Music Banter - View Single Post - Frontiers of Imagination: The History of Science Fiction and Fantasy

Trollheart · 03-09-2021, 07:23 PM

So those are the many sub-genres of both science fiction and fantasy, but how did they get started? Well, it’s easy to see that fantasy was first, and had its origins in the myths and tales of the poets and scribes of ancient Greece, Rome and the sagas of Norway, among others. It’s true that mostly, at the time these were written they were not written as stories, but as accounts, fables or parables in which the writer himself believed. Homer’s Odyssey and Illiad are supposedly true accounts of events that happened, even if they may be very much embellished from the somewhat mundane truth. But man has always been fascinated by the different, the weird, the bizarre, the unexplainable. Flying horses, all-powerful gods, dwarfs dwelling in caverns beneath the earth, fantastical monsters and epic voyages and battles, magic and amazing feats caught the imagination back then, even as they do now, though in these enlightened ages we recognise that such things could not exist. We still enjoy them though; something does not have to be feasible or plausible to interest us. If it did, a huge swathe of fiction would disappear overnight.

The first rule, they say, in storytelling is to hook the reader, or back then, the listener, in the first sentence or two. So openings like “A giant dwelled on a mountain” or “The son of the sultan took to the air on his magic flying carpet” were always going to grab the attention, and so figure strongly in the story. People wanted, and still want, to be entertained, and as ever, our overall attention span is low, hence the preponderance of never-pause-for-breath action movies gracing our cinemas these days, and possibly why some people - too many people, it seems to me - refuse to read a book. Instant gratification is the goal in this hurly-burly, can’t-stop world, and the majority of people, it would appear, simply have not or cannot spare the time to work through a developing story.

Even more restless, those who could not read (which covered the vast majority) back in the days of Homer and Virgin and Cicero, were eager for action, action, action! They did not want a long, rambling introduction or scene setting up the story. Bam! Man on a flying dragon! Page one! Into the battle! People wouldn’t sit around waiting for things to happen, and so the storyteller had to make them happen, quickly and on cue and with increasing wonder and awe, one of the things that makes the likes of the Illiad so full of action, comparatively.

Timeline of Fantasy Literature

Timeline: 1800 BC - 1000 AD (approx)

Sumerian

Most scholars seem to agree that the Epic of Gilgamesh, written approximately 1800 BC, almost four hundred years after the death of the King of ancient Sumerian city Uruk, is the first real example of fantasy literature. Whether it was based on a real figure or not, it incorporates all the great tropes that would go on to define fantasy: monsters, seemingly invincible enemies, gods, demons, quests, heroes and companions.

Note: as this list is bound to be long and feature numerous writings, I’ll only be giving a quick idea, the bare bones of the story here. Should you wish to research, read or watch the item in question further, links will be provided.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh

Indian

India, too, has its ancient epics, one in fact being reckoned the longest epic poem ever. With over 200,000 verses totalling in excess of almost two million words, the Mahābhārata is twice the length of both the Odyssey and the Illiad combined - and they ain’t small paperbacks, people! It was written by the great Indian sage Vyasa around 800-900 BC (though the surviving fragments only date from around 400 BC) and together with the Ramayana is considered the Hindu Itihasa, or history of their people.

In addition to relating the tale of warring princes and kingdoms, the text offers advice on spiritual, philosophical and devotional issues, and is treated by Hindus with the same reverence as Christians ascribe the Bible, or Muslims the Qu’oran.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata

There is also the Baital Pachisi, which translates roughly to “Vikram and the Vampire”, something you’ll have come across if you’re reading my Vampire journal. If not, it’s a loose collection of stories which is said to have perhaps inspired one of the very greatest epics, not only of Islamic culture, but in the world, the 1001 Nights, better known as The Arabian Nights.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baital_Pachisi

Greek/Roman

But of course the best examples of early fantasy, at least that we’re more familiar with, come from the ancient Greeks, also adapted later by the Romans, usually with just a few name-changes to appease their gods. Great writers and poets of the time such as Homer, Virgil and Plato have given us stories that, while of course we now recognise them as fiction, some perhaps even allegorical, still enthrall and entertain us today. Timeless heroes like Odysseus and Achilles, Hercules, Theseus, Jason and Perseus still find their place in our twenty-first century world of computers and technology, sometimes updated but often with little change from how they were written back in ancient times. The whole structure of fantasy, particularly heroic fantasy and sword and sorcery, begins with the Greek and Roman playwrights and scribes. Things like quests, magical items, rebirth through struggle, rescue of princesses, encounters with gods and battles against evil all stem from these times and the writings of these men. It would be hard not to call them the fathers of fantasy literature.

