19th Century Science Fiction Short Stories

19th century science fiction

Over the years several anthologies have reprinted science fiction short stories from the 1800’s. These tales are fascinating to read on many levels. Way before the establishment of the science fiction genre, writers were telling science fictional stories. Even without modern technology, they explored the same SF possibilities we do today. Ideas I thought original with Golden Age science fiction writers turn out to be much older. Reading these stories reveals universals about human nature that you don’t get from history books.

The Anthologies

1954 – The Treasury of Science Fiction Classics edited by Harold W. Kuebler
1962 – A Century of Science Fiction edited by Damon Knight
1967 – Masterpieces of Science Fiction edited by Sam Moskowitz
1968 – Science Fiction by Gaslight edited by Sam Moskowitz
1972 – Worlds Apart edited by George Locke
1976 – Beyond the Gaslight edited by Hilary and Dik Evans
1977 – The Road to Science Fiction: From Gilgamesh to Wells edited by James Gunn
1979 – Science Fiction by the Rivals of H. G. Wells edited by Alan K. Russell
1981 – Isaac Asimov Presents the Best Science of the 19th Century edited by Asimov, Greenberg, Waugh
1995 – Future Perfect edited by H. Bruce Franklin
2012 – A Victorian Science Fiction Reader edited by Graham C. Lester
2016 – Frankenstein Dreams edited by Michael Sims
2017 – Scientific Romances edited by Brian Stableford

The Stories

Here are all the stories from the above anthologies. You can see the editors have done a good job of finding stories the other editors haven’t, although there are stories loved by more than one editor. Where I can, I’ve linked to an online version of the story. If one isn’t available, I’ll link to an essay about the story. For some stories, you’ll need to get the anthology. Actually, reading the anthologies are much more convenient.

Year	Title	Author	Editor
1809	The Conquest of the Earth by the Moon	Washington Irving	Franklin
1833	The Mortal Immortal	Mary Shelley	Asimov, Moskowitz
1835	The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Phall	Edgar Allan Poe	Moskowitz
1835	The Great Moon Hoax	Richard A. Locke	Lester, Sims
1839	The Conversation of Eiros and Charmion	Edgar Allan Poe	Kuebler
1840	A Heavenward Voyage	Samuel-Henry Berthoud	Stableford
1844	A Tale of the Ragged Mountains	Edgar Allan Poe	Franklin
1844	Rappaccini’s Daughter	Nathaniel Hawthorne	Franklin, Asimov, Gunn
1844	The Artist of the Beautiful	Nathaniel Hawthorne	Franklin, Stableford
1844	The Sandman	E. T. A. Hoffman	Asimov
1845	The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar	Edgar Allan Poe	Sims
1849	Mellonta Tauta	Edgar Allan Poe	Franklin, Gunn
1852	A Descent Into the Maelstrom	Edgar Allan Poe	Asimov
1854	The Birthmark	Nathaniel Hawthorne	Franklin
1855	The Bell-Tower	Herman Melville	Franklin
1858	The Diamond Lens	Fitz-James O’Brien	Franklin, Gunn, Lester
1859	The Wondersmith	Fitz-James O’Brien	Moskowitz
1859	What Was It?	Fitz-James O’Brien	Stableford
1860	The Atoms of Chladni	J. D. Whelpley	Franklin
1863	Darwin Among the Machines	Samuel Butler	Lester
1870	From Man’s Rights: Or, How Would You Like It?	Annie Denton Cridge	Franklin
1872	The Brick Moon	Edward Everett Hale	Moskowitz
1872	The End of the World	Eugène Mouton	Stableford
1873	The Automaton Ear	Florence McLandburgh	Sims
1874	The Tachypomp	Edward Page Mitchell	Davies
1875	The Soul Spectroscope	Edward Page Mitchell	Davies
1875	The Story of the Deluge	Edward Page Mitchell	Davies
1876	The Inside of the Earth	Edward Page Mitchell	Davies
1876	The Telescope Eye	William Henry Rhodes	Sims
1877	The Age of Science	Frances Power Cobbe	Lester
1877	The Man Without a Body	Edward Page Mitchell	Davies
1879	A Paradoxical Ode (After Shelley)	James Clerk Maxwell	Stableford
1879	A Psychological Shipwreck	Ambrose Bierce	Franklin
1879	The Ablest Man in the World	Edward Page Mitchell	Davies, Stableford
1879	The Facts in the Ratcliff Case	Edward Page Mitchell	Davies
1879	The Senator’s Daughter	Edward Page Mitchell	Davies, Sims
1880	From Mizora: A Prophecy	Mary E. Bradley Lane	Franklin
1880	The Professor’s Experiment	Edward Page Mitchell	Davies
1881	The Clock That Went Backwards	Edward Page Mitchell	Asimov, Davies, Sims
1881	The Crystal Man	Edward Page Mitchell	Davies
1882	Into the Sun	Robert Duncan Milne	Asimov, Davies
1882	Josuah Electricmann	Ernest d’Hervilly	Stableford
1884	A Tale of Negative Gravity	Frank R. Stockton	Asimov, Davies
1884	The Child of the Phalanstery	Grant Allen	Stableford
1885	Old Squids and Little Speller	Edward Page Mitchell	Davies
1885	The Great Keinplatz Experiment	Arthur Conan Doyle	Asimov, Davies
1886	The Blindman’s World	Edward Bellamy	Franklin
1886	The Monarch of Dreams	Thomas Wentworth Higginson	Franklin, Sims
1887	Christmas 200,000 B.C.	Stanley Waterloo	Franklin
1887	The Horla, or Modern Ghosts	Guy de Maupassant	Asimov
1887	The Shapes (Les Xipéhuz)	J. H. Rosny aîné	Asimov
1888	An Express of the Future	Jules Verne	Moskowitz
1888	Tornadres	J. H. Rosny aîné	Stableford
1889	Our Second Voyage to Mars	W. S. Lach-Szyrma	Evans
1889	To Whom This May Come	Edward Bellamy	Asimov, Davies
1890	Dr. Materialismus	Frederic Jesup Stimson	Franklin
1890	In the Year Ten Thousand	Edgar Fawcett	Stableford
1890	Professor’s Bakermann’s Microbe	Charles Epheyre	Stableford
1891	Old Doctor Rutherford	D. F. Hannigan	Moskowitz
1891	The Revolt of the Machines	Emile Goudeau	Stableford
1891	The Salvation of Nature	John Davidson	Stableford
1892	In the Year Ten Thousand	Will N. Harben	Franklin
1892	The Doom of London	Robert Barr	Moskowitz
1892	The Los Amigos Fiasco	Arthur Conan Doyle	Moskowitz
1892	The Philosophy of Relative Existence	Frank R. Stockton	Stableford
1893	June, 1993	Julian Hawthorne	Stableford
1893	Mysterious Disappearances	Ambrose Bierce	Sims
1893	The Damned Thing	Ambrose Bierce	Gunn, Kuebler
1895	A Wife Manufactured to Order	Alice W. Fuller	Sims
1895	Lost in a Comet’s Tale	Luis P. Senarens	Moskowitz
1895	The Purple Death	W. L. Alden	Davies, Russell
1896	Citizen 504	Charles H. Palmer	Moskowitz
1896	In the Abyss	H. G. Wells	Asimov
1896	In the Deep of Time	George Parsons Lathrop, Thomas A. Edison	Locke
1896	London’s Danger	C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne	Evans, Russell
1897	The Aeriel Brickfield	John Mills	Evans
1897	The Crystal Egg	H. G. Wells	Knight
1897	The Microbe of Death	Rudolph De Cordova	Russell
1897	The Star	H. G. Wells	Kuebler, Stableford
1897	The Thames Valley Catastrophe	Grant Allen	Asimov, Davies, Evans, Moskowitz, Russell, Sims
1898	A Corner in Lightning	George Griffith	Evans, Moskowitz, Stableford
1898	From the “London Times” of 1904	Mark Twain	Franklin, Knight
1898	The Lizard	C. J. Cutcliffe Hyne	Asimov, Evans, Russell
1898	Where the Air Quivered	L. T. Meade, Robert Eustace	Moskowitz
1899	A Thousand Deaths	Jack London	Asimov, Davies, Franklin
1899	Moxon’s Master	Ambrose Bierce	Knight
1899	The Master of the Octopus	Edward Olin Weeks	Russell
1899	The Monster of Lake LaMetrie	Wardon Allan Curtis	Moskowitz, Russell, Sims
1899	The Purple Terror	Fred M. White	Davies, Evans, Moskowitz, Russell
1899	The Wheels of Dr. Ginochio Gyves	Ellsworth Douglass, Edwin Pallander	Locke, Russell

