There had to be science fiction before HG Wells right? Are there any incidences at all of classical age (or any premodern age) science/speculative fiction?
For starters, Jules Verne was before HG Welles. 
Depends on how you define science fiction. Right off the top of my head these stories that are SF or have SF-like themes:
[ul]
[li]Frankenstein[/li][li]Gulliver’s Travels[/li][li]Dante’s Inferno and Divine Comedy[/li][li]The Odyssey [/li][/ul]
…must…type…faster…
I like Terminus’s suggestions of Frankenstein and Gulliver’s Travels.
The Penguin dictionary of literary terms says the term “science fiction” was apparently first used in 1851 by William Wilson.
As an early example of science fiction, they cite the parody Vera Historia (“True History”), ca 150 AD, by Lucian of Samosata.
“The hero of this work visits the moon and the sun and is involved in interplanetary warfare,” the book says.
The editors also mention More’s Utopia, published in 1516, as a kind of forerunner to modern science ficiton.
<wonders who will be the first to say “the bible” >
Actually, the Greek myths are clearly science fiction. After all, “science” in those days made it clear that thunder was caused by Zeus throwing thunderbolts. The myths were just science fictional speculation on that bit of scientific knowledge.
True, that explanation is known to be wrong, but there are plenty of hard SF stories and novels that were based on speculation on the nature of the universe that was proven to be false later.
Hell, go back to GilGamesh. 3rd Millenium BC, at least. Probably earlier in its roots. Earlier than the bible per many experts.
Using the Modern viewpoint; ie, not early myth as explanation of earth’s origin and creation.
E.A. Poe’s “Leiga” Story of possession by an alien. (ca 1840’s)
Washington Irving’s “The Lunatics” What if some advanced civilization from the moon came and treated us as we had treated the Native Americans. (ca 1795)
I see where your coming from but I don’t know if I could call greek myth early science fiction. The speculation isn’t even a remote extension of something based in fact. If someone wrote fiction based on wild speculations on the observations of Hippocrates, Pythagoras, Archimedes, or Anaxagoras, I’d agree it was sci-fi. My definition of science fiction is narrower than most, however, in that I consider sf to be that fiction that others would consider to be hard sf.
The real Cyrano de Bergerac (1619-1655) wrote two works (published posthumously) that qualify: Voyage dans la Lune (1657) and L’Histoires des Etats et Empires du Soleil (1662). In the tradition of the best SF, he predicted inventions that later came to pass: the rocket as used for space travel, and the ramjet.Cite.
I think I could make a strong case that Dante’s Divine Comedy was science fiction, and that was written in the early 14th century. It attempted to explain how the universe worked using the science of the time (if you doubt me, read Paradiso again), had a strong theme of social reform and commentary and even had some compelling characters to boot.
Of course, it’s medieval science so it’s a bit of a strange read at times (“So, tell me again, Bediver, how a ram’s bladder may be used to predict earthquakes…”).
I would say the Greek myths surrounding Daedalus could be called the earliest science fiction. Daedalus was a master inventor, and there are a number of stories concerning his inventions. Most famous is the story of the artificial wings which Daedalus built for himself and his son Icarus; he also supposedly invented various more prosaic things like the axe, as well as the labyrinth at Knossos. The tale of Icarus, with its themes of science, technology, and human folly overreaching themselves, has many of the classic ingredients of science fiction.
The Bible? Science Fiction?
Nah, that book’s a work of pure fantasy if I ever saw one.
Obviously it depends how you define sf, specifically the hazy barrier between sf and fantasy. The most commonly agreed upon first sf novel is Frankenstein, I believe.
Your mythic Greek works, and later Arcadian stuff, and Gulliver et al can conveniently be classified as fantasy.
The argument has been made in many places that Frankenstein is the first, based upon the claims that “science” as we know it and modern fiction got their start around that time. Curiously enough, Leonard Wolf, who annotated Frankenstein (The Annotated Frankenstein and the later The Essential Frankenstein) doesn’t even think Frankenstein is SF at all. I think he needs his glasses checked.
It’s still an arbitrary decision. Voltaire’s Micromegas has as much right to be called SF. Johannes Kepler wrote a story about going to the moon. You could argue that the fantasy content in these stories makes them non-SF, but lots of stuff today with just as much “fantasy” get classified as SF.
It’s necessarily a nebulous thing judging what the “first” SF work to be was, but I think that stories in which rationalist science, with extrapolations on existing technology and how it affects people, rather than fantastic wish-fulfillment stories and fantasies really began in the 19th century, with Frankenstein as one of the first (although it’s short on details – the idea that a scientist could create life is all that’s given), the works of Edgar Allen Poe and Jules Verne, and H.G. Wells and a great many forgotten others picking up the idea and carrying it through.
Although I love the earlier stuff, I don’t feel comfortable classifying things like “Gilgamesh” as science fiction.
I think it’s a bit of a stretch to refer to the topic of Ligeia as “possession by an alien”. While the narrator rhapsodizes about the wonderful, and somewhat menacing and inhuman, qualities of the title character, he doesn’t directly imply her to be other than human. Her possession of the narrator’s second wife is not too different from spirit possessions found elsewhere in ghost stories, or even the “Gadarine Swine” episode in the Bible. Poe does provide a somewhat unusual rationale for the possession, describing it as exercise of Ligeia’s all-powerful “Will”, making it kind of a proto-Nietzscheian ghost story.
Re: Dr. Nick’s comments, I think it’s a bit facile to toss Gulliver’s Travels into the “Fantasy” pile, given the whole “Laputa” episode which discusses at length the scientific achievements of the inhabitants of the floating island. Certainly one of the first satires of science and scientists merits categorization as science fiction.
No one here yet has specifically mentioned Plato’s discussions of Atlantis as falling into the category of proto-science fiction, so I will.
I think the key to the topic is defining Science Fiction, probably in parallel with Fantasy.
Both Science Fiction and Fantasy speculate on the behavior of characters in a setting different in one or more ways from the world that the author knows. In Science Fiction, those differences are the product of science, which we might more broadly define as human creative and investigative endeavor. Fantasy, in contrast, encompasses all “different worlds”, even ones impossible or directly contradictory to our current understanding of the world.
Under that framework, I would class Frankenstein as science fiction, given that it frames its setting as reflective of then-current trends in the sciences, even if Ms. Shelly didn’t bog herself down in details. Gilgamesh and most later myths are neither science fiction or necessarily fantasy, depending upon how literally you think the people of their cultures took the existance of their gods and places like Olympus and Hades. I’d say they fall somewhere between Fantasy and “Heroic Fiction” – the ancient equivalents of modern action movies (as Joseph Campbell would gladly point out).
The Icarus myth, and other Daedelus stories, I think do have some claim to Science Fiction status, as their “impossible inventions”, like Dr. Frankenstein’s, are depicted as products of human ingenuity, and do not defy science as understood at the time.
I think Cyrano’s works clearly rate as SF. Dante is a bit tricker. His cosmological discussions might qualify, but I don’t think his guided tour of Hell is implied to be something within the technical reach of humans. As with ancient myths, I think it comes down to Fantasy or Heroic Fiction, depending on whether it was intended to be understood as allegorical, or presumed that the reader would accept the physical locations described as literally true.