The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

Across the Zodiac by Percy Greg (1880)
Considered the first of the sword-and-planet genre its not exactly Princess of Mars. There is some fighting but its mostly a world building exercise. The martians have some pretty modern tech, including the fax machine and amazon.com :) . [4/5]

The Coming Race by Edward Bulwer Lytton (1871)
Its basically a race of Vulcans. I mean they live underground and use thought controlled wings and phasers, but they're basically Vulcans.
There's a chapter or two about language which is mind-numbingly boring but about a third of the novels is really good.
Ignore the fact that it inspired a nazi cult ;) http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content... . [4/5]

Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott (1884)
I'm counting this as scif-fi, i'm not sure i should but it is all about the nature of reality and involves multiple dimension which is good enough for me.
Probably responsible for the Marvel character the Beyonder (point land) but try not to hold that against it. [5/5]

Erewhon by Samuel Butler (1872)
OK so this is NOT sci-fi. I mention it however because it is anti-scifi. A man discovers a people who when the most advanced machine around was the steam engine, still came to the conclusion that the machines would inevitably take over and so they destroyed them all first.
They're basically omish, its not fantastic but has some interesting elements. [3/5]

First Men in the Moon by H.G.Wells (1901)
I saw this group already read Earth to the Moon, which i personally didn't think that much of . This is much better in my opinion and my personal favourite Wells novel. [4/5]

The Goddess Of Atvatabar by William R. Bradshaw (1892)
Strange utopian sort of novel which turns in Flash Gordon about 2/3's of the way through. You've got these armies of soldiers with metal wings fighting with electric staffs. They also have a sort of solid-light hologram machine thats powered by sexual frustration, i kid you not :lol .
It would be great if not for the bling-porn. He just can't stop himself from describing in minute detail every damn shiny object. [2/5]

Ralph 124C 41+ by Hugo Gernsback (1912)
Pulpy sci-fi/romance goodness. [4/5]

R.U.R. Rossum's Universal Robots by Karel Capek (1920)
Where the word robot came from. Fully voiced version of the play on Libravox Highly recommended .[5/5.]

Maza of the Moon by Otis Adelbert Kline (1930)
Pure pulp. Also pretty racist. Moondragons, rayguns and lightsabres. [3/5]

A Plunge into Space by Robert Cromie (1891)
An anti-recommendation. It's pretty terrible, its main idea is that space travel is boring and it really tries to convince you of that by being incredibly boring :) . [2/5]

Roadtown by Edgar Chambless (1910)
Not scif-fi technically but this is an amazing architectural idea. A city which is one long line of buildings. Trains run under them connecting each piece. No cars, everyone with a front and back garden. The roof is one long promenade. I found it fascinating. [3/5]

Paris in the Twentieth Century by Jules Verne (1863)
The second best Verne book i've read. Set in the 1960's, its supposedly a dystopia but our hero is a poet, and not just a poet but one who only writes in Latin. I defy such a person to enjoy living in any time period :lol .
Oh and it has that stupid pneumatic train thing that people are working on now, the hyperloop. [4/5]

A Journey in Other Worlds by John Jacob Astor IV (1894)
Garbage avoid. [1/5]

A Honeymoon in Space by George Griffith (1901)
A trip around the solar system. Strong female character for the time and it has a sort of theme with each planet representing a different version of humanity, its quite good. [3/5]

The Face in the Abyss by A.E.Merrit (1930)
Awesome pulpy goodness. Dinosaurs and rayguns, sexy snake women, genetic engineering, dark lords and damsels. Completely over the top, completely fun. [4/5]

Great list! Thanks!!!

Some of these look really good. Mentioning Flash Gordon immediately makes me want to read The Goddess of Atvatabar even with a 2/5 review.

I loved Flatland. Lent it to a friend and it never was returned...

Terri wrote: "I loved Flatland. Lent it to a friend and it never was returned..."

Well at least it's out of copyright so you can get a new copy if you have a reader http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/201 .

Wreade1872 wrote: "Terri wrote: "I loved Flatland. Lent it to a friend and it never was returned..."

Well at least it's out of copyright so you can get a new copy if you have a reader http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks..."

Thanks for the link - I think it is time to re-read it now that it is back in mind!

Thanks for making this awesome list. I really enjoyed your comments. I've read a couple of these and own a few others. Gonna have to read The Face In The Abyss soon.

Recently finished the 1911 pulp
The Nyctalope on Mars by Jean de La Hire
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

Its pretty good for a pulp, very different from something like Burroughs.
Also not free unlike most of the stuff i read. I mean it is free if you speak french but otherwise you have to buy the BlackCoatPress.com translation.

