The History of Science Fiction:
a Chronological Survey

Science fiction is a subcategory of a broad range of fiction that can be best described as literature of the fantastic. Other literatures of the fantastic include horror and fantasy.
Miriam Allen de Ford has noted: "Science fiction deals with improbable possibilities, fantasy with plausible impossibilities."

Science fiction has many progenitors in literature, namely:

  • Mythical adventures such as The Odyssey
  • Voyages of discovery
  • Stories of ideal societies such as Thomas More's Utopia

But science fiction adds technological imagery and is generally considered to attempt an extrapolation into the future of known concepts of science and technology.

We can divide the development of science fiction as literature into the following overlapping stages:
Prehistory: from the beginnings of literature to the development of the scientific method c. 1600 Pioneers and Kissing Cousins: (1814-1890): dominated by the gothic strain of the Romantic as embodied by Shelley, Hawthorne, and Poe
The Age of Wells and Burroughs (c. 1890-1930): dominated by the scientific romances of H.G. Wells and the prodigious output of Edgar Rice Burroughs Early Modern Science Fiction (c. 1930-38): dominated by Hugo Gernsback and the first pulp magazines
The Golden Age (c. 1938-46): dominated by editor John W. Campbell and his stable of writers The Post-War Era (1946-c. 1965): science fiction written in the shadow of the nuclear arms race

The Modern Era:(1965 to the present): science fiction in the Space Age and beyond

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SciFi Guide
© 2002 Agatha Taormina
Last Revised: November 5, 2003