In the mid-17th century, European society experienced an evolution in the way natural phenomena were described and explored. What was previously known as “natural philosophy” (which included disciplines like alchemy and medicine) slowly grew into what we now recognize as science. This evolution came at a time when those working in the field of natural philosophy would have already been exposed to new and cutting-edge ideas in stories that are understood today as early science fiction. These fictions took plausible new scientific ideas and placed them in narratives to explore the effects of how those ideas might affect the world.
In the 1660s, a premier group of natural philosophers formed The Royal Society, also known as The Royal Society of London for Improving Natural Knowledge. To paraphrase Robert Markley, The Royal Society recognized that science could become a utopia of advancement, objectivity, progress, and improvement of the arts (Markley, 1983, pp. 355-6). This group included Robert Boyle (1627-1691) and Isaac Newton (1643-1727), revolutionary natural philosophers of the period. Both of these early scientists were inventing disciplines, methods, languages, math, and science as they were developing their works (Markley, pp. 358-9). Though their work was certainly groundbreaking, some of their ideas would have been influenced by fictional works already in circulation at the time.
Published posthumously in 1626, Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis describes an isolated, hidden nation featuring an institution known as Salomon's House. This institution made use of the relatively new principles of the scientific method, which Bacon himself developed. Based on these principles, Bacon’s story describes the various roles people play at Salomon’s House, which is essentially a research university pursuing and applying science to further human knowledge. Bacon’s characters do this, according to the story, because the purpose of Salomon’s House is “…the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible" (Bacon, 1626).
New Atlantis may have influenced the methods behind the science itself, but Thomas More’s Utopia, published in 1516, would’ve given rise to the idea that society itself might be improvable, if not perfectable, with learned planning. More’s story not only describes the island of Utopia as a society in a geographical location, the civilization there is described as a utopia in the sense that it is an idealized society. Everyone’s needs are met. Everyone has a role. Everyone is treated fairly and equally (More, 1516). A proto-communist society in nature, the specific principles may not necessarily hold up to scrutiny by today’s standards; but the innovative idea that disciplined foreknowledge could support the educated planning of an entire civilization would have been radical and inspiring at the time.
1608 saw the publication of Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (or, The Dream). Written as a university dissertation, this story describes how astronomy on the moon might look. First, however, Kepler’s astronomer needed to get to the moon before conducting such astronomy. Though he includes the help of a “daemon” (maybe what we might call an alien) to facilitate the journey, Kepler goes on to describe the safety precautions and possible effects on the human body during space travel. What follows is a fairly dense scientific description of lunar-based astronomy (Kepler, 1630). 17th-century natural philosophers would have been absorbed not only by the scientific detail, but also with an intense sense of possibility seeing the application of science in such an exotic context, thus making Kepler an early writer of hard science fiction and science fiction prototyping (an increasingly popular real-world method for imagining the effect of new technology on the future) (Wikipedia. 2020.).
When Margaret Cavendish published The Blazing World in 1666, she had been interacting with The Royal Society. In her story, a young woman is abducted, her abductors die, she is rescued after finding another world connected to ours, and she becomes empress of that “blazing world”. The men of the blazing world are hybrids of men with insects and animals, but are versed in the various disciplines of natural philosophy. Her story attempts to explore many scientific topics such as why the sun is hot, what snow is made of, and what life is. On the overwhelming wondrousness of life, the protagonist eventually declares “Nature's works are so various and wonderful, that no particular creature is able to trace her ways” (Cavendish, 1666.). The Blazing World would have been a direct challenge to the scientists of the day, and was a forerunner of feminist science fiction that would flourish in the latter 20th century.
Even before science was known by that name, and before the term science fiction was used to describe stories exploring scientific possibilities, early precursors of such stories were influencing the people that would make science a reality. Those people would, in turn, develop science into an engine of imagination fueling even more stories in what would become a recurring symbiotic relationship of discovery and imagination.
Works Cited
Bacon, Francis. The New Atlantis. Project Gutenberg, 2008. Ebook.
Cavendish, Margaret. The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World. Project Gutenberg, 2016. Ebook.
Kepler, Johannes. Somnium – A Dream. Charlestown, Rhode Island: Frosty Drew Memorial Fund, Inc., 2020. https://frostydrew.org/papers.dc/papers/paper-somnium/.
Markley, Robert. “Objectivity as Ideology: Boyle, Newton, and the Languages of Science.” Genre (Volume 16, Winter 1983). University of Oklahoma.
More, Thomas. Utopia. Seattle: Amazon, 2014. Kindle edition.
Wikipedia contributors, "Science fiction prototyping," Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Science_fiction_prototyping&oldid=953944570 (accessed October 6, 2020).
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