Just finished Netflix del Toro’s Frankenstein, wow what a masterpiece. I’d easily give it a 9/10. Del Toro did it again. The ending is quite different from Mary Shelley’s original novel but honestly that’s not the point of this post. I remember reading somewhere that many readers consider Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein 1818 the first true science fiction novel. I personally don’t fully agree with that claim. For me there were already several works written before Shelley’s time that could be classified as sci-fi as well. Like Kepler's Somnium in 1634 or Francis Bacon's The New Atlantis in 1627.
Do you consider Frankenstein the first science fiction novel or do you think earlier writers already paved the way for Shelley’s creation?
by Delicious_Maize9656
9 Comments
Kepler’s Somnium IS widely regarded as the first sci fi novel. Both Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan believe it to being among the first.
Kepler’s and Bacon’s books are very rarely read or treated as literature. That’s probably why.
I think that Frankenstein is just the first work that everybody agrees is science-fiction and not science-fantasy or mythology. Isaac Asimov and Carl Sagan both agree with you about Somnium, and some consider Lucian’s A True Story, from the second century AD, to be the first science-fiction novel.
Many readers don’t, Brian Aldiss does. Sounds like there are plenty of people who consider otherwise.
Frankenstein is to me the birthplace of modern science fiction. The New Atlantis for me is much more of a philosophical utopian novel than science fiction. I’ve never read Somnium so I can’t really speak on it but I do know plenty of people consider it the foundation for modern science fiction.
Science fiction could be considered to go back to [the 2nd century CE](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story)
I honestly think the idea that there is a “first” novel in *any* genre is pretty ridiculous. Any genre is an amalgamation of stories, tropes, and archetypes that have developed over hundreds or thousands of years—not the result of one author or book inventing the genre wholesale out of thin air.
I think I’d put it in the Fantasy category.
These things are so subjective…
Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein is generally considered to be Gothic horror moreso than science fiction. It’s more that you could classify Frankenstein as a science fiction story by modern standards, but I don’t know if she would have.
As for if I think that, I don’t really think about it at all one way or the other. Genre tells you where you put the book in a book store, and outside of commercial contexts genre starts to lose distinction. I would accept Frankenstein in an essay or podcast talking about science fiction, probably