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

[Laurence Horn]

> 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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