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Was This 400-Year-Old Forgery the First Sci-Fi Novel?

Was This 400-Year-Old Forgery the First Sci-Fi Novel?

Last updated on: August 31, 2026 at 9:35 pm by Philip Jenkins

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Was This 400-Year-Old Forgery the First Sci-Fi Novel? 2026-08-31T21:35:12-04:00 Philip Jenkins

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Forging The Chymical Wedding

I have been posting about the mind-stretching Renaissance works in which enterprising scholars discovered, created, or forged scriptures to justify their religious and spiritual agendas: the Gospel of Barnabas is one prime example; the Rosicrucian Manifestos are another. One amazing feature of such products is just how very modern, and indeed post-modern, such writings are, in their willingness to break the fourth wall, to implicate the reader in the process of discovery and deceit – to write what we now call metafictional works. To that extent, the avant-garde literary scene around 1610 looks an awful lot like that of 2010, or 2026.

The Rosicrucian literature offers an example. In 1616, The Chymical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz was published in Germany and subsequently attributed to Johann Valentin Andreae; it became the third of the legendary Rosicrucian Manifestos. This heavily allegorical work describes how the legendary hero Christian Rosenkreutz is invited to a wondrous castle to attend a royal wedding, immersed in alchemical (“chymical”) language and symbolism.

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That is, we have a novel with an author (Andreae) and an imaginary character (Rosenkreutz), who speaks in the first person. Notionally, this is presented as an authentic account reported by Rosenkreutz, in a manuscript that Andreae has obtained and edited. The Wedding then gets weirder, and more metafictional, very much like Cervantes’s Don Quijote, which had appeared only a very few years before (The second part of Quijote was published in 1615). Andreae himself called his own work a ludibrium, a playful game or satire.

Throughout the book, the (fictional and literary invention) Rosenkreutz reports what he has learned through other books and documents, many coded, ciphered, and duly interpreted, not to mention all the riddles and mysterious acronyms. The hero is reading his world. This is a book about books about books. At every point, the action proceeds through dramas and theatrical performances, through plays within the play. It is literally all about deception and illusion.

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This Chymical Wedding, this false forged fiction, has a great deal to say about false forged fictions, all of which is negative. Judging the philosophers, the mighty figure of the Virgin demands

That they should confess that they had too lightly given credit to false fictitious books, had assumed too much to themselves, and so come into this Castle, although they were never invited into it, and perhaps the most part had presented themselves with design to make their market here, and afterwards to live in greater pride and lordliness; and thus one had seduced another, and plunged him into this disgrace and ignominy, wherefore they were deservedly to be soundly punished

The other group is charged “that they very well knew, and were in their consciences convinced, that they had forged false fictitious books, had fooled others, and cheated them, and thereby had diminished regal dignity amongst all.”

One classic scene involves the great library, which seems to contain work by Andreae himself. The text proceeds, “The other thing that was shown to us two was the noble library as it was all together before the Reformation.” Now hold on, this is notionally a. book set in 1469, so how can it discuss what happens before the German Reformation, which famously began in 1517? But of course, it was a distant historical event in Andreae’s day. After mentioning the library, he proceeds, “Of which (although it makes my heart rejoice as often as I call it to mind) I have so much the less to say, because the catalogue of it is very shortly to be published.” So, does that mean a fictional catalog of a fictional library? Or is Andreae planning another catalog of the sort in his own day?

The book ends weirdly (of course). Rosenkreutz is to be appointed the porter or door-keeper to the king and his castle. Here is the finale:

Now after they had all spoken friendlily to me for a while, and at last given their hands, committing me to the Divine protection, I was conducted by both the old men, the Lord of the Tower, and Atlas, into a glorious lodging, in which stood three beds, and each of us lay in one of them, where we spent almost two, &c…..

The narrative ends in an ellipsis, suggesting mid-action, to be followed by what looks like the note by a desperate editor who is handling a fragment of a precious ancient manuscript:

Here about two leaves in quarto are missing, and he (the author of this), whereas he imagined he must in the morning be doorkeeper, returned home.

Even more exquisitely metafictional, these wholly imaginary Manifestos spawned real world Rosicrucians, whose mystic orders and societies endured for centuries.

A few years ago, John Crowley did a terrific (illustrated) edition of The Chemical Wedding: by Christian Rosencreutz: A Romance in Eight Days by Johann Valentin Andreae in a New Version (Small Beer Press, 2016). He argued, intriguingly, that this was indeed the first science fiction novel: “Like SF, it probably appealed to a self-selected readership of geeks and enthusiasts).” He described the book as “funny, almost Kafkaesque in its irreducible strangeness.”

An interviewer asked Crowley about his single personal favorite moment in the book. He replied,

So many. When Christian looks out the window of his castle room at night and sees the seven ships set out for the Tower Island, each with a flame burning on the top mast—the soul of the body carried in the hold. When Christian sins by looking on Venus naked. But best of all is the very end (do you need to call Spoiler Alert for a 400-year-old book?) when Christian thinks he has to stand in penitence at the porter’s gate, and then . . . the text just breaks off in mid-sentence and somebody else writes a note saying, no, he thought he had to stay but in the morning he just went home.

At least as an idea, lost and recovered scriptures played a critical role in Renaissance culture. And if genuine items were not available, people were very happy to supply what was needed.

Do check out my bibliography on these issues.

Philip Jenkins

alchemy

Don Quijote

Johann Valentin Andreae

metafiction

Renaissance

Rosicrucians

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