"don't fall for their BS" sort of way.

I came across True Story in a trivia book I read. It mentioned literary firsts and gave credit to this as the first sci-fi. I'd never heard of it but found it online (also at Amazon for a buck or two). Now I'm going down a rabbit hole finding other stories with supporters of it being first to see where I stand on the opinion.

Phillip wrote: "Trike wrote: "I haven’t read the story you reference, Phillip. Are there clues that he was making stuff up for fun? Or conversely that this was something to take seriously?"

He literally starts th..."

Definitely sounds like a contendah.

Obviously not as old as True Story, but another pair of SFF books that predate Frankenstein are Cyrano de Bergerac's (yes, that one) Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon and its semi-sequel The States and Empires of the Sun published in 1657 and 1662. Gulliver's Travels from 1726 would plausibly count, too, IMO.

It would be fair to say that sci-fi predates written history.

Of the ones we know and have records I would say the Gilgamesh story (already mentioned) is a contender (from 2100 BCE). It is a story that inspired the Noah story from the bible. I know many won't consider stories from the bible as sci-fi, but they are often retellings of earlier stories that do have SFF elements. Very little in the bible is original. The authors plagiarised much older stories. Even the Jesus myth is heavily inspired from Sumerian, Babylonian and Egyptian SFF stories.

Metamorphoses by Ovid (from 8 CE) is often cited as the first true Sci-fi book. But even that is based on many much older stories.

Whoosh!

Every time I think I have a bit of a literary clue, and could hold my own a bit in this sort of conversation (or at least follow along), I get proven gravely wrong.

Thanks Dave ;-)

I guess I have some googling to do.

I kind of think it is hard to have SF without Science...

Iain wrote: "I kind of think it is hard to have SF without Science..."

They had science 2,000 years ago. Admittedly it consisted primarily of “water wet, fire hot, sun bright” but it was science. :p

I kid, mostly because their civilizations are dust, but seriously, you can’t build pyramids, Parthenons, and coliseums without science and math.

I'm on the discord of a hobby machinist and youtuber who is making a reproduction of the antikythera mechanism. For a while there was a writer on there who was during research for a "Sandal Punk" (will it never end). With devices like this available to the Greeks of the time (although seeming very rare), I'm surprised more of the art of the time, including the fiction stories did not include more science of the time.

I am not convinced what the ancients civilisations did was "Science".

They had maths and technology and technology advanced gradually over time as individuals made improvements. However maths and technology is not Science. Thinking about stuff really hard and coming up with an idea of atoms is not the same as the methodical testing of the idea that developed in the 16th century.

The publication of your theories and most importantly testing the theories with experiment are central to the process and application of Science. While there were isolated pockets of thinking and results that match a more modern view of Science (for example measuring the radius of the Earth, take that Columbus) this does not make what was done at the time Science.

I am much more comfortable withe the term Natural Philosophy which better describes what was done at the time.

I know I made a throw away comment but I still hold that it is hard to have Science Fiction without the scientific method.

It was science. You don't get to the Scientific Method without the millennia of science development that preceded it.

They were fighting against the "God(s) did it" mentality that held back science ( and is still holding back science)

Medicine was improved by learning from the mistakes and successes of previous generations.

Maths and Technology is science. The Egyptians were using science to build their pyramids.

Eratosthenes, 2200+ years ago, was using science to calculate the circumference of the Earth, the Earth's tilt and the length of a year to a precision not matched for well over a 1,000 years

And it’s not just geometry and trigonometry, either. Metallurgy, chemistry, textiles (weaving and dyes), animal husbandry, the directed evolution of plants. The Greeks are the ones who came up with the idea of atoms, after all, and the Chinese had gunpowder, ink, and paper. The Minoans had sewer systems and running water in their homes.

They might not have called it by the terms we use, but it was still science and their experimentation was a version of the scientific method. We’ve only recently started to figure out how the Romans made their ultra-durable concrete, which is still vastly superior to ours. None of our concrete structures will be around 2,000 years from now.

I was thinking Archimedes, who used applied science just fine to burn up a fleet. And we still use the Archimedean Screw for irrigation. Then there's Hero of Alexandria who had a working steam engine in 50 AD. He considered it a toy, sigh. Egyptians had electricity and used it in making mummies.

If anything, what we have now is more widespread dissemination of scientific information. In ancient times knowledge was limited to an elite. Now it's everybody.