The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction

Book 490: Mammoth Books

by George Mann

Genres: Science Fiction

Synopsis

This encyclopedia is the most up-to-date, concise, clear and affordable guide to all aspects of science fiction, from its background to generic themes and devices, from authors (established and new) to films. Science fiction has evolved into one of the most popular, cutting-edge and exciting fiction geners, with a proliferation of modern and classic authors, themes and ideas, movies, TV series and awards. Arranged in an A-Z format, and featuring a comprehensive index and cross-referencing system, The Mammoth Encyclopedia of Science Fiction is also the most accessible and easy to use encyclopedia of its kind currently available.

Release date: March 1, 2012

Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

Print pages: 160

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Science Fiction begins in prehistory.

Or, perhaps, if you listen to some critics, with Thomas More, with Voltaire, with MARY SHELLEY’s Frankenstein (1818), with the stories of EDGAR ALLAN POE, with JULES VERNE or H. G. WELLS or, indeed, with HUGO GERNSBACK and his AMAZING STORIES magazine of the 1920s.

If taken on its most basic level, as a form of fantastic fiction, science fiction (from now on referred to as SF) is as old as storytelling itself. But surely this is not the case? Shouldn’t SF, by its very name, include at least some allusion to science and scientific theory?

The origins of the SF genre are as hotly debated as those of any other established branch of literature, and the disagreement that surrounds the topic is almost as complex as the questions themselves. What is the first novel that can truly be called SF? And do we take this as our starting point, or was there a crucible or melting pot of ideas from which it was formed? Indeed, what is it that actually makes an SF novel SF?

In other words, to find the origins of our genre, we must first go in search of definition.

Most people feel that they can recognize SF when they come across it in their daily lives, whether it is a novel or an episode in a television drama. Indeed, when used as a marketing tool SF is defined in broad and inclusive terms, taking in everything from space vessels and laser guns to kooky aliens and vampires. This is not necessarily helpful.

For SF to be recognized as a distinct genre, there have to be some boundaries, rules or ideal parameters that define what constitutes science fiction and exclude what doesn’t.

Let us take two examples from literature and see where they lead us.

First, the classic novel Titus Groan (1946) by Mervyn Peake. In this work the author portrays the lives of a group of people who exist within the confines of an enormous castle, Gormenghast. This castle is effectively a city unto itself, so huge and labyrinthine that much of it remains unexplored by its current inhabitants who go about their lives according to a set of obsessively detailed scriptures and ancient regulations that give the place a real sense of oppressively looming history. Peake explores in great depth the bizarre environment of these people and examines in telling detail the effect it has on the inhabitants themselves. He does not concern himself with how the castle of Gormenghast came to exist originally nor with where it is to be found, neither does he establish the means by which this particular cross-section of humanity has come to be there. It simply is.

Now set this alongside FRANK HERBERT’s comparably epic Dune (1965).

In Dune, Herbert sets out, in much the same manner as Peake, to describe in painstaking detail an imaginary world, the PLANET Arrakis, and the way of life that its ecology imposes upon its necessarily hardy inhabitants. However, what sets Dune apart from Titus Groan is the manner in which its author establishes his invented world. Herbert goes to great lengths to place the distant planet in a recognizable, if unavoidably remote human context – an interstellar Empire that has arisen and developed over many years, discovering in the process other habitable worlds upon which to settle colonies. He describes in true ECOLOGICAL terms the physical geography of the planet, even to the consistency of its soil, and the various forms of life that may have evolved in this environment over time. He does not make it easy for his human characters to get by, forcing them to live strictly according to the description he has given of his world – for example, by having them wear rubber ‘stillsuits’ that enable them to recycle their body fluids: Arrakis is a vast parched desert with no water supply of its own. Some of the characters have technological implements to aid them in their quest for survival, others do not. Some of the author’s extrapolations are credible, others are not.

At one point Herbert even explains the characters’ dreams of making the planet more hospitable to human life, and the TERRAFORMING process by which they plan to do it. But what is most important about Dune is its intrinsic attempt at realism, as the lives of the characters are shaped by the scientifically defined landscape of their environment.

This comparison between two classic works of imaginative fiction, one fantasy, the other science fiction is by no means the final word on the subject, and is at best an over-generalization. But it can be seen as representative of the relationship between much fantasy and SF. Science fiction is a literature concerned with the process by which a depicted environment has become different from our own, or with the means by which humanity finds itself there. This does not rule out narrative elements of intrigue, adventure and so forth, far from it, but it does imply that SF will attempt to examine the wider picture, for example by questioning how aliens might have developed on Mars and exploring the effects that their existence could have upon the way in which human beings view themselves and the wider universe. One of the best ways to envisage a time different from our own, to devise a temporal ‘laboratory’ within which to test new ideas, is to look forward to the future. SF emphasizes its difference from fantasy by attempting to construct a rational framework for anything that it describes.

This, however, is not to say that the genres cannot usefully interact with each other. SCIENCE FANTASY or SPACE OPERA will use devices derived from SF to describe new and exciting environments, but in many ways both subcategories remain more true to the pulp-fiction genres of the 1920s and 1930s. This is because they do not bother to make plausible their invented futures, being more concerned with the adventure components of their storylines and more willing to go beyond the realms of scientific plausibility to create spectacular effects. This is another factor that can make it more difficult for us to reach a satisfactory definition of ‘real’ SF.

There is also the question of actual science.

Most true SF stories will, in their attempt to render credible their particular vision of the future, draw upon some scientific theory or device to strengthen its plausibility. However, there is also a school of thought that argues that ‘softer’ disciplines like psychology and sociology should also be considered as sciences. This has interesting implications for SF.

ALFRED BESTER’s The Demolished Man (1953) is a good example of this. The novel depicts a society within which the majority of people have telepathic powers – hardly a scientifically plausible notion. However, in his exploration of the theme, Bester clearly considers the rational arguments for and against telepathy, and attempts to extrapolate as clearly and as realistically as he can the effects that the introduction of psychic powers would have on society. He describes an America that has evolved very differently than it would have under ‘normal’ circumstances, a UTOPIA of sorts, in which crime is rarely heard of and can usually be detected before it even takes place. However, Bester also examines the other side of the coin, and shows how this type of environment could be seen as oppressive and even dangerous. What Bester does in The Demolished Man, and what makes it a genuine SF novel, is to devise one (admittedly implausible) change to society and then extrapolate coherently the repercussions that the introduction of this change would have on the development of civilization. His book is a triumph of sociological speculation and in its method, if not in its use of conventional science, it exemplifies true science fiction.

The same can be said of much ALTERNATE WORLD fiction.

Gloriana, or the Unfulfill’d Queen (1978) by MICHAEL MOORCOCK examines the possibilities of a British Elizabethan Empire that differs completely from the historical records but whose ambience is often fantastical and in keeping with period fantasias such as William Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (first performed c. 1596, published 1600) and Edmund Spenser’s The Faerie Queene (1590–1596). KEITH ROBERTS’s Pavane (1968), on the other hand, is realistic and hard-hitting, attempting to extrapolate realistically how society might have developed if the Spanish Armada had defeated Drake’s navy and the British Isles had remained a Papal dominion. Pavane is SF not so much in its content as in its telling. It is meticulous and thoroughly worked out.

So SF, by necessity, is an open and wide-ranging genre whose definition can have as much to do with the way in which a book is written as with its content. It also incorporates the more fantastical Space Opera, which, although it has its proponents who insist on claiming a ‘scientific’ foundation for the intergalactic conflicts and militaristic alien invasions, for the most part prefers to concentrate on the end result – spectacular action – rather than the means – convincing extrapolation. This inclusiveness makes any binding definition hazardous, but it is fairly safe to assume that most ‘real’ SF is covered by the following loose description:

SF is a form of fantastic literature that attempts to portray, in rational and realistic terms, future times and environments that are different from our own. It will nevertheless show an awareness of the concerns of the times in which it is written and provide implicit commentary on contemporary society, exploring the effects, material and psychological, that any new technologies may have upon it. Any further changes that take place in this society, as well as any extrapolated future events or occurrences, will have their basis in measured and considered theory, scientific or otherwise. SF authors will use their strange and imaginative environments as a testing ground for new ideas, considering in full the implications of any notion they propose.

Obviously, many SF novels and stories fail to achieve what they set out initially to do, and many of the more space-opera-type stories are written as sheer entertainment. But it is the way in which they are written and their attempts to adhere to rational, recognizable frameworks that make them truly science fiction.

So, with these guidelines in mind, let us consider the origins of the genre and attempt to locate the first true example of an SF novel.

The foundations of SF were laid many thousands of years ago, with such wonderful works of mythology as The Epic of Gilgamesh and The Egyptian Book of the Dead. There is no way in which these ancient texts can be meaningfully interpreted as science fiction, but they do offer us a starting point for a more general form of fantastic literature that points the way to the eventual emergence of the genre. But, of course, it was not until much, much later that SF would actually develop as a distinct branch of literature.

It is important to remember that, for as long as human beings have been able to communicate ideas to one another, allegorical tales have existed as a useful testing ground for new ideas. However, it is only during the last two or three centuries that a recognizably modern scientific viewpoint has formed and begun to pervade both society and literature. Until this point, most fantastical writing had been of a RELIGIOUS nature and, as such, was intent upon perpetuating the pious myths upon which it was based, as well as these myths’ underlying lessons and philosophies. For the most part, it is unhelpful and often harmful to the credibility of the genre to attempt retrospectively to classify this sort of material as SF.

In 1516 Thomas More published, in Latin, his famous political work Utopia, which displays a particularly resonant awareness of its time and extrapolates contemporary political thought to create its setting. An English translation appeared in 1551. It describes, in great detail, an unknown island (clearly modelled on the recently discovered America) where a ‘perfect’ society has been established – the first depiction of a Utopian state. The book is fundamentally satirical, as More intends it to be known that he does not believe that such a profound social equilibrium as he depicts could ever be reached. His book triggered an explosion of Utopian fictions: they continue to appear today, but are ultimately more correctly considered as political rather than science fictional writings. Utopia does, however, indicate the direction that fantastical literature was beginning to take.

There followed a succession of fantastical works over the next few centuries, as writers began to make use of devices that would later become intimately associated with the SF genre. Gulliver’s Travels (1726: rev. 1735) by Jonathan Swift is one fine example, as is Voltaire’s lesser-known Micromégas (1752). Both are satirical and use devices such as ALIENS and strange new worlds as a means of commenting on the society of their contemporaries. These are not the alien races that would come to appear much later in episodes of STAR TREK, but metaphorical humans with no previous experience of our culture. Their ignorance is used to satirical and often ingenious effect. Nevertheless, these stories remain, ultimately, fantasies.

So what is the first true SF novel – and when did it appear?

BRIAN ALDISS proposes in his excellent history of the genre, Billion Year Spree (1973), that we should view the classic Gothic Romance by MARY SHELLEY, Frankenstein, or the Modern Prometheus (1818), as the first novel to be truly recognizable as SF. There are many grounds for agreeing with him.

Frankenstein shows a keen awareness of the technological and scientific knowledge of its time, and develops this to form the basis of the novel. From some perspectives, Frankenstein shows clearly the beginnings of the development of SF as a form distinct from other fantastical literature. In a similar way to much other fiction of the time, Frankenstein draws on images taken from philosophy, poetry and mythology but adds the extra dimension of science. It is essentially a Gothic Romance in which Shelley, bravely, used current scientific thought to render her demon credible. The monster is no longer a devilish entity that simply exists – it is created, bit by bit, by a human being, and literally shocked into existence with electricity. Magic or mystical invocations are nowhere in sight and although religious analogies are drawn, they remain purely metaphysical. Science, not religion, has become the key to unlocking life.

Shelley’s novel represents a bold step forward into a new way of thinking, and shines a light ahead of itself, making further exploration possible. In Frankenstein, Shelley opened up a Pandora’s box of notions and ideas that had been bubbling away under the surface of society for years. She gave them voice and form, and proved herself to be years ahead of her time.

It is fair to say that Frankenstein represents the first true SF novel to appear, according to our previous definition. However, there are reasons to believe that the novel had an even more significant bearing on the Gothic Romance, and it is also important to mention that, until the middle of the twentieth century, Frankenstein did not have a big influence on the development of the SF genre. It stands alone as a testament to the foresight of one young woman, and it was not until many years later, when the genre was already established, that it would be recognized as the classic piece of SF that it is.

It took a few years more and the work of a number of other writers before the genre began to emerge in its current and recognizable form.

It is important to mention here the work of the nineteenth-century American writer EDGAR ALLAN POE who has been lauded by a number of critics, nowhere more memorably than in THOMAS DISCH’s study of the SF genre The Dreams Our Stuff is Made Of (1998), as the first writer of what today’s reader might accept as genre fiction. While it remains undeniable that Poe has had a more direct and profound influence on the modern HORROR story, exemplified in the work of such writers as Stephen King and Clive Barker, it is nonetheless notable that a number of his stories make use of ideas that would later become associated with SF. In the works of Poe we encounter alien races existing out in the ether of space, we witness balloon flights to the moon, and we peruse the travel journals of a twenty-ninth-century woman. The power of these stories is undeniable and they represent the seeds that would eventually flower into the modern genre, yet they remain, like the fantstical tales that had preceded them, allegorical fantasies.

The ‘fantastic journey’ and the utopian/anti-utopian story developed into a more recognizably modern form of SF with the publication of the first SCIENTIFIC ROMANCE, the French author Jules Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth (1863).

The ‘Scientific Romance’ represents the first real step on the road towards the consolidation of the central ideas and themes of SF into one dominant form, the first version of science fiction in a recognizably ‘modern’ manifestation. The term did not actually come into use until about thirty years after Verne’s Journey to the Centre of the Earth, with the publication of H. G. Wells’s The Time Machine (1895), but it is legitimate as well as convenient to consider Verne in the same context.

Journey to the Centre of the Earth achieves much. Its precision of detail is certainly inspired by the works of Poe (whom Verne admired greatly, to the extent that he later wrote a sequel to Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym (1837)), but it shows a more clear and ready grasp of science and the scientific method. It describes the descent of Professor Von Hardwigg and his spirited nephew Harry into the mouth of an Icelandic volcano, from which they go on to discover a subterranean world inhabited by prehistoric monsters. The author approaches the scenario itself with judicious logic, explaining how these dinosaurs could have survived for so long in isolation, but it is the manner in which the character of Von Hardwigg, a chemist and mineralogist, approaches his discovery that is most enlightening. The novel is full of the scientific speculation of the day. It casts a scientist in the lead role, and shows very clearly how he uses the scientific method to aid him in his quest to discover how this subterranean world has come about. It is also an adventure, and – this is important to remember – it was widely read and therefore had an important and far-reaching influence on other writers of the day.

If Journey to the Centre of the Earth marks the beginning of SF as a definite genre, then Verne’s later works From the Earth to the Moon (1865), Twenty Thousand Leagues under the Sea (1870) and The Mysterious Island (1874) represent its continued growth, as he toys with new ideas and continues to develop imaginative scenarios that can nonetheless be explained logically in terms of cause and effect. Verne did not create mere fantasy lands. He wanted to know from whence they came.

It is this insistence on a fundamental realism that has caused Verne’s novels to be retrospectively seen as of key importance in the development of SF. It is also significant that they were translated and read all over the world – people in droves came to the books looking for adventure and got it, but with an edge of scientific inquiry that left them with a new, very different SENSE OF WONDER. The magic of the realms of fantasy had been superseded by the fascination of speculation rooted in reality.

