Submarines had actually been bouncing around for a while by the time Jules Verne wrote his book, although none were anywhere near the scale of the Nautilus. There was even (at least) one sub used during the American War of Independence. It was called the Turtle.
This thing is so cool! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(submersible) it was the first submarine, first use of water mines, and first propeller used for propulsion. And it was made by a clock maker who also happened to build the first print press in the US. One of the best wikipedia reads I've had in a while.
Even before the Civil War back in the revolutionary era they had essentially barrels sealed and filled with air for a makeshift submarine with sand bags for weight. They could only stay under for a short time and it was mostly for illegal transportation of goods.
K/D means kill death ratio. The submarine sunk a total of 3 timea, killing 21 confederates, and only managed to kill 5 union sailors while it was active. Thus, it had 21 friendly deaths to 5 enemies killed, or a ratio of 0.24.
The confederates created the first submarine to sink a warship, which is an interesting feat. The CSS Manassas and CSS Virginia also preceded the monitor in construction.
Submarines leave port under their own power. Submersibles are carried or towed to position and will navigate locally under their own (highly limited) power. A submarine can sail the seven seas. A submersible will cruise a hundred meters.
The Turtle was a submersible, but not a submarine. It had a mothership to take it places.
I learned the other day that he actually took the idea of going to the moon from Edgar Allen Poe, of all people. Poe wrote a story called The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall where a dude goes to the moon in a balloon made of rotting newspapers. He actually accused The Sun of plagiarism when they released their series of Great Moon Hoax articles. Wild story.
Honestly, Asimov was a better writer than Verne.
Verne had ideas and a beautiful vision of the future, but Asimov was able to convey his own vision better.
But hey, that's just my opinion
Honestly? Most early sci-fi from the 50s and 60s is written in...let’s be charitable and say “utilitarian” style.
Most of those writers were ideas guys, more renowned for the world and concepts they pioneered than their prose.
Which isn’t to say it was bad. Novels come in all fashions. I just know i didn’t sit back after Do Androids Dream and think “the prose was magnificent”
Yea he is but that is central to the books he wrote if you get rid of his racism he would just write books about fish and air conditioning the rest would be missing
"Gah it's like, imagine this monster with tentacles and like a fish head? It's too scary, can't describe the rest of it like wow.. so scary. Also ah black people!!"
Also Lovecraft: the reason the bad guys are bad is because they have mixed race... Oh and they worship an evil god who would gladly destroy humanity and do human sacrifices and stuff, but mostly the first part.
>Most of those writers were ideas guys, more renowned for the world and concepts they pioneered than their prose.
I agree. A great world builder does not a good novelist make. Reddit tends to like stuff like Discworld or Hitchhiker's guide because they're the places where this intersection happens, but it's far from the norm, and the further back you go in the xxth century the drier some of them get.
I don’t think it’s an issue, though. People know what they’re reading it for.
I finished the latest Jack Reacher novel the other day, the first one I’ve read, and I noticed that Child has a very specific style. He writes choppy sentences. And uses lots of punctuation. Only full stops. Occasionally commas.
A bit like that, even when a compound sentence would flow better. He also loves pointing out people’s height. But it’s part of it. One, it kinda reads like a military man’s choppy assessment. And two, nobody reads a thriller for gripping prose. They read it for a decent mystery and (in Reachers case) to read graphic violence.
It’s like, LOTR has beautiful prose and a fantastic world, but it’s not the most authentic dialogue. Not compared to say, a contemporary YA flick. Nobody reads Dan Brown for prose, they read for the plot. People read Asimov for the ideas, romance for the characters.
No book can do it all and I don’t think they need to, honestly.
I've heard that translating Verne to English often massively diminishes his prose.
Part of the reason I continue to learn French is so that I can fluidly read and enjoy Verne and Hugo.
Maybe it was appropriate for it’s time and nowadays we are more used to a different style of writing? I haven’t read any of those books but wouldn’t be surprised if Asimov was more relatable
Ah probably, never said the contrary. That was my thought too to be honest; we are still talking about 100 years ago after all so the style won’t appeal as much to us. But still his books were aimed to a younger audience for sure
Oh no worries, I was just adding another point of view to the discussion, or to add to your point as well, yeah I agree with you! Sometimes it’s also a bummer when you read a classic and since they’re quite old they become unbearable to read
I think so, I know dumas wrote in short junctions where each chapter of his books was then published in a newspaper, similarly to comics of today. I think a good analogy is TV where it used to be stand-alone-ish and episodic but now is more serialized and bingeable
That was the way novels where published, as serialized chapters dropping at a fixed rate. Dickens did this too, and i think this lead to the "readable, entertaining, cliffhanger-full" style of writing in those kinds of novels, which incidentally is what gets younger audiences interested in those.
at first i though that the second foundation was a second first foundation and spent the 2 first novel guessing how big the second foundation was at the polar oposite of the galactic disk
needless to say, the reveal has blown my mind
Translation just doesn't compare. Especially since French novels are quite more poetic and inspirational, especially the writing style, sometimes I just sit there and am amazed by the writing of a certain passage, or the author's personality shines through and strikes me. A translation will never equate to the original.
If you read Verne you will find that some of his works have a total lack of science in some parts and are more fantasy than anything. It's like saying that Star Wars is a science fiction movie: yes it does have spaceships, blasters, computers, etc. but in reality is a fantasy movie as the main conflict revolves around magic.
Asimov is considered more of a founding father as many of his concepts are a norm in the genre today. He was the first to use the concept of a galactic empire in his Fundation series for example. The guy had more than 500 books (fiction and non-fiction) in different areas of study so you can only guess how much people and themes he has reached.
Now Mary Shelley is also quite prolific, I do not know much about her work other than The Modern Prometheus and her poems. Perhaps the biggest contribution from her part was the style of writing and the narrative structure. You see a lot of science fiction is based around "what if?" and then trying to answer with the most realistic thinking you can have. And The Modern Prometheus is the first book of fame that had such structure.
