The Evolution of Science Fiction (Feat. Lindsay Ellis) | It's Lit!

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Correction: At 1:49, we accidentally said that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was published in 1918, when it was published in 1818. We regret the error -- thanks to Stephen Pershing for catching this!

Stories, tales, and myths from all around the world posing speculative questions around technologies have existed long before Ray Bradbury and Frank Herbert, from the time-traveling Japanese fairy tale "Urashima Tarō” to some of the speculative elements of 1001 Arabian Nights. But there are a few eras that begin to shape what we’ve come to know as science fiction today.

Written by Lindsay Ellis and Angelina Meehan
Directed & animated by Andrew Matthews
Produced by Amanda Fox
Executive in Charge (PBS): Adam Dylewski
Music and Sound Design: Eric Friend
Hand Model: Katie Graham
Imaged by Shutterstock

[Curarkaig]

Thank you PBS for giving me more Lindsay Ellis!

[ingonyama]

Lindsay & PBS, you had me at lightcycles & hoverboards on Mars.

Who am I kidding? You had me at 'Lindsay & PBS'.

[thewhatness]

I'm so glad Ursula K. LeGuin got a shout-out here. It's really easy to overlook her influence in the genre.

[davidshi]

I love the mathematical novella Flatland, by Edwin A. Abbott, which is about sentient geometrical figures that live on a 2D plane. Does that count as science fiction? It certainly has the social commentary element, as the first half is basically a satire of Victorian society. The second half is more of an exploration of higher dimensions, and how to think about them.

[jeremiahbok]

Books AND Lindsay Ellis. This is literally my favorite youtube show.

[williamhubscher]

I liked all of this, except for one MASSIVE omission: Arthur C. Clarke! :)

[jonathonbekker]

I recommend ALL Sci-Fi fans, regardless of other tastes, take some time to read "Colonialism and the Emergence of Science Fiction" by John Rieder. Rieder makes the case that Sci-Fi, historically, had its roots in colonial adventure novels, and draws a line between things like "King Solomon's Mines" and its exploration of Africa to, ultimately, space travel. This partially explains the use of the Arctic exploration as a framing device in Frankenstein: the Arctic and the Jungle were the two major frontiers of colonial explorers.

This winds up having some great applications - Ray Bradbury's "Martian Chronicles" feels a lot more clear, for example, and it blows up your ability to read secondary literature about Sci-Fi to include colonial histories.

Anyway, my favorite Sci-Fi novel is almost certainly "Heroes Die" (and its attendant series) by Matthew Stover. They manage to be both really intellectually hefty, while also being pulpy action novels. It's an amazing balancing act.

[lagozzino]

Got to give a shoutout to the prophet William Gibson, who seems to write scifi as a lowkey way to tell us all about his fairly accurate visions of the near future

[MissNausicaa]

One of my old time favorites is Flowers for Algernon (very underrated!). The Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guin and A Canticle for Leibowitz by Walter M. Miller Jr. are also amazing.

[Zee-piio]

Ursula Le-guin's the Dispossed is my favourite sci-book of all time.

[arthur]

One small thing, Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is not Victorian. Queen Victoria was decades from taking the throne. The historical period in which Mary Shelley wrote the book is Georgian, i.e. the same time Jane Austen wrote her books. And in any case, since Mary Shelley wrote the book in Continental era, it's more accurate to see it as a Romantic work or part of the Romantic era. Aside from that, nice video.

[HughDingwall]

I dig when scifi authors, rather than necessarily comment on whether a thing is good or bad, just use scifi to crack it open and look at its guts. For example, China Mieville's _Embassytown_ is about trying to talk to aliens who have no concept of metaphor, and can only talk about things that literally exist. (They pay humans to do stuff so that they can use them as similes, amongst other things.)

[mofohasteheyelazors]

At 30, I feel like I was too late for the golden age of the xerox zine; somehow this animatic style manages to make me feel a degree of nostalgia I couldn't have imagined. It's Baller. I love it.

[theniftycat]

my favourite sci-fi writers are the Strugatsky brothers since I was 12. mainly known and popular in the post-Soviet countries. but you might know some of their creations, such as Stalker (Tarkovsky's film). they started out writing communist futuristic utopias that were fun, but then they went on to create many cautionary tales and got darker and darker. but what makes them great in my eyes is their ability to see the good in people, even if there's also plenty of bad.

[mistersympa]

I need a citation on Ray Bradbury being a Cool Dude.

[golgarisoul]

This is like an abridged version of what the people over at Extra Credits are doing.

[anarchistmugwump]

One thing of minor note is the influence that the socialist movement had on Sci-Fi particularly time traveller stories. The Time Machine was in part a parody of the Utopian fiction that was quite popular at the time, where narrators would suddenly find themselves in a socialist or communist utopia and then spend their time dossing about having a nice time (they usually don't read well by modern standards and in a modern context) Wells' novel was influenced by this and at first it kinda seems to be going that way but then it turns out "Aw bummer, there's still class conflict".

[rocketdave]

My favorite sci-fi book of the last several years is Way Station by Clifford Simak. Its quiet pastoral charm was like a breath of fresh air for me at a time when I was feeling very bored by spaceships blowing each other up.

[Garland]

I'm a little sad that Aldous Huxley and his Brave New World wasn't mentioned. I find it better than George Orwell's 1984, and that is also came 17 years earlier.

[steepertree]

1918? Oops. Frankenstein is time traveling now.