Questions tagged [history-of]
For questions about the history of the genre: the origin and evolution of ideas in speculative fiction. Example topics include the first work of speculative fiction with a particular property, or the origin of a term or trope.
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Is there an SF story on the theme of language that does NOT use the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis? [closed]
There are numerous SF stories based on language but I have never heard of one that doesn't focus on the idea that language shapes thought. For example, here is a previous question that lists a few ...
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When was the first time a human spoke an alien language in Star Trek, without the use of the Universal Translator?
The Universal Translator in Star Trek translates languages to allow species to communicate with each other.
This obviously leads to a need not to know an alien language, as the computer will translate ...
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What was the first story to depict a modern objective-based approach to artificial intelligence?
A great deal of older science fiction has a rules-based approach to artificial intelligence. Think Isaac Asimov's three laws of robotics: the robot has a set rule, and it follows it. In many such ...
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First mention of radar in story?
People probably know that radar originated when a death ray was being considered but at any sort of distance apparently, the energy transmitted is too attenuated to raise the temperature of a human ...
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Where did the idea of "surrogates for astronauts" appear for the first time?
I have watched the latest season 6 of Netflix's Black Mirror and I have a question about its third episode, Beyond the Sea. This episode is about two astronauts, David and Cliff, who are on a six-year ...
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What is the origin of the "suddenly you have no mouth" trope?
A fairly common trope in the fantasy/science fiction/horror genre is the sudden absence of one's mouth and the inability to breathe and/or scream.
Off the top of my head:
Neo in The Matrix and Black ...
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What was the literary origin of the idea that in the far future the moon would get closer to the Earth?
Something that comes up a lot in science fiction novels that take place on Earth in the distant future is the idea that the moon will get closer to the Earth (sometimes close enough to share a common ...
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Which was the first fictional work to bring up the concept of giant bugs?
I was playing some video games, and eventually came face to face against giant bugs. When I realised it's a very common trope which I keep seeing in many games, I jokingly told myself: "Giant ...
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Which was the first isekai tensei "reincarnated into another world" story?
There is a very popular Japanese animation genre now called "Isekai Tensei", where a person is reincarnated into another world. There are probably over a hundred of these animes now, each ...
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When and where did 'hench' become a verb? [closed]
Inspired by this question, when did people start to use "hench" as a verb? Was there a popular fictional origin, or did this usage originally come from non-fiction discussions of villains' ...
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First story to suggest some successor to steam power?
I would mention that during the 19th century, people spoke of steam (despite it not being very new, perhaps few people had direct contact with it until steam trains, etc. started to expose people) ...
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What was the first work where the main characters became the 'aliens' who crashed at Roswell?
In some science fiction works, such as Futurama's Roswell that Ends Well and DS9's Little Green Men, established characters somehow go back in time and crash-land near Roswell New Mexico, and ...
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What's the oldest story where someone teleports into a solid or liquid?
Video games coined the term for this — "telefragging." Sometimes two people teleport in the same place instead of one person teleporting into a solid, but it's usually grisly for the ...
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What's the first time travel story which acknowledges trouble with tenses in time travel?
It's often said that travelling through time screws up the tense system. Sometimes the fact is lampshaded with something like this: "Then I will have seen my future self in the past... uh... what ...
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What was the first work set in the future where someone thinks something mistaken about the past?
The most common version of this trope is an archeologist, explorer or other researcher (or group thereof) misidentifying what an ancient object was for. The broadest scope versions are about ...
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What was the first work that showed someone (or something) inverted by passing through higher dimensions
Prompted by this question, I found myself wondering what the first work of science fiction was in which a character (or object) was inverted by passing through higher dimensions. Martin Gardner ...
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What was the first work of science fiction that accurately depicted stellar evolution?
Many stories from the golden age of science fiction depicted a far-future Earth in which the sun was reddening and dying. This appeared in both humorous (for example, The Dying Earth series by Jack ...
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First matter-transmitter story where the philosophical aspects of it are discussed? [closed]
Characters discuss (there may be more than one answer, like first destructive copy, etc.) :
If a known destructive copy, how anyone would voluntarily use it?
They question whether it is a ...
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First story with a portal to a distant location?
I believe the idea of teleportation or extremely fast movement is very old. "Seven League Boots" and probably inexplicable movement to a distant place effected by a geni or demon.
I am ...
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What is the first science fiction work to use the determination of sapience as a plot point?
To clarify, the sapience of the being or species must be undetermined and uncertain to the reader and the characters in the story at first. Accusing a clearly sapient being of not being sapient does ...
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First story of aliens pretending to be humans especially a "human" family (like Coneheads) that is trying to fit in, maybe for a long time?
My sense is that this is a fairly new (like post 1940s) idea because aliens (on Earth -- Lunarians is very old) themselves are fairly new, but I am not sure.
I think while The Invasion of the ...
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What is the earliest example of a friendly Western dragon?
I note that the friendly Western dragon trope becomes common in the 20th century. My question is whether there are any earlier examples than Kenneth Grahame's "The Reluctant Dragon" (1898).
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What was the first work to portray the guardian of the Golden Fleece as a many-headed hydra?
At the climax of the mythical tale of Jason and the Argonauts' voyage to Colchis, Jason (with the help of the local priestess-princess Medea) steals the Golden Fleece from a sacred grove, where it ...
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First story having both the bad guys and the good guys avoiding using weapons in a space craft or space station that would puncture hull?
It seems like this comes up a lot: despite the bad guys having murderous intent, there is at least a tacit agreement not to use projectile weapons or anything else that would make a hole in the ship's ...
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What is the first instance of human-sized, bipedal intelligent rat-people?
