Fiction, Science Fiction, Drama, Poetry Timeline Outline

Probably the Earliest Surviving Recipe for Making Beer
(Circa 1,800 BCE)

The Rigveda
(Circa 1,700 BCE – 1,100 BCE)

Probably the Earliest Surviving Papyrus of a Greek Text
(Circa 350 BCE)

A "Wild" or "Eccentric" Papyrus of the Iliad
(Circa 275 BCE)

The Beginning of Latin Literature
(Circa 250 BCE)

The Earliest Surviving Datable Examples of Rustic Capitals
(31 BCE – 79 CE)

The Oldest Surviving Manuscript of the Comedies of Terence
(Circa 350 CE – 450 CE)

Early Christians May Have Destroyed What Remained of the Alexandrian Library Because of its Pagan Contents
(391 CE)

The Codex Mediceus of Virgil
(Circa 450 CE)

Partial Inventory of the Court Library of Charlemagne at Aachen
(Circa 790)

Charlemagne Renews Book and Library Culture
(800 – 877)

"The most ingenious and expressive work of narrative art known from all of Late Antiquity"
(820)

The Fables of Phaedrus
(Circa 850)

The Earliest-Known Manuscript of the Arabian Nights
(October 20, 879)

One of the Two Oldest Manuscripts of Ovid's Ars Amatoria
(Circa 880)

Perhaps the First Grammar of a Romance Language
(Circa 1240)

The Planudean Anthology as Basis for the Anthologia Graeca
(1299 – 1301)

Zilbaldone
(Circa 1350)

The Largest and Finest Collection of Greek Texts before Bessarion's
(December 15, 1423)

The First Printed Editions of Virgil
(1469 – 1470)

The First Printing of a Major Greek Work in its Original Language
(1488 – 1489)

Portrait of a Elegant Young Man Mishandling a Book
(Circa 1535)

The First Publication of Shakespeare's Sonnets
(May 20, 1609)

The First Book to Contain Images of Organisms Viewed through the Microscope
(1630)

Some of the Earliest Printed Examples of Concrete or Shaped Poetry
(1633)

Popol Vuh, The Book of the People, Known from a Single Manuscript
(1701 – 2012)

Possibly the Earliest Reference to a Fictional Device that Resembles a Modern Computer
(1726)

The First General-Interest Periodical and the First to Use the Word "Magazine" to Indicate a Storehouse of Knowledge
(January 1731)

Candide, ou l'Optimism
(1759)

The First Book Printed Entirely on Wove Paper
(October 6, 1759 – 1760)

The Poetry of Homer as a Product of Oral Tradition
(1795)

Invention of Lithography
(1796 – 1800)

The First Literary Magazine Published in the United States
(1815)

The First Indigenous Arabic Press in Egypt
(December 1822)

The First "Livre d'Artiste"
(1828)

The First Complete Printed Edition in Arabic of the Thousand and One Nights
(1835)

"Darwin among the Machines"
(June 13, 1863)

Schliemann Discovers the Ancient City of Troy
(1871 – 1873)

"Erewhon"
(1872)

Listening to the Earliest Surviving Recording of a Musical Performance
(June 22, 1878 – October 2012)

Imagining a Library One Hundred Years in the Future
(1883)

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions
(1884)

First Use of the Term "Credit Card"
(1887)

Lewis Carroll Wrote or Received 98,000 Letters
(January 14, 1898)

The Earliest Fictional Account of a Universal Library, Foreshadowing the Virtual Library on the Internet
(1901)

An Early Sci-Fi View of the Internet and Virtual Reality
(November 1909)

Robot
(1920)

The Literature and Culture of Suicide
(1927)

Visionary of New Reading Machines and Changes in the Process of Reading
(1930 – 1931)

La Realite Virtuelle
(1938)

Mass Hysteria Induced by Electronic Media
(October 30, 1938)

Fantasies of an All-Encompassing Archive or "Universal Library"
(1939)

Borges' Universe as a Library, or Universal Library or Archive
(1941)

"Waldo" : Imagining Remote Manipulators and TeleRobotics
(August 1942)

"Nineteen Eighty-Four"
(1949)

"Fahrenheit 451"
(1953 – 2011)

The First Use of a Computer to Write Literary Texts
(October 1954)

One of the Earliest Surviving British Television Dramas
(December 12 – December 14, 1954)

"Nineteen Eighty-Four" Filmed
(1956)

Satirizing the Role of Automation in Eliminating Jobs, and Librarians
(1957)

The First Digital Poetry
(1959)

"Dial F for Frankenstein"
(1961)

Spacewar, the First Computer Game for a Commercially Available Computer
(1962)

Dylan's "The Times They Are A-Changin' "
(1963)

The Printing and the Mind of Man Exhibition
(July 16 – July 27, 1963)

"2001: A Space Odyssey"
(1968)

Replicants
(1968)

The First Widely-Attended International Exhibition of Computer Art
(August 2 – October 20, 1968)

The Name of the Rose
(1980)

Blade Runner
(1982)

William Gibson Coins the Word Cyberspace
(July 1982)

The Earliest Fictional Treatment of Word Processing by a Prominent Literary Author
(January 1983)

Cyberspace
(1984)

The First Book Written by a Computer Program
(1984)

The Perseus Digital Library Project
(1985)

Probably the Best Book History and Library Film Set in the Middle Ages
(1986)

Foundation of Computational Sylistics
(1987)

The First Hypertext Fiction: "Afternoon, a story"
(1987 – 1990)

Visions of a Metaverse
(June 1992)

The Electronic Beowulf
(1993)

Jurassic Park
(1993)

The Matrix
(1999)

Conflicts between Androids and Men
(2001)

Minority Report
(2002)

Working Around Chinese Censorship of Literary Works
(2002)

The First Cell Phone Novel
(2003)

300,000,000 Printed Copies
(October 5, 2005)

The Film "Avatar" and Visions of Reality, Virtual and Otherwise
(December 10, 2009)

Bestsellers on eBook Readers: Romance Novels
(December 9, 2010)

The Second Best-Selling Book in America Priced Like an App (99 Cents)
(February 25, 2011)

"Turn on, Tune in, Drop Out": The New York Public Library Buys the Timothy Leary Papers
(June 2011)

"Distant Reading" Versus "Close Reading"
(June 24, 2011)

Action Comics #1 Superman sells for $2.16 Million
(November 11 – November 30, 2011)

What Makes Spoken Lines in Movies Memorable
(April 30, 2012)

How eBooks Are Changing Fiction Writing and Publishing
(May 12, 2012)

The World's Smallest Book Requires a Scanning Electron Microscope to be Seen
(September 25, 2012)

Computer Graphic Animation Indistinguishable from Nature
(December 22, 2012)

Jane Austin and Walter Scott Were the Two Most Influential Novelists of the 19th Century: A Discovery Made Through Digital Humanities Research
(January 26, 2013)