Science Fiction from Mary Shelley to Today

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Part 1 - Science Fiction Begins with “What If?” – From Mary Shelley to Frankenstein

What if?

What if human beings could create life? What if machines could think? What if alien intelligence did not conquer us, but misunderstood us? What if politics, capital, technology and fear built a future in which humanity became little more than a footnote?

That question is the true engine of science fiction. It opens doors that seem closed in the present. It takes an idea, a scientific possibility, a social development or a moral danger – and extends it into the future. There, under the pressure of imagination, the hidden structures of the present become visible.

The beginning of modern science fiction is often linked to Mary Shelley. In 1818, she published Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus and created not only one of literature’s most famous creation myths, but also a foundational text of science fiction. Victor Frankenstein crosses a scientific boundary. He creates life. Yet the decisive question is not whether he can do it. The decisive question is whether he accepts responsibility for what he has made. That is why Frankenstein remains so powerful. It is not merely a story about a monster. It is a story about a creator who refuses moral responsibility for his creation. This motif still echoes through stories about genetic engineering, artificial intelligence, biotechnology and posthuman futures.

From the beginning, then, science fiction was more than technical fantasy. It was the literature of responsibility. It did not merely ask what could be done. It asked what price might be paid for doing it. It asked what happens when progress moves faster than ethics. And it placed humanity exactly where science fiction still loves to place it: at the threshold of a future it has created, but may no longer be able to control.

Coming soon in Part 2:
The journey through science fiction continues — with new visions of the future, greater ideas, and the question of why this genre still reveals so much about humanity, technology, and our dreams.

Part 2 - Science Fiction Begins with “What If?”

What if? From Jules Verne and H. G. Wells to Modern Science Fiction

After Shelley, Jules Verne and H. G. Wells opened two great doors for science fiction. Both looked towards the future, but they did so in very different ways. Jules Verne stood for technology, travel, discovery and scientific possibility. His novels showed a world in which inventions could move boundaries. Submarines, journeys to the Moon, expeditions beneath the Earth or around the world – in Verne, technology became adventure. Scientific curiosity became a narrative force. His future was often an extension of human ingenuity.

H. G. Wells, by contrast, looked at the future with a darker, sharper and more political eye. In The Time Machine, The War of the Worlds and The Island of Doctor Moreau, the future was not merely admired. It was interrogated. Wells was interested in evolution, class division, colonialism, war, power and the fragility of civilisation. His machines were not only wonders. They were instruments for examining the human condition. From that point onwards, science fiction became a literary experiment. It placed humanity inside laboratories: on alien planets, in distant centuries, under foreign rule, inside machine worlds, artificial paradises, ruined cities and political systems that feel disturbingly familiar.

The important point is this: science fiction appears to move away from reality in order to approach it more directly. It relocates conflicts into the future, onto other worlds or into alternative societies so that we can see them more clearly. An alien invasion can speak about imperialism. A time machine can expose social inequality. A remote island of experiments can reveal scientific arrogance. That is why science fiction is never merely an escape from reality. Very often, it is the most direct route back into the present. It does not only show what might come. It asks why it might come – and who would be responsible.

Part 3 - Science Fiction Begins with “What If?”

What if? The Golden Age and the Big Three of Science Fiction

In the twentieth century, science fiction became a mass phenomenon. Magazines, pulp fiction, paperbacks and, later, film and television made the genre visible across the world. Especially influential were the so-called Big Three: Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke and Robert A. Heinlein. Clarke, Asimov and Heinlein are still widely referred to as the “Big Three” of science fiction.

Asimov brought intellectual architecture to stories about robots, empires and the cycles of civilisation. His robot stories and famous laws of robotics turned machines into moral tests rather than simple monsters. Clarke connected cosmic scale with scientific elegance. In works such as Childhood’s End, Rendezvous with Rama and 2001: A Space Odyssey, humanity becomes small, but not meaningless. Heinlein wrote about freedom, militarism, social models, bodies, sexuality and political self-determination – often fascinating, often controversial, but always influential.

The Big Three gave science fiction a powerful structure: Asimov gave it logic, Clarke gave it the cosmos, Heinlein gave it the conflict between the individual and society.