Foundations of STEM Fiction: Two STEM Fictions from 1835 That Imagined Our 21st-Century Reality Edited and Introduced by Jason Kassel, PhD Before AI. Before space stations. Before satellites. In 1835, two short works appeared-one in New York, the other in Paris-that eerily predicted technologies, dilemmas, and philosophical questions that define our twenty-first century. Foundations of STEM Fiction brings these visionary stories together in a new educational edition that bridges historical imagination with contemporary relevance. The first tale, originally published in The Sun newspaper as "The Great Moon Hoax," describes a fictional astronomer's lunar discoveries, including bat-like inhabitants and crystalline cities. Though entirely invented, it represents one of the earliest literary attempts to apply scientific method, telescope-based observation, and public reasoning to extraterrestrial life-a fictional prototype of systems-based STEM storytelling. The second story, Edgar Allan Poe's "The Unparalleled Adventure of One Hans Pfaall," goes even further.

Written in the same year, Poe's tale combines atmospheric science, pressure mechanics, propulsion logic, and first-person narrative to envision a trip to the Moon-complete with slow oxygen loss, trajectory control, and the eerie isolation of deep space. Poe's tale is not just early science fiction-it is early STEM fiction. This volume includes: The full original texts Line-by-line annotations connecting nineteenth-century metaphors to modern science A comparative introduction by Jason Kassel, PhD Illustrations and diagrams that highlight the system-thinking embedded in the fiction Designed for educators, students, and curious readers age 12+, this volume shows how fiction became a lab for scientific imagination-and why literary STEM literacy still matters today.