# The 200th anniversary of science fiction\* **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 17, 2018, 6:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361 "2018-05-17T18:53:05Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/61 "2018-05-19T14:39:59Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Single favorite, read it more often than any other is hands-down Heinlein’s _The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress._ Without question, this is my pick and my favorite Science Fiction author. It is a great book and great read. ---
**Author:** ![GreenWyvern](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/greenwyvern/32/2834_2.png) [@GreenWyvern](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GreenWyvern)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 3:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/62 "2018-05-19T15:07:51Z")
There is also Louis-Sébastien Mercier’s _ **L’An 2440** _ (The Year 2440), published in 1770, in which the author imagines Paris in the far future. It’s introduced as a dream, but this is just a convention, it’s an attempt to describe a future society. There’s an 18th century English translation on [Google Books](http://books.google.co.za/books?id=RZm2hKo2OmQC&printsec=frontcover&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q&f=false) under the title _Memoirs of the year two thousand five hundred_. But I would say that Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is probably the first work that can really be classified as SF in the modern sense. The idea of reanimating a dead person was already being discussed in the decades before Mary Shelly wrote, so the idea wasn’t original, but her treatment of it was. In modern SF, I think C.J. Cherryh is underrated. Her books are intelligent, well-written hard SF, with three-dimensional characters, and realistic space combat. I like _Downbelow Station_, and _Pride of Chanur_. ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 4:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/63 "2018-05-19T16:32:22Z")
> [@RealityChuck](#): > > Which is precisely the issue when you separate science fiction from fantasy. I argue they are essentially the same, except that the fantastic events in SF have a “scientific” cause (and thee quotes are deliberate). > > Samuel R. Delany has pointed out it’s impossible to come up with a definition that includes all cases that the definer considers science fiction but excludes all cases that the definer does not. _My Favorite Martian_, _Mork and Mindy_, _Bewitched_, and _I Dream of Jeannie_ are exactly the same show. But the first two justify the premise by aliens, i.e. science fiction, and the latter two justify it by magic, i.e. fantasy. SF and Fantasy are far better used as marketing devices, and the “I know it when I see it” test works in 90+% of cases. I also know cheap and lazy writing when I see it, and using technology as magic was all too prevalent in the field even, perhaps especially, in the so-called Golden Age. > [@Chronos](#): > > Isn’t that the one that has robots powered by generators in their own joints, so they can keep running indefinitely as long as they keep moving? If you’re going to stick a perpetual motion machine into a science fiction story, you had darned well better make that machine the main focus of the story, and explore the implications in considerable depth, if you expect me to take the story seriously. I don’t remember any robots at all in _The Three-Body Problem_ and a search on the book using “robots” doesn’t bring up any hits. You’re thinking of some other book, is my guess. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 4:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/64 "2018-05-19T16:41:45Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Isn’t that the one that has robots powered by generators in their own joints, so they can keep running indefinitely as long as they keep moving? If you’re going to stick a perpetual motion machine into a science fiction story, you had darned well better make that machine the main focus of the story, and explore the implications in considerable depth, if you expect me to take the story seriously. That is _A Closed and Common Orbit_, first mentioned in post #62 in [this](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=825234) thread. Three Body Problem was terrible for _other_ reasons. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 5:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/65 "2018-05-19T17:55:31Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Isn’t that the one that has robots powered by generators in their own joints, so they can keep running indefinitely as long as they keep moving? If you’re going to stick a perpetual motion machine into a science fiction story, you had darned well better make that machine the main focus of the story, and explore the implications in considerable depth, if you expect me to take the story seriously. I enjoyed Closed and Common Orbit enough to come up with an (unlikely) fan fix for power supply issue (just as I enjoy the Expanse books in spite of their scientific errors (for which I didn’t even bother to come up with a fan fix). ---
