[Ads-l] Fw: Has the Earliest Modern Usage of the Term "Science Fiction" Gotten Any Attention from Science Fiction Historians?

[Shapiro, Fred]

This doesn't seem to be the modern usage of "science-fiction," but it's weirdly kind of in the same ballpark, maybe a Republican vision of science fiction (conflating Darwin with "Planet of the Apes").  Fascinating discovery, Peter !

Fred Shapiro


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From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Peter Reitan <pjreitan at HOTMAIL.COM>
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Subject: Re: Has the Earliest Modern Usage of the Term "Science Fiction" Gotten Any Attention from Science Fiction Historians?

An earlier example of "science-fiction book" from 1894, in a poem about the origin of language, with reference to Darwin's Origin of the Species.

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"So went it on for countless ages:
No neater form expression took:
Is it not written in the pages
Of Darwin's science-fiction book?"

Weekly Herald (Calgary, Alberta), February 2, 1894, page 1.






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              Gotten Any Attention from Science Fiction Historians?
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Does that make Etidorhpa nominally the first science fiction novel? I read
that in high school around 1980.

On Mon, Jul 13, 2020, 08:01 Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:

> ---------------------- Information from the mail header
> -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU>
> Subject:      Has the Earliest Modern Usage of the Term "Science Fiction"
>               Gotten Any Attention from Science Fiction Historians?
>
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> I am just curious about something.  Maybe Jeffrey Prucher or someone else
> c=
> an help me.  It seems to me that an 1897 citation in the OED is the
> earlies=
> t known example of the modern usage of the term "science fiction," 30
> years=
>  before Gernsback:
>
> 1897   H. B. Mason in Pharmaceut. World 20 May 592/1   My last remembrance
> =
> had been of reading Mr. [J. U.] Lloyd's Etidorhpa... The complete arrest
> of=
>  bodily function and tissue waste which the central figure of that
> remarkab=
> le science-fiction achieved at the point where gravitation ceases,
> somewher=
> e between here and China, impressed me deeply.
>
> Have science fiction historians or scholars picked up on this important
> cit=
> ation?  It is referring to an individual instance of science fiction
> writin=
> g rather than the genre as a whole, but the usage is essentially the same
> a=
> s the modern one.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
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