I’m going to have to read The Blazing World now. I’m surprised I haven’t heard of it.
Well, if you include Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World (1666), you would have to put Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (1634) and
Lucian of Samosata’s A True Story (2nd century AD) ahead of her.
I’ve listened to “A True Story” years ago but can’t remember any of it. Reading the synopses, I think all three are closer to fantasy than Sci-Fi. So I still Put Frankenstein as the first true Sci-Fi book.
Mary Shelley has to be up there for inventing Sci-Fi.
Some would say that was Margaret Cavendish, 150 years earlier. Mary Shelly’s novels are and have been more popular though.
I’m going to have to read The Blazing World now. I’m surprised I haven’t heard of it.
Well, if you include Margaret Cavendish’s The Blazing World (1666), you would have to put Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (1634) and Lucian of Samosata’s A True Story (2nd century AD) ahead of her.
I’ve listened to “A True Story” years ago but can’t remember any of it. Reading the synopses, I think all three are closer to fantasy than Sci-Fi. So I still Put Frankenstein as the first true Sci-Fi book.