Homer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer
Virgil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil
Plato: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato

Islamic

Despite however being written, at best estimates, approximately a thousand years after Homer put quill to parchment, the story cycle that has had the greatest impression upon the world and has lasted the longest comes from the Middle East, from Persia and Syria, where the tale of the One Thousand and One Nights, often called The Arabian Nights, introduces characters were are all familiar with, such as Ali Baba, Sinbad the Sailor and Aladdin. Written as a series of nested stories, as it were, the epic concerns the efforts of the princess Scheherazade to put off her execution by her husband the king, who mistrusts women after having been betrayed by his previous wife (and had her executed) and who intends to, and does, have every future wife murdered on her wedding night. Scheherazade uses the medium of storytelling to stay his hand, ensuring that each story ends on a cliffhanger, so that the king will wish to hear how the story turns out, and will have to keep her alive until the following night, when she promises to resume/finish the story.

Each story of course ends up leading into another one, ensuring her survival for one thousand and one nights, by which time the king, having learned and taken to heart the many philosophical lessons in Scheherazade’s stories, and also having learned that she is not like other women, can be trusted and that, in the end, he loves her, eventually spares her.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Th...and_One_Nights

EUROPEAN

English

The first proper tale of fantasy coming out of the shores of England is the epic of Beowulf, which tells of the efforts of the eponymous king to protect his realm from the marauding creature Grendel. Its author’s name is lost to the mists of time, and even the date of its composition can only be guessed at, though it seems to have been written somewhere around the same time as the tales that eventually comprised the One Thousand and One Nights were being collated into one epic. Although written in Old English and believed to be by an English (or at least, Anglo-Saxon) author, it is in fact set in Scandinavia, in Sweden.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf

Norway

Drawing deeply on the mythology of the Norse Vikings, the Prose Edda, written by Snorri Sturluson around the 13th century, is responsible for introducing the world of Thor, Odin and the Aesir to a broader audience outside of Scandinavia, and so paving the way for fantasy literature to take such characters to its bosom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose_Edda
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_mythology

Other important Nordic sagas include the Volsung Saga and the Nibelungenlied, both of which would be transformed into Wagner’s famous operatic Ring Cycle, and Frithjof’s Saga, which influenced fantasy writing in Europe, including one J.R.R. Tolkien.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Völsunga_saga
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungenlied
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frithiof%27s_Saga

Celtic

Irish and Welsh mythology is rich with figures who have been taken and used in fantasy literature, and has had a bearing too on one of the most important semi-historical/fantasy figures, King Arthur.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabinogion
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Cycle

