The History of Science Fiction: An (Almost) Complete Guide 

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I like that you're expanding beyond just LOTR content

I think Clarke should have been added to the list along with Asimov and Heinlein, since they were considered the "Big Three" writers of science fiction at the time. Clarke, arguably, was the most science-y of science fiction writers, adding amazing technological depth to his very human stories, and he's the reason we have the oft quoted observation: "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”

Ursula Le Guin. The Left Hand of Darkness is anthropological Science Fiction at its best. I miss her.

"All of great literature is one of three stories: a man goes on a journey, a stranger comes to town, and Godzilla vs Megashark" - Leo Tolstoy

Hearing a Morgan and Morgan ad on RU-vid is surreal

While some emphasize differences between fantasy and science fiction, others identify the many elements both have in common, grouping both together under the umbrella term "speculative fiction." The essays of Ursula K. Le Guin are an excellent resource for anyone seeking more insight into the value of dancing across the lines between the genres.

I wrote a novel based upon Lucian's True History. Mine is called Helen and Cinyras. It gets me excited whenever i hear it mentioned.

Thank you so much for calling out scientology! I've very much been looking forward to you covering sci-fi more substantially and you did not disappoint. I believe that there was an interview where Alan Moore described golden age sci-fi as having been written by robots for robots, which may sound harsh but is accurate when you consider the ideas first characters and plot second approach. Later writers isolated the key ideas that were introduced during that era and improved on the rest. Here are some fun additional resources that I hope you enjoy (I'm a bit scatterbrain at the moment and can't quite articulate a proper paragraph or two on my love for the genre, so decided to point out those who can): 1. Overly Sarcastic Productions have two videos titled 'Trope Talk: Robots' and 'Trope Talk: Those Dang Phones' that nicely cover how writers of various eras viewed and predicted technology based on their specific circumstances. They also have a video on Stranger in a Strange Land that's absolutely hilarious because Heinlein's work hasn't aged particularly well and they made damn sure to illustrate that fact. 2. Neil Gaiman is featured in the documentaries 'Future Shock: The Story of 2000 AD' and 'Harlan Ellison: Dreams With Sharp Teeth' in case you want to hear him gush about those particular influences on him (Ellison in particular was huge in impacting the New Wave movement in sci-fi). Gaiman wrote the forward to the upcoming greatest hits reprint of Ellison's work. 3. The podcast Breaking the Glass Slipper has an excellent episode that delves into the differences between sci-fi and fantasy titled 'Subverting social norms with Adrian Tchaikovsky'. 4. 'Phasers on Stun!: How the Making (and Remaking) of Star Trek Changed the World' by Ryan Britt is excellent for both Trekkies and newcomers! 5. KyleKallgrenBHH has a video called 'Forbidden Planet and the Magic in Science Fiction - Summer of Shakespeare' that nicely covers that particular era of the genre and how the film drew from The Tempest. 6. Proper Bird has videos on Godzilla, Twilight Zone, the dystopia genre, and AI that I can't recommend enough! Her channel is criminally underrated. 7. Dominic Noble has videos on The Thing and Starship Troopers that address the politics of Campbell and Heinlein.

Yeah! Another quality video. When I compare Scifi of the 1950s to today I notice that there is a balance in current Scifi between futuristic and perceived reality. While the older Scifi seems more whimsical and well, more imaginative. I have not done any in depth review of this. It is just my observations.

I move that Jess begin discussing Studio Ghibli movies. A second to the motion? All in favor?

I like that your content is broader than what I initially showed up for 🎉

I always felt like Lewis's Space Trilogy was an underrated part of his work, even though it skews a bit more towards fantasy and dystopia. Love the thoroughness of the discussion! Have a great weekend, Jess!

This definitely needs a second part, covering the rise of comic-books, movies (beyond the earliest ones), and TV series.

Your monographs are great, continue with them, they are very good. The one you made of Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is pure gold

1:11 yes! Star Wars is often designated as "science fantasy or space fantasy" with lightsaber-wielding wizards...

I love these little background episodes on our nerddom

It took the mind of a teenage girl to create Frankenstein, never thought about that before.

