Although the term “science fiction” didn’t gain popularity until the 1920s, many of the hallmarks of the genre were developed and popularized in the nineteenth century. In this seminar, we explored the development of SF in the nineteenth century in England in order to think about the contours of the genre. What is Victorian SF? What questions does it ask? How does it differ from other kinds of fiction? We also examined the ways that Victorian SF reflects the anxieties and values of its time, and we considered some of the ways that early SF participated in discussions about science and technology, industrialism, gender, social class, and race and empire.

The time machine from the 1960 George Pal adaptation of H.G. Wells’s “The Time Machine”.