Writing the future: A timeline of science fiction literature

Illustration from Frankenstein. Credit: Mary Evans Picture Library.

Mary Shelley tells the story of Victor Frankenstein who engineers a living creature in a monstrous experiment.

Although Napoleon had been defeated at Waterloo in 1815, the early 19th Century was an era of political upheaval at home and abroad and many think this book promotes revolutionary ideas. Frankenstein is seen as a warning against the expansion of science without a moral context. In the deeply religious pre-Victorian age, suggesting a scientist could challenge God by trying to create human life was profoundly shocking.

Amazing Stories reprints stories by influential authors. Credit: Mary Evans Picture Library

The origin of the term “science fiction” appears.

Journalist and magazine proprietor Hugo Gernsback launches a pulp magazine which initially reprints tales by Verne, Wells and Edgar Allen Poe. The magazine calls its fiction “Scientifiction”, which combines romance with prophetic vision and scientific knowledge. Gernsback later coins “science fiction” in his magazine Science Wonder Stories in 1929.

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George Orwell's vision of the future remains a popular read.

George Orwell’s grim satire on Stalinism foretold the future even more.

Written during the Cold War, this book is set in a near-future Britain where a totalitarian party curtails all individual freedoms. The Government monitors all private and public activity. A number of concepts from the story, such as Big Brother and Room 101, enter popular culture and remain in use.

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Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? inspires the classic SF film Blade Runner.

The futuristic novels of Philip K Dick provide the plotlines for many modern sci-fi blockbusters such as Blade Runner and Minority Report.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? is set in a post-apocalyptic world. Dick is fascinated by the question of what constitutes a human being. Blurring the lines between humans and androids, he suggests androids can take on human characteristics, but lack compassion or empathy. The influences in Dick’s work include Jungian psychology, mental illness and drug use.

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Doris Lessing's novel was later made into a film starring Julie Christie.

The well-known author and playwright Doris Lessing publishes a tale of post-apocalyptic societal breakdown.

The novel is written in response to the long-established English “disaster tradition”. Lessing's story of a not-too-distant future where barbarism is the norm offers an interesting class analysis of bourgeois fears of social regression.

Malcolm Ali

Octavia E Butler’s novels explore themes of race, gender and sexuality.

Dawn is the first novel in Octavia E Butler’s Xenogenesis trilogy (1987 – 1989).

This novel examines racial difference in a tale of the alien Oankali who attempt to rescue humanity’s final survivors after a nuclear holocaust. Born in California in 1947, Butler grew up in a socially deprived, mixed race neighbourhood. For a number of years she was the only African-American woman publishing sci-fi. The Xenogenesis novels explore the concepts of reproduction between species, gender and sexuality.

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Margaret Atwood often terms her work as speculative, rather than science, fiction.

Margaret Atwood follows up her science fiction interests first visited in the dystopia of The Handmaid’s Tale (1985).

Maddaddam is the third novel in Atwoods's trilogy written between 2003-13. It outlines a post-apocalyptic world following a catastrophic genetic engineering programme which has wiped out most of humanity. Atwood’s popular trilogy opens up the genre to a new audience not previously familiar with sci-fi. The author terms her work as speculative, rather than science, fiction meaning that scenarios in her novels are Earth-bound and plausible.