God bless you and your work young lady ❤❤❤ respect from Croatia Europe 😇😇😇👍👍👍

Aside from the excellent discussion of the roots of science fiction, the segue to the sponsor was artfully done!😄

31:55 ... **sets up a shrine to Jess out of pure spite** Love this video. Scifi was my go-to genre in my youth, I devoured those 19th and early 20th century classics as a child. And I cannot express enough how DUNE spoke to my soul in ways only two other books ever did (The Giver and Jonathan Livingston Seagull). I'm excited to see your channel continue to grow and branch out - even outside your comfort zone ;)

That has to be the best advertisement segue I’ve ever heard! I couldn’t help it, I burst out laughing while I was driving along in my car. I enjoyed that way more than I probably should have!

I have no idea how Jess doesn't have more subscribers, every video is somehow better than the last

Been watching your videos for several months now. I enjoy them a lot. Other writers I cut my reading teeth on that I'd like to seementioned someday are H. Rider Haggard, for his lost civilization stories (admittedly with strong fantasy tones) and Edgar Rice Burroughs (besides Tarzan, he wrote vast number of science fantasy series). Leigh Brackett and C J Moore well deserve mentions, too, I think, women who were important pioneers in the field. C. J. Cherryh has pointed out that Moore's stories of adventures on other worlds in the solar system could be for the most part still hold up today as interplanetary tales.

With Sora launching from Open AI yesterday, this is perfectly timed. ALSO, love the LOTR content of course, but doing non-LOTR content from time to time is really awesome so thank you!

"Research them before you build a shrine to any of them" 🤣🤣🤣🤣

Wow, I never thought of it like that, Jess. But you're totally right. Go back far enough and even ships and wagons become cutting edge technology. There's a tendency to think of "old people" as less intelligent than us, but they had their technology and our advancements stand on the shoulders of theirs. Surely if we took someone born 10,000 years ago and raised them in modern society, they'd be able to keep up with us just fine. We haven't evolved that much.

Great assessments and summary of history Jess, thanks.

Not even Lucien would have ridiculed Homer, they all treated him with reverence, like he was Shakespeare.

Jess, thank you for this great, short summary of science fiction! I think there were two authors of the late 20's into the 40's that you didn't mention, but had a large influence in their time. Neither are thought of today as nearly as influential as the likes of Asimov, or the earlier authors you mentioned. One was E.E. "Doc" Smith and his "Skylark" series. It created the format that was considered space opera, influencing such shows as Buck Rogers to Star Wars. The other was Murray Leinster, who wrote various stories that were often used in the 1950's SciFi radio series, and his novella "The Time Tunnel", that influenced the later TV show of the same name. A particularly foresighted Leinster short story of 1946 was "A Logic Named Joe", dramatized in the radio show Dimension-X. It described a society using Logics; machines that were linked together into homes and businesses, providing rapid and cheap communication, accounting aid, historical facts on demand, but also personal information. Can you say "the Internet"?

Science Fiction is a modern mythology world-building block for our current technology age timeline, in fact of course.

When you started talking about the history of storytelling, going way back to the early Greeks, the first thing that popped into my head was the story of Icarus. And while it’s a myth, it does use technology, a kind of science, I guess. He had to make the wings, had to figure out how to put them on, and he did manage to fly pretty close to the sun. So maybe it’s a cross between sci-fi and fantasy, lol.

When I was a kid, I was taught that Jules Verne was the father of Science-fiction, and I still consider him as such. (Maybe there was a national bias in this description, given that I am French and live in France. After all, I was also taught that Clement Ader had invented the aeroplane.)

This was thoroughly enjoyable, thank you !

Ok, this channels is becoming one of my fav, and I have a unhealthy amount of channels that I follow.

Baron Frankenstein, needed to discuss things with the. Mathmetition from Jurassic Park and ask not if they could create “life”, but if they should.

Hi Jess, thanks for another excellent video! SciFi is a more divers area than Fantasy so there are probably several “parents of SciFi” depending on the subjects they cover (some you didn’t mention are space operas, end of humankind or first contact) In SciFi, there is also a big influence of comic books - not the superhero trash of Marvel and DC but excellent literature from France and maybe the UK (2000 AD). Check out Moebius (Jean Giraud) with his Inkal stories and the works from Philippe Druillet, Caza, and Bilal!

