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

[ADSGarson O'Toole]

The Oxford English Dictionary has an entry for "scientific fiction"
which is one of the key precursors of "science fiction". The first OED
citation is dated 1876.

[Begin excerpt from OED]
scientific fiction  n. now chiefly historical = science fiction n. 3.
1876   W. H. L. Barnes in W. H. Rhodes Caxton's Bk. 7 The great master
of scientific fiction, Jules Verne.
1937   Discovery Oct. 318   ‘The Man in the Moone’, the fantasy of
Bishop Godwin.., is an early excursion into the realms of scientific
fiction.
[End excerpt from OED]

In 1862 Sir Bulwer-Lytton published the novel "A Strange Story". One
character in the story seems to heal the sick by mesmeric influence
and another character attacks this approach as unscientific.

The passage below is from a book review printed in 1862. The excerpt
refers to another character in the tale as a "strange creation of
scientific fiction".

Date: February 23, 1862
Newspaper: The Observer
Newspaper Location: London, England
Article: Notices of New Books (Book Review of "A Strange Story" by Sir
Bulwer Lytton)
Quote Page 7, Column 4
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
Finally, we have the dreamy, imaginative Lilian--a lovely image of the
erring but pure-thoughted visionary, "seeking overmuch to separate
soul from mind, till innocence is led astray by a phantom, and reason
is lost in the space between earth and Heaven." This strange creation
of scientific fiction, alike the unconscious and unwilling instrument
of Margrave, guided and led at his will, by turns loving and hating,
impulsive and yielding . . .
[End excerpt]

In 1874 a newspaper in Tucson, Arizona used the term "scientific
fictions" when referring to the works of Jules Verne:

Date: November 14, 1874
Newspaper: Arizona Citizen
Newspaper Location: Tucson, Arizona
Article: The Marvelous Country
Quote Page 1, Column 3
Database: Newspapers.com

[Begin excerpt]
We have read the work at a single sitting, and with an interest
unsurpassed even by the scientific fictions of Jules Verne.
[End excerpt]

Garson

On Sun, Jul 12, 2020 at 8:01 PM Shapiro, Fred <fred.shapiro at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> I am just curious about something.  Maybe Jeffrey Prucher or someone else can help me.  It seems to me that an 1897 citation in the OED is the earliest 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 remarkable science-fiction achieved at the point where gravitation ceases, somewhere between here and China, impressed me deeply.
>
> Have science fiction historians or scholars picked up on this important citation?  It is referring to an individual instance of science fiction writing rather than the genre as a whole, but the usage is essentially the same as the modern one.
>
> Fred Shapiro
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org