Many trace its beginnings to HG Wells and Jules Verne, whose work filled my bookshelves as a teenager. Verne's characters now seem rather two-dimensional, but he tried to get the Science right, and was rather sniffy when Wells simply invented stuff to make his stories work. For example, Wells created 'Cavorite', an anti-gravity substance to power his spacecraft for 'The First Men in the Moon' whilst Verne envisaged some kind of giant gun to fire his travellers into space. (Thankfully, it was never tried.) But Verne was only out to showcase the possibilities of 19th century Science, when Wells was exploring broader ideas with fantasies that placed realistic characters in strange new settings- and his results are far superior. 'The War of the Worlds' is just as much a satire on Western Imperialism as a rattling good yarn, and still worth a read.
But before them, a woman created the first real SF tale- Mary Shelley's 'Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus'. Like Wells, Shelley explores the implications of Scientific discovery, but she's also asking much bigger questions about human pride, loneliness and hope. Her Doctor is probably the first Mad Scientist in popular fiction- but his Creature is a highly sympathetic figure until Despair gets the better of him. There's many a reference to Milton's Paradise Lost and the Bible on the way. Creation and Fall, aspiration and destruction are all wrapped up in a gothic tale of high drama.
So where could a discerning reader find some good SF? Here are some starters.
EM Forster's 'The Machine Stops' envisages a society living in perpetual lockdown, Written in 1909, it even predicts Zoom. Read it here for free. https://www.ele.uri.edu/faculty/vetter/Other-stuff/The-Machine-Stops.pdf
Colson Whitehead's 'The Underground Railroad,' (2016) turns a 19th century slave-smuggling network into a real, functioning secret railway, following the adventures of one escaped African-American struggling for freedom- and on the way, encountering a whole series of responses to how the United States has tried to 'solve' The Problem of Slavery. Under the current circumstances, a must-read for anyone trying to understand the African-American historical experience.
Frank Herbert's 'Dune' (1965) is a 20th century masterpiece. The desert planet Arrakis is the only known source of Spice, an addictive drug that extends life expectancy. However, its human inhabitants wage a constant fight for survival against both the giant worms that create the spice, but also the noble families who run the planet as a personal fiefdom. A new family is given control of the planet, but politics intrudes- and one boy discovers a messianic destiny. Space-opera writ-large, for adults. (As a follow-on, read the prequels, but not the sequels.)
Zenna Henderson's 'Pilgrimage: the Book of the People''(1965) is a series of stories about one teacher's encounters with a rural refugee community with a past, living in constant fear of discovery and persecution through their alien origins. Her schoolwork with their children provides a wonderful parable about the power of education to liberate young minds. Once read, never forgotten. My own 'The Tyranny of Heav'n' does contain a fair dollop of hard Science, which hopefully won't get in the way of the bigger story, which come to think of it, probably owes quite a lot to Zenna Henderson.
Got any others to share?
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Any requests of subjects for future posts? No idea too stupid for consideration. And yes, I know I am a bad writer, so don't bother saying that unless you can write something better. But maybe there's a topic buzzing around in your head that you'd like to see covered... because I've got a keyboard here, it's loaded with letters, and I ain't afraid to use it.