What was Science Fiction called in the early part of the 20th Century?
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.
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, 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 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.’
The uses of ‘science in fiction’ and ‘science and fiction’ at 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, unless I find that ‘science fiction’ had begun to be used earlier than 1920 to describe this genre.