03-09-2021, 07:23 PM	#18 (permalink)
Trollheart Born to be mild Join Date: Oct 2008 Location: 404 Not Found Posts: 26,970	So those are the many sub-genres of both science fiction and fantasy, but how did they get started? Well, it’s easy to see that fantasy was first, and had its origins in the myths and tales of the poets and scribes of ancient Greece, Rome and the sagas of Norway, among others. It’s true that mostly, at the time these were written they were not written as stories, but as accounts, fables or parables in which the writer himself believed. Homer’s Odyssey and Illiad are supposedly true accounts of events that happened, even if they may be very much embellished from the somewhat mundane truth. But man has always been fascinated by the different, the weird, the bizarre, the unexplainable. Flying horses, all-powerful gods, dwarfs dwelling in caverns beneath the earth, fantastical monsters and epic voyages and battles, magic and amazing feats caught the imagination back then, even as they do now, though in these enlightened ages we recognise that such things could not exist. We still enjoy them though; something does not have to be feasible or plausible to interest us. If it did, a huge swathe of fiction would disappear overnight. The first rule, they say, in storytelling is to hook the reader, or back then, the listener, in the first sentence or two. So openings like “A giant dwelled on a mountain” or “The son of the sultan took to the air on his magic flying carpet” were always going to grab the attention, and so figure strongly in the story. People wanted, and still want, to be entertained, and as ever, our overall attention span is low, hence the preponderance of never-pause-for-breath action movies gracing our cinemas these days, and possibly why some people - too many people, it seems to me - refuse to read a book. Instant gratification is the goal in this hurly-burly, can’t-stop world, and the majority of people, it would appear, simply have not or cannot spare the time to work through a developing story. Even more restless, those who could not read (which covered the vast majority) back in the days of Homer and Virgin and Cicero, were eager for action, action, action! They did not want a long, rambling introduction or scene setting up the story. Bam! Man on a flying dragon! Page one! Into the battle! People wouldn’t sit around waiting for things to happen, and so the storyteller had to make them happen, quickly and on cue and with increasing wonder and awe, one of the things that makes the likes of the Illiad so full of action, comparatively. Timeline of Fantasy Literature Timeline: 1800 BC - 1000 AD (approx) *Sumerian* Most scholars seem to agree that the Epic of Gilgamesh, written approximately 1800 BC, almost four hundred years after the death of the King of ancient Sumerian city Uruk, is the first real example of fantasy literature. Whether it was based on a real figure or not, it incorporates all the great tropes that would go on to define fantasy: monsters, seemingly invincible enemies, gods, demons, quests, heroes and companions. Note: as this list is bound to be long and feature numerous writings, I’ll only be giving a quick idea, the bare bones of the story here. Should you wish to research, read or watch the item in question further, links will be provided. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epic_of_Gilgamesh *Indian* India, too, has its ancient epics, one in fact being reckoned the longest epic poem ever. With over 200,000 verses totalling in excess of almost two million words, the Mahābhārata is twice the length of both the Odyssey and the Illiad combined - and they ain’t small paperbacks, people! It was written by the great Indian sage Vyasa around 800-900 BC (though the surviving fragments only date from around 400 BC) and together with the Ramayana is considered the Hindu Itihasa, or history of their people. In addition to relating the tale of warring princes and kingdoms, the text offers advice on spiritual, philosophical and devotional issues, and is treated by Hindus with the same reverence as Christians ascribe the Bible, or Muslims the Qu’oran. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahabharata There is also the Baital Pachisi, which translates roughly to “Vikram and the Vampire”, something you’ll have come across if you’re reading my Vampire journal. If not, it’s a loose collection of stories which is said to have perhaps inspired one of the very greatest epics, not only of Islamic culture, but in the world, the 1001 Nights, better known as The Arabian Nights. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baital_Pachisi *Greek/Roman* But of course the best examples of early fantasy, at least that we’re more familiar with, come from the ancient Greeks, also adapted later by the Romans, usually with just a few name-changes to appease their gods. Great writers and poets of the time such as Homer, Virgil and Plato have given us stories that, while of course we now recognise them as fiction, some perhaps even allegorical, still enthrall and entertain us today. Timeless heroes like Odysseus and Achilles, Hercules, Theseus, Jason and Perseus still find their place in our twenty-first century world of computers and technology, sometimes updated but often with little change from how they were written back in ancient times. The whole structure of fantasy, particularly heroic fantasy and sword and sorcery, begins with the Greek and Roman playwrights and scribes. Things like quests, magical items, rebirth through struggle, rescue of princesses, encounters with gods and battles against evil all stem from these times and the writings of these men. It would be hard not to call them the fathers of fantasy literature. Homer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homer Virgil: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virgil Plato: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plato *Islamic* Despite however being written, at best estimates, approximately a thousand years after Homer put quill to parchment, the story cycle that has had the greatest impression upon the world and has lasted the longest comes from the Middle East, from Persia and Syria, where the tale of the One Thousand and One Nights, often called The Arabian Nights, introduces characters were are all familiar with, such as Ali Baba, Sinbad the Sailor and Aladdin. Written as a series of nested stories, as it were, the epic concerns the efforts of the princess Scheherazade to put off her execution by her husband the king, who mistrusts women after having been betrayed by his previous wife (and had her executed) and who intends to, and does, have every future wife murdered on her wedding night. Scheherazade uses the medium of storytelling to stay his hand, ensuring that each story ends on a cliffhanger, so that the king will wish to hear how the story turns out, and will have to keep her alive until the following night, when she promises to resume/finish the story. Each story of course ends up leading into another one, ensuring her survival for one thousand and one nights, by which time the king, having learned and taken to heart the many philosophical lessons in Scheherazade’s stories, and also having learned that she is not like other women, can be trusted and that, in the end, he loves her, eventually spares her. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_Th...and_One_Nights *EUROPEAN* English The first proper tale of fantasy coming out of the shores of England is the epic of Beowulf, which tells of the efforts of the eponymous king to protect his realm from the marauding creature Grendel. Its author’s name is lost to the mists of time, and even the date of its composition can only be guessed at, though it seems to have been written somewhere around the same time as the tales that eventually comprised the One Thousand and One Nights were being collated into one epic. Although written in Old English and believed to be by an English (or at least, Anglo-Saxon) author, it is in fact set in Scandinavia, in Sweden. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beowulf *Norway* Drawing deeply on the mythology of the Norse Vikings, the Prose Edda, written by Snorri Sturluson around the 13th century, is responsible for introducing the world of Thor, Odin and the Aesir to a broader audience outside of Scandinavia, and so paving the way for fantasy literature to take such characters to its bosom. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prose_Edda https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norse_mythology Other important Nordic sagas include the Volsung Saga and the Nibelungenlied, both of which would be transformed into Wagner’s famous operatic Ring Cycle, and Frithjof’s Saga, which influenced fantasy writing in Europe, including one J.R.R. Tolkien. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Völsunga_saga https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nibelungenlied https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frithiof%27s_Saga *Celtic* Irish and Welsh mythology is rich with figures who have been taken and used in fantasy literature, and has had a bearing too on one of the most important semi-historical/fantasy figures, King Arthur. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mabinogion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ulster_Cycle __________________ Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018