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ENCYCLOPEDIA BRITANNICA

science fiction -

Form of fiction that developed in the 20th century and deals principally with the impact

of actual or imagined science upon society or individuals. The term is more generally

used to refer to any literary fantasy that includes a scientific factor as an essential

orienting component.

Science fiction was made possible only by the rise of modern science itself, notably the

revolutions in astronomy and physics. Aside from the age-old genre of fantasy

literature, which does not qualify, there were notable precursors: imaginary voyages

to the moon or to other planets in the 18th century and space travel in Voltaire's

Micromégas (1752), alien cultures in Jonathan Swift's Gulliver's Travels (1726), and

science-fiction elements in the 19th-century stories of Edgar Allan Poe, Nathaniel

Hawthorne, and Fitz-James O'Brien. Science fiction proper began, however, toward the

end of the 19th century with the scientific romances of Jules Verne, whose science was

rather on the level of invention, as well as the science-oriented novels of social

criticism by H.G. Wells.