Science fiction

The Hellenized Syrian satirist Lucian wrote the novel A True Story, sometimes regarded as the first work of science fiction, in the second century AD. It is the earliest known work of fiction to feature outer space travel, flying to the Moon, alien lifeforms and interplanetary warfare.

Somnium (Latin for "The Dream") is a novel written in 1608, in Latin, by the German astronomer Johannes Kepler. It was first published in 1634. The work is a detailed imaginative description of how the Earth might look when viewed from the Moon, and is considered to be the first work of science fiction since Roman times.

Reproduction of 1634 title page

New Atlantis is an incomplete Utopian novel by English writer and statesman Sir Francis Bacon, published posthumously in 1627. The work is a fable about a city on an imaginary Pacific island, Bensalem, ran by scholars. Its advanced population had aircraft, hearing aids, refrigerators and submarines. One of the first ever science fiction novels, it was a best seller for more than a decade after its publication.

The Man in the Moone is a book by the English Church of England bishop Francis Godwin (1562–1633). Initially considered to be one of his early works, it is now thought to date from the late 1620s. The novel was first published posthumously in 1638 under the pseudonym of Domingo Gonsales.
In The Man in the Moone, a Spaniard ends up on the moon after fleeing Spain and harnessing some wild swans who fly him up to it. He then meets the "Lunars"-a people who inhabit the moon. Some critics consider The Man in the Moone to be one of the first works of science fiction.

The early French science-fiction novel Memoirs of the Year 2500 by Louis-Sébastien Mercier was one of the most popular titles of the 18th century. The first work of utopian fiction set in the future rather than at a distant place in the present , the novel describes the adventures of an unnamed man who falls asleep and wakes up in a Paris several centuries later. Written only 18 years before the French Revolution of 1789, the book describes a future pacifist France with no religion and no military.

The earliest use of the term Science Fiction, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was in 1851 when it was applied to poetry or fiction interweaving a story with scientific fact. The earliest use of “science fiction” for futuristic writing was in 1927 and had come into general use by the end of the decade.

The first science fiction film, titled A Trip to the Moon and based on From the Earth to the Moon by Jules Verne, was released in France in 1902.

Luxembourgish-American writer, editor, and magazine publisher Hugo Gernsback August 16, 1884 – August 19, 1967) provided a forum for the modern genre of science fiction in 1926 by founding the first magazine dedicated to it, Amazing Stories.

February 1928 cover of Amazing Stories

Although Greenback was the first in modern times to use the term "science fiction", he preferred to call it “scientifiction.”

The annual awards at the World Science Fiction Convention are called the “Hugos” after Hugo Gernsback,

The abbreviation “sci-fi” was introduced in 1954, by analogy with “hi-fi."

The first science fiction fanzine, The Comet, was published  in May 1930 by the Science Correspondence Club in Chicago, Illinois.

The Buck Rogers in the 25th Century radio show, notable as the first science-fiction program on radio, first hit the airwaves as a 15-minute broadcast on CBS Radio on November 7, 1932. The show related the story of our hero Buck finding himself in the 25th century.

R.U.R (Rossum's Universal Robots) is a play that was first performed in Czechoslovakia in 1920 and is widely credited with popularizing the term "robot." The play is set in a future world where robots are created to perform manual labor, and it explores the themes of technological progress, the relationship between humans and machines, and the consequences of creating artificial life. 

The BBC aired an adaptation of Karel Čapek's play R.U.R on February 11, 1938. It was the first science fiction television program ever broadcast. The 1938 adaptation by the BBC marked a significant moment in the history of science fiction, as it brought these themes to a wider audience and helped to establish the genre as a staple of popular culture.

The first episode of Doctor Who, titled "An Unearthly Child," aired on November 23, 1963. It was the beginning of a long-running and iconic science fiction television series. The episode introduced viewers to the Doctor, played by William Hartnell, and his time-traveling spaceship, the TARDIS, as well as his companions Susan Foreman, Barbara Wright, and Ian Chesterton. 

The first episode of Doctor Who was broadcast eighty seconds later than the scheduled program time, because of the assassination of John F. Kennedy the previous day.

Gene Roddenberry created Star Trek in the mid-1960s. He sold it as a western, but in space, and modeled it on Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, with each episode combining an adventure with a morality tale. The first episode of Star Trek aired on September 8, 1966, and was titled "The Man Trap."

Commander Spock and Captain James T. Kirk pictured here in The Original Series

Enthusiastic Star Trek fans are usually called Trekkies. The word was first used by Arthur W. Saha when he saw people wearing fake Vulcan ears at a convention in 1967.

Dune, by Frank Herbert, the world’s best- selling science fiction novel, was rejected over 20 times before being accepted by a publisher of car manuals.

Science fiction author William Gibson notably coined the term "cyberspace" in his short story "Burning Chrome," which was published on July 7, 1982.  The word was used in reference to the "mass consensual hallucination" in computer networks. Gibson later popularized the concept in his acclaimed 1984 debut novel Neuromancer.

The front cover art for the book Burning Chrome. Wikipedia Commons

The cyberpunk science-fiction genre was named after the 1983 short story Cyberpunk by Bruce Bethke.

L Ron Hubbard the founder of Scientology, was a science fiction author.

In his later years the artist Pablo Picasso liked to read science fiction comics.

National Science Fiction Day is unofficially celebrated by many science fiction fans in the United States on January 2, to correspond with renowned science fiction author Isaac Asimov's birthday. While not an official holiday recognized by the government, it's widely acknowledged by science fiction fans and organizations like the Hallmark Channel and Scholastic Corporation.

Gattaca (1997) was voted the most plausible science fiction film of all time by the scientists at NASA.

Sources Daily Express, Daily Mail