This book, very popular at the time, combined elements of the Utopia, the Robinsonade and the episodic adventure novel, and could be regarded as the earliest German forerunner of adventure sf. The eighteenth century saw publication of Wunderliche Fata einiger Seefahrer (4 parts 1731-1743), usually known as Insel Felsenburg, by Johann Gottfried Schnabel (1692-1752). Considered a masterpiece of its time is the picaresque novel Der abenteuerliche Simplizissimus ( 1669 trans A T S Goodricke as The Adventurous Simplicissimus 1912 retrans H Weissenborn and L Macdonald 1963) by Johann Jakob Christoffel von Grimmelshausen (1622-1676), which contains, inter alia, a journey into a Utopia located in the centre of the Hollow Earth. The roots of German sf can be traced back to the seventeenth century, when the astronomer Johannes Kepler's Somnium ( 1634 in Latin trans into German as Traum von Mond 1898 trans E Rosen as Kepler's "Somnium" 1967) reflected, in semifictional form, on life on the Moon. There is a separate entry for Austria, with which there is a small and inevitable overlap: many books by Austrian writers were in fact published in Germany, and many Austrians have lived in Germany – some, indeed, working in the German publishing industry. This entry covers the whole of Germany, including the former GDR (East Germany).
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