**Author:** ![furryman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/furryman/32/99_2.png) [@furryman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/furryman)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/66 "2018-05-19T18:20:58Z")
> [@DavidwithanR](#): > > I’m reading this thread because I know essentially nothing about the genre. I don’t understand what belongs and what doesn’t, but I do have sort of an idea that seems to resemble something that’s lurking in this thread: the relationship of the story’s characters with the story’s science. It feels to me as if - for a rough example - if the characters ride somewhere in a spacecraft but we don’t see them interact with or refer to the science behind that craft, then they might as well be riding in a K-car. 🙂 > > Similar to if there was a sports movie where all the action took place inside the locker room, or an action movie that only showed a narrator sitting in a rocking chair explaining what happened. There are definitely genre blurring series. I consider both the Darkhold novels and The Pern novels as fantasy although there are references to the humans arriving on those planets on spaceships. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/67 "2018-05-19T18:25:59Z")
> [@furryman](#): > > There are definitely genre blurring series. I consider both the Darkhold novels and The Pern novels as fantasy although there are references to the humans arriving on those planets on spaceships. Pern is closer to Sci-Fi. The Science is Fantastical and the most important plot devices are effectively dragons, but it is really Sci-Fi at its heart. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 7:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/68 "2018-05-19T19:26:39Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > _My Favorite Martian_, _Mork and Mindy_, _Bewitched_, and _I Dream of Jeannie_ are exactly the same show. But the first two justify the premise by aliens, i.e. science fiction, and the latter two justify it by magic, i.e. fantasy. > > SF and Fantasy are far better used as marketing devices, and the “I know it when I see it” test works in 90+% of cases. I also know cheap and lazy writing when I see it, and using technology as magic was all too prevalent in the field even, perhaps especially, in the so-called Golden Age. Good examples. And a lot of stories in _Unknown_ used magic as technology, and did it in a more logical and worked out way than the use of “science” in lots of science fiction. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 7:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/69 "2018-05-19T19:31:22Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > That is _A Closed and Common Orbit_, first mentioned in post #62 in [this](https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=825234) thread. Three Body Problem was terrible for _other_ reasons. The first part was pretty good. But I had seen the problem motivating the very last bit before it came up and wondered how he was going to solve it. I wasn’t expecting such a load of unscientific nonsense. It’s like the Chinese government blocked access to physics sites for some reason. Not to mention not having an exact solution to the problem doesn’t mean that planets and stars bounce around. I was very disappointed, and am not planning on reading the sequels unless I really have a lot of spare time on my hands. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 7:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/70 "2018-05-19T19:38:44Z")
Ah, my mistake, then, as I haven’t read either. And I think with Pern, what happened was that McCaffery wanted to write fantasy, but science fiction was considered more respectable at the time, so she had to toss in a few spaceships so she could pretend it was sci-fi and sell it. For fantasy that’s “science fiction at its heart”, I would instead nominate something like Hardy’s _Master of the Five Magics_. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/71 "2018-05-19T19:39:07Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > I was very disappointed, and am not planning on reading the sequels unless I really have a lot of spare time on my hands. Yes, I skipped them, too. It was a real test of will to finish the first one. ---
**Author:** ![Hari\_Seldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/hari_seldon/32/5173_2.png) [@Hari\_Seldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hari_Seldon)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 7:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/72 "2018-05-19T19:41:36Z")
I am going to go with the Foundation trilogy (surprise!), but I think the bible is the first science-fiction–at least if we include fantasy (which we must unless we exclude any story with FTL drives, telepathy, time travel, and other standard memes. For best short, I’ll stick with Nightfall. ---
**Author:** ![What\_Exit](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/what_exit/32/10652_2.png) [@What\_Exit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/What_Exit)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 7:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/73 "2018-05-19T19:47:47Z")
If we include Fantasy then I would put the Lord of the Rings above all others. However, these are two different but close genres and not the same. The Odyssey otherwise would be an early Sci-Fi story and perhaps even Gilgamesh. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 7:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/74 "2018-05-19T19:52:12Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Ah, my mistake, then, as I haven’t read either. The biggest technology stupid in 3BP is Advanced aliens “unfolding” a proton through several dimensions until it is a sheet millions of square miles in area, etching circuits into its surface, and folding it back down again into a subatomic mega-supercomputer, which is sent to Earth to do things like give people visions by bouncing around on their retinas, screw around with physics experiments, and–once–unfold itself and surround the Earth to make it appear like the cosmic microwave background of the whole universe itself was being modulated to deliver a message to a specific scientist on Earth. ---