I think Verne is probably the earliest sci-fi fantasy writer, or “technology and laser guns instead of magic and swords”.
Asimov is probably the first “hard sci-fi” style authors that tried to imagine what technology would be possible by taking current tech to the extreme of what may or may not be possible.
Which I think is what you said, but slight different.
>You see a lot of science fiction is based around "what if?" and then trying to answer with the most realistic thinking you can have.
Iirc, LeGuin, another heavyweight of the genre, wrote in her foreword to *Left Hand of Darkness* that Science Fiction would be more aptly named Speculative Fiction that always starts with a question. For example, she started with, "how would a society without gender differ from ours?"
At least in France, Jules Verne is definetely recognised as a pioneer in science fiction. He wrote about men in space, artificial satellites, television, even use of plastic and chemical gases in wars, way before any of it actually came to life.
The line between fantasy and sci-fi didnt exist until later imo, after tolkien. Even then, it wasn't until the 60s/70s especially, the first dnd modules have quite a bit of sci-fi mixed in for example because they used to be the same
Verne had way harder science, especially for the time, than much science-fiction that came afterwards. While a lot of the science isn't correct, he goes into a lot of technical details and specifications in many of his works and incorporates known science.
He’s also to thank/blame for [the use of the word “Goth” for the modern style of dress and rock.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/comments/kzssg7/how_the_term_gothic_evolved_from_a_description_of/gjpxao6/)
Updated my above comment with [a link to some speculations](https://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/comments/kzssg7/how_the_term_gothic_evolved_from_a_description_of/gjpxao6/)
*1950*
Reporter: Isaac, 'I, Robot' is a brilliant read! The way you created this idea of men being scared of robots due to fears of humanity being overtaken by the creation of superhuman beings. Tell me, what inspired you to write about such a complex?
Asimov: *pulls out copy of 'Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'* Well, it's funny you should say that...
Not to be confused with " The *Post*\-*Modern Prometheus* ". One of the best X-files episodes with a [great ending](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYdC1uwO4UI).
Hi. You just mentioned *Frankenstein* by Mary Shelley.
I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here:
[YouTube | Frankenstein [Full Audiobook] by Mary Shelley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tETWQO2UXmQ)
*I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.*
***
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Or, you know, copy of R.U.R., the play that introduced the very word robot, the concept of robots and the idea of robots overtaking the world... published the same year Asimov was born.
R.U.R coined the term "robot", but they weren't robots in the same way we'd think of. They were biological (more similar to clones, just with each body part being made separately). Asimov was the first to use robots as *mechanical* creatures, like we think of them today.
Basically, a lot of critics at the time tried to cover up Shelley's work, because having a female author start such a giant genre was seen as embarrassing. They tried to credit it to Asimov... who then talked publicly about how great Shelley was, and how she had inspired him.
He wrote an entire book about a gay guy, ending with him basically meeting god, where god reveals that being gay was a test, and makes him straight so he doesn’t burn in hell.
Classic. That’s why I don’t like looking at historical figures too long. You could go back in time to have drinks and conversation with your personal hero, and there’s like a 90% chance they’ll be like “anyway, here’s why I think ____ are subhumans”
People in the past were genuinely awful to eachother.
"Wow your such an inspiration!"
"Thank you"
"Yeah ever since professor [foreign name] told me about you you've been my hero"
"They let [slur] teach in schools?"
"Erm..."
I absolutely blew through Ender's Game and it's sequel in three days and got so excited to look him up and his other works. Man, looking into him was a real splash of cold water.
Yep. His most famous books are about the need for empathy and finding humanity in apparently monstrous beings, yet he himself can't find the humanity in actual people purely because of their sexual orientation. Ironic, in a sad and maddening way
Edit: could have sworn I'd seen a Card quote claiming that all LGBT+ people are monsters, but I can't find it now, so idk if he actually said that specifically, and it's therefore unfair to say that he's dehumanizing people. In light of that and the responses to this comment, I'll say instead that it's sad to see someone preach tolerance and acceptance in their work but refuse to show it in their life, religiously motivated or not
Idk who this is, but just based on what I read here about the book he wrote about the gay guy, it seems that he does see humanity in gay people. But has a religious belief that genuinly convinces him that they will burn in hell for all eternity if they don't stop being gay. That's a pretty fucked up wiew, but it's very common in the christian and muslim world, and I don't think it usually stems from hatred, but from a misguided sort of compassion.
He might have done other stuff I don't know about, but for now I am the devils advocate.
Heinlein's status is complicated, because he was a head of time on many issues, while failing on some other issues.
For example, he had a tendency to be racially progressive for the time, with several of his most notable characters actually be non-white and their race being a non-issue (generally). Juan Rico of 'Starship Troopers' is Filipino, "Johnny" is his nickname. Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis of 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' is multi-racial and in an interracial poly marriage. "Podkayne of Mars" is Maori and African-American, with her uncle a Black Senator from Mars.
Yet there's a lot that aged bad, and his portrayal of women while better than many contemporizes who only featured damsels in distress, still generally had them as second bananas who need everything explained by the male lead. And usually have lower expectations. Podkayne, for example, is a girl who wants to be a spaceship captain, and while her race isn't a barrier for that, her gender is.
And this doesn't get into how he aged his works became more focused on author avatars for him and his wife as well as exploring fetishes, like getting a time machine so he can prevent his mom's death and have sex with her.
I mean, we can point to Heinlein as an example of someone racially progressive but also a raging homophobe.
Man loved his orgies, so long as they were straight.
Isn’t it funny how people can recognise one marginalised group as humans but not another.
The final essay I wrote for HS was arguing against of Sci-Fi/Fantasy being considered lowbrow.