These ‘extraordinary voyages’, as they were then known, had an exceptional influence on the work of many writers, including that of EDWIN A. ABBOTT and ROBERT LOUIS STEVENSON. But their most profound effect was on the British writer H. G. Wells, whose The Time Machine (1895) represents the definitive moment at which science fiction came of age.

Wells’s The Time Machine is the epitome of a science fiction novel, marking the important leap from Verne’s adventurous ‘extraordinary voyages’ to fully fledged SF.

It achieves this in a number of ways.

Firstly, it postulates a device, based on a scientific theory, that will see its character transported forward through time to various stages in the existence of man. It extrapolates from current EVOLUTIONARY theory to justify its portrayal of future humanity as two distinct species. Perhaps most importantly, it also uses scientific speculation to comment critically on the Victorian society of Wells’s own time.

Wells wanted to stir up the complacent Victorians and provide them with what he thought could be an accurate vision of their future. He saw the gentle yet docile Eloi race as symbolic of the effete upper classes, whilst the Morlocks represented the descendants of the uneducated but more evolutionarily successful worker underclass. His fictional future was a satire on Victorian society, but it was also scientifically plausible according to the speculation about evolution that was current at the time.

The Time Machine pioneered the use of many SF concepts that have now become genre clichés, so often have they been recycled by other writers over the years. Indeed, the story culminates in what has become one of the most enduring images of the genre, the terminal beach, as the Time Traveller watches the final, dying moments of the Earth before the Sun expands to swallow the planet. Wells was not optimistic about the future, and in The Time Machine he attempted to show his Victorian readers one possible means by which they might eventually bring about their own downfall.

Everything about The Time Machine was fresh and original. Wells had given readers an ostensibly ‘scientific’ method for traversing the time streams: he posited a device created through the application of advanced science that would allow its inventor to actually visit times to come. The book was revolutionary, and in a similar way to the works of Verne it put scientific thought at the forefront of modern literature. Science had opened the door to the future.

Wells did not stop there, and in the heady years that followed he produced some of the finest writing that the genre has ever seen. Who can forget the end of The War of the Worlds (1898), in which malignant Martian invaders are destroyed not by human resistance, but by a simple strain of the common cold? In this and the books that followed, including such titles as The Invisible Man (1897), The First Men in the Moon (1901) and The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), Wells set out a template for the development of the genre that would eventually come to be known not by its original name of ‘Scientific Romance’ but as Science Fiction.

Whilst the themes and concerns of Scientific Romance continued to attract a large readership and to be explored by many authors in Britain and Europe in the years after the First World War (the works of OLAF STAPLEDON are a notable example), a rather different development was under way in the United States.

‘Pulp’ magazines and ‘Dime’ novels began to feature SF stories and found that their sales soared. This helped to popularize the emerging genre, generating a dedicated fan base that would later develop into both a readership and, ultimately, a good source of new authors.

However, the founding of Amazing Stories magazine in 1926 by editor Hugo Gernsback represented the first real attempt to put SF before the reading public as a distinct genre in its own right.

Gernsback was perfect for the job. He had previously worked as an editor on popular science magazines such as Modern Electrics and Science and Invention. Alongside scientific articles in these early magazines, Gernsback had regularly published examples of what he called ‘Scientifiction’ – fiction with a grounding in scientific fact. Most of it was stylistically stiff and rather too conventional, lacking the narrative drive and sense of adventure of the Scientific Romance of the day, in many cases simply acting as a text showcase for new technological ideas or gadgets. Indeed, Gernsback’s sole novel, Ralph 124C41 + (1925), written along these lines, is generally regarded as unreadable today.

But with the founding of Amazing Stories, things changed. Gernsback obtained the rights to republish and serialize the works of Poe, Wells and Verne, and encouraged readers to submit stories with a distinctive technological edge. This in turn gave US writers an outlet for their work, and fostered a trend for technophilia in their fiction. The advent of science fiction as a mass-appeal genre was just around the corner.

