Talk:Timeline of science fiction

Length of the list

TompaDompa, the article/list is long. I'm aware that the editing pass being made now is only up to the 1940s, but I suspect it's not going to get any shorter as we go through. Is it perhaps too long?

Looking at some of the entries up to the 1940s, for example, I wonder if Woman in the Moon could be removed -- we already have Metropolis, which is more important; do we have to have two Fritz Lang films in what is intended as a summary article? And how about world events: the stock market crash and Hubble's discoveries are certainly context, but this is Wikipedia, not a specialist publication, and we can cover those topics elsewhere. You know more about 19th century sf than I do, but I wonder if we've included a disproportionate number of works in the 19th century. Are Hudson, Jeffries, and Donnelly important enough to include? Do we really need more than one work by Jack London? Do we need Beresford? The Kipling is famous only because it's Kipling, not because it was influential in any way, and could perhaps be dropped. It's certainly true that non-genre sf has to be covered, so things like Brave New World are needed but do we need the 1933 film of Buck Rogers or Palmer's editorship of Amazing, or Street & Smith's acquisition of Astounding? Of course magazine sf has to be covered, and Palmer was important, but people like Campbell, Gold, and Boucher were more important; and the publishing transactions are causes of change but perhaps not very interesting in themselves.

I think the rule of having material only if it's in more than one source timeline is good, but I think we could filter it further. I don't have explicit criteria to offer, but some are implied by my comments above -- multiple works by one author should be looked at to see if one can be removed; and authors included primarily because they are famous, not because they are influential, are candidates for removal. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 10:51, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

I'll admit to not really knowing what the appropriate length for a "timeline" article like this is. I don't necessarily disagree with your points (surely Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is much more important than her later The Last Man?), but I am as always wary of imposing our views (rather than the sources') too much. If I were only using my own judgment there are quite a few entries I would remove and even some I would add (perhaps most notably Lucian of Samosata's True History). I think it best to finish the work currently being done before we start filtering it further so we have a "baseline" version to use for comparison. We are going to run into the opposite problem (kind of) towards the end of the list once we pass the sources' publication dates one by one, an issue I was planning to raise here on the talk page once we get there. There are also entries that could be merged (I have no idea why the sources think it warranted to have separate entries for the serial and novel publications of Ralph 124C 41+, for instance, and Aelita was filmatized so shortly after its publication that the book and film could share an entry). When it comes to magazine history, I'm a bit surprised that the sources don't list the 1896 advent of the pulp magazines with Argosy, but other than that the only really important things to my mind are the 1926 launch of Hugo Gernsback's Amazing Stories as the first truly specialized science fiction magazine and the 1937 assumption of the editorship of Astounding by John W. Campbell (inasmuch as it is widely considered to either mark the beginning of the Golden Age of Science Fiction or else to shortly precede it). Generally speaking, I think it's probably good to add short glosses that give an indication as to why particular entries might be considered important (e.g. mentioning that R.U.R. introduced the word "robot" and that Amazing was the first sf magazine), though of course not for every single entry. TompaDompa (talk) 11:21, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

I agree we should wait till your pass is done and look at it then. Re the magazines, I think the end of the pulps is worth noting, though as you've noted elsewhere there are debates about exactly when it happened; and I could make a case for the launches of Galaxy and F&SF as important. Perhaps the New Wave/New Worlds era, too. Anyway, a long way to go before we can pause and review. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:37, 18 June 2025 (UTC)

I'm not sure I see a real problem with the list trailing off as of the last few sources' publication dates. When you are doing a timeline, I'd rather omit modern blockbusters that no one will remember in 20 years and stick with more solid classics.Brianyoumans (talk) 00:21, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

Incidentally, the article is looking SO MUCH BETTER. I think there are a few recentisms and other oddities on it that I'm not sure, in the view of 2025, turned out to be as classic as they looked back when the sources were published ("Coelestis" by Paul Park? I like Park, but I think his earlier work was better.) But on the whole, a VAST improvement. Kudoes to TompaDompa. Brianyoumans (talk) 23:16, 30 June 2025 (UTC)

