Comment by flohofwoe
16 days ago
> What, you thought early era SF used accurate science?
It depends on the author I guess. Stanislaw Lem for instance mostly separated his "silly-fiction universes" (e.g. the Ijon Tichy and 'robot fairytales' novels) from his "hard sci-fi" universes (for instance the Pilot Pirx novels) - and there it was mostly about the restrictions of space travel (where space travel is usually just plain old cargo hauling), Pirx never left the solar system because it simply wasn't possible during his lifetime (part of him eventually did - maybe - in his last book 'Fiasco'), instead the Pirx novels were mostly occupied with typical 'space trucker' problems like oil leaks on his rocket boosters, wrestling with space harbour bureaucracy or the occasional humanoid robot going into a mode that could be described as 'mad' or 'depressed'.
Early SF would be a couple decades before Lem.
Or more. The War of the Worlds was published half a century before Lem's first novel. And arguably SF goes back farther than that. Jules Verne in 1864. Frankenstein was published in 1818.
Yeah, I'm deliberately sticking to the time period when SF was recognized as a genre in its own right, distinct from others. Otherwise we might have to go back a few centuries, depending on one's definition of sci-fi!