[Ads-l] Has the Earliest Modern Usage of the Term "Science Fiction" Gotten Any Attention from Science Fiction Historians?
Laurence Horn
laurence.horn at YALE.EDU
Mon Jul 13 15:11:50 UTC 2020
> On Jul 13, 2020, at 9:57 AM, Peter Reitan <pjreitan at HOTMAIL.COM> wrote:
>
> 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.
>
> https://www.newspapers.com/clip/55261042/weekly-herald/
>
> "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.
>
>
That’s great. I often wondered what the first words spoken were, and now I know. Who knew?
“Science fiction” = ’scientific findings I condemn for ideological reasons’ is a nice foreshadowing of current applications of “fake news”...
LH
>
>
>
>
> ________________________________
> From: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> on behalf of Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Sent: Monday, July 13, 2020 4:39:38 AM
> To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Subject: Re: Has the Earliest Modern Usage of the Term "Science Fiction" Gotten Any Attention from Science Fiction Historians?
>
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender: American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster: Randy Alexander <strangeguitars at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject: Re: Has the Earliest Modern Usage of the Term "Science Fiction"
> Gotten Any Attention from Science Fiction Historians?
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> 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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>> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>>
>
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