Science fiction and adventure stories
I'm reading the voyages of Sinbad as part of the Arabian Nights, and I'm struck by how closely it resembles modern science fiction. In his second journey he is stranded on an unknown island, populated only by a giant bird who blots out the sun. He escapes by tying himself to the birds leg, before landing on a second island filled with giant snakes and valleys full of diamonds. He eventually makes his escape with some merchants come in search of the diamonds, and makes his way home.
The connection with sci fi comes in the unknown, the sense of undiscovered worlds and fantastic creatures. One of the things I've liked about Arabian Nights is the sense of wonder about our own world. It's written in a time when much of the world was still unknown, and the storytellers imagine fantastic, wonderful possibilities. As scientific explorers charted the known world in the 19th and early 20th centuries, our storytelling imaginations shifted from undiscovered parts of the planet to the stars, and space carried that sense of menace, wonder, and limitless possibility that our formerly uncharted planet used to carry.
Dreams and imagination lives on in our uncharted areas...wherever that may be.
