Scientific romance

In recent years the term has come to be applied to science fiction written in a deliberately anachronistic style as a homage to or pastiche of the original scientific romances.

[7] The term is most widely applied to Jules Verne, as in the 1879 edition of the American Cyclopædia,[8] and H. G. Wells, whose historical society continues to refer to his work as "scientific romances" today.

[15] In recent years the term "scientific romance" has seen a revival, being self-applied in works of science fiction that deliberately ape previous styles.

Most notably, the British writers tended to minimise the role of individual "heroes", took an "evolutionary perspective", held a bleak view of the future, and had little interest in space as a new frontier.

Even in scientific romances that did not involve vast stretches of time, the issue of whether mankind was just another species subject to evolutionary pressures often arose, as can be seen in parts of The Hampdenshire Wonder by J. D. Beresford and several works by S. Fowler Wright.

John Wyndham's work has been cited as providing "a bridge between traditional British scientific romance and the more varied science fiction which has replaced it".