Just found your channel. Although I'm not a huge LoTR fan, this video about science fiction in general is excelent. I hope you keep diving in this topic!

I'd (partially) recommend 'Billion Year Spree' (or perhaps it was 'Trillion') by Brian Aldiss covering the history of Science Fiction. Partially because I've not finished it yet...with a title like that you think I might have twigged that it could take more than a little time to read. And by the way, that's a British Billion/Trillion.

Love your foray into Science Fiction and look forward to more of it! In the previous century, they gave Jules Verne credit for fathering science fiction, for the most part. I loved reading David Brin’s Postman, And Earth. Both were very good novels in my opinion. Asimov’Foundation was so good - and my favorite was the fourth book which he wrote decades after the first three. There are so many great sci fi authors out there. Sci Fi also had a heck of a hard time surviving on network television in the late mid to late twentieth century, as most producers seemed not to understand it too well then and found reasons to drop shows after a season or two. Younger generations don’t even get the courage it took to put Uhura, a black woman, on the bridge of a starship back in 1966. Planet of the Apes was a very popular movie back in the late ‘60s and it had some controversial messages, along with the sequels it generated. I was an instant fan of all of that, born right into it.

I'm honesty a little surprised that you didn't bring up Roger Zelazny. If for no other reason than because he started to re-blur the lines between fantasy and sci-fi. Dug the rather deep dive on Poe. I think that even Mark Twain dabbled a bit in Poe-esq sci-fi, with his Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's court. =)

You did very well as usual. I find you as informative as some of my English Professors. My favorite classes were in literature and creative writing. I love the study of literature, especially science fiction. I do not believe we can truly know who the founder of science fiction would be. Thank you for another well thought out and very well prepared study into sci-fi and fantasy. You could have been a professor like Tolkien and C. S. Lewis.

Fantastic video Jess! Everyone's favourte Hobbit goes to space! I can't wait to see you do an analysis of Dune. I had noticed it has pride of place behind you in most of your videos. :) (The syfy channel version is still my favourite adaptation of the book)

Nicely done, and it’s a lot to pack in to a relatively short amount of time. A good adventure, outside of your comfort zone! On the themes brought up in Frankenstein and in the Island of Doctor Moreau, you might want to check out “The Edge of Evolution: Animality, Inhumanity, & Doctor Moreau“ by Ronald Edwards (Oxford, 2016). It is an interdisciplinary work discussing the themes of these stories from multiple perspectives. One of the themes it picks up explicitly is human exceptionalism in Wells. From you discussion, I suspect you would find this interesting.

Great video. You gave a good over view of the history of science fiction and it's nice to see you branching out from the Lord of the Rings, even if it is outside your comfort zone. I don't really believe there was a single person that could be considered the progenitor of science fiction but I would be interested in seeing you do an exploration of the more influential authors in the golden age, such as Heinlein, Asimov, Clarke, Bradbury etc. and those who came later such as Le Guin, Hambly, McCaffery, Cherryh, & Bujold.

DUNE 1984 (40th anniversary) is playing February 18th & 19th. The spice must flow!

This was a lovely, well researched video that will be on my re-watch list.

E.M.Forster The Machine Stops. One of the best Sci Fi and very relevant even today. Published in 1909.

Bravo, Jess! I always learn new things from your programs. I grew up on the science fiction magazines "Analog" and "Fantasy and Science Fiction" (F&SF), to which my parents subscribed. Both my parents were readers of science fiction, and I couldn't tell you precisely when I picked up the habit. The genre is moving so fast now, I have a hard time keeping up with the latest authors. Btw, I'm very fond of your closing. Don't let anybody pressure you to change it. Onward and upward.

This is absolutely a great video. Thank you.