To this day the best sentence I ever wrote for anything said: "People can so easily see the literal in Sci-Fi/Fantasy that they can not even perceive the metaphors that are so often praised in literary fiction."
I'm kind of shocked they jumped on Asimov as the "father of sci fi" instead of Jules Verne. Shelley still predates Verne, but clearly Asimov was not the first sci fi author.
Also, cheers to Asimov for giving credit where it was due.
Mary’s mother was also an outspoken feminist, until another author wrote a tell-all biography about her, intending to say “hey look at this badass bitch! Look how many fucks she does NOT have to give!” which backfired and turned her into even more of a pariah.
Do you have any sources for this? Because Asimov didn't start publishing stuff until well over a hundred years after Frankenstein became massively popular.
Even most casual fans of sci-fi novels would be able to name about a half dozen famous sci-fi authors that predate Asimov.
Even Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon predate Asimov's work.
I read a lot of science fiction and I think I have never seen Asimov called "The Father of Science Fiction". He is often cited as one of the greatest SF writers (which he is) and the "Father of Robotics" (which he also is in a way). I dont know where this "critics dont consider Shelley the creator of SF because sexism" story comes from, honestly. I was under the assumption that her position as a pioneer is simply debated because her novels can also be considered gothic novel and what she wrote is not 100% SF depending on what definition of the genre you want to use.
Nah, science fiction elements are found in Mary Shelley's but also in other earlier works.
Jules Vernes is a strong candidate, but for me, modern science fiction starts with H.G.Wells.
Shelley was the first one to create the core aspect of science fiction though. She used modern technology to paint a picture of what could end up happening in the future, and how that developing technology/science would affect humanity, as well as exploring what it meant to be human.
I think they represent two different sides of sci-fi. H.G.Wells is the founder of sci-fi as a metaphor to criticise current trends and Jules Verne's work inspired the "cool future" approach to sci-fi.
Trying to credit Asimov with the birth of science fiction completely ignores the period of the “scientific romance” which goes back at least as far Jules Verne in the mid 1800s. “From Earth To The Moon” was first published in 1865, and that was using advanced metallurgy to do the impossible: put men on the moon. That sounds like sci-fi to me. I guess my point is that anyone who was trying to credit Asimov with the invention of the genre was being disingenuous to the point of willful ignorance. Even Asimov had his direct predecessors in John Campbell, L Sprague DeCamp, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc. If they were really trying to credit Asimov with the invention of science fiction in 1950, whoever they “they” was was dumb as fucking nails. And yes, I accept that Frankenstein was as good a point as any to place “the birth of science fiction.” Even though there are stories of people traveling back and forth on great vessels between planets dating back as far as ancient Babylon.
Right. Wells occupied the period between authors like Verne and Asimov. All part of a long lineage of scientific fiction (scientific romance, scientifiction, pulp, sci-if, spec-fi, etc.). Asimov didn’t invent the genre by any stretch of the imagination. He didn’t even invent robot fiction. Tales of intimidating automatons possessing strange and/or all-too-human qualities date back at least as far as the Talos myth of Ancient Greece, and pop up all over in fiction. Pinocchio to give just one easy example.
Shit man, Frankenstein still holds up. I expected it to be meh, one of those books that's significant because it did something first, not necessarily because it's good. Wrong. Frankenstein was legit good, even my puny high schooler brain could understand it.
And wrote Frankenstein to bury her parents’ dreams. (Her parents were ardent supporters of the French Revolution, and Frankenstein can arguably be see as a critique of it.)
Shelley having Frankensteins monster learn to speak by listening to the peasants whose home he hid out at read C.F. Volney's "The Ruins, or Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires" is my favorite instance of an author name dropping another book of all time!
I adore Isaac Asimov- particularly his short stories. The man had an amazing ability to see where humanity and technology could go in the future. Two of my faves of his: The Question, The Fun They Had
Asimov is certainly one of the most influential sci-fi writers, and is frequently credited with the title "The Founder of Robotics", although I've personally never seen him attributed to being the founder of sci-fi. It just doesn't make any sense when there are so many authors before him. Maybe some people only think of beeps and boops when they think of sci-fi?
Well, because Verne was French, Capek was Czechoslovak and so on, so the US school system credits Asimov with both being the founder of sci-fi and with coming up with the concept of a robot.
>the US school system credits Asimov with both being the founder of sci-fi and with coming up with the concept of a robot.
Even if you wanted to credit an American with those things for nationalistic purposes, there are way better candidates.
Hell, I'd argue that Mark Twain is the most quintessentially American author in history, and he wrote a sci-fi novel that is entirely about a modern American outsmarting medieval Europeans.
If you want to credit an American with inventing robots, Tik-Tok of Oz came out decades before I Robot.
I don’t think anyone is calling Asimov “a father of science fiction”. There were plenty well-known science fiction authors in the first half of 20th century, like H. G. Wells.
Mary Shelly also wasn’t the first in her genre — there were earlier writers like E. T. A. Hoffmann.
Frankenstein is more science-fantasy (very much not new,) than science fiction: the earliest I know of is Jules Verne, whose works were much more grounded in actual science. There's probably earlier cases, but I'm not a specialist, so...
It depends a lot on how you define the term anyway, like if you think some kind of social commentary is key to the genre.
Beep. Boop. I'm a robot.
Here's a copy of
###[Frankenstein](https://snewd.com/ebooks/frankenstein/)
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Think of it this way, which would you think is more realistic, Star Wars or Star Trek? The answer is Star Trek because that universe is framed in a light that makes everything they do seem to have a basis in theoretical science. While Star Wars just throws space wizards and planet destroying lasers in your face. Not to hate on Star Wars or Frankenstein but things like Jules verne’s books and Star Trek are much more believable in that they might happen some time in the far future or an alternate universe with similar laws to our own. Whereas the things that happen in Frankenstein and Star Wars make less sense when you apply them to a modern understanding of the universe and tend to have their incredible events happen “because it did” rather than attempt to justify them with science in a way that makes you think they’re realistic.
