On September 8, 1966, Star Trek made its television debut.
Science fiction deals mainly with the impact of actual or imagined science upon
society or individuals. The term also refers to a literary fantasy that includes some scientific factor as an essential orienting component. Either way you look at it, Star Trek is science fiction.
Science fiction may consist of careful and informed extrapolation of scientific
principles, or it may range into far-fetched areas flatly contradictory of accepted concepts.
Although the term didn't appear in print until 1851, the genre of science fiction is considered to be a bit older. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein, published in 1818, is a precursor of the form. Science fiction proper began to develop near the end of the nineteenth century with the novels of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells, and its birth as a self-conscious genre can be traced to 1926, when Hugo Gernsback founded Amazing Stories, a magazine devoted exclusively to science fiction. Gernsback has two other claims to fame in the science fiction world: he coined the blend word scientifiction (meaning "science fiction"), and he was also the person for whom the Hugo, an award recognizing notable achievement in science-fiction writing, was named.
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