First-pass cleanup done

@Mike Christie and Brianyoumans: I have now completed the first-pass cleanup of the article. This is what the article looks like now. I don't doubt that some errors have crept in, either by my own hand or unwittingly reproduced from the sources, but hopefully not too many. All entries are now cited to at least two timeline sources. As a result, the timeline ends rather abruptly in the mid-2010s, as only one of the sources is more recent than that. The timeline now contains, by my count, a total of 609 entries. That seems very overinclusive to me. I have a few ideas about how to get it down to a more manageable size without getting too arbitrary about what stays and what goes, but I'll start with two:

1. Remove all deaths and births from the timeline. In the grand scheme of things, these are trivia.

2. Remove (post-1900) entries that are only sourced to either (A) the two Booker sources or (B) the two Cambridge sources. My reasoning is that each pair represents less than two independent sources, in a sense. The two Booker sources are obviously not independent—they're both by the same author—but neither are the two Cambridge sources despite having different names on the covers (in this case editors rather than authors). Looking at the timelines in the two Cambridge sources makes it pretty clear that they share DNA, so to speak. They are formatted the same way, have a very high degree of entry overlap (though still not to the point of redundancy), and most damningly have some conspicuous errors in common.

What do you think, do we need to pare the timeline down? If we do, are these good starting points? Do you have any suggestions of your own? I figure we'll start here and evaluate before I get into my other ideas. TompaDompa (talk) 03:02, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

I agree with both your suggestions for trimming. I have family visiting this weekend so don't have much time but will take a look when you've completed that trim. One difficulty I know I'll have is in sticking to the sources; I'll have my own opinions on what's important enough to keep but we do need objective criteria. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 03:05, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

Done. The article now looks like this, with (by my count) a total of 486 entries, a reduction of 123 entries or some 20%. This reduction comes almost entirely from the second half of the 1900s, with ten pre-1950 entries and ten entries from the 2000s making up the rest. One upshot of this is that the entries for the 1980s, 1990s, and 2000s now lean a lot more heavily towards film, which I think seems about right. Here are my next two suggestions:

3. Consolidate entries where possible. I mentioned the Ralph 124C 41+ situation and Aelita above, but we also have things like Kim Stanley Robinson's Mars trilogy having three separate entries that could be combined into one. These may have to be discussed on a case-by-case basis—which sequels should be treated separately? How do we treat the Star Wars films? Which adaptations should have separate entries from the source material? I could by all means give it a shot myself, but this is an area where editorial judgment calls need to be made.

4. Remove entries from 1926 onwards that are only sourced to The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and one other source. Starting in 1926, The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is a lot more detailed than the other sources, to the point that it does not seem representative to me—consequently, I don't think being on that list carries as much weight as being on one of the other lists since it is much less selective in its inclusion. In other words, appearing on that list and one other does not as strongly indicate expert consensus of importance as appearing on two separate lists both of which are relatively selective in their inclusion. One might describe it as counting as slightly less than one list appearance, perhaps. I am open to extending this to pre-1926 entries as well. I will note that this would mean removing The Twilight Zone, which I have to admit seems off to me.

Thoughts? TompaDompa (talk) 13:48, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

I would trust your judgement on this. It sounds like the right thing to do. As to issues like Twilight Zone... You know, I'm old school enough to say that if we have several reasonably expert eyes on this and we agree that this is something we should include or exclude, and there are at least a good source for that... I'm totally OK with that. The method that TompaDompa has used is hard to argue with, but I don't see any problem with not just doing this totally mechanically. It's the three of us, until someone else happens along.Brianyoumans (talk) 18:24, 5 July 2025 (UTC)

I have carried out point #4 (entries from 1926 onwards—I have left the pre-1926 entries as they were for now), and started on point #3. I'll merge each set of entries with a separate edit to make it easier to revert if you happen to disagree with any of them.