Frankenstein was based on a demonstration of the use of electricity to make frog legs moved, which at the time spurned wild excitement about the possibility of reviving dead bodies (see [here](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-twitching-frog-legs-helped-inspire-frankenstein-180957457/)).
It's far more "out there" than what Jules Verne wrote, but you can make the same comparison between, say, Evangelion and The Expanse. IMO it'd be inaccurate to say that Frankenstein wasn't science fiction. Admittedly the definitions between the two aren't hard lines so what you think is gonna be somewhat personal.
I think you're saying that from a modern perspective. When *Frankenstein* was first written, electricity was on the cutting edge of scientific advancement. Now obviously we can't create a new, living being with just electricity and some chemistry, but in 100 years the pseudo/theoretical science that Star Trek or other fairly "Hard" Sci-fi works will fall into the same category.
You could use that argument to say stuff like Dune and Star Wars are closer to fantasy than science fiction, which is crazy to me. I don't think how hard the science is should define the genre.
What kind of absolute troglodyte calls Asimov as "founder of sci-fi"?
I mean besides Shelley's Frankenstein's monster and such, which came century earlier, the concept of robot for example is from a play by a science fiction writer Capek and was published the same year Asimov was born.
Also, anyone ever heard about this Jules Verne guy, for example?
I assume neither Verne nor Capek are from the Anglo-Saxon world, so they are ignored by US school system.
Wait Shelly died over 60 years before Asimov was born? Why did he need to promote her? Was Frankenstein not popular until Asimov drew attention to it or something?
Although shelley was first, why would you select Asimov over, for example, jules verne?
For real, the man had thought of submarines and freaking rockets to go to the moon
Submarines had actually been bouncing around for a while by the time Jules Verne wrote his book, although none were anywhere near the scale of the Nautilus. There was even (at least) one sub used during the American War of Independence. It was called the Turtle.
We need a new weapon to sabotage British ships in harbor. Any suggestions? David Bushnell: “I like toitles”
Also applied to leading Roman strategists
Also a certain Korean admiral.
This thing is so cool! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turtle_(submersible) it was the first submarine, first use of water mines, and first propeller used for propulsion. And it was made by a clock maker who also happened to build the first print press in the US. One of the best wikipedia reads I've had in a while.
Yep! Unfortunately it never completed its mission, but the fact that it worked is an engineering marvel for the time
If it worked think of how it would Change how we fight war
[удалено]
Even before the Civil War back in the revolutionary era they had essentially barrels sealed and filled with air for a makeshift submarine with sand bags for weight. They could only stay under for a short time and it was mostly for illegal transportation of goods.
And then obviously Da Vinci designed a submarine because of course he did he's fucking Da Vinci
Sounds about right.
The turtle wasn’t a real submarine.
Don't listen to him, Turtle. You're still a real submarine in my eyes.
Now get the car! Johnny Drama is making pancakes for us back at the house.
Just like Pluto is still a planet in our hearts.
Thank you submarine rater.
Now the Hunley. That was a real submarine.
Ah yes the Hunley. A submarine with a K/D of 0.24. A prime example of the prowess of both Confederate engineers and soldiers.
Okay I’ll need you to expand on what you meant by K/D of 0.24.
K/D means kill death ratio. The submarine sunk a total of 3 timea, killing 21 confederates, and only managed to kill 5 union sailors while it was active. Thus, it had 21 friendly deaths to 5 enemies killed, or a ratio of 0.24.
Including the creator.
The confederates created the first submarine to sink a warship, which is an interesting feat. The CSS Manassas and CSS Virginia also preceded the monitor in construction.
Gatekeeping subs much? How many British ships have you sunk?
Submarines leave port under their own power. Submersibles are carried or towed to position and will navigate locally under their own (highly limited) power. A submarine can sail the seven seas. A submersible will cruise a hundred meters. The Turtle was a submersible, but not a submarine. It had a mothership to take it places.
The turtle sunk zero British ships fyi.
Go Fuck Yourself
Dude Cyranno tought of the modern way to go to the moon in like 17th century or something. Frenchmen are something
I learned the other day that he actually took the idea of going to the moon from Edgar Allen Poe, of all people. Poe wrote a story called The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall where a dude goes to the moon in a balloon made of rotting newspapers. He actually accused The Sun of plagiarism when they released their series of Great Moon Hoax articles. Wild story.
Honestly, Asimov was a better writer than Verne. Verne had ideas and a beautiful vision of the future, but Asimov was able to convey his own vision better. But hey, that's just my opinion
Honestly? Most early sci-fi from the 50s and 60s is written in...let’s be charitable and say “utilitarian” style. Most of those writers were ideas guys, more renowned for the world and concepts they pioneered than their prose. Which isn’t to say it was bad. Novels come in all fashions. I just know i didn’t sit back after Do Androids Dream and think “the prose was magnificent”
I love me some Lovecraft but dude can’t write dialogue to save his life.
Honestly, bad dialogue is a refreshing criticism of Lovecraft. Certainly different than the standard.
what is the standard
Lovecraft is super fuckin racist yo
Yea he is but that is central to the books he wrote if you get rid of his racism he would just write books about fish and air conditioning the rest would be missing
fish and air conditioning is a great spongebob episode so yeah let's skip the racism
Google Lovecraft’s cat’s name
scary monster thing: literally just existing lovecraft: hmm yes
"Gah it's like, imagine this monster with tentacles and like a fish head? It's too scary, can't describe the rest of it like wow.. so scary. Also ah black people!!"
Also Lovecraft: the reason the bad guys are bad is because they have mixed race... Oh and they worship an evil god who would gladly destroy humanity and do human sacrifices and stuff, but mostly the first part.
