The prescientific universe

This essay is by Isaac Asimov, a Russian-born American biochemist who wrote a huge amount of science fiction and popular science.

Fiction means invented stories; this essay is non-fiction, an argument about where such stories come from. Science fiction is fiction built on science and technology, the kind of story that fills us with wonder, as films like 'Avatar' do today.

True science fiction, he says, is only about two centuries old. It needs one idea: that science and technology will shape the future.

That idea came only when change became fast enough to be seen within one lifetime: with the Industrial Revolution, around 1800.

Before that, most people had little idea of unbreakable laws of nature. They thought the universe was moved by living wills, by beings who chose what to do.

So great natural events (storms, earthquakes, floods) were imagined as the work of beings like us but greater: gods of superhuman size, strength and lifespan, or giant animals.