Just found this channel and saw this video. The storytelling of Halo, especially with the recent release of Epitaph, can absolutely be just so beautiful. 10+ years of stories wrapped into one book with many many questions asked in those books and games and comics put to rest, and reckonings we as fans of the story must come to terms with. The Ur-Didact… Shadow-of-Sundered-Star… has easily been cemented as the most tragic character of Halo, though also has finally reached a satisfying ending for readers. Kelly Gay gave us what feels to be Halo’s best book for years to come; drawing from old and new, popular and obscure, and most importantly, the new versus the contextualization of what already exists.

ETA Hoffmann's Sandman is a way better example of proto science fiction than Frankenstein. The young narcissist Nathanael falls in love with the automaton Olympia. Published 2 years before Frankenstein

Really enjoyed this. Definitely recommend also checking out Margaret Cavendish's 'The Blazing World' (1666), which included travelling to a parallel world of talking animals via the North Pole, a lengthy discussion of the sciences, a *very* close friendship with another woman with whom she creates a new world, and then staging an invasion back into her world with submarines and flying machines to subdue it to her will. And a lesser known one, Jane Loudon's 'The Mummy' (1827), which is in some ways Mary Shelly fanfic - with an Egyptian mummy brought back to life with a galvanic battery - but is also set in the 22nd century, with flying transportation, robot surgeons and lawyers, moving houses with air conditioning, messages sent to giant screens or shot through tubes that span the country, and women in trousers (gasp)!

I feel like Edgar Rice Burroughs is a often underrated Science-Fiction and Fantasy Writer. He is often left out when people talk about the great Writers of Fiction and in my opinion ghe absolutely belongs to them.

Awesome! On a bit of a tangent, if you haven't yet check out Inferno by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. They reimagine Dante's Inferno through the eyes of a sci-fi writer who falls out a hotel window at a convention, and is then guided through the underworld by Benito Mussolini. Good fun! I highly recommend anything written by Niven and Pournelle. ✌️

_Gulliver’s Travels_ was of course a satire on the exploration diaries of previous centuries, like Amerigo Vespucci’s. For another proto-SF work in the same vein, Thomas Moore’s _Utopia_ (a more subtle satire than Swift’s) is the earliest work I know of to take its world-building seriously.

It is so refreshing seeing a young person who is able to tackle a topic with an critical eye. I'd give the title of father of modern SciFi to Asimov.

I read the Dune books in the 90's as a teenager. Been waiting a long time for it to be made to film properly

Gulliver’s Travels is one of my favourite classic books and is actually very humorous and satirical. The name of the floating city of Laputa is also the name of the Soviet missile complex that ends up being bombed by Major “King” Kong in the film Doctor Strangelove, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, a film made by the director of my favourite film (sci-fi or any other genre) 2001: A Space Odyssey. Dr. Strangelove was the first film role for the actor who would later go on to provide the voice for Darth Vader. What does all of this mean? Nothing in particular, I just like to point these things out.😊

I loved this, and I hope there's a part 2 down the line. I think sci-fi has done a better job of "cross-pollinating" screen with writing than any other genre. For example, the broad libraries that have come from modern franchise sci-fi. Disney lifted the character of Thrawn out of the written Star Wars universe and used him as a villain in two different small-screen shows. Or the way that a not-insignificant number of current Star Trek writers have talked about getting their "start" by writing fan-fiction ( I know, I used the ff word), and how current iterations of several hybrid-media franchises commission official books and graphic novels to serve as companion stories to the screen media. It's not the same as independent stories appearing in magazines, but it is a unique approach that pops up across the genre. Put a fictional universe on screen in small doses, then use the written medium to fill it out and add to those stories. Or, in some cases, the other way around. Great video. Thank you for putting it together. It's a huge amount of information, and just getting it all into one video that's easy to follow and not as long as Infinity War is not an easy task.

I always loved Darko Suvin's concept of 'Cognitive Estrangement' when talking about the beating heart of SF. By rendering an element of society or humanity alien or fantastical it allows the audience to view that part in a radically different way and perhaps change their perspective on it in reality.

Swedish writer/translator/publisher Sam J. Lundwall made some excellent anthologies on the history leading up to SF genre in the mid seventies. In English you can find "Science fiction: an illustrated history" by him.

Great video Jess. Thank you.

Excellent video, this is a vast subject. I wrote a paper on this very subject. Overwhelming to say the least!