James Wallace Harris (9/20/18)

11 thoughts on “19th Century Science Fiction Short Stories”

I’d also recommend Brian Stableford’s Scientific Romances and the first and fifth volumes of James Gunn’s The Road to Science Fiction. I’m not sure if Stableford’s work with Black Coat Press has any good collections of 19th French sf though there are some French works in Scientific Romances and in some author collections like Edmond Haracourt’s work.

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jameswharris says:

September 20, 2018 at 11:43 pm

Thanks, Marzaat. I went and bought Scientific Romances. I have Stableford’s 4-volume New Atlantis, so this will make a great supplement. I’ve owned The Road to Science Fiction series for years, so I should have remembered to include it. I’ll update the list in the future with Stableford and Gunn.

Since I don’t know French, I haven’t tried to keep up with French science fiction. I take it, you do?

By the way, did you see the other day Gunn’s The Dreamers were on sale for ebooks?

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1. marzaat says:
  
  September 21, 2018 at 12:12 am
  
  I have a copy of The Dreamers under the VT The Mind Master. I didn’t happen to make any notes on that one when reading it, so no review.
  Black Coat Press specializes in translated French works and lately Stableford has been putting in a lot of time translating and writing scholarly introductions to the books. You can find some of those introductions for free at the New York Review of Science Fiction website.
  
  I don’t read French myself so I only know the work through Stableford.
  
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Damon Knight edited an anthology of French science fiction stories (Thirteen French Science-Fiction Stories) and also translated some French SF himself.

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I read the very earliest piece—by Washington Irving—and I was passably well entertained, but it’s not science fiction. In fact, it isn’t fiction at all. It’s political satire; more particularly, it’s a scathingly sarcastic (albeit humorous) argument/indictment of the assumed right of white settlers to occupy North America and displace the indigenous population.

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jameswharris says:

September 21, 2018 at 5:24 pm

Yeah, often these editors don’t use my definition of science fiction. On the other hand, most readers don’t use my definition of science fiction either. It bugs we when people think anything weird or strange must be science fiction.

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This is an excellent list! Thank you for compiling my reading list for me. 🙂

One small detail, if I may; Frank Reade Junior is the protagonist of “Lost In A Comet’s Tail.” It was actually written by Cuban-American author Luis Senarens.

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