What is the first science fiction story? Some say the first science fiction story is the True History by Lucien of Samosata, in which a ship is brought by a cyclone up into the sky, where it sails in among the celestial bodies. But given that Lucien’s story was written in the second century A.D. A philosopher might ask, how could there be a science fiction story written before the development of modern science? But then another philosopher might ask, what does science mean anyhow? This is why philosophers are annoying. Here’s more from MOTHERBOARD:
The term “sci-fi” was coined in 1954 when Forrest Ackerman, the prototype sci-fi memorabilia collector, was cruising around Los Angeles and listening to his car radio. The word “hi-fi, referring to high-quality audio equipment, caught his attention, so he riffed on it: “I looked in the rear-view mirror, stuck out my tongue, and there tattooed on the end of my tongue was sci-fi.”
Like most genres, sci-fi existed before there was a term to describe it. James Gunn [not that James Gunn], grand master of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, thinks that its origin point was the Industrial Revolution. “Science fiction couldn’t exist until change created by science, technology, or natural events became apparent within people’s lifetimes,” he told me. “And that’s why our current era is science-fictional, because change is occurring annually, almost daily, and we have to adjust to it or are adjusted by it.”