Lucian has the earliest mention of "asparagus spears" that I've found.

The distinction I would make is that with fantasy, the author is basing the story on elements they know are impossible. Jules Verne did not know he was mistaken on how his escape velocity cannon propelled by guncotton would actually behave, so Verne was doing science fiction. Vampire and werebeast writers are using something they should know is impossible, so they are doing fantasy. I do not know how much biology Tolkien knew, so the essential fantasy element in The Lord of the Rings were the Half-Elven. If men and elves are interfertile, elf genes would dominate, as they are apparently immune to disease, and Tolkien set the story in a Medieval tech situation. The rest could be reset as lost tech, using Clarke’s comment on technology.

Good brief, Jess. Well researched and interesting.

Jules Verne and H. G. Wells are often credited with inventing the Steampunk genre - which is basically science fiction from the 19th century.

The best science fiction usually makes a statement about the real world at the time in which it was created, and in order to do that credibly, it needs to adhere to real world rules. Fantasy has no such constraints, and so is better suited to addressing more ephemeral themes. Fantasy can more effectively discuss such things as morality, justice, beauty, and personal values at their most abstract, persuading the reader towards an intended conclusion through inspiration. Science fiction deals with things like social responsibilty, cultural interactions, and the consequences of political actions by reflecting the common experiences of its time, thereby making its arguments more compelling and evidenciary. Problems arise the more the lines are blurred between them, creating such "scientisms" as midichlorians and body thetans. Or conversely, leading people to question why the eagles didn't fly to Mordor.

Thanks Jess! Whew!!! To quote a latent song; “.... so much to say, so much to say...” Aftrer review, and consolidation of my reactive responses, I will, hopefully, find the time to, provide a satisfactory answer in understanding. Such that we all, may gather under the same Tree, whose name is Justice!

Well done video. Thank you. 👍🏻👏

Lemuel Gulliver was a Doctor not a sea captain ;)

"He was researching how to get sunshine out of vegetables" Wood burns better, and it's basically getting sunshine out of vegetables (energy out of chemical bonds originally constructed with energy from sunlight).

Will gladly listen to anything science fiction from you. Specifically classics like you touched on or even through the 80's centering on books

Thank you for your channel. Wonderful and insightful.

Maybe you could have added the the point on sociological, or anthropological science fiction, mentioning for that matter Metropolis as an early example of dystopias, going back to Foundation, Ender's Game, The Left Hand of Darkness and ending on Dune, just to illustrate that science fiction goes beyond rockets and robots, playing in the fields of sociology, psychology, history, politics, religion, gender or any other aspect of human experience.

I do think that if you are looking for a Parental figure for Science Fiction, while acknowledging the work of Mary Shelly, Jonathan Swift and Edgar Poe, you really can't look past Jules Verne. The others mentioned were writers of individual stories. Verne, on the other hand specialized, taking the cutting edge science of his own day (submarines, rockets, etc.) and suggesting what might either be possible today ("Around the World in 80 days") or very soon (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea). Moreover, his writings influenced others , both writers and scientists, and since his day, there has not been a time when Science Fiction has not been ubiquitous - even if it wasn't always called, "Science Fiction"...

Because Sci-Fi has such a multi-faceted and fragmented beginning, it's more than appropriate that the same can be said of the founders and big driving forces of the genre. Even more than the Fantasy genre, Sci-Fi also won't hesitate to incorporate other genres into its stories (Western, Horror, Fantasy, Mystery, etc.). It's a bit like the Anthropology of genres in that regard.

Well done video. The only author I think you should have added is Arthur C Clarke. Along with Heinlein and Asimov, they were the masters of the Sci Fi short story. They used to talk about the Clarke-Asimov treaty about who the top author was. Still I was a Heinlein fan, with the diversity of his stories opening my eyes in the days of segregation, and he wrote the most human stories. Good times. Asimov was the most scientific, as befits a man who wrote college textbooks as well, and Clarke touched on religious themes, once being commented on by a theologian that Clarke would be dangerous if he stuck with one theme. Look forward to Dune, Herbert was a great author. The Handmaid's Tale made a lot of waves, but I think Herbert's treatment of that subject in The White Plague was more interesting.

