Scientific marvelous (also spelled with a hyphen: scientific-marvelous) is a literary genre that developed in France from the end of the 19th century to the middle of the 20th century. Akin today to science fiction, this literature of scientific imagination revolves around key themes such as mad scientists and their extraordinary inventions, lost worlds, exploration of the solar system, catastrophes and the advent of supermen.
Emerging in the wake of Jules Verne's scientific novels, this literary current took shape in the second half of the 19th century, moving away from the Verne model and centering on a new generation of authors such as Albert Robida, Camille Flammarion, J.-H. Rosny aîné and Maurice Renard, the latter claiming the works of the more imaginative novelists Edgar Allan Poe and H. G. Wells as his model. Consequently, in 1909 Renard published a manifesto in which he appropriated a neologism coined in the 19th century, "scientific marvelous", adding a hyphen to emphasize the link between the modernization of the fairy tale and the rationalization of the supernatural. Thus defined, the scientific-marvelous novel, set within a rational framework, relies on the alteration of a scientific law around which the plot is built, in order to give the reader food for thought by presenting the threats and delights of science.
Mainly employed by popular novelists, this genre draws on the sciences and pseudo-sciences that resonate with public opinion, such as radiographic, electrical and biological discoveries. However, despite the theoretical foundation provided by Maurice Renard in 1909, scientific-marvelous literature failed to take shape as a literary movement, and in the end constituted no more than a heterogeneous and scattered literary whole. Despite the arrival of a new generation of authors such as , , , Jacques Spitz and André Maurois, this literature failed to renew itself and gradually declined from the 1930s onwards, while at the same time, in the United States, literature of scientific imagination enjoyed great success under the name of "science fiction", with a broadening of its themes. Presented as a new genre, science fiction arrived in France in the 1950s and, seducing French authors and readers, completed the demise of the scientific-marvelous current and its generations of writers.
A marginal and unassumed genre during the second half of the 20th century, the scientific marvelous has been the subject of renewed public attention since the late 1990s, thanks to the critical work of a number of researchers and the reappropriation of this forgotten literary genre by authors, particularly in the comic strip medium.
Origins
Although some authors, such as Rabelais, experimented with conjectural literature early on in their fictional careers, it wasn't until the 19th century that the genre really took off. In fact, as early as the end of the eighteenth century, began publishing his "" between 1787 and 1789, the first collection devoted to the literature of the imaginary. In its thirty-six volumes, the collection offers seventy-four conjectural tales on the themes of utopia, exploration and scientific anticipation.
In the 19th century, despite a short-lived attempt at structuring, literature of this kind remained scattered and diffusely published. In 1834, attempted to catalogue all the inventions from which humans could benefit in . The following year, Edgar Allan Poe published The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall, a journalistic hoax detailing a man's incredible journey to the Moon. In 1846, Émile Souvestre published , an anticipation tale set in the year 3000. It is still considered a major work of dystopian literature. In 1854, C. I. Defontenay broke new ground in scientific fantasy literature with the publication of . The novel included detailed descriptions of the habits and customs of an extraterrestrial civilization. However, this production does not establish a specific literary genre due to its scattered nature, as many novelists attribute such ramblings to the narrator's dreams or madness. Nonetheless, it has yet to establish itself.