I've been thinking about the non-sf entries—both in the sense of the sf-adjacent ones such as Hugo Gernsback emigrates from Luxembourg to the United States. or Philip K. Dick experiences a series of visions that influence his subsequent works. and the unrelated real-world ones such as The atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki lead to the end of World War II and the beginning of the Cold War. or Cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin becomes the first human in space.. My previous line of thinking was that we should consider these on a case-by-case basis. The more I look at the list, however, the less they seem like helpful context and the more they come across to me as plain WP:OFFTOPIC. I'm leaning towards simply removing all of them. What say you? TompaDompa (talk) 02:42, 11 July 2025 (UTC)

Update: With a little help from WP:RX, I have managed to use the more recent second edition of Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Cinema (2020 instead of 2010) to update the timeline somewhat. The 2010s is now almost all film entries. I'll also note that Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction by Allen Stroud is to be published in October, and I expect that it will contain a chronology just like the other "Historical Dictionary" titles (not least because Stroud's 2023 Historical Dictionary of Fantasy Literature does). TompaDompa (talk) 16:54, 6 July 2025 (UTC)

Some possible ways to trim the list

@Mike Christie and Brianyoumans: This is what the article looks like now. The timeline now contains, by my count, a total of 415 entries. The reduction compared to the previous count has mainly come from removing 10-20 entries from each decade of the mid-century (1930s, 1940s, 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s), though the number of 2010s entries has also increased by more than 20. I have some suggestions about possible ways to trim it further, listed here roughly in increasing order of severity:

5. Remove non-sf entries (see above).

6. Remove pre-1926 entries that are only sourced to The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and one other source (see above).

7. Remove entries from 1926 onwards that are only sourced to The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction and either (A) the two Booker sources or (B) the two Cambridge sources. This combines the logic behind points #2 and #4 above.

8. As #7, but also including pre-1926 entries.

9. Remove entries from the "19th century" through the "1980s" tables that are only sourced to two sources—requiring a minimum of three sources for this part of the timeline. Applying this pre-1800 would mean excising what some of the sources deem important early works, which doesn't seem right to me, and would also mean that the first entry of our timeline (which would then be Micromégas by Voltaire, 1752) would not be the starting point of any of the timeline sources' lists, which I also think seems like misrepresenting the sources in some sense. Applying this from 1990 onwards would result in the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s having 5, 3, and 0 entries respectively, which does not seem right to me. I don't think it is too much of a stretch to say that academic consensus of what the most significant works from these decades may be has not yet fully solidified—and considering when many of our sources were published, especially hadn't by then.

Thoughts? TompaDompa (talk) 22:24, 12 July 2025 (UTC)

I have implemented suggestions #5 through #9. Post-#5 version, post-#6 version, post-#7 version, post-#8 version, post-#9 version. The timeline now contains, by my count, a total of 293 entries. @Mike Christie and Brianyoumans: what do you think? TompaDompa (talk) 23:45, 19 July 2025 (UTC)

The article is transformed from the melange it was into a very respectable list. Congratulations. I've looked through it a couple of times and there are certainly places where I would disagree with the selections (e.g. if you're going to have just one Tiptree, I'd make it "The Women Men Don't See" or "Houston, Houston, Do You Read" or "The Screwfly Solution") but that's irrelevant since I'm not a reliable source. It's a pity the recent entries skew towards films but again you have to go with what the sources give you. Kudos; this is now a useful and coherent resource for people interested in the history of the genre. Mike Christie (talk - contribs - library) 11:09, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Thank you, that's very kind. I should probably mention that I just found one more source that I have added to the article, so the above entry count is already out of date. I'm considering whether the threshold for inclusion should be raised even further to 4 sources for the bulk of the list (1800–1989) and perhaps 3 for the remainder (pre-1800, 1990 onwards). Might wait until even more sources are found, perhaps. TompaDompa (talk) 19:07, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

I concur that it looks much better. There are a few entries where I kind of wonder - say, the film Sleep Dealer - I mean, an indie film that barely opened in theatres and has mediocre reviews? OK, it won a couple of non-genre awards, but still... But there's a process, which means people can't add random crap to it. Great work. Brianyoumans (talk) 20:23, 20 July 2025 (UTC)

Short story from 1825

Being not a regular editor on this page I'll just leave this link here so if others think it fits it can be added: http://nla.gov.au/nla.news-article2183845 jayoval (talk) 08:39, 20 October 2025 (UTC)

More early books?

