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One of the earliest science fiction books was written by a 1660s duchess (2016)
- 082349872349872 6y ago"She becomes their Empress, and with her otherworldly subjects, she explores natural wonders and questions their observations using science." Not only early SF but also an early Mary Sue?
- simplertms 6y agoFor the uninitiated to fanfiction terminology Mary Sue refers to a character who is so perfect and competent that it becomes absurd. I believe the name was given to a parody fiction written for the Trekkie universe -- ah and wikipedia confirms (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Sue) Also this gem, an excerpt from the fanfiction: "Gee, golly, gosh, gloriosky," thought Mary Sue as she stepped on the bridge of the Enterprise. "Here I am, the youngest lieutenant in the fleet - only fifteen and a half years old." Captain Kirk came up to her. "Oh, Lieutenant, I love you madly. Will you come to bed with me?" "Captain! I am not that kind of girl!" "You're right, and I respect you for it. Here, take over the ship for a minute while I go get some coffee for us." Mr. Spock came onto the bridge. "What are you doing in the command seat, Lieutenant?" "The Captain told me to." "Flawlessly logical. I admire your mind."
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- nilram 6y agoI was very interested when I learned my high school English teacher was writing a novel and I expressed my admiration. “Oh, everyone’s writing a novel,“ he replied. I asked him how it was going and he said he’d had this character who was just too good and was taking over the book. “So,” he said, “I killed him.”
- dragontamer 6y agoI'd assume Mary Sue characters existed from the dawn of human existence. We just don't remember them because it's relatively bad storytelling. Even if people enjoy it, stories with Mary Sue characters rarely stand the test of time. Ready player one, Twilight, etc etc. Early epics are noted for their flawed characters. Gilgamesh's bloodlust, Odysseus's disdain of the gods. Iccarus's hubris. King Authurs infidelity. We better remember characters who were flawed. 'Perfection' is strangely boring.
- watwut 6y agoOdysseus did not had disdain for God's. But he lied a lot through that was not framed as bad.
- User23 6y agoOdysseus got raped by goddesses a lot, so you could call his posture disdainful I'd say. As the story is related he really did just want to get home to his superlatively excellent wife. On a tangent, I do like how the phrase "holy moly" is a direct allusion to the Odyssey.
- riffraff 6y agoHow does "holy moly" relate to the Odyssey?
- User23 6y agoMoly was the sacred herb that freed Odysseus from Circe’s spell.
- watwut 6y agoWhether he is disdainful should be judged by what Odysseus says and do. Not by what goddess do. In the story Odysseus is not behaving in disdainful way to gods at all. He is not disrespectful, he is not treating gods as unworthy. It quite the opposite the whole time.
- mrlonglong 6y agoWow, she just described a jet engine, nearly 400 years before it invented in the late 1930s.
- stormdennis 6y agoShe kind of described what people do when they blow on something to make it move. Big breath in though a wide open mouth followed by a directed blow out through pursed lips.
- WalterBright 6y agoMore accurately, the turbo-jet engine was invented in the 1930's (independently by Ohain and Whittle). The turbo-jet has a compressor stage driven by a turbine in the exhaust stream. Prior jet engines were rocket engines, which go back to the ancient Chinese. A ram-jet eliminates the turbine entirely, relying on aerodynamic forces to provide the compression. Of course, the engine needs to be moving very fast for this to work. Fun fact: Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory was named "jet" instead of "rocket" out of concern that the neighbors would be afraid of rockets. Of course, rocket engines were what they were developing, not turbo-jets.
- mseepgood 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_True_Story > A True Story is a novel written in the second century AD by Lucian of Samosata. [...] It is the earliest known work of fiction to include travel to outer space, alien lifeforms, and interplanetary warfare. As such, A True Story has been described as "the first known text that could be called science fiction".
- tjalfi 6y agoMargaret Cavendish's book, The Description of a New World, Called the Blazing-World, is available from Project Gutenberg at [0]. [0] http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51783 http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51783
- lapetitejort 6y agoYet another reference from The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (first referenced in Black Dossier) that passed me by. Alan Moore certainly knows how to dig deep into literature.