Best viewed full size.

Perhaps you see some of your favorites; I marked some of mine. The important founders of a subgenre are located in close proximity to its label, like Neal Stephenson and William Gibson with Cyberpunk.

Ward Shelly describes his work: “History of Science Fiction is a graphic chronology that maps the literary genre from its nascent roots in mythology and fantastic stories to the somewhat calcified post-Star Wars space opera epics of today. The movement of years is from left to right, tracing the figure of a tentacled beast, derived from H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds Martians.

Science Fiction is seen as the offspring of the collision of the Enlightenment (providing science) and Romanticism, which also birthed gothic fiction, crime novels, horror, westerns, and fantasy (all of which can be seen exiting through wormholes to their own diagrams, elsewhere). Science fiction progressed through a number of distinct periods, which are charted, citing hundreds of the most important works and authors. Film and television are covered as well.” (the blue lobes, bottom right)

21 responses to “The History of Science Fiction”

  1. From the bottom left:

    History of Science Fiction Detail

  2. I don’t see "Brave New World" up there….or "Fahrenheit 451"…
    (But my eyes are going…)

    Futuristic writing can be scary…(!)

  3. Brave New World has an orange circle all its own near the center top. And F451 is just to the right of that. There are some small year markings along the top to help zoom in to the book you want.

  4. [http://www.flickr.com/photos/24270806@N06]
    If it makes you feel better…the whale is obvious here…(!)

    My theory is that "Moby Dick" was actually a very early form of futuristic writing…..

  5. wow, interesting map – starts with Gilgamesh epic… read it loooong time ago… very blurry memories… human memory is a problem, want to keep all this literature/art in my head plus all science… not humanly possible to remember even the outskirts any ways:D badly need a memory enhancement microchip in my head… but do not want a microchip in my heart:D

    and would be so cool to map a history of science fiction together with the history of science… navigating through idea clusters and parallels or predictions… somebody probably did it already or doing it… and what about rama?

  6. Tons of fun for an SF geek! Thanks, and great graphic!

  7. Absolutely superb. Congrats on Explore

  8. Well done
    YOUR PICTURE ENHANCES OUR GROUP
    http://www.flickr.com/groups/610256@N25/
    Please tag your image

  9. Congratulations!
    This is a wonderful shot!
    You are invited to post it to:


    artland

  10. Like Ahab pursuing Moby Dick, the drawing takes the metaphor of writing the great novel and encompasses it within the greater science fiction genre. It takes on a life of its own, asking to invent new genres of science fiction even as it chronicles the existing ones.

  11. Good ‘mind map’ ….Good to mention the US sci-fi author of ‘Blade Runner’ (aka ‘Do andriods dream of electric sheep’) Philip K Dick…literary artist of paranoid fiction.
    en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philip_K._Dick

  12. Yes, yes, I often weave him into my comments, such as here

  13. That is like really. Really. Really awesome.

  14. Hi, I’m an admin for a group called RockPaper Qubits, and we’d love to have this added to the group! Amazing!!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *