Reddit mentions of The Novel: An Alternative History: Beginnings to 1600

It depends on what you mean by "fiction book." Different societies in different places developed their literary styles differently, so there's cases of history and myth being mixed together, or myth used as history, i.e. not held as fiction. Epic poems like the Iliad or Gilgamesh easily date back into antiquity and prehistory. Examples of long-form prose fiction can be found from Rome and Asia as early as the second century CE.

If you're asking more specifically about novels, it's a somewhat complicated question, as literary academia has something of a debate regarding a consensus definition on what actually constitutes a novel. However, the one I've always essentially been taught is: a fictional prose narrative of substantial length chronicling aspects of the history and life or lives of a character or characters, examining the ways in which they experience the world and the ways in which their experiences change them or fail to change them.

Assuming this definition of the novel, the generally held strongest contender is "The Tale of Genji" by Murasaki Shikibu, written in the early 11th century CE. It follows the life of Genji, a son of the Japanese emperor who is disinherited by his father and his subsequent struggle to return to honour and prominence, with a heavy focus on his romantic exploits along the way. The wiki article has a more detailed plot synopsis, and it has been translated into English several times, so it's fairly easily available in bookstores or online (if you do intend to actually read it, however, I recommend getting a version with annotations and historical background like the Penguin Classics version. It is extremely complicated to read out of its context without scholarly assistance).

There are other important entries to the development of the novel, especially from the European perspective. Beowulf (~8th century CE) and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight (14th century CE) are both important forerunners, to say nothing of the myriad of romantic novellas that can became popular around the start of the 12th century and remained so for several centuries, but in particular, Don Quixote (1605CE, mentally unstable country gentleman rides around with his "squire" in pursuit of the glory and adventure of the tales of chivalry he reads) is considered the first European novel, and Robinson Crusoe (1719, the classic castaway story) the first English-language novel.

This answer is a very, very cursory overview of a broad field that touches on both literary and historical studies. I've focused on the novel generally here as its the medium I'm best equipped to speak to, but bear in mind that there are a lot of ways to interpret this question. The first pieces of fiction committed to paper are truly ancient. Even discounting poetry, prose fiction has a long and rich tradition that predates the concept of books (as does arguably the Tale of Gengi). This answer is also formed largely from course notes, but I'll recommend you some sources for digging more deeply into the topic.

• The Novel: An Alternative History, Beginnings to 1600 by Steven Moore. Start here. This is an absolutely exhaustive discussion of the various genres and works of literature from around the world that contributed to the literary development of the modern novel. He covers everything I have in much greater depth, as well as the vastness that I haven't. Also check out this article he wrote for the Guardian around the time of the books publication. It gives a good sense of where his focus is and the scope of his undertaking, as well as serving as an interesting introduction to the world before the novel.
  
  
• Theory of the Novel: A Historical Approach by Michael McKeon, editor. An anthology of literary thinkers on, as the title suggests, theory of the novel. This is definitely more literature-focused, it uses guys Northrop Frye and Mikhael Bakhtin - literary critics as opposed to historians - but they do reflect on some of the historical developments of the novel. Definitely Eurocentric, though.
  
  
• The Novel Before the Novel by Arthur Ray Heiserman, editor. You'll probably have to go to a university library for this one. Heiserman collects a variety of essays that are particularly focused on the development of prose fiction before the conventionally held first novels. Like McKeon, he is particularly concerned with Europe and the West, so stick with Moore for anything other.

Your question says "technologies," but it sounds like this is a question about media and communications formats or technologies specifically (please correct me if I'm wrong). It's a layered question, and looking into any part of the answer will lead you to some really interesting research topics.

It sounds like you're really asking about a human social phenomenon which isn't limited to technology, but is often associated with changing social environments which can include technology. This phenomenon is called a Moral Panic.

I realized as I was writing this that the Moral Panic isn't actually a grass-roots phenomenon. It's engineered by someone in power, to try to maintain control over society as things change and they feel their power threatened. At the forefront of all of the examples I can think of, there's an established authority (a church, in almost every instance before 1980) responding to an emerging form of communication by calling it a moral emergency. It's a top-down decree. Comedia dell'arte is a good example: the population wants to watch a silly play, the church freaks the hell out about it.

First, some frames of reference for you:

1. Humanity has not always feared new technologies. Anti-change attitudes in communications and media are not universal (not every new fashion or medium was hated, and not by everyone equally, of course), but they do crop up. WHO is opposed to new media is just as important as "WHY did they fear it." Painting and art was highly policed and censored in the Middle Ages and early Renaissance, only breaking partially free as the Enlightenment got into full swing. But it's STILL policed today - people are still getting freaked out about artistic communications. Example: the current Inflatable Buttplug installation in Paris. WHO CARES if an artist paints a regular merchant and not a depiction of Jesus? Why is that a thing? WHO CARES if there's a giant inflatable buttplug on a Paris street. Well, if you follow the objections, censorship attempts, and outright violence that go along with objections to media, you will start to see how deeply religion has influenced and monopolized Western culture over time. Now the
   
   
2. The speed at which this happens is interesting to watch - it accelerates over time. Novels took hundreds of years to get accepted as legitimate communications media. Comics took 90 years, video games 30 years, and Twitter took less than a decade. The more recently a platform/format emerges, the quicker it goes through the cycle from "this is evidence of the downfall of society" to "grandma uses this to communicate with the kids and we teach it in schools."
   
   
3. Finally, the degree to which society thinks its citizens need to be controlled has a lot to do with how quickly we're able to accept new media and technology. Superstitious societies and ones with rigid social control seem to fight new ideas longer; open and libertarian societies can integrate better. You can see evidence of this in the "stragglers:" the people who are still stupidly terrified of something even though everyone else is fine with it. Like if you grew up in a homeschool breeder cult, and were taught that Satan can whisper in your ear through heavy metal music; that's why you only listen to Christian Contemporary. That belief was actually mainstream in the 1970's, but now it's only for wackos.
   
   
   So here's a few examples:
   
   

• The Novel: religious thinkers objected to fiction (Middle Ages), because it was frivolous and not sober. Then (1600's) they objected because it was the domain of (lazy, morally suspect) aristocrats who used novels as social media platforms to bitch about semi-private scandals. THEN (1700's-1800's) they objected because novels were becoming mass-market levels of popular, and encouraging poor morals in the lower classes. Then the lower classes read books for a few generations and society didn't implode, so novels started becoming regarded as socially legitimate, then intellectually preferable, and NOW we force kids to read novels in school because it fits a cultural ideal of education and good citizenship. Jeez. Did no one tell today's kids that reading fiction will lead to indolence, laziness, and obsession with romance and fantasy? That's how Satan gets you!
  
  
• Comedia dell'arte: Yes, acting on stage is nothing new, but Comedia dell'arte represented a small cultural crisis in Europe, especially since female actors appeared on stage, which (again, HELLO religion!) was considered immoral. "The Italian scholar Ferdinando Taviani has collated a number of church documents opposing the advent of the actress as a kind of courtesan, whose scanty attire and promiscuous lifestyle corrupted young men, or at least infused them with carnal desires." Indeed!
  
  
• 20th Century Comic Books: Yeah, this one freaky lunatic convinced America that comic books were actually trying to destroy society. Batman and Robin were secretly gettin' it on, and Wonder Woman was really all about bondage, plus that powerful-woman archetype meant only one thing: lesbianism! Nowadays we call that "cheesy fanfiction" but in 1954, it was considered serious socio-political discourse. Concerned church ladies made the dimestore stop selling comics, parents burned their kids' Archies and Supermans, the whole kaboodle. Comic store owners have gone to prison for selling "obscenity," as late as the 1990's, because of this lingering prejudice against comics as a medium.
  
  
• Not a media platform, but an excellent example of science-panic: Stem Cell Research Christian Fundamentalists (incorrectly) decided that all stem cells were from abortions, and engineered a moral panic about new stem cell science in the 1990's. By the early 2000's they'd gotten the US President to ban funding the research, effectively crippling our progress against cancer, AIDS, and paralysis. We're only now recovering.
  
  
• While we're at it, did you know that as birth control became a viable consumer technology, it also became ILLEGAL to teach women how to control whether or not they got pregnant? Margaret Sanger and Emma Goldman, amongst many others, were arrested and imprisoned for distributing information about birth control and reproductive health. Someone has to keep those uppity women in line, or society will collapse!
  
  
• Heavy Metal music will make your kids kill
  1988: "It’s interesting to note that recent resurgence in Satanic worship and activity has almost directly followed the introduction of MTV showing these various heavy metal groups with all their Satanic symbolism." -- Please note that this was considered a reasonable, moderate approach to the "question" of rock/metal music. This is more indicative of current anti-media hate and fear. Christians completely invented a "satanic worship" crisis and linked it to rock music. Whatever that "resurgence" was that this idiot (apparently, he's a priest?!) is talking about, it was entirely invented.
  
  
• Another, earlier-looking source regarding the moral panic around rock and roll; note how objections change over time. Above, a 1980's article about the content and ethos of rock music. In the 1950's, their reasoning is straightforward: its rhythms are African, and therefore primitive and Satanic. Because black people are scary, and Africa is a dark, lost place full of evil. Moral panics follow cultural prejudices, and they flare up at the same time as social progress challenges the status-quo. Basically, black people ask America to stop treating them like crap, sparking a Civil Rights Movement. In response: a knee-jerk reaction by the establishment, to link a suspect new idea (treating black people like we treat white people - with respect) to a suspect new cultural phenomenon (rock and roll).
  
  
• Here's a fun response to Jerry Falwell's attempt to create a moral panic against Teletubbies, back in 1999 - evangelists' anti-gay campaigns ramped up in direct response to the fact that gay rights were really beginning to gain mainstream acceptance. They drummed up the moral panic to create an illusion of authority (for them) under persecution (from the people who wanted their rights -- actually those being persecuted themselves) In this instance, flipping the narrative to frame Christians as victims of the Big Gay Conspiracy wasn't successful or convincing - the anti-Tubbies Pnic fizzled and the media mocked.