Science Fiction - Proto Science Fiction Research

Proto science fiction describes fiction stories that came before science fiction and contained elements that would influence or develop into science fiction. The biggest difference in these stories is that they are not rooted within science, more so in magic, mythology or religion, however they do still tell tales of space travel, extra terrestrial life and more. 

I researched proto science fiction because I started thinking about the design brief that I set myself for this project, to create a product or item from 3020 when humans live on Mars, so I thought maybe it would be useful to look at it retrospectively, and to consider what people thought the world would look like in the future a thousand years ago. 

Here is an extract from an article named “History of Science Fiction Part 1” -

‘The history of science fiction truly begins before science fiction as a genre really started to take shape. Many old texts depict scenarios where man traverses beyond the limits of the world, and dives into space and the cosmos beyond.

Even before the Renaissance, it is clear that humanity looked to the stars, and asked "Are we alone?"

Greek writer Lucian wrote True History, which depicts a man who travels beyond the heavens to witness a battle between the People of the Moon and the People of the Sun. The Japanese story, The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter, depicts a princess named Kaguya who descends from the moon to Earth, only to ascend back to join her people later on.

One Thousand and One Nights features many images that feel like they sprang straight out of a science fiction story. The story "The Ebony Horse" depicts a man-made horse that, with the turn of a key, can carry a cart beyond the atmosphere into the outer reaches of space.

Another story, "The City of Brass," depicts an ancient city built near a machine that King Solomon used to capture djinn. The city, comprised of abandoned technology, is filled with living puppets without puppeteers and other constructed men – or automatons.

However, these old stories do not credit science for these miracles. Rather, the books and stories depict these machines and aliens as magic and enchantments. Man creating another man with gears and parts – why, that was a product of alchemy and magic.

Consider Dante's The Divine Comedy. In this trilogy of epic poems, Dante dives into the Hell, located beneath the Earth's crust, only to emerge on the opposite side of the planet, climb the mountain of Purgatory, only to ascend to the Heavenly Spheres – each planet in the sky consisting of the souls of Heaven.

While much of the iconography when removed from the religious context resembles the sort of stuff Jules Verne and H.G. Wells would later write about, the explanation for space and the composition of the Earth's core is religious in nature. Not scientific.

It wasn't until the Age of Reason that the first science fiction stories started emerging.’

https://vocal.media/futurism/history-of-science-fiction-part-i

Clearly the author is right in saying that these aren’t true examples of science fiction because they ‘don’t credit science for these miracles’ but that did remind me of a quote from Arthur C. Clarke: 

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic”

As I’ve mentioned before, science fiction is often most successful when there are still familiar aspects to whatever technology, society or world we are presented with because this means its not too farfetched e.g. we might be being presented with Kubricks 2001:a space odyssey, in which we see commercial travel to the moon, self aware artificial intelligence and space travel on a level that seems unimaginably advanced, however because a lot of these things are contextualised within knowledge and technology that we already have, some of the dots are connected. In the case of some of these proto science fiction stories, we are also seeing space travel, or alien life, but this is coming from a time when human civilisation knew incredibly little about space, so clearly at the time these concepts would have been mind blowing, and although some of these miracles and tales did actually end up happening as a result of science and technology, in the original stories was this predicted from an extrapolation of their current technology, or was it just a magical or religious story?

This idea ties in a lot with part of the original brief I wrote for this project in which it said to explore how science fiction has predicted future technology. 

The article mentions “The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter”, a Japanese story which is the earliest example of ‘Japanese prose narrative’ and has been dated all the way back to the 10th century. The tale is about a bamboo cutter who finds a young baby inside a bamboo stalk, which him and his wife decide to raise. Within 3  months the baby grows into a beautiful woman who many noble men in the land try to marry, and even the emperor. Eventually she reveals she’s actually from the moon and needs to return back there to be with her people. As heavenly beings descend from the moon to take her home, the emperor orders his army to stop them but is ultimately unsuccessful.

This tale is one of the most important works of proto science fiction because it describes an alien civilisation living on the moon, one of the first examples of speculation of an alien race in folklore. 

Also some of the woodblock prints and illustrations depicting the story have really incredible imagery on them.