Science-Fiction
In the early part of the 20th century, science fiction had yet to be defined as such. (Arguably, it is still yet to be defined!) While there were stories that could be defined as science fiction today, there weren’t yet enough of them for even the general public to create a category for them. In 1851, William Wilson published A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject. In Chapter 10, he reviews a story by R. H. Horne called The Poor Artist; or, Seven Eye-sights and One Object and says ‘We hope it will not be long before we may have other works of Science-Fiction, as we believe such books likely to fulfil a good purpose, and create an interest, where, unhappily, science alone might fail.’ He later lists his definition as, ‘Science-Fiction, in which the revealed truths of Science may be given interwoven with a pleasing story which may itself be poetical and true-thus circulating a knowledge of the Poetry of Science, clothed in a garb of the Poetry of life.’ (Original emphasis.) The problem is that he came upon ‘science-fiction’ to describe a short prose-poetry work that describes a person observing the natural world. ie a fiction about biology. In modern day science fiction, this would not fit the category. It would just be fiction. Later he switches to using ‘Poetry of Science’ so, while the term ‘Science-Fiction’ was used, it was really just describing fiction with a bit of science in it, like most fiction today. Not something that could properly define a genre. However, his description is still appropriate, opening the way with ‘other works of Science-Fiction’ to use that to describe any ‘fiction with science’.
Even so, Science-Fiction did not catch on later as a term for such works as H.G Wells’ War of the Worlds, which was described by reviewers as a ‘sensational work‘ , ‘fantastic tale‘ and ‘imaginative fiction‘. (Links to references in Trove in 1898 and 1899)
There may be other instances of the use of ‘Science Fiction’ at the time, though these have yet to be discovered. Google’s ngram, which searches records and constructs a usage graph, has trouble distinguishing ‘science fiction’ and ‘science, fiction’ so the results are a bit skewed. A search of the Trove database lists hundreds in several decades but the OCR records aren’t too clear and in at least one case a blurry phrase containing ‘scientific’ was recognised as ‘science fiction.’
Science in Fiction
More accurately, the general public were using the phrase ‘science in fiction’ as well as ‘science and fiction’ There are a few examples of this which can be found in Trove. A 1901 article Science in Fiction where Dr. Andrew Wilson, in The Illustrated London News, (update – originally published in Nov 1899) syndicated to several newspapers in Australia, says ‘The novelist has come to draw his inspiration more and more frequently from the Pierian spring of scientific knowledge. In ordinary fiction there are two phases of science that are utilised. The novelist either weaves his story around what science has proved to be a reality in life, or he makes science to suit his requirements’ and later ‘The reasonable use of the imagination is therefore entirely warranted in respect of science in fiction.’
Unlike William Wilson’s earlier proclamation that Science-Fiction should describe fiction that has science in it, Andrew Wilson gets closer by pointing out it has a ‘reasonable use of imagination’. While seeming like a simple comment, in 1901 imagination was described as a rare skill that only some people could use. It was also recommended to be used as a tool sparingly by the general public, less someone may suffer ‘an attack of the vapours.’
Science and Fiction
In 1900, in an article in Australia titled Fashions in a Century’s Fiction, a discussion of the changes in fiction included this
For the past thirty years, novelists have increasingly drawn on medical and scientific lore, to mingle with established fact much of their own prophecy and imagining. Oliver Wendell Holmes in Elsie Venner, Besant in The Ivory Gate, Du Maurier in Peter Ibbetson and Trilby, Conan Doyle in his Doctor and Detective Stories, have all on foundation of scientific fact built a superstructure of their own surmise. The bonds uniting Science and Fiction are strong, and every day they are knitted more closely together. With increased facilities for travel, the wilds of Spain, the mysteries of Italy, and the supply of rich relatives dying in Australia, have failed the novelist. He has had to seek a new region of wonders, and he has discovered one which cannot be exhausted, for it stretches away and away beyond the bounds of mortal vision.
This seems to declare the expectation of the development of a new genre.
‘Science and Fiction‘ was also used in 1903 as in, ‘But the chief favourite seems to be Mr. Wells himself, with his peeps into the future-his daring mixture of science and fiction.’
Update: ‘Science and Fiction’ was previously used by Dr. Andrew Wilson in an article in The Illustrated London News 8 Oct, 1892.
The uses of ‘science in fiction’ and ‘science and fiction’ either side of the turn of the century suggests it wasn’t a great stretch to drop the preposition and coordinating conjunction and end up with ‘science fiction’, which we eventually did. The problem with these earlier terms is that they were also used to describe works that had science in them but without the imagination component. Ironically, this is a reverse of what we’re doing now with science fiction, containing the imagination component but not the science.
In writing my thesis, I was struggling with what to call this proto-science fiction genre and had considered calling the stories I discover ‘fiction with science.’ After researching what it was called in the early 1900s I can now call it ‘science in fiction’ for the period 1901-1920. Still, William Wilson’s description is more apt, and I’ve heard other science fiction scholars refer to older fiction like these as science fiction, so, perhaps I should continue calling it’ ‘early science fiction’.
Other notes: ‘Scientific Romances’ was a semi-popular classification of stories in the UK for science fiction works such as those by H. G. Wells and Jules Verne, and was used between 1845 and the early 1900s. However, it was also used disparagingly to describe science articles containing false claims. I’ll explore scientific romances in a longer post in the future.
‘Scientific fiction’ was used, in Australian newspapers at least, 1876-1912. First appearance: Scientific Fiction
‘Speculative-Scientific Fiction’ was used at least once, from 1894. Speculative-Scientific Fiction
‘Sensational semi-scientific fiction’ used to describe Jules Verne’s works in an obituary indicates that most already knew what scientific fiction was by 1905. Sensational semi-scientific fiction
Ted Underwood (Distant Horizons 2019) researching lexical models of genre evolution points out that science fiction has maintained a stable ‘textual coherence’ across 160-200 years. This has always been my belief and for digital humanities methods to confirm this is validation for me, as proving this was one of the impetuses for retrieving ‘new’ science fiction stories from early 20th century newspapers. This reinforces my argument that science fiction consolidated as a genre long before Gernsback labelled it as such, especially considering ‘modern’ styled space opera with space battles around planets such as Coles’ The Struggle for Empire (1900). Considering this, there is no real reason to call 19th century science fiction ‘proto’ or ‘early’ or ‘science in fiction’ or even ‘scientific romances’ when it already contained the structures we associate with science fiction in the 21st.
Please note that The Illustrated London News digital archive is behind a subscription wall so I’m unable to link to Dr Andrew Wilson’s original articles here. If you are a member of the State Library of Victoria, you can access the Gale archive through the State Library of Victoria Gale portal.
Update: Having searched through many issues on Trove looking for references to any of the above, I found that ‘science in fiction’ was repeated several times across the decades. There was also a single reference to ‘quasi-scientific stories‘ in 1924, in an article comparing the predictions of science fiction writers, called Science and Fiction. It wasn’t until 25 Sep 1935 that ‘science fiction writers’ was used in the letters pages of the Daily Standard (Brisbane) a time when it was already commonly in use by science fiction readers around the world. At some point I will search other newspaper archives to see if I can find any earlier references.