This is an interesting list of old SF.
http://hilobrow.com/radium-age-100/

I didn't much enjoy R.U.R. but thought Capeks later novel War with the Newts was a vast improvement on a very similar theme (destruction of mankind due to creating his own replacement).

I also like The Machine Stops, which is a short story predicting global interconectedness.

"War of the Newts" is really a great novel.

Here is my review:

"This is simply a wonderful work of satire that still resounds in our own times. Capek is better known as the co-inventor of the word robot from his science fiction play "R.U.R". Unlike Kafka who wrote in German, Capek wrote in Czech (from which the word robot is derived) and, until Vaclav Havel, he was the most famous playwright of the Czech people and Eastern Europe.

Printed in 1936, "The War with the Newts" is a bitter look at mankind and our treatment of the environment and our fellow human beings. It is also gruesomely funny such as his reflection on our dysfunction American society of the 30s:

"In the United States, especially Tritons became the fashion; in New York a showy revue ran for three hundred nights featuring Poseidon with three hundred most beautiful Triton girls, Nereids, and Sirens; in Miami and on the beaches of California youth bathed in the costumes of Tritons and Nereids (i.e. three strings of pearls and nothing else), whereas in the Middle and Middle West states the Movement for Suppression of Immorality (M.S.I.) became unusually strong; at the same time mass demonstrations took place, and a few Negroes were partly hanged and partly burned to death."

Uncomfortably as we read this passage we realize our regional cultures don't seem to have changed that much in the 21st century. Capek also warns us of the effects of unrestrained pseudo-Capitalist feudalism free to mobilize labor in absolute servitude a la Emir of Dubai:

"I should prefer that we thought in terms of whole milliards of Newts, of millions, and millions of working units, of changing the earth's crust, a new Genesis, and new geologic epochs. We can speak to-day of a new Atlantis, of old continents which stretch out further and further into the oceans, of the New Worlds which mankind will build for itself. Excuse me, gentlemen, perhaps this may seem too much of a Utopia for you. Yes, we are truly entering upon a new Utopia. We are already in it, my friends. We have only to work out in full the future of the Newts on the technical side -- (And economical!)"

One hopes, we can still hear ringing in our ears the dystopian horror tales of the labor camps of Dubai of the early 21st century filled with Third World migrant workers and, at the time of its composition, remember the soon-to-be enacted Final Solution of Hitler supported by the architecture of Albert Speer rising to engulf Capek's Prague and leading to the complete extermination of the Jews in its ancient ghetto.

However Capek recognized the underlying horror of Modernism that Nazism represented to the continent. He had, due to ill-health, witnessed from the safety of Prague the destruction of World War I and the development of technologies of death by objective and clinically detached scientists. However, he dedicated his latter work to stopping the spread of fascism across Europe and won recognition for his effort by being declared Public Enemy No. 2 in Czechoslovakia by the Nazis. Unlike his brother, Jozef, he was spared a concentration camp death by dying instead of pneumonia on Christmas Day following the German annexation of the Sudetenland in 1938. In this work he anticipates the "experiments" of Dr. Mengele, the general atrocities of the militarist powers of World War II, and our own tragic acceptance of torture as an acceptable tool in the "War Against Terrorism" through the mental revulsion to the academic reports heard by an attendee of a scientific conference on the study of the Newts:

"Excuse me, I really don't know what he described; for at that moment I began to rack my brains to think what disturbances might perhaps appear in Professor Devrient if I removed his right cerebral lobe; how the smiling Dr. Okagawa would react if I irritated him with electricity, and how Professor Rehmann would behave if somebody crushed the labyrinth in his ear....For my part, I should be ready in the interest of science to smash the glasses of Professor Debebosque, or send electric shocks into the bald pate of Professor Diaten, after which I should publish an article on the manner in which they reacted. To speak the truth, I can picture it vividly. Less vividly can I imagine what went on in the soul of Andrias Scheuchzeri [the Newts] during such experiments....none of the celebrities who spoke said that poor Andrias Scheuchzeri had ever grown violent...."

While Karl Capek failed to reach the likes of Clemenceau and Chamberlain as they appeased Hitler at Munich he leaves an extraordinary work of literature warning us of the frailties of Man and his treatment of the Other. One can only hope we pause to appreciate his words and learn from his humanity."

Thanks for the article above!! a good read!

I hadn't realized that Harry Harrison& Keith Laumer were old school enough that a lot of their stories are in the public domain. I've been listening to the Librivox recordings of some older short stories & even a couple of novels. It's been a treat.

