The Evolution of Science Fiction discussion

We are back to the beginning and so are looking for nominations from pre-1950 for any book we have not previously read. We have already read many books from this period so please check the bookshelf before making a nomination (here). One nomination per person please.

I'm going to nominate Gladiator again. It is the progenitor of Superman, Doc Savage, & most comic book heroes, so is extremely important in the evolution of the genre. Most of all, it's a good read.

It's available for free at any of the following sites. You might want to look at them all since there are different editions, one even illustrated.
http://onlinebooks.library.upenn.edu/...
https://archive.org/details/Gladiator...
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/42914

I'll second Gladiator (if it's needed). There also is a free audio version for it (Public Domain, not piracy for those who question) done by LibriVox on Archive.com

https://archive.org/details/gladiator...

For my Nomination, I'll go back a step further and give Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions the nod. In a foreword to one of the many publications of the novella, noted science writer Isaac Asimov described Flatland as "The best introduction one can find into the manner of perceiving dimensions."

You can get the various free versions of the text or audio here https://archive.org/search.php?query=...

I nominate _Lost Horizon_ by James Hilton. I admit to a self-interest in the matter: I own a used copy and read the first 25 percent of the book already.
It was first published in 1933 and highly popular. Two movie adaptations were made.
One might say that the novel is not science fiction. I can see that point of view but I would argue that its speculative fiction. The novel has fantastic elements and the main part of the story is about a utopian society.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...

I'd like to nominate The clockwork Man by E.V. Odle (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1...) , considered the first cyborg novel. you can found a serialized free version here: http://hilobrow.com/2013/03/20/the-cl...

PSXtreme wrote: "I'll second Gladiator (if it's needed). There also is a free audio version for it (Public Domain, not piracy for those who question) done by LibriVox on Archive.com ..."

Thanks. Seconds are not needed. I could have sworn we read "Flatland", but it's not on the shelves so I'm wrong. Might have been a popular side read.

I'll nominate The World of Null-A by A.E. van Vogt, published in 1948. Originally serialized in "Astounding Stories"

Rossum's Universal Robots or R.U.R. by Karel Čapek. It is the play that populorized the word "robot".

I'll nominate The Goddess of Atvatabar by William Richard Bradshaw, which someone else nominated last time.

I will nominate The Lost Continent by Edgar Rice Burroughs, also known as Beyond Thirty. Great tale - a lot of fun, and translates well to the modern age.

I nominate Kallocain a dystopian novel from 1940 by . Never read this one, but I'm eager to read it.

I would like to nominate Herland first published in serial form in 1915. Herland, The Yellow Wall-Paper, and Selected WritingsCharlotte Perkins Gilman

Have we read The Martian Chronicles?

Yes, it is listed in the bookshelf as a group read for August 2016.

David wrote: "Yes, it is listed in the bookshelf as a group read for August 2016."

Thanks David for replying. I've been away and hadn't seen the question until now!

We've got 11 books in the poll & we forgot to start doing things by the new period dates. Since early book discussions aren't usually well attended, we thought we'd break this month into 2 polls & read 2 books.

Here's how we plan to break them out:
Period 1
Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions 1884
The Goddess of Atvatabar 1892
Herland 1915
The Lost Continent 1916
R.U.R. 1920
The Clockwork Man 1923

Period 2
Gladiator 1930
Lost Horizon 1933
Star Maker 1937
Kallocain 1940
The World of Null-A 1948

Going forward, we'll do our reads based on the periods we've established in the folders for this group:
Pre 1920
1920-1939
1940-1959, etc.

Next month we'll nominate books from 1940-1959 even though there are a couple of books from the 40s in this month's selections.

I like this. The cycle will be quicker.

R.U.R. and Star Maker are classics.

The periods are actually designated by science fiction historians as follows:

1920-1937: Pulp era
1938-1946: Early (or First) Golden Age
1947-1959: Later (or Second) Golden Age

Here's one reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_...

You can take it a bit further:
1805-1919: Early science fiction
1920-1930: 1920s Early Pulp
1931-1937: 1930s True Pulp
.....
1960-1976 New Wave science Fiction

The distinction between Pulp eras is Asimov's (Before the Golden Age: A Science Fiction Anthology of the 1930s, page 34) "With the November 1930 issue, Wonder Stories went pulp size and left Amazing Stories as the only large-size science fiction magazine."

I consider Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grainville's Le Dernier Homme to be the first work of true rather than proto science fiction. It's a really great poem: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le_Dern.... Following that you have the two wonderful Mary Shelley science fiction novels (1818 and 1826), and so on.

Periods more recent than 1976 break down better by genre. I, at least, know of no further names for more recent periods than then.

Remember Asimov was speaking mainly of American SF. Given that instead of the Pulp Era just call it the Gernsbackian Era since he modeled the nature of American sci-fi so strongly as William Gibson illustrated in "The Gernsback Continuum", thereby, breaking with American Optimism in science fiction.

As I have argued, the Later Golden Age should be labeled Classical SF.

I would say the Cyberpunk era is well recognized by most readers and writers.

I would also contend we are in the Neo-Classical SF Era and a Literary SF Era now. These branches are both dominated by a pessimism similar to the New Wave and Cyberpunk periods.

However, the decade layout allows us to read the best of each period - whether by cutting edge or legacy - authors independent of argument on categories.

Gregg raises a good point. The most common criticism of those period designations I provided (and they are Asimovian) is that they are highly USA-centered. I tend to forget that, being in the US as I am.

I think cyberpunk is more widely considered to be a sub-genre. That Gregg wants to name an entire period of science fiction after a sub-genre (genre for short) seems to me support for just classifying by genres after 1976.

I also agree with Gregg's last point, that simply classifying by decades allows us to avoid problems of which era to classify long-productive authors who have style changes and can logically fit into three or more periods.

We'd like to keep things simple from a management standpoint, so breaking up by the decades the way we did seemed like a good idea & is closer than the way this group was originally set up - probably close enough, all things considered. Besides, there are plenty of exceptions & that spurs conversation.

Breaking up too many nominations in the future might be by decade, but we'll also want to even them out, so could use other criteria. For instance, if there is a clear division between action & horror, alphabetically by author's last name or title, or we may flip coins if nothing else seems to fit.

I'll go out on a limb & say we might be open to suggestions in breaking nominations up, but we probably won't ask for them. The window for such will be brief since organizing a discussion on how to make them up would require too much time. If it's obvious & you have an idea, you're welcome to throw it out there, but setting up polls is kind of a PITA all on its own. I'm glad Jo does it, not that I'd reliably remember.
;)

Dan wrote: "The periods are actually designated by science fiction historians as follows:

1920-1937: Pulp era
1938-1946: Early (or First) Golden Age
1947-1959: Later (or Second) Golden Age

Here's one referen..."

Thanks for the tip on "The Last Man". I have engaged my librarian....