From Sam Edge, Ringwood, Hampshire, UK
Frankenstein is one of my favourite novels. However, I, like many others, contest the notion that it is the first science fiction (Leader, 30 November).
There are many prior examples of what we would today consider sci-fi, if we define that as proposing a novel technology for the time and exploring the consequences.
For instance, in the 1600s, Church of England bishop Francis Godwin wrote The Man in the Moone, an account of a trip to the moon using a flock of swans harnessed to a vessel. At the time, it was a scientifically acceptable proposition that missing birds migrated to the moon in winter, so this would be what we now call “hard sci-fi”, proposing a scientifically plausible scenario. He even described the low gravity on the moon. I could go on.
Advertisement
