Four centuries ago, the philosopher, statesman and father of the scientific method Francis Bacon wrote a proto sci-fi book that would help reshape the world. The vision of ‘Salomon’s House’ inspired the Royal Society (the oldest continuously existing scientific academy on earth, founded in 1660 “for Improving Natural Knowledge”), and the research laboratory/university.
When a crew of lost European sailors is blown off course and stumbles upon the hidden island of Bensalem, they discover a civilisation far in advance of their own. At its heart sits Salomon’s House, a state-funded college of scholars dedicated to “the knowledge of causes, and secret motions of things; and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.”
The New Atlantis is among the earliest works of fiction to imagine a hidden, technologically advanced civilisation discovered by shipwrecked travellers, a premise that would recur throughout science fiction for centuries to come. Bacon outlines a culture far in advance of its day, that has already discovered are submarines, aeroplanes, artificial flavourings, amplifiers, hearing aids, microscopes, telephones, air-conditioning, refrigeration, skyscrapers, particle accelerators, artificial light, artificial metals and materials, and perpetual motion machines.
The book is appropriately unfinished, due to Bacon’s death in 1626, from pneumonia possibly caught while experimenting with snow as a preservative. Alongside Thomas More’s Utopia, the book defined the genre of utopian literature. It is also credited as a cornerstone of modern political thought, outlining a state built around enabling human betterment through reason. The vision of Salomon’s House as a place of organised, public science gave the world a lasting blueprint for institutionalised research as collaborative, state-sponsored, and methodical.