Following a (now deleted) question on another site about Skaven in the Warhammer Fantasy setting and the issue of plagiarism, I've tried to work out when Games Workshop invented the Skaven, or if they ...
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First story about parasitic egg-laying aliens?
I distinctly recall discussing Alien right after I had seen it in a movie theatre when it first came out. Someone said something like, "Nature is just as cruel..." and of course anyone who ...
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First "space walk" described in fiction?
When I search for this, I am only getting hits about the real 1965 space walk.
As mentioned in the question about the vacuum of space, it seems to me that the early works about journeys to Luna ...
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First story in which the vacuum of space and its consequences were discussed?
I am not sure Verne had a clear understanding of the nature of the space between Luna and Earth -- at his time, since balloons were the only method of reaching high altitudes, no one had ever reached ...
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First movie in which the past prevents significant change?
In the Guy Pearce version of The Time Machine, he can frustratingly appear to have managed to change the past, but since he built the machine because his fiancé died, no matter what he does, she dies ...
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Earliest use of a prosthetic-integrated gun in speculative fiction?
We see this trope in comics and manga, and also in cyberpunk fiction, where characters have weapons integrated onto prosthetics, like arm cannons. It can sometimes even be a bit absurd, where guns are ...
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Which was the first Sci-Fi story to predict obnoxious "robo calls"?
I saw a post on the internet today that said, "None of the sci-fi stories I read as a kid predicted a future where everyone was afraid to answer their phone due to constant calls from robots.&...
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Was Mad Max the first post-apocalyptic film where biker gangs are among the survivors?
I would say that it was in the second movie where it is really clear that the producers envisaged people who were already outlaws (or borderline) as becoming the de facto leaders of future society ...
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What inspired the creation of Cyrus Smith?
What inspired the character of Cyrus Smith in the novel The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne? Did Verne ever explain the concept behind the character?
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Was Kornbluth the first to suggest a future of low-IQ people overwhelming high-IQ "minders"?
I am referring to his Little Black Bag universe which afaik only also includes The Marching Morons and inspired Idiocracy and to a slight extent Robocop.
Note that The Time Machine is not really an ...
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Was Douglas Adams's Deep Thought inspired by Robert Sheckley's Answerer?
Robert Sheckley's short story "Ask a Foolish Question" (1953) is about a sophisticated machine called Answerer which can answer any question but only those that are "valid", ...
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What was the first SF Story to feature Time Police?
It's no surprise that when time travel appears in a universe where going back in time can alter history, a group appears, (apparently) acting to preserve the continuum they know. But when did science ...
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What was the first time travel story in which someone interacts with their parents in the past?
Mostly meeting their own parents in a time travel sci-fi movie leads to awkward moments and a comedic effect in the film as used in the Back To the Future (1985), another example coming out of top of ...
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What was the first depiction of Earth-visiting aliens as friendly?
I've mostly seen aliens in movies/books/shows as invaders who want to take take over Earth and all.
So - Which was the first depiction(tv-show/movie/comic book/novel) of aliens as friendly?
Now ...
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What's the first time travel story in which someone meets themself?
I'm a little astonished that this question hasn't been asked before, as far as I can tell, but...
I was thinking about the movie Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure (as one does) and I came to wonder: ...
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What is the first sci-fi media to discuss human evolution into a non-corporeal being?
In the novelisation of 2001 A Space Odyssey after Dave Bowman enters the TMA-2 monolith, the narrative discusses the evolution of the monolith builders from corporeal beings, to robots to non-...
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First instance of robots killing a non-human animal?
This is kind of grim, I realize. I am rereading The Second Variety and a quirky, almost humorous bit is, "Major Hendricks went on. Off to the right something scuttled, something round and ...
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What was the first story wherein an artificial plague is created for therapeutic reasons?
In Miri from STOS, I do not think specifically an artificial virus or artificially-modified virus is mentioned, but Wikipedia says, "The party find a medical research laboratory and look through ...
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What's the first licensed Skill-Deck Building World / LitRPG?
Like this reddit thread, finding "All The Skills" has made me think about the origins of the Deckbuilding genre.
Amazon's Kindle books on Deckbuilding show that Goblin Summoner seems to be ...
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Where does this (supposedly) Gibson quote come from?
Where does "The future is already here, it's just not very evenly distributed" come from?
It has been attributed to Gibson, usually supposedly in The Economist of Dec 4th, 2003, which I'm ...
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First appearance of nano-tech on screen
Nanotechnology as per Wikipedia is
the use of matter on an atomic, molecular, and supramolecular scale for industrial purposes. The earliest, widespread description of nanotechnology referred to the ...
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What is the first occurrence of a being able to see in the X-ray portion of the spectrum?
I doesn't need to be specifically termed "X-ray vision" but that should be how it is understood. This specifically leaves out X-ray viewers that people look at, but permits self-motivated ...
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First Benevolent AI in Fiction
Inspired by First AI to not follow a command?, I was wondering when the first positive depictions of AI appeared? Fiction is littered with rebellious robots from HAL 9000 to Skynet to Ultron, negative ...
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First AI to not follow a command?
Which is the first science fiction work to feature an AI that refused to follow commands (not necessary that it takes over the world)".
The answer could feature any AI that simply refused to ...
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First story to deal with increased human intelligence?
I know that some stories have dealt with humans or other beings that are "wiser" (I think even the concept of intelligence separate from knowledge is a fairly modern one) than normal humans. ...
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Who was the first cyborg in science fiction?
Cyborgs are defined as a person whose physical abilities are extended beyond normal human limitations by mechanical elements built into the body.
The DC's universe's Cyborg is quite famous and Darth ...
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