Early Science Fiction: Verne to Wells

The label “science fiction” was coined in the 1920s, but the books it was coined to describe had been popular for sixty years by then. This list pairs the two writers who defined the form in the nineteenth century, Jules Verne in France and H. G. Wells in England, and starts with the book both are usually traced back to.

Frankenstein (1818)

Included as the prologue: a creature made by study and experiment rather than magic. It is Gothic in tone, but its premise is the one later science fiction builds on.

Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870)

Verne’s method was to take the engineering of his day and extend it. The Nautilus is a plausible submarine described in loving detail, and the book is as much a tour of the oceans as a plot. Readers who dislike long descriptive passages may prefer to start with the next entry.

Around the World in Eighty Days (1872)

Verne’s fastest book, with a deadline plot and no invented technology at all; the wonder is the real railway and steamship network of 1872. A good bridge between adventure fiction and science fiction.

The Time Machine (1895)

Wells’ first novel is short, bleak and focused on one idea, the far future of the human species. Where Verne extrapolates machines, Wells extrapolates society.

The War of the Worlds (1898)

The first alien-invasion novel, narrated by an ordinary man in the Surrey suburbs. Wells wrote it partly as a comment on British colonialism, and its structure (reportage rather than heroics) set the pattern for most disaster fiction since.