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> I looked back into the science-fiction literature to try to find the earliest example of a story featuring a nonhuman industrial civilization on Earth. The ea
by kadoban 4y ago
> I looked back into the science-fiction literature to try to find the earliest example of a story featuring a nonhuman industrial civilization on Earth. The earliest I could find was in a Doctor Who episode.“
> That 1970 episode of the classic TV series involves the present-day discovery of “Silurians” [...]
That can't possibly be the first example of that concept in sci-fi, can it? Nothing against Doctor Who, just seems unlikely. Trying to think through the early sci-fi I've heard of or read though and I'm not coming up with anything with that concept.
- formerkrogemp 4y agoHG Wells Time Machine might qualify, but it imagined humanoid life following humanity's inevitable decline in the far flung future. I don't suppose that imagining this backwards instead of forwards in time would have been too much of a stretch. The heavy influence of Abrahamic religions up to the time might have influenced early scifi writers to treat the far flung "future" as a safer topic for allegory, metaphor, or thought experiment than the religiously more significant past I guess, especially with the relatively rapid rate of invention and change represented by industrialization. I've always wondered where the phrase 'silurian hypothesis' came from. I never imagined it came from an ancient doctor who episode.
- giordano-bruno 4y ago
- binibus 4y agoMaybe some Lovecraft's tales (?). There are several advanced civilizations predating humans, but I can't pin down if some evolved strictly on earth.