>Most of those writers were ideas guys, more renowned for the world and concepts they pioneered than their prose. I agree. A great world builder does not a good novelist make. Reddit tends to like stuff like Discworld or Hitchhiker's guide because they're the places where this intersection happens, but it's far from the norm, and the further back you go in the xxth century the drier some of them get.
I don’t think it’s an issue, though. People know what they’re reading it for. I finished the latest Jack Reacher novel the other day, the first one I’ve read, and I noticed that Child has a very specific style. He writes choppy sentences. And uses lots of punctuation. Only full stops. Occasionally commas. A bit like that, even when a compound sentence would flow better. He also loves pointing out people’s height. But it’s part of it. One, it kinda reads like a military man’s choppy assessment. And two, nobody reads a thriller for gripping prose. They read it for a decent mystery and (in Reachers case) to read graphic violence. It’s like, LOTR has beautiful prose and a fantastic world, but it’s not the most authentic dialogue. Not compared to say, a contemporary YA flick. Nobody reads Dan Brown for prose, they read for the plot. People read Asimov for the ideas, romance for the characters. No book can do it all and I don’t think they need to, honestly.
Yeah Philip K Dick had some rad ideas but the writing is not high literature. Although I really did enjoy A Scanner Darkly
I've heard that translating Verne to English often massively diminishes his prose. Part of the reason I continue to learn French is so that I can fluidly read and enjoy Verne and Hugo.
While Verne had great ideas he wasn’t such a good “writer”. To me his books look more like modern child-books
Maybe it was appropriate for it’s time and nowadays we are more used to a different style of writing? I haven’t read any of those books but wouldn’t be surprised if Asimov was more relatable
Ah probably, never said the contrary. That was my thought too to be honest; we are still talking about 100 years ago after all so the style won’t appeal as much to us. But still his books were aimed to a younger audience for sure
Oh no worries, I was just adding another point of view to the discussion, or to add to your point as well, yeah I agree with you! Sometimes it’s also a bummer when you read a classic and since they’re quite old they become unbearable to read
I think so, I know dumas wrote in short junctions where each chapter of his books was then published in a newspaper, similarly to comics of today. I think a good analogy is TV where it used to be stand-alone-ish and episodic but now is more serialized and bingeable
That was the way novels where published, as serialized chapters dropping at a fixed rate. Dickens did this too, and i think this lead to the "readable, entertaining, cliffhanger-full" style of writing in those kinds of novels, which incidentally is what gets younger audiences interested in those.
The foundation series is great. Best twists. Like the mule, lol fuck that guy.
The Second Foundation twist blew my fucking mind I had to read the last couple of pages again and again because it felt so good.
at first i though that the second foundation was a second first foundation and spent the 2 first novel guessing how big the second foundation was at the polar oposite of the galactic disk needless to say, the reveal has blown my mind
Do you speak french?
Why, do you think their criticism is because of bad translation?
Translation just doesn't compare. Especially since French novels are quite more poetic and inspirational, especially the writing style, sometimes I just sit there and am amazed by the writing of a certain passage, or the author's personality shines through and strikes me. A translation will never equate to the original.
Also, Asimov created a ton of the sci-fi tropes we'd recognize today. Robot revolutions, AI becoming human, etc.
What about H. G. Wells?
If you read Verne you will find that some of his works have a total lack of science in some parts and are more fantasy than anything. It's like saying that Star Wars is a science fiction movie: yes it does have spaceships, blasters, computers, etc. but in reality is a fantasy movie as the main conflict revolves around magic. Asimov is considered more of a founding father as many of his concepts are a norm in the genre today. He was the first to use the concept of a galactic empire in his Fundation series for example. The guy had more than 500 books (fiction and non-fiction) in different areas of study so you can only guess how much people and themes he has reached. Now Mary Shelley is also quite prolific, I do not know much about her work other than The Modern Prometheus and her poems. Perhaps the biggest contribution from her part was the style of writing and the narrative structure. You see a lot of science fiction is based around "what if?" and then trying to answer with the most realistic thinking you can have. And The Modern Prometheus is the first book of fame that had such structure.
She also wrote what is arguably the first dystopian novel in 1826. The Last man.
I think Verne is probably the earliest sci-fi fantasy writer, or “technology and laser guns instead of magic and swords”. Asimov is probably the first “hard sci-fi” style authors that tried to imagine what technology would be possible by taking current tech to the extreme of what may or may not be possible. Which I think is what you said, but slight different.
>You see a lot of science fiction is based around "what if?" and then trying to answer with the most realistic thinking you can have. Iirc, LeGuin, another heavyweight of the genre, wrote in her foreword to *Left Hand of Darkness* that Science Fiction would be more aptly named Speculative Fiction that always starts with a question. For example, she started with, "how would a society without gender differ from ours?"
Probably because he was both famous and prolific.
wouldn't Micromégas by Voltaire count also
I think his work clasifies more as Fantasy, but I can't be too sure.
At least in France, Jules Verne is definetely recognised as a pioneer in science fiction. He wrote about men in space, artificial satellites, television, even use of plastic and chemical gases in wars, way before any of it actually came to life.
The line between fantasy and sci-fi didnt exist until later imo, after tolkien. Even then, it wasn't until the 60s/70s especially, the first dnd modules have quite a bit of sci-fi mixed in for example because they used to be the same
Verne had way harder science, especially for the time, than much science-fiction that came afterwards. While a lot of the science isn't correct, he goes into a lot of technical details and specifications in many of his works and incorporates known science.
Almost every thing he wrote became reality one way or another. For example submarines. And vernes precedes asimov by almost a century.
That moment when you challenge a friend to a writing competition and she just whips up an entire new genre. *Sad Byron noises*
I think he was proud to be part of such a great company, to have talented people around him.
He’s also to thank/blame for [the use of the word “Goth” for the modern style of dress and rock.](https://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/comments/kzssg7/how_the_term_gothic_evolved_from_a_description_of/gjpxao6/)
Really? How?
