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1797 I. D'Israeli Vaurien I. vi. 88 The learned reader who has a fondness for the marvellous of scientific romances, may now indulge his passion in its plenitude of fancy.

1845 N. Amer. Rev. Apr. 426 This [sc. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation] is one of the most striking and ingenious scientific romances that we have ever read. The writer of it is a bold man; he has undertaken to give a hypothetical history of creation.

1873 G. M. Towle tr. A. Marx Introd. in tr. J. Verne Tour World Eighty Days 12 The success of ‘Five Weeks in a Balloon’ induced him to turn his whole attention to scientific romance.

1923 H. G. Wells Men like Gods (1927) 22 And now he imagines himself in some sort of scientific romance and out of our world altogether. In another dimension.

1997 Sci.-fiction Stud. Mar. 144 For the reader accustomed to the cinematic/pulp felicities of the traditional sf novel, the protagonist of a scientific romance will tend to seem passive and morose.

2004 T. C. Renzi H. G. Wells (ed. 2) Introd. p. xix Wells's scientific romances rely significantly on Darwinian theory, which, in the late nineteenth century, proposed a bold new outlook on humankind.