Science Fiction – Page 8 – Interesting Literature

Five Fascinating Facts about Karel Čapek

Interesting trivia about one of science-fiction’s greatest voices

1. Čapek’s most famous work introduced the concept of the ‘robot’. Čapek’s 1920 play R. U. R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots) was the first text to use the word ‘robot’ to denote man-made creatures – the word comes from the Czech roboti meaning ‘slave’ or ‘drudge’. In Čapek’s play, the robots are built in a factory for the purpose of undertaking menial labour for their human masters – but, as with The Terminator over sixty years later, they eventually turn against their owners and destroy the human race.

20 Interesting Facts about Science Fiction

Trivia about classic science-fiction

In this post, we thought we’d share some of our favourite facts about science fiction, SF, sci-fi, call it what you will – partly because the world of science fiction has given the world some truly visionary writers but also some funny stories and curious facts. So, if you’re ready to boldly go to a literary galaxy far, far away…

Contrary to popular belief, Orson Welles’ radio adaptation of H. G. Wells’s The War of the Worlds didn’t cause a nationwide panic.

In 2004, a group of science fiction authors wrote a novel, Atlanta Nights, designed to be unpublishable; it was accepted for publication.

Five Fascinating Facts about John Brunner

Interesting facts about John Brunner (1934-1995), British science-fiction author

1. John Brunner coined the term ‘worm’ for a program that infiltrates another computer. In his 1975 novel The Shockwave Rider, Brunner came up with the idea of the ‘computer worm’, a program that sabotages another computer (or a whole network). In that novel, one character says, ‘I’m just assuming that you have the biggest-ever worm loose in the net, and that it automatically sabotages any attempt to monitor a call to the ten nines.’ Prescient indeed! Now, of course, ‘worms’ are part of the modern world of computers connected to the internet, along with Trojan Horses (from Greek myth, of course), viruses (borrowed from biology), and other insidious programs.

Frankenstein Through the Years: An Established Mythology

Spencer Blohm examines the history of screen adaptations of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein

For nearly two hundred years the archetype of the ‘mad scientist‘ has been dominated by a single name: Dr. Victor Frankenstein. When Mary Shelley wrote and published her groundbreaking novel in 1818, there’s no way she could have known that her scientist and his creation would come to symbolize so much of the human condition and would be reimagined and reinvented countless times. Soon, what is sometimes referred to as the first science fiction novel, will once again be told on the big screen, this time in Victor Frankenstein.

Five Fascinating Facts about Mary Shelley

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

1. Her most famous novel, Frankenstein, is widely considered the first science fiction novel.

Brian Aldiss certainly thinks so. It’s worth mentioning here that two other leading science (fiction) writers, Carl Sagan and Isaac Asimov, argued that the honour of ‘first science-fiction novel’ should go to a much earlier book: Johannes Kepler’s Somnium (‘The Dream’), first published in 1634.