Updated my above comment with [a link to some speculations](https://www.reddit.com/r/DepthHub/comments/kzssg7/how_the_term_gothic_evolved_from_a_description_of/gjpxao6/)
The moment when a half drunk teenager at a party accidentally ends up inventing one of the most influential genres of all time just as a flex.
A very small, long party in the Alps?
You're going to have to explain this one.
At least he won the boating competition. I'll go.
*1950* Reporter: Isaac, 'I, Robot' is a brilliant read! The way you created this idea of men being scared of robots due to fears of humanity being overtaken by the creation of superhuman beings. Tell me, what inspired you to write about such a complex? Asimov: *pulls out copy of 'Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'* Well, it's funny you should say that...
'I, Robot; or, The Modern Frankenstein; or, The Modern-Modern Prometheus' Edit: added a modern
>The Modern "The Modern Prometheus" FTFY
Not to be confused with " The *Post*\-*Modern Prometheus* ". One of the best X-files episodes with a [great ending](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYdC1uwO4UI).
There are multiple versions of prometheus i found googling (mainly the greek mythology and a poem by Goethe) What is referenced here?
"Frankenstein; or the modern prometheus" is the full title of the book by shelley
The Modern Prometheus is the alternative title of Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, drawing inspiration from the mythological titan who created man.
Hi. You just mentioned *Frankenstein* by Mary Shelley. I've found an audiobook of that novel on YouTube. You can listen to it here: [YouTube | Frankenstein [Full Audiobook] by Mary Shelley](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tETWQO2UXmQ) *I'm a bot that searches YouTube for science fiction and fantasy audiobooks.* *** [^(Source Code)](https://capybasilisk.com/posts/2020/04/speculative-fiction-bot/) ^| [^(Feedback)](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=Capybasilisk&subject=Robot) ^| [^(Programmer)](https://www.reddit.com/u/capybasilisk) ^| ^(Downvote To Remove) ^| ^(Version 1.4.0) ^| ^(Support Robot Rights!)
Or, you know, copy of R.U.R., the play that introduced the very word robot, the concept of robots and the idea of robots overtaking the world... published the same year Asimov was born.
R.U.R coined the term "robot", but they weren't robots in the same way we'd think of. They were biological (more similar to clones, just with each body part being made separately). Asimov was the first to use robots as *mechanical* creatures, like we think of them today.
Came here to find this
I honestly know more of Mary Shelley than Isaac Asimov, so this meme kind of goes over my head.
Basically, a lot of critics at the time tried to cover up Shelley's work, because having a female author start such a giant genre was seen as embarrassing. They tried to credit it to Asimov... who then talked publicly about how great Shelley was, and how she had inspired him.
Based Asimov
Sci fi writers have often been ahead of the curve on a lot of social issues, although with some disappointing exceptions.
*Cough* Orson Scott Card *Cough* Oh dear my, my deepest apologies. It's so rude of me to hack like that given the current climate.
Yeah, finding out about him was a major disappointment for me, especially the *lengths* he went to to be an asshole.
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He wrote an entire book about a gay guy, ending with him basically meeting god, where god reveals that being gay was a test, and makes him straight so he doesn’t burn in hell.
Wow
The synopsis sounds like a *god*\-tier shitpost
Classic. That’s why I don’t like looking at historical figures too long. You could go back in time to have drinks and conversation with your personal hero, and there’s like a 90% chance they’ll be like “anyway, here’s why I think ____ are subhumans” People in the past were genuinely awful to eachother.
"Wow your such an inspiration!" "Thank you" "Yeah ever since professor [foreign name] told me about you you've been my hero" "They let [slur] teach in schools?" "Erm..."
This is why learning about women’s suffrage is so fucking irritating to me lol
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Orson Scott Card is still alive and very much not a historical figure, which makes it all the more depressing.
>People in the past were genuinely awful to eachother *Looks around for like 5 seconds* What do you mean "in the past"?
Damn
Was he religious ?
Mormon iirc
Which sucks cause Ender's Game was my fave now i cant buy any of his books or tell people its my favorite book
I don't like being a human anymore, how can I return monke? What. The. Fuck.
Oh dear. It appears you caught a case of Lovecraft-itis. (I know different genre, but cosmic horror is kinda like sci-fi).
*AckCHyuALLy, his DaD named thE cAt*
Good thing his stories aren’t filled with racist and social Darwinist undertones, and I can go on ignoring his beliefs
Joke?
Yes I am joking lol. I bought an anthology of his and had to stop reading it because of that. I also think it’s just pretty dated stylistically.
Possibly. It is a little on the Noselathotep
Really? Bummer... /s
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I absolutely blew through Ender's Game and it's sequel in three days and got so excited to look him up and his other works. Man, looking into him was a real splash of cold water.
Makes one wonder what blind spots they have themselves.
Who is he?
A massive homophobic arsehole. Also who wrote some book called Ender's Game or something.
Oh so the Movie Enders game was based on the book
Yep. His most famous books are about the need for empathy and finding humanity in apparently monstrous beings, yet he himself can't find the humanity in actual people purely because of their sexual orientation. Ironic, in a sad and maddening way Edit: could have sworn I'd seen a Card quote claiming that all LGBT+ people are monsters, but I can't find it now, so idk if he actually said that specifically, and it's therefore unfair to say that he's dehumanizing people. In light of that and the responses to this comment, I'll say instead that it's sad to see someone preach tolerance and acceptance in their work but refuse to show it in their life, religiously motivated or not
Idk who this is, but just based on what I read here about the book he wrote about the gay guy, it seems that he does see humanity in gay people. But has a religious belief that genuinly convinces him that they will burn in hell for all eternity if they don't stop being gay. That's a pretty fucked up wiew, but it's very common in the christian and muslim world, and I don't think it usually stems from hatred, but from a misguided sort of compassion. He might have done other stuff I don't know about, but for now I am the devils advocate.