My wife loves Castle in the Sky and the soundtrack so much that we named our daughter Laputa.

Thanks for alerting me to Lucian's True History..I realised I had a copy of Lucian's Selected Writings on my bookshelf, unread. I honestly haven't laughed that much for ages.

I've always heard of legendary big-nosed poet Cyrano de Bergerac being credited as one of the precursors of sci-fi tales because of his two-part splitted novel called 'L'autre monde'. It even seems to preceed Gulliver's Travels by a century. Very fun fact, speaking of Gulliver: the name of Laputa sounds just like Spanish for "The Bitch", which explains why changes had to be made for the localization of Studio Ghibli's film xD

I understand why H.P. Lovecraft doesn't always get covered in essays like yours--BOY, is he problematic--but much of his work was really more science fiction than supernatural horror. Cthulhu, the great Old Ones, and other blasphemous entities which had his protagonists screaming like terrified girl scouts were actually extraterrestrial and pan dimensional intelligences which couldn't be interpreted by human minds as anything other than demons. There was even an element of hard science in some of the work, references to Einstein and other new developments. It's like you say in the video. Don't put any creator on a pedestal. As Captain Malcom Reynolds once counselled Jayne Cobb, every man ever had a statue made of him was one kind of sumbitch or another. Great video. I always learn cool stuff from your content.

Gibson is the father of cyberpunk I would say. Maybe Ridley Scott but more so Gibson

havent watched yet, there better be a big helping of "yeah Lovecraft did it," here.

You give a very interesting presentation, I was hoping that you might reference some of Mark Twain’s science fiction works. Tom Sawyer and Huckleberry Finn abroad, or the story about romance by telephone.

I suppose this is Jess preparing a running start for the upcoming Dune videos. Edit: Called it

I really love your hair in this video!

This was the brightest part of my day! I am so excited about your Dune episodes!!!

Before the 1980s version of the thing that was the 1950s, the thing from another world which even credits his short story, who goes there in the opening credits

Morgan & Morgan, Did anyone else not see this ad coming?

Awww, missed opportunity to make a Lorax reference at 7:39 ! XD

Wells put out a periodical “the history of the world”. I have the full set still unbound.

LOVED IT! Thank you :)

While he's hardly known for his sci-fi, C.S. Lewis wrote his Space Trilogy before his more well-known fantasy and a couple short stories afterwards. All are responses to sci-fi of the day and before, and some were a response to academic scientists and philosophers at his university.

Great Video Jess! New-ish too your Channel but love the content 👌.. My favourite book is still Gullivers Travels which I read in around 1994 for my A Levels here in the UK, and changed my interpretation of literature. I certainly agree that some of the fathers of SCi-FI literature from the mid to worryingly late 20th century need to be approached with caution! But most were progressive and certainly changed literature and film for the better! Anyway thanks from York-Shire!

Wonderful video as always Jess! Would love a part 2 of this. I was also curious if you've ever read CS Lewis' space trilogy? I've been debating whether I should give it a try. I'm not usually super inclined towards sci-fi but given it's CS Lewis I thought it might be a good gateway

Another pioneer who isn’t praised enough is the Creator of Tarzan: Edgar Rice Burroughs. Creating the very first space hero figurehead in the character of John Carter! Whom in turn was a big influence in the characters of Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon, whom of course George Lucas loved as a kid. Check out the Saturday Morning Cartoon “Blackstar”. While it’s typical kid fluff, it takes the Flash Gordon scenario and places him in a fantasy world that uses influences from Tolkien. I mean when he first arrives he’s saved by a race of people called Trobbits! 😂

Good job Jess! I am looking forward to the Dune video as I would rank Hebert 2nd to Tolkien in the fantasy realm. This video has inspired my to look at writing something in the fantasy genre reflecting what our lack of respect for our past could do to our world in the not so distant future. Hoping to GOD it is not TOO dystopian! Seriously, you sound so much better when you are not on 3/4 speed 🙂

"One of Campbell's favorite tropes is that of the 'super-man'" Have you ever read anything Jules Verne wrote about Americans? It's incredibly flattering.