I am wondering why not to include the following (or rather, can I add any of the following):

• c. 1270 AD: The Syrian writer Al-Qazwini pens the futuristic tale Awaj bin Anfaq. It features a highly advanced, peaceful entity from outer space who lands on Earth to observe humanity and critically evaluate our primitive laws, customs, and technologies.
• 1516: Thomas More publishes Utopia, inventing the term and establishing the structural framework for a fictional, logically organized society isolated from the known world.
• 1602: Tommaso Campanella writes The City of the Sun. It integrates scientific governance, mechanical inventions (like flight and self-propelled ships), and astrology-driven eugenics into a utopian framework.
• 1657: Cyrano de Bergerac's Comical History of the States and Empires of the Moon features pioneering descriptions of fireworks-fueled rockets and early audiobooks.
• 1666: Margaret Cavendish publishes The Blazing World, blending feminist utopian ideas with multi-dimensional travel, submarines, and animal-hybrid societies.

TIA, Tar-ba-gan (talk) 11:26, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

As long as there are sources citing them as examples of science fiction, you can go ahead. Dimadick (talk) 19:18, 17 June 2026 (UTC)

The inclusion criteria for this page, following significant cleanup last year (see talk page sections above and in the archives), is that each entry must have appeared in multiple timelines of science fiction published by WP:Reliable sources. Currently, eight different such sources are used:

1. Brian Ash's The Visual Encyclopedia of Science Fiction (1977)
2. John Clute's Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia (1995)
3. Edward James and Farah Mendlesohn's The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (2003)
4. Brian Stableford's Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Literature (2004)
5. Nick Hubble and Aris Mousoutzanis's The Science Fiction Handbook (2013)
6. M. Keith Booker's Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction in Literature (2014)
7. Gerry Canavan and Eric Carl Link's The Cambridge History of Science Fiction (2018)
8. M. Keith Booker's Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction Cinema (2020)

The number of timelines we require entries to have appeared on in order to be included here varies depending on the point in time: pre–1800 and from the 1990s onwards entries need to appear on two source timelines, and for the bulk of the list (1800–1989) three sources are required. This will likely be increased to three and four, respectively, following the release of Allen Stroud's Historical Dictionary of Science Fiction, which is expected to be published in November.

Utopia by Thomas More is already on the list, by the way. It's the first entry. TompaDompa (talk) 18:01, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

Fundamentally, if this list contained every work that someone thought was science fiction and in some way significant, it would get completely unwieldy, chaotic, and much less useful, IMHO. Personally, I thought the addition of movies and tv shows was also a mistake, I think those belong in a separate article, but I was overruled.Brianyoumans (talk) 21:07, 18 June 2026 (UTC)

References

"talk page for inclusion criteria"

@TompaDompa: Where exactly? Cattenion (talk) 16:23, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

The short version can be read in the #More early books? section above: The inclusion criteria for this page [...] is that each entry must have appeared in multiple timelines of science fiction published by WP:Reliable sources. Currently, eight different such sources are used [...]. The longer version can be read in the #Length of the list section, where the inclusion criteria were developed. TompaDompa (talk) 20:49, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

"Lokapannatti" (p.273 -, Di Crocco: "circa 11th century") Chapter 1 - Vu "Early Science Fiction Beyond Europe" Cattenion (talk) 22:46, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

is G Cattenion (talk) 22:47, 23 June 2026 (UTC)

This doesn't seem like an unworthy candidate for inclusion, but I think we should stick to our agreed-on rules. Otherwise, the list will quickly grow unwieldy.Brianyoumans (talk) 00:27, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

Perhaps "TompaDompa" would like to make the edit as is the 1st username on both lists Cattenion (talk) 18:06, 24 June 2026 (UTC)

The sources you bring up, or more to the point the parts you link to, are not timelines of science fiction. The latter book—The Cambridge History of Science Fiction (2019)—does however contain such a timeline on pp. XXII–XXXVII, called "Chronology". That's the kind of source we use for this page, and indeed it is cited heavily. TompaDompa (talk) 20:50, 24 June 2026 (UTC)