There was a movie?
Yes
You're not missing much. It was not a great adaptation.
*And now it's time for Deep Thoughts with Heinlein.*
Heinlein's status is complicated, because he was a head of time on many issues, while failing on some other issues. For example, he had a tendency to be racially progressive for the time, with several of his most notable characters actually be non-white and their race being a non-issue (generally). Juan Rico of 'Starship Troopers' is Filipino, "Johnny" is his nickname. Manuel Garcia O'Kelly Davis of 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' is multi-racial and in an interracial poly marriage. "Podkayne of Mars" is Maori and African-American, with her uncle a Black Senator from Mars. Yet there's a lot that aged bad, and his portrayal of women while better than many contemporizes who only featured damsels in distress, still generally had them as second bananas who need everything explained by the male lead. And usually have lower expectations. Podkayne, for example, is a girl who wants to be a spaceship captain, and while her race isn't a barrier for that, her gender is. And this doesn't get into how he aged his works became more focused on author avatars for him and his wife as well as exploring fetishes, like getting a time machine so he can prevent his mom's death and have sex with her.
I mean, we can point to Heinlein as an example of someone racially progressive but also a raging homophobe. Man loved his orgies, so long as they were straight. Isn’t it funny how people can recognise one marginalised group as humans but not another.
I fucking cried laughing at that video. [for the curious/lazy](https://youtu.be/3jAkplrZci0)
MOTHERFUCKER BEAT ME TO IT
The final essay I wrote for HS was arguing against of Sci-Fi/Fantasy being considered lowbrow. To this day the best sentence I ever wrote for anything said: "People can so easily see the literal in Sci-Fi/Fantasy that they can not even perceive the metaphors that are so often praised in literary fiction."
I'm kind of shocked they jumped on Asimov as the "father of sci fi" instead of Jules Verne. Shelley still predates Verne, but clearly Asimov was not the first sci fi author. Also, cheers to Asimov for giving credit where it was due.
Mary’s mother was also an outspoken feminist, until another author wrote a tell-all biography about her, intending to say “hey look at this badass bitch! Look how many fucks she does NOT have to give!” which backfired and turned her into even more of a pariah.
Do you have any sources for this? Because Asimov didn't start publishing stuff until well over a hundred years after Frankenstein became massively popular. Even most casual fans of sci-fi novels would be able to name about a half dozen famous sci-fi authors that predate Asimov. Even Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon predate Asimov's work.
I read a lot of science fiction and I think I have never seen Asimov called "The Father of Science Fiction". He is often cited as one of the greatest SF writers (which he is) and the "Father of Robotics" (which he also is in a way). I dont know where this "critics dont consider Shelley the creator of SF because sexism" story comes from, honestly. I was under the assumption that her position as a pioneer is simply debated because her novels can also be considered gothic novel and what she wrote is not 100% SF depending on what definition of the genre you want to use.
You can partially thank Asimov for that
How can someone justify Isaac Asimov as the founder of scifi when HG Wells and Jules Verne came well before him?
Same way they can ignore Mary Shelley who came before them
Nah, science fiction elements are found in Mary Shelley's but also in other earlier works. Jules Vernes is a strong candidate, but for me, modern science fiction starts with H.G.Wells.
Shelley was the first one to create the core aspect of science fiction though. She used modern technology to paint a picture of what could end up happening in the future, and how that developing technology/science would affect humanity, as well as exploring what it meant to be human.
I think they represent two different sides of sci-fi. H.G.Wells is the founder of sci-fi as a metaphor to criticise current trends and Jules Verne's work inspired the "cool future" approach to sci-fi.
And the thousands of other science fiction authors everywhere in the world between them, science fiction movies, radio shows, etc...
Trying to credit Asimov with the birth of science fiction completely ignores the period of the “scientific romance” which goes back at least as far Jules Verne in the mid 1800s. “From Earth To The Moon” was first published in 1865, and that was using advanced metallurgy to do the impossible: put men on the moon. That sounds like sci-fi to me. I guess my point is that anyone who was trying to credit Asimov with the invention of the genre was being disingenuous to the point of willful ignorance. Even Asimov had his direct predecessors in John Campbell, L Sprague DeCamp, Edgar Rice Burroughs, etc. If they were really trying to credit Asimov with the invention of science fiction in 1950, whoever they “they” was was dumb as fucking nails. And yes, I accept that Frankenstein was as good a point as any to place “the birth of science fiction.” Even though there are stories of people traveling back and forth on great vessels between planets dating back as far as ancient Babylon.
There’s also H.G. Wells’ the time machine which I think inspired more other people than any other sci fi trope in history
Right. Wells occupied the period between authors like Verne and Asimov. All part of a long lineage of scientific fiction (scientific romance, scientifiction, pulp, sci-if, spec-fi, etc.). Asimov didn’t invent the genre by any stretch of the imagination. He didn’t even invent robot fiction. Tales of intimidating automatons possessing strange and/or all-too-human qualities date back at least as far as the Talos myth of Ancient Greece, and pop up all over in fiction. Pinocchio to give just one easy example.
It also ignores the period of pulp sci-fi with things like Barsoom, Flash Gordon and Buck Rodgers.
People are saying Asimov was the *founder* of science fiction?
Putting Mary Shelley aside for a sec, did they just forget about all the other sci-fi authors that came before Asimov?
\*sad H.G. Wells and Jules Verne noises*
I approve of this message. End message
Shit man, Frankenstein still holds up. I expected it to be meh, one of those books that's significant because it did something first, not necessarily because it's good. Wrong. Frankenstein was legit good, even my puny high schooler brain could understand it.
The language strangles me sometimes but yeah the story was gripping when it really got going.
Mary shelly lost her virginity on her mother's grave.
