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

[Baker, John]

I think this is the OED’s definition A.2.a.:  “An apparently unlikely scientific theory or assertion. Obsolete. rare.”  The OED cites an earlier example, from 1881, about an incorrect theory of the tides:

1881   Daily News<javascript:void(0)> 16 Apr. 7/1   I wonder who really believes that science-fiction about the earth being so much more powerfully attracted that it really leaves the waters behind, and so produces the rise of water on the opposite side of the earth.


John Baker


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Subject: Re: Has the Earliest Modern Usage of the Term "Science Fiction" Gotten Any Attention from Science Fiction Historians?

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> On Jul 13, 2020, at 9:57 AM, Peter Reitan <pjreitan at HOTMAIL.COM<mailto: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/<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
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> Subject: Re: Has the Earliest Modern Usage of the Term "Science Fiction" Gotten Any Attention from Science Fiction Historians?
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> 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<mailto:fred.shapiro at yale.edu>> wrote:
>
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>> Poster: "Shapiro, Fred" <fred.shapiro at YALE.EDU<mailto: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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