History of Science Fiction in Literature Full Video- Mr. Sci-Fi Mini-Series 

Excellent video, great context. I haven’t read many of the great works discussed here, but now I will! Asimov and Wells and every other sci-fi novelist owes a debt of gratitude. Thank you for your dedication to sci-fi!

Wow! that was amazing! More than an hour with no hesitation or deviation. I'm so happy I found your channel. I was beginning to lose hope that there was anything substantial on youtube about the history of sci-fi writing. Then BOOM!! A vintage book avalanche from Mr. Sci-Fi. Fantastic!

I can't tell you how much I appreciate this!

There's a RU-vid video of the historic meeting and conversation between H.G. Wells and Orson Welles, after Orson did his infamous War of the Worlds radio adaptation.

Gilgamesh story is one ancient retelling that could pass for science fiction. The bull of heaven Inanna threatens Gilgamesh with itself beats any void ship in current scifi with its unmatched power for devastation. The bull of heaven was stationed far off venus s orbit for it was known amongst the gods that the power of its engines once ignited was enough to incinerate asteroids and even planets, hence always left in far orbits.

Yea first! Thanks again Marc! I love learning and I / we love Sci Fi so you know I really appreciate you using your valuable time and expertise to document all of this for all of us. THANK YOU again Marc!

I love your enthusiasm for what you love.

I was looking for a video that tell the history of sci-fi for months and this video is exactly what i need. Thank you very much. You earned a real subscriber!

Wonderful amount of information, thank you for sharing!

Very fine and engaging. My first great love in reading, I used to collect the novels on sale at the grocery store.

Great ! Thanks ! This was more or less exactly what I was looking för.

Great, comprehensive video. Man am I jealous of some of your editions! I did wonder why you didn't mention Philip Wylie's 'Gladiator' and its influence on Superman and comic books in general.

This is an amazing resource, thank you. I will be rewatching this to better engrave it.

Wonderful to watch and learn so much from you about these books! Thank you! I am inside scifi reading the last 5 years and it gets deeper and deeper. It is a window for the mind. Sci fi literature can show you not only future worlds but also to drive you inside sociology, ecology and politics. My favorites until now is Ursula K Le Guin, Frank Herbert but also I stuck with the book "Voyage to Arcturus" by David Lindsay (strange but powerful with its way). Now I am preparing for Asimov and Aldiss. Thank you for all the great information!

Somebody, please...get this man a sci-fi!

That was a real treat. Thank you for making this

I've never seen a picture of Isaac Asimov without the signature mutton chops before!

Definitely one of the best videos of its kind on RU-vid! Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us, I learned a lot.

Great talk on Sci Fi.

Great stories of the SF History. Thank you for sharing this portraits of a rich era, Mark. It's amazing how these Science-fiction(s) and their writers have shaped our imaginations, our politics and social systems in so many ways. Science-Fiction at its best can be both relevant (ex: it can show the way science, when taken as a religious belief, is dangerous and no longer effective) and poetic (it uses one's imagination!). At its worst, Science-Fiction is just propaganda for some kind of social engineering from the military industrial complex (Eisenhower's warned us ;o). Did you watch the latest Lady Doctor Who episode, by the way? [sighs] Old sci-fi is gold! Be well.

Lester del Rey also made a great impact in the late 50s-60s, to make science fiction realistically available to kids.

Interesting that he conflates popularizing the push to space with Bradbury and spends so much time talking about Bradbury, implying that he broke SF into the slicks. Actually, of course, it was Heinlein who performed that function. It was Heinlein who broke into the 'slicks' (three long years before Bradbury). It was Heinlein who "raised" a generation of kids on realistic stories about going first to the planets and then to the stars. A new Heinlein book every Christmas! (Bradbury's stories are the opposite of realism.) There are things to be said for both writers, but my-oh-my this smells like historical revisionism to me.

Love your channel so much I love sifi

Cool, Marc. Thanks for sending me the link through The Table.

Hey Mr great video. I agree that Frankenstein is the first scfi story. But with some reluctancy as I have always considered Gullivers travels in my youth to be the first scfi story. So maybe there is some bias there. I'm wondering what your opinion on this is? If you think about it Gullivers travels is very much a science fiction story that deals with man abusing science. There is infact nothing magical about gullivers travels( apart from the occasional ghost) nor is it impossible for the most part. When swift was alive the world had not yet been fully mapped yet, so he imagined a world of tiny people and a race of giant alien horse people who did not know war could exist unkown to man. The idea of man going out to the unkown and finding races in the stars/distant lands with both peaceful and malicious attentions is very much science fiction trope that swift tapped into. Gulivers travels is very much a scientific fiction book, which the themes are later explored in science fiction in the works of Shelly, HG ect. Swift was just writing about science as he knew it at the time. There's even a part in the book were he encounters a floating island, which is held up with magnets. No magic is used. The island is inhabited by mad scientists, which is actually the first reference to mad scientists before Frankenstein. The mad scientists even experiment on the populations living below them. Alot of the book has very definitive Utopian and Dystopian science fiction themes. There is even a super computer in the book, called The Engine, a fictitious device resembling a modern computer. but ultimately it's a satire of ruling elite/ imperialism and how they misuse power for their own ambitions instead of using to help ordinary people. When swift wrote his novel he targeted his scurrility through comedy at the royal society, which he believed as a bunch of elite quacks wasting everyone's time with silly experiments. hat was the main influence for the floating island of Laputa .This is a small part of the book, but I thought i would point that out. The book deals with alot of important themes despite being misleading to most people because of its silly outrageous child like outer exterior, but that was obviously the point of swifts writing. Swift also predicted a number of things with scientific accuracy. Such as mars having two moons and even did some scientific research to have his mad scientists preform plausible sceincey things. Anyway, i'm probably going to get replies telling me I don't know what i'm talking about by literature scholars, but what what do you think?

The year without a summer..i have my novel title..

Mr. Sci-Fi, I am growing deeply concerned that the author, Doc E E Smith, has been completely forgotten. Is the man and his work, some how, banned or blocked... is there some strange copyright thing or what? I have poured over his works again and again and have concluded that HE is The Godfather of many Sci-Fi staples. The Lens (the Force). The Hyperspacial Tube (The Stargate). Inertialess Drive (Warp Speed). The Galactic Patrol (The Federation of Planets). There are millions of moments in his work that are one to one comparisons to millions of SF and Super-hero ideas long before they saw print. The Lensmen had x-ray vision before Superman did, had a Red Lensmen before the Green Lantern existed, and had “...a strong influence of the weak minded,” before Obi-wan.

Amazing video, love the whole intro of the sci-fi history

You missed E.E. "Doc" Smith and H Beam Piper.

I tried to pigeon hole Frankenstein as SF at university, but my teacher's wouldn't have it: Frankenstein was Gothic!

No mention of Ursula LeGuin?

Geez, take a breath. Great stuff, but I couldn't get past ten minutes without a truckload of xanax.

Fiction? What about "Reality imitating Art"?

Didnt know Arthur C Clarke was gay

You know you can't trust anything this guy says when he claims Frankenstein's was the first science fiction story. Not when there are stories 200+ years older than this story that deal with sci-fi

The first pure fantasy novel is the Bible.