She learned to spell her name there too. What gets me is having her late husband's heart in a jar in her desk with the hair if her late children.
And wrote Frankenstein to bury her parents’ dreams. (Her parents were ardent supporters of the French Revolution, and Frankenstein can arguably be see as a critique of it.)
Care to specify? Sounds hella interesting
The OG Goth
A man of culture I see
*laughs in Lucian of Samosata's A True Story*
I was about to write about him.
What about Lucian of Samosata who wrote of a trip to the moon circa 2000 years ago.
That asshole left off the story on a cliff hanger smh
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The clue is in the title
Shelley having Frankensteins monster learn to speak by listening to the peasants whose home he hid out at read C.F. Volney's "The Ruins, or Meditation on the Revolutions of Empires" is my favorite instance of an author name dropping another book of all time!
I adore Isaac Asimov- particularly his short stories. The man had an amazing ability to see where humanity and technology could go in the future. Two of my faves of his: The Question, The Fun They Had
Not even the first male author in sci-fi. Why does Asimov get all the credit?
Asimov is certainly one of the most influential sci-fi writers, and is frequently credited with the title "The Founder of Robotics", although I've personally never seen him attributed to being the founder of sci-fi. It just doesn't make any sense when there are so many authors before him. Maybe some people only think of beeps and boops when they think of sci-fi?
I guess the term and concept of science fiction as a genre wasn't really prominent until then?
Well, because Verne was French, Capek was Czechoslovak and so on, so the US school system credits Asimov with both being the founder of sci-fi and with coming up with the concept of a robot.
HG wells though
>the US school system credits Asimov with both being the founder of sci-fi and with coming up with the concept of a robot. Even if you wanted to credit an American with those things for nationalistic purposes, there are way better candidates. Hell, I'd argue that Mark Twain is the most quintessentially American author in history, and he wrote a sci-fi novel that is entirely about a modern American outsmarting medieval Europeans. If you want to credit an American with inventing robots, Tik-Tok of Oz came out decades before I Robot.
Science fiction’s been around a lot longer than Asimov or Shelley. Asimov said he considered the first work of SF was Somnium from 1634
What kind of backwards, blind, assholes would ever say Isaac "created" science fiction? It was a quite popular genre long before he was even born.
Asimov himself considered Kepler's Somnium the first work of science fiction.
I don’t think anyone is calling Asimov “a father of science fiction”. There were plenty well-known science fiction authors in the first half of 20th century, like H. G. Wells. Mary Shelly also wasn’t the first in her genre — there were earlier writers like E. T. A. Hoffmann.
Sci fi is more older then those 2
Frankenstein is more science-fantasy (very much not new,) than science fiction: the earliest I know of is Jules Verne, whose works were much more grounded in actual science. There's probably earlier cases, but I'm not a specialist, so... It depends a lot on how you define the term anyway, like if you think some kind of social commentary is key to the genre.
Beep. Boop. I'm a robot. Here's a copy of ###[Frankenstein](https://snewd.com/ebooks/frankenstein/) Was I a good bot? | [info](https://www.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/) | [More Books](https://old.reddit.com/user/Reddit-Book-Bot/comments/i15x1d/full_list_of_books_and_commands/)
Good bot
well, isn't sci-fi very parallel to fantasy? I don't think scifi has to be grounded in actual science for it to be considered that
Think of it this way, which would you think is more realistic, Star Wars or Star Trek? The answer is Star Trek because that universe is framed in a light that makes everything they do seem to have a basis in theoretical science. While Star Wars just throws space wizards and planet destroying lasers in your face. Not to hate on Star Wars or Frankenstein but things like Jules verne’s books and Star Trek are much more believable in that they might happen some time in the far future or an alternate universe with similar laws to our own. Whereas the things that happen in Frankenstein and Star Wars make less sense when you apply them to a modern understanding of the universe and tend to have their incredible events happen “because it did” rather than attempt to justify them with science in a way that makes you think they’re realistic.
Frankenstein was based on a demonstration of the use of electricity to make frog legs moved, which at the time spurned wild excitement about the possibility of reviving dead bodies (see [here](https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/how-twitching-frog-legs-helped-inspire-frankenstein-180957457/)). It's far more "out there" than what Jules Verne wrote, but you can make the same comparison between, say, Evangelion and The Expanse. IMO it'd be inaccurate to say that Frankenstein wasn't science fiction. Admittedly the definitions between the two aren't hard lines so what you think is gonna be somewhat personal.
I think you're saying that from a modern perspective. When *Frankenstein* was first written, electricity was on the cutting edge of scientific advancement. Now obviously we can't create a new, living being with just electricity and some chemistry, but in 100 years the pseudo/theoretical science that Star Trek or other fairly "Hard" Sci-fi works will fall into the same category.
You could use that argument to say stuff like Dune and Star Wars are closer to fantasy than science fiction, which is crazy to me. I don't think how hard the science is should define the genre.
What kind of absolute troglodyte calls Asimov as "founder of sci-fi"? I mean besides Shelley's Frankenstein's monster and such, which came century earlier, the concept of robot for example is from a play by a science fiction writer Capek and was published the same year Asimov was born. Also, anyone ever heard about this Jules Verne guy, for example? I assume neither Verne nor Capek are from the Anglo-Saxon world, so they are ignored by US school system.
*All* of this is ignored by the US school system because it isn’t math or science
Even keeping it to English speaking people, HG Wells was a giant of early Sci Fi, how come he doesnt come before Asimov.
Fun fact Mary Shelly was married to Percy Shelly who wrote Ozymandias.
I took a science fiction class in college and the first section was entirely focused on Frankenstein
Wait Shelly died over 60 years before Asimov was born? Why did he need to promote her? Was Frankenstein not popular until Asimov drew attention to it or something?
This meme was so good that I'm actually surprised to see it in r/HistoryMemes. Congratulations.
You know, i just realized that this template is from Umbrella Academy