ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book presents a selection of the British and American fiction which would evolve in the following century into science fiction. It offers examples of speculative fiction thematically grouped around scientific experiments and new developments in technology, frequently cast in the form of case studies. One of the most controversial of the new sciences was phrenology, which claimed that the shape of the skull could reveal an individual’s character. It became the subject of heated controversy in Edinburgh in the 1810s and more generally throughout the early decades of the nineteenth century. By the mid-century, phrenology had become assimilated into mainstream realist fiction, featuring in the novels of Dickens, Melville, and Charlotte Bronte, among others.
