https://motherboard.vice.com/en_us/arti ... ce-fiction

It's not a new article, but it's an intriguing idea. The concept that people were writing science fiction in Ancient Rome sort of made me do a double-take, but there you are. I learn new things all the time.

Give birth through their calves? Crazy.
Someone should make that as a movie, though.

It could be the sequel to John Carter...

Lucian's True History has long been recognized as proto-science fiction. I read some excerpts of a modern translation when I was a kid. I'll have to look that up.

Cyrano de Bergerac (The real one, not the swordsman with the big nose you may have heard of) wrote of a trip to the Moon in the 1600s. And there was a huge amount of science fiction written during the nineteenth century. Jules Verne and H.G. Wells are just the ones that people remember. I used to have access to a university library that had a large collection of early science fiction. Somebody must have been teaching classes on it or something. It's amazing what sorts of things those early writers came up with. A lot of story ideas are older than we usually think.

Indeed!

I stumbled across this reference to Lucian while arguing about discussing the whole 'ancient astronaut' thing on another forum. It seems that some people aren't willing to accept that Erich von Däniken might have been a bit of a con artist.

A bit?

I think this is a lot like the origin of heavy metal. Before Black Sabbath, there were hints, pieces, and possibilities of what could become Heavy Metal, but wasn't. It took Sabbath to put it all together and it was this completely new thing, where you could see where it came from, but it was different enough to be new. In the case of Science Fiction, I agree with the article - that new thing was Frankenstein.

I also agree with the fact that it is really hard to consider anything pre-enlightenment as science fiction, since outside of Arabia, there wasn't much Science going on.

I will say that this article is the first time I've hard the hard/ soft split in Science Fiction applied to the hard / soft sciences division, though. Most of the time, I see it defined as hard SF is rooted in science (either STEM or social doesn't matter), and soft science fiction either uses fuzzy science or no science in a SF setting to tell stories. The Expanse is hard science fiction. Star Trek is Soft Science fiction. Star Wars is fantasy.

P.S. I'm firmly in the camp that the egg came first.

I think you're off on your timeline to think "pre-enlightenment" was some kind of marker for emergence from the Middle Ages. The following were non-Arabic, pre-enlightment figures:

Newton
Pascal
Kepler
Copernicus
Da Vinci
Descartes
Galileo
Laplace
Liebniz

The idea that Lucian's grounding in the "soft sciences" as they're now known helps to make his True History science fiction is an interesting argument. I'm not sure that I'm completely convinced here, though the writer also makes a good point in observing how the "soft sciences" can add a lot to modern science fiction. I still believe that Lucian's work can be considered a forerunner of science fiction in its exploration of other worlds. It's an early manifestation of one of science fiction's key themes, even though it comes before modern science. Let's not forget, either, that Lucian was an educated product of Hellenistic culture, which also produced the first proto-scientists.

More observations about the inhabitants of the Moon:

"They roast flying frogs on coals. Then they sit around a large table and breathe the smoke from the fire. They live only on the smoke."

"Everyone there who is thought to be good-looking is baldheaded, but bearded. Each foot is in one piece, for they have no toes. All of the people have cabbages for tails. The rich people wear robes made of glass, while the poor people must use brass."

And then there's the Lunar army:

80,000 men mounted on three-headed vultures
20,000 men on giant birds with cabbages for feathers and lettuce leaves for wings
30,000 Flea Guards mounted on fleas larger than elephants
50,000 Wind Coursers who sailed through the air like ships on their long robes
Garlic Throwers and Bean Shooters

The invaders from the Sun included warriors riding giant flying ants and giant gnats, Radish Throwers armed with poisonous radishes, and Mushroom Fighters armed with asparagus spears.

I have a 1960s Middle School-level reading textbook at home that has illustrations of some of this! Sooner or later, when the superhero movies finally wear out their welcome, somebody's probably going to try making this into a movie.

Maybe I meant the renaissance, then.