Definitions -- SF and the ancient novel -- From Medieval romance to sixteenth-century utopia -- Seventeenth-century SF -- Eighteenth-century SF: big, little -- Early 19th-century SF -- SF 1850-1900: mobility and mobilisation -- Verne and Wells -- The early 20th century, 1: high modernist SF -- The early 20th century, 2: the pulps -- Golden Age SF: 1940-1960 -- The impact of the New Wave: SF of the 1960s and 1970s -- SF screen media, 1960-2000: Hollywood cinema and TV -- Prose SF of the 1980s and 1990s -- Late 20th century SF: Multimedia, visual SF and others -- 21st-century science fiction.