The presenter on my “Classical Mythology” lecture CDs said that science fiction is the direct literary and cultural descendant of Greek and Roman mythology. She only spent a half hour on the topic, but there’s definitely a good case to be made.
Interesting. I hadn’t heard any of these before. I’ve actually heard the case that SciFi is an almost uniquely American thing (or atleast capitalist, which would explain the Gundum and other SciFi in Japan other asian countries). But it seems that with defining SciFi from the Greeks (or earlier) you would have figure out what the line between Scifi and Fantasy, but then again I just see SciFi as a subset off fantasy (a one with it’s own life, but still an offshoot)... so I see them inexorably linked in some ways.
Was that a Teaching Company course? Those are terrific, aren’t they.