Keith Laumer is probably best known for his Bolo & Retief stories. I haven't come across any of the former, but have listened to a couple of the latter. The Retief character is pretty much the standard for his heroes, anyway. The situations aren't usually worked for laughs, though.

Harry Harrison is probably best known for Make Room! Make Room! which the 1973 movie Soylent Green was based on. The Stainless Steel Rat & Bill, the Galactic Hero are two well known series. Again, none of them are available, but the first 2 of his Death World series are plus several other stories.

Librivox also has compilations of old short SF stories. Some stories show up over & over, but there are quite a few different one. I've been really pleased with the quality of the narration, too.

I had no idea Harrison wrote the basis for Soylent Green.

The First Men in the Moon
Paris in the Twentieth Century
and
A Honeymoon in Space
seem worth considering, imo.

I hated "Paris in the Twentieth Century".

I got more fun out of The Brick Moon and The Struggle for Empire: a Story of the Year 2236.

Neither one is exactly good, but they are fun.

Wreade1872 also found a source at a library in Toronto and posted the links on the SFFBC group. Here's their shelf for easy reference: https://www.torontopubliclibrary.ca/s.... There are several I'd like to nominate this month for April; go see for the one I chose!

Very cool resource. Thanks.

Excellent, Cheryl! Thanks.

Erm, I just realized, these aren't all from before 1920.
Also, this link should be posted to that other thread that Jim started for resources. Also don't thank me, thank Wreade1872. ;)

https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/2014/10...

pjmedia has a series, this is the first, covering the 1910s.

That's really cool. Your link goes to #9, the second page of the article (look below to go to previous page to see the beginning) & I immediately saw Beyond Thirty by ERB that I'd never even heard of before. I thought I had & had read all his stuff. Nope. Love it when that happens. It's free to read on the Australian Gutenberg here:
http://gutenberg.net.au/ebooks/fr1000...

The rest are well worth looking at, too.

Here are some old, mostly forgotten things that may interest people.

A Columbus of Space by Garrett P. Serviss, Science Fiction, Adventure, Space Opera, 1909. Said to be steam-punk-like.

A Honeymoon in Space, by George Chetwynd Griffith. 1900.

A Journey in Other Worlds: A Romance of the Future by John Jacob Astor. (No, not THAT Astor, but a relative.) 1880.

Across the Zodiac by Percy Greg. 1880. Said to be a "sword-and-planet" story like John Carpenter stories.

I found these described here.

Also "The Conquest of the Earth by the Moon" by Washington Irving. 1809. Satirical SF in which the Earth is colonized by the moon.

Full text here in Mythaxis magazine.

The Washington Irving thing is really more of an essay than a story, but was still interesting.

Wreade1872 wrote: "The Face in the Abyss by A.E.Merrit (1930)
Awesome pulpy goodness. Dinosaurs and rayguns, sexy snake women, genetic engineering, dark lords and damsels. Completely over the top, completely fun. [4/5]"

A. Merritt! Gosh, I'd forgotten those went back to 1930s -- and earlier. I have a few ancient, crumbling mmpb reprints. The one I liked the best, according to my booklog, was "The Metal Monster" (1920!), and the review you should read is https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I gave it 4 stars, & just marked it for early reread. With luck I still have the pb.

Sounds fun!

Ed wrote: "Sounds fun!"

Well. I started re-reading it, and Merritt's writing is certainly colorful. But. The book is badly dated, with casual racism and nonsensical plot elements. A troop of Persian warriors suddenly appear, armed just like Alexander's! Paused for now. Book of its time (circa 1920).

I have found some of these books through the Iliad service at our local library, somewhere, some library will probably have them.

Jim wrote: "I hadn't realized that Harry Harrison& Keith Laumer were old school enough that a lot of their stories are in the public domain. I've been listening to the Librivox re..."

Way Station byClifford D. Simak is classic old school.. call it 'Agrarian SciFi' He wrote a lot of stories set in the rural Midwest, with intergalactic twists, of course.

Neal, Project Gutenberg has a lot of titles by Laumer.

Neal wrote: "Way Station byClifford D. Simak is classic old school.. call it 'Agrarian SciFi' He wrote a lot of stories set in the rural Midwest, with intergalactic twists, of course."

Way Station: here's my 4-star review
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
-- and lots of raves from other GR friends. If you've missed it, or it's been awhile.....

Neal wrote: "Way Station byClifford D. Simak is classic old school.. call it 'Agrarian SciFi' He wrote a lot of stories set in the rural Midwest, with intergalactic twists, of course."

I liked it!

Simak is great