Amazing Stories was an immediate success, and although many of its early stories had the same faults that had plagued the tales that had appeared previously in Modern Electrics and Science and Invention, the magazine did see the first publication of writers such as E.E. ‘DOC’ SMITH and Jack Williamson. Much of this newer work was an early form of Space Opera, but it drew on existing genre ideas and adhered to the rules of Gernsback’s ‘Scientifiction’.

It was not long before the unwieldy ‘Scientifiction’ became known as ‘Science Fiction’. The genre as we know it today had received its name.

Gernsback’s reign at Amazing Stories was beset by financial difficulties and in 1929 he lost control of the magazine. It was sold on to other owners and continued to publish a range of stories, maintaining Gernsback’s standards but serializing too a number of good pulp novels that kept it operating as a buoyant concern.

Gernsback himself went on to found other SF magazines such as Scientific Detective Stories and Air Wonder Stories, but never managed to repeat the success he had achieved with his former magazine, the possible exception being Wonder Stories (an amalgamation of Air Wonder Stories and Science Wonder Stories), which ran for a healthy number of issues during the early 1930s.

Amazing Stories itself has been sporadically relaunched ever since, with its latest incarnation under the ownership of the games company Wizards of the Coasts ceasing publication as recently as the year 2000. It now looks set to make a return as an Internet-based concern.

However, where Amazing Stories had experienced financial problems during the early 1930s, a new magazine named Astounding Stories had thrived. Astounding Stories had started publishing just four years after Amazing Stories and, offering better rates of pay, had attracted many of the other magazine’s best writers.

Initially, Astounding’s stories had a more adventurous slant than those that appeared in Amazing Stories, and many writers were keen to join in with the sense of pulp fun that was prevalent in the magazine at the time. Scientific speculation was a constant feature but only when it helped the writer tell the story; essentially, Astounding Stories was a melodramatic pulp.

But, things were soon to change. When JOHN W. CAMPBELL took over as chief editor of Astounding Stories in 1937, the GOLDEN AGE of science fiction was about to dawn.

The original Golden Age of SF is believed by many to have occurred during the war years of 1939–43. It was arguably the most important period in SF history, and saw the emergence of many of the classic writers, as well as the establishment of a more sober and serious tone for the genre. There is little doubt that this maturing of the genre was partly due to the Second World War and the effect that it was having on the mood of the time, but much of it can also be put down to the constant and attentive work of editor John W. Campbell.

A little more than a year after Campbell had taken over as editor of Astounding Stories, he had already changed the name. Astounding Science Fiction was the new legend that was printed on the front of each issue, and with this change in title came an important and revolutionary change in content.

The year 1939 saw the debuts of a number of important SF authors – ROBERT A. HEINLEIN, THEODORE STURGEON, A. E. VAN VOGT – as well as good work from established writers such as ISAAC ASIMOV and E. E. ‘Doc’ Smith. Campbell nurtured these authors, insisting that they worked through fully and logically any ideas they proposed and asking them to consider the sociological and psychological effects of their notions and to translate them into stories of greater maturity and depth. The authors responded enthusiastically and although it alienated some readers who had grown to admire the more pulp-orientated theme of the magazine, it turned Astounding Science Fiction into the true mouthpiece of the genre.

The Golden Age period saw the development of many of the key concepts of SF that would later come to define the field. The authors took ideas from the pages of the early pulps, and then subverted them, turning them into something new and even more exciting. Science became an integral part of many of the stories, as authors developed aspects of current scientific theories or ideas. Indeed, some of these writers were scientists in their own right.

It was from this heady brew that the important sub-genre of HARD SF was to be distilled, a form of powerfully science-loaded SF that would later, in a further incarnation, come to dominate the magazine.

During the years from 1939 to 1943 Astounding Science Fiction featured some of the most wonderful short stories and serializations ever to be written. Heinlein developed his FUTURE HISTORY in its pages, Asimov his Robot and Foundation sequences, Van Vogt published Slan and Smith his entire Lensman saga. Campbell encouraged them all, and when L. RON HUBB