Brief Essays on Genre, Part 1: On the Origin of Science Fiction

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On the Origin of Science Fiction

 

The first written glyph was a straight line drawn with a stick in the mud or sand and it meant: I am here. This was the beginning of history.

 

A moment’s reflection, however, reveals that implicit in the statement was another: I was not always here. This was the beginning of literature.

 

So science fiction, the literature of change, was present in written language from the very beginning.

 

--Michael Swanwick