Science-Fiction: The Early Years

{{Short description|Book by Everett F. Bleiler}}

{{Infobox book

| name = Science-Fiction: The Early Years

| image = Science-Fiction The Early Years.jpg

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| author = Everett F. Bleiler, Richard Bleiler

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| country = United States

| language = English

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| subject = Science fiction

| genre = Reference book

| publisher = Kent State University Press

| pub_date = 12 December 1990

| pages = 1024

| awards = Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction

| isbn = 0-87338-416-4

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| preceded_by = The Guide to Supernatural Fiction (1983)

| followed_by = Science-Fiction: The Gernsback Years (1998)

}}

Science-Fiction: The Early Years is an American reference book on early science fiction of all countries up until 1930, published by Kent State University Press. The book catalogues over 3000 science fiction works, many of which are very rare and have never been described before.{{cite web | url =https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3310121-science-fiction |title=Science-Fiction: The Early Years |publisher=Goodreads| date=| accessdate =1 August 2022}} The included works are novels, novelettes, short stories and occasional plays. Several indexes are included: motif and theme index, date index, magazine index, title index and author index. The book received the Locus Award for Best Non-Fiction in 1992.

The book's foreword acknowledges the difficulty of selecting both the initial and terminal date; the authors regard Johannes Kepler's Somnium (1634) as the first story "that could indisputably be called science-fiction". The year 1930 was chosen as the least objectionable of several possible terminal dates, being the point at which genre magazines became widely available in the United States. The book's catalogue is not regarded as complete, as at least two unimportant omissions have been noted (Garret Smith's "You've Killed Privacy!" and Donn Byrne's "Through 'HELL' to Peace").{{cite journal |title=Review: Science, Fictive Science, and Science Fiction: Bleiler's Massive Bibliography |first=R. D. |last=Mullen |journal=Science Fiction Studies |date=July 1991 |volume=18 |issue=2 |page=267 |jstor=4240064}}