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The Dawn of Science Fiction

While scholars and critics have long discussed and disputed the actual definition of science fiction as a genre, it is undeniable that if someone says that they read a sci-fi book or watched a sci-fi film, the average person will have a good idea as to what they are talking about. Familiar science fiction tropes, concepts, and story lines have been explored and refined time and time again to the point that they are instantly recognisable, yet their popularity never seems to wane. Each new iteration brings a new perspective to the sci-fi framework, and each generation finds fresh metaphors for contemporary issues within its themes and devices.

It could easily be argued that science fiction’s history goes back hundreds, even thousands of years, a whisper of its conception to be found in the work of Ancient Greek cosmologists and philosophers, but, spurred on by the industrial revolution, science fiction as we recognise it today was largely formed in the latter half of the 19th century and the early 20th century. The term science fiction itself, though first appearing in William Wilson’s A Little Earnest Book upon a Great Old Subject in 1951, was not widely used until its popularisation in the 1920s by the hugely influential publisher Hugo Gernsback, when it became firmly recognized as its own genre.

I’d like to share with you today some of our early sci-fi titles. As a fan of the genre I find it fascinating to witness its birth through these novels, and to see just how similar some of the storylines are to those in sci-fi that is being created today. Furthermore, our separation from them in time makes it is easy to see how the political, social, and technological landscape of the period influenced these novelists, which in turn helps us to more easily see how our own lives and times influence the content of contemporary science fiction, even without the clear lens of hindsight.

THE CRYSTAL MAN

Edward Page Mitchell, edited and introduced by Sam Moskowitz, 1973 [1874-1886]

This is an anthology collection of early science fiction short stories by Edward Page Mitchell originally published in newspapers in the 1870s and 1880s. Mitchell’s stories explored human invisibility and time travel before H.G. Wells’ (undisputedly one of the most influential early sci-fi writers) The Invisible Man and The Time Machine, and it has been postulated by a number of scholars that Mitchell could have been an influence on the legendary author. Also in this collection are extremely early, formative examples of other now-popular science fiction themes such as faster-than-light travel, teleportation, mind transfer, and superhuman mutants. It would be difficult to find a modern sci-fi narrative that didn’t include a concept Mitchell touched on! After his death in 1927 he was largely forgotten until being rediscovered by leading science fiction historian Sam Moskowitz, who collected and published his work together for the first time in this volume, along with his own long and informative introduction which details Mitchell’s personal life and work.

CEASAR’S COLUMN: A STORY OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

Edmund Boisgilbert, pseudonym of Ignatius Donnelly, 1890

Ceasar’s Column is one of the earliest works of dystopian science fiction in the English language. Compared to Mitchell’s work, Donnelly’s novel revolves less around the futuristic and fantastic technologies and occurrences of science fiction themselves, and instead focuses on the political and social struggles of the world they exist in. That’s not to say it isn’t rich in imagined technology – Donnelly’s portrayal of 1980s New York is filled with advanced tech, much of which, such as television, radio, aeroplanes capable of transatlantic flight, and poison gas really did come to exist, though not quite in the way he imagined them! The plot centres on the city’s ruthless financial oligarchy that rules over a vast, abject working class, and the secret resistance organization that opposes it.

The resemblance to modern works, particularly those created during the dramatic increase in the popularity of dystopian narratives in the late 2000s and early 2010s, is notable. When compared with one of the most popular dystopian novels of recent decades, Suzanne Collins’ The Hunger Games, it can be seen that both novels create worlds where the brutality of an oppressive state is matched in barbarity by the violence of the revolutionary resistance, with neither truly earning the moral high ground. The similarity of the climax of both novels, in which the struggle between both sides comes to a less-than-clean-cut conclusion, is particularly staggering.

THE FIRST AND LAST MEN

Olaf W. Stapledon, 1930

As science fiction matured throughout the early 20th century, more ponderous, philosophical, and cosmically-scaled narratives appeared, including the works of Katherine Burdekin that I discussed in my previous blog post, and exemplified by the groundbreaking works of Olaf Stapledon, all of which helped to form a strain of the genre that still exists today (a favorite example of mine being the 2009 film Mr Nobody, or, more recently, 2016’s Arrival). The recent and anticipated advancements in astronomy and cosmology, which Stapledon followed closely, encouraged a ‘zoomed-out’ view of humanity, and even of the very solar system in which we reside. The First and Last Men, about which Arthur C. Clarke (of 2001: A Space Odyssey acclaim) stated ‘no book before or since has ever had such an impact on my imagination’, takes on the incredible task of imagining the story of the human race all the way up to its demise billions of years in the future. Humanity makes its way through eighteen different forms or species, some of which occur through natural selection, others by human intervention, offering an early example of genetic engineering in science fiction. The narrator, a ‘last man’ residing on Neptune in the last remaining human stronghold, psychically holds the consciousness of a ‘first man’, a stroke of cyclical symmetry which is reminiscent of contemporary and later cosmological and philosophical theories such as the cyclical model, loop quantum cosmology and eternalism. The First and Last Men preceded Star Maker, in which Stapledon took his ideas a step further and traced the birth and death of an entire universe.

Look out for these early works of science fiction among many more like them (so many it was hard for me to choose which to include in this blog post!) in our upcoming catalogue of the legendary Martin Stone’s collection, which is rich in speculative and weird fiction.

Bibliography

Adam Roberts: The History of Science Fiction. Springer, 4 Aug 2016

H.G. Wells: The Invisible Man. Broadview Press, 30 Jun 2018

Ignatius Donnelly: Caesar’s Column, A Story of the Twentieth Century. Wesleyan University Press, 4 Dec 2003

Olaf Stapledon: Last And First Men. Hachette UK, 19 Mar 2012

Robert Crossley: An Olaf Stapledon Reader. Syracuse University Press, 1 Mar 1997

www.scififilmhistory.com: Karina Wilson, accessed 2 September 2019

www.sf-encyclopedia.com: Gollancz, SFE Ltd., accessed 2 September 2019

Published September 12, 2019 by Poppy Connor-Slater .

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New on the Shelves: Female Writers

While gender inequality still remains in the publishing world today, the challenges that female writers faced in the past, including society’s attitude towards them, were even more severe and impenetrable. Today the majority of classic writers who have become household names are male, but that’s not to say that women weren’t writing in the early 20th century and earlier – we just don’t know about them! That’s why it has been so exciting that while we have been cataloguing the collection of the legendary Martin Stone we have come across quite a few interesting books by female writers, many of which are new to me. I’d like to share a few of their stories, which I have personally found extremely humbling and inspiring.

ANNA KINGSFORD (1846 – 1888)

When I picked up a copy of Dreