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| Posted By : Jaqhama - 5/6/2008 6:54 AM | | If the Bible was read today by a non-religious person...read simply as another novel...would it not be viewed as one of the world's first sci-fi/fantasy books?
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| Posted By : southernweirdo - 5/6/2008 9:12 AM | Interesting thought and I know where you're coming from, but I don't think we should call the Bible sci-fi/fantasy. It is a religious text, something altogether different. It was not written as fiction. The Old Testament is historical in nature, the single best historic reference we have for that time period and place. The New Testament is also important as a historic document.
I may be biased because of my personal beliefs, but I took many world literature classes in college and have a deep and abiding love for studying ancient texts from various cultures, including those outside the Hebrew/Early Christian cannon. Most early world literature (indian myths, Gilgamesh and other Sumerian texts, The Egyptian Book of the Dead, various Asian texts, the epics of the early Europeans, etc.) seems fantastic by today's standards, but, for the most part, they were all taken seriously as fact by the authors and readers at that time and place. It's not like a science fiction or fantasy novel today.
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| Posted By : MichaelEhart - 5/6/2008 1:23 PM | The Epic of Gilgamesh was written down at least 700 years before the Bible, so no, even by stretching the standards.
I do claim that Gilgamesh, and the attendant Tale of the Deluge are the first S&S stories.
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| Posted By : SJHigbee - 5/6/2008 3:31 PM | Surely, the whole idea of sci-fi/fantasy stories is that they are an effort to create an alternative world where different rules apply? Whereas the Bible is a gathering together of disparate writings and teachings on the subject of God and how we should worship Him, written over a long timespan - often a long time after the specific events they cover, as in the case of the 4 Gospels describing the life and death of Jesus. There is no overt attempt to 'make up' magical, or fantastic creatures within those writings. Whether people reading them believe the contents is a different issue.
Surely, one of the earliest series of sci-fi/fantasy stories has to be the tales of Scheherazade, of djines, monstrous birds and tyrannical magic users... Which she spun out in an effort to stop her wife-hating husband from killing her by making the stories as exciting as possible, so that he would keep her alive one more night in order to hear what would happen next.
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| Posted By : RHFay - 5/6/2008 4:29 PM |
MichaelEhart said...The Epic of Gilgamesh was written down at least 700 years before the Bible, so no, even by stretching the standards. I do claim that Gilgamesh, and the attendant Tale of the Deluge are the first S&S stories.
I agree with Michael. The Epic of Gilgamesh is about as far back as tales go. Then you have Egyptian mythology, too. Gods with the heads of an ibis, falcon, cat, lion, hippo, and jackal - that's pretty fantastical if you ask me!
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| Posted By : Swashbuckler - 5/6/2008 4:44 PM | Of course, the majority of the people in the cultures that produced the Epic of Gilgamesh and the Egyptian mythologies (or Norse mythologies, or American Indian mythologies, or Hindu mythologies ...) likely believed those tales to be true, rather than "fantasy" stories. Those tales may read like fantasy stories to modern humans, but I don't think the people of the times and places involved thought of them as such.
Still, I read "Gilgemesh" as pretty much a sword-and-sorcery story and enjoyed it as such.
Steve Goble
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| Posted By : Nathan Jerpe - 5/7/2008 11:37 AM |
southernweirdo said...
...but, for the most part, they were all taken seriously as fact by the authors and readers at that time and place. It's not like a science fiction or fantasy novel today... Even more interesting, perhaps, is your implication that whether or not a piece is declared sci-fi/fantasy depends on the author's intention. If the author is intending to record facts or accurately document history, I think it is harder to argue it is a work of sci-fi.
Then again, suppose somebody wrote something intended as a sci-fi work three hundred years ago, and by now everything that was in it has become not only plausible, but pedestrian. Would it still be considered sci-fi?
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| Posted By : Swashbuckler - 5/7/2008 4:10 PM | Nathan Jerpe: Interesting conundrum! I'd have to say yes, it still would be considered as science fiction -- and probably as a shining example of science fiction at its predictive best. I'm sure the science fiction fans would be loathe to have such a book suddenly regarded as "not science fiction" just because it happened to be right on the money, much the way science fiction fans often are upset that books like McCarthy's "The Road" aren't considered science fiction even though the theme is clearly science fiction.
Steve Goble
Visit my blog, Swords Against Boredom, for news on published fiction and upcoming stories. |
| Posted By : Nathan Jerpe - 5/7/2008 9:15 PM | Oooh...didn't know that about The Road. It just moved up a few slots on my To Read list.
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| Posted By : southernweirdo - 5/7/2008 11:06 PM |
Then again, suppose somebody wrote something intended as a sci-fi work three hundred years ago, and by now everything that was in it has become not only plausible, but pedestrian. Would it still be considered sci-fi?
Interesting thought, but I'd have to say it would still classify as sci-fi. We still find Jules Verne and H.G. Wells in the science fiction sections in a lot of libraries/bookstores even though a lot of what they wrote about that seemed fantastic during their time is true today.
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| Posted By : SJHigbee - 5/8/2008 10:50 AM | southernweirdo says "...Jules Verne and H.G. Wells in the science fiction sections... even though a lot of what they wrote about that seemed fantastic during their time is true today."
Absolutely. Surely that's the point? In order to be regarded the the 'first' sci-fi/fantasy storyteller you have to be knowingly weaving an imaginery world. People writing the Bible, telling tales of Egyptian, Greek, Norse or any other pantheon of fantastic gods believed they were telling the truth, often in order to explain natural occurances, such as flood, thunderstorms, etc.
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| Posted By : SJHigbee - 5/9/2008 5:16 AM | So... if the Bible isn't the first true sci-fi fantasy book to have ever been written - what was? Maybe "Gulliver's Travels" by Jonathan Swift is a candidate????
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| Posted By : Jordan Lapp - 5/9/2008 5:19 AM | The first novel in the English language, according to my English prof was Oroonoko in 1688, so if we're talking novels, it would have to be later than that.
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| Posted By : Anthony G Williams - 5/9/2008 8:46 PM | | Depends on how you define SFF, I suppose. I recall reading of one "alternate history/what if" story which goes back about 2 millennia.
However, Wiki identifies the 17th century as the time when SFF got going in a recognisable form.
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