Science fiction goes back further than you might think

Science fiction from medieval times? That sounds like a contradiction.

But Carl Kears and James Paz make a compelling case for just the opposite conclusion: that sci-fi can and did exist during the (not so) Dark Ages.

The assumption that sci-fi appeared only recently, relatively speaking, relies on a few conclusions.

First, there’s a misconception that we weren’t making scientific discoveries or developments during that era (Kears and Paz list a number of breakthroughs to dispel that notion).

And second, we tend to define the genre as requiring modern science, like space travel and artificial intelligence, to separate it from what we call fantasy — which is more similar to what one finds in medieval sci-fi.

See the full argument for medieval science fiction and examples of it in Kears and Paz’s full post, shared with permission on The Digital Reader.