Science and Science Fiction: mutual influences until the 19th century

Illustration of the Sun article

In the early years of the 20th century there was a flood of titles that led to the recognition of a literary genre called science fiction.

In fact, science fiction novels, understood as works using science (especially future advances) as an essential element of the plot of a novel, are very old. Lucian of Samosata, a Syrian satirist from the 2nd century, is usually considered the creator of the genre. One of his works (Vera Historia) tells of a journey from Earth to the moon in a ship that, lifted by a waterspout, is launched into space. The moon is inhabited by an advanced civilization, which has crossed space and is at war with the inhabitants of the sun over a conflict of interest regarding the colonization of planet Venus. As he didn't know about the existence of interplanetary vacuum, Lucian never thinks of explaining how his characters could breathe during their trip.

1656 saw the publication of Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon, by the French writer Savinien de Cyrano de Bergerac. In this work the author discusses various methods of interplanetary travel, as curious as they are impractical. In the end, his protagonist uses a rocket-powered vehicle, which was precisely the system that took us to the moon over three centuries later. Cyrano's vehicle is open. The author still believes that interplanetary space is full of air. However, the work was published nine years after Blaise Pascal showed that atmospheric pressure decreases with height, proving that the Earth's atmosphere only reaches a certain distance, without filling the entire universe. Thus, Aristotle's assertion that nature has a horror to vacuum was disproved. In this case science was ahead of science fiction.

During the 18th and 19th centuries the possibility of manned flights to the moon and the planets was seriously considered. The possible existence of life on other worlds came to the forefront. As the moon is our closest heavenly body, it attracted the maximum attention. In August 1835, the New York Sun newspaper published a series of six false reports in which English astronomer Sir John Herschel was attributed important discoveries supposedly made from his observatory in Cape Town. According to the newspaper, Herschel would have observed flying plants, animals and men with membranous wings, similar to those of bats, on the moon. These reports caused a sensation and the circulation of the Sun beat all the records of the time. Nine out of ten Americans are said to have believed the story. What the Sun actually did was publish a science fiction novel as if they were real events, using the names of existing scientists.

Jules Verne

In the mid-nineteenth century the almost total absence of atmosphere and water on the moon was known, but the authors of imaginative novels wished to have a moon inhabited by intelligent beings. In 1865, Jules Verne published his novels From the Earth to the Moon and Around the Moon, which describe a journey to our satellite. The means employed (a projectile launched from a cannon) is impractical. Aside from the difficulty of building such a powerful cannon, the travelers would have been crushed by the initial acceleration of the launch. Verne leaves open the possibility of the existence of life on the far side of the moon, relying on certain theories that asserted that there could be air and water there. It took a century to prove that this hope was not real.

In addition to the trip to the moon, Verne wrote more works of science fiction, although in his time the name of the genre did not yet exist. Thus, although the submarine Nautilus of Twenty thousand leagues under the sea (1869) was ahead of the technique of its time, the idea of ​​an underwater vehicle was not new, for in 1859 Narcis Monturiol had successfully launched his Ictíneo. But Verne's influence on modern science was recognized by the fact that the first nuclear submarine, launched in 1954, was named Nautilus, which is also the name of a marine cephalopod mollusk.

In a little-known work published in 1889 (In the year 2889), Jules Verne made many scientific anticipations, although he believed that we would have to wait a millennium to see such advances as the practical use of solar energy, the general diffusion of the telephone, spoken press, television, videophone, and so on. Most of these advances have taken place just a century after the novel. Others, on the other hand, Verne considered impossible, even in a thousand years, such as curing colds and freezing human bodies for long periods and then bringing them back to life, things that, in fact, have not yet been achieved.

Before I finish with this first article on the subject, I must mention Frankenstein, the work of Mary Shelley, often considered the first modern science fiction novel in history. Published in 1818, long before Jules Verne wrote his novels, it introduced a special sub-genre of science fiction, the construction of artificial human beings using parts of corpses. The work was evidently influenced by Galvani's experiments with frogs, which allowed him to discover animal electricity, i.e. the fact that animal nerves conduct electricity, which causes the muscles to move. It is true that the novel does not mention electricity as a means of imparting life to the monster, but all its film adaptations have taken that step, and Galvani's experiments with dead frogs, whose legs contracted together with lightning, were too near for Mary Shelley to ignore them. In fact, Victor Frankenstein mentions galvanism in Chapter 2, and says that he felt impressed by thunderstorms.

In the next post we'll talk about the 20th century.

The same post in Spanish

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Manuel Alfonseca