**Author:** ![Andy\_L](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/c67d28/32.png) [@Andy\_L](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Andy_L)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 9:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/75 "2018-05-19T21:44:33Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > The biggest technology stupid in 3BP is Advanced aliens “unfolding” a proton through several dimensions until it is a sheet millions of square miles in area, etching circuits into its surface, and folding it back down again into a subatomic mega-supercomputer, which is sent to Earth to do things like give people visions by bouncing around on their retinas, screw around with physics experiments, and–once–unfold itself and surround the Earth to make it appear like the cosmic microwave background of the whole universe itself was being modulated to deliver a message to a specific scientist on Earth. That’s just a variation of Eric Frank Russell’s Sinister Barrier plot (except he did it with invisible alien emotional vampires). ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [May 19, 2018, 10:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/76 "2018-05-19T22:37:25Z")
I’m not actually all that bothered by that. If you’re going to try to depict an insanely-advanced alien race, then their technology is going to be insane. And almost certainly wrong, but what can you do? ---
**Author:** ![Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/left_hand_of_dorkness/32/7156_2.png) [@Left\_Hand\_of\_Dorkness](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Left_Hand_of_Dorkness)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2018, 12:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/77 "2018-05-20T00:35:38Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > I’m not actually all that bothered by that. If you’re going to try to depict an insanely-advanced alien race, then their technology is going to be insane. And almost certainly wrong, but what can you do? Yup. I find it baffling that folks object to stuff like that in science fiction–that’s exactly the sort of bonkers stuff that I adore–but no accounting for taste and all. ---
**Author:** ![Darren\_Garrison](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darren_garrison/32/92_2.png) [@Darren\_Garrison](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darren_Garrison)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2018, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/78 "2018-05-20T01:01:55Z")
So–perpetual motion machine is bad, but acting like a cluster of sea quarks, valence quarks, and force carriers are a single solid object is okay? ---
**Author:** ![Exapno\_Mapcase](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/exapno_mapcase/32/1051_2.png) [@Exapno\_Mapcase](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Exapno_Mapcase)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2018, 3:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/79 "2018-05-20T03:02:23Z")
> [@Darren\_Garrison](#): > > So–perpetual motion machine is bad, but acting like a cluster of sea quarks, valence quarks, and force carriers are a single solid object is okay? It’s almost insanely stupid, and yet it makes a kind of sense. Some magic has to be allowed through the door to have a genre at all. Aliens, space battles, time travel. A lot of people can’t accept this and can’t get into sf as a genre at all. I think that’s one reason why fantasy has an easier path to grab people. Call magic magic and people understand how the rules are suspended. Call magic quarks and it’s a reminder of a failed test in science class. I personally can’t think of anything in sf that’s stupider than zombies and vampires, but millions of people run to embrace those stories. We all have doors that are only partially ajar. (Well, some of us have fully open doors. You’ve seen what happens when they post here. They don’t last very long.) I hated _The Three Body Problem_, but it wasn’t the science that did me in. (Well, the magic monofiliment ending…) Lots of people will read for magic technology and be fulfilled in ways that no longer work for me, but I get what they’re seeing in a way I’ll never get zombies. ---
**Author:** ![Morgyn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/morgyn/32/3041_2.png) [@Morgyn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Morgyn)\ **Post date:** [May 20, 2018, 3:56am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361/80 "2018-05-20T03:56:01Z")
I believe it was Clarke who said that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. I’m not sure I could pick a favorite SF anymore. Dune is one that I’ve reread the most, so maybe that. But I’ve also reread Passage at Arms by Glen Cook umpty times, and the characters are certainly more relatable than anyone in Dune. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361.md?page=3) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/the-200th-anniversary-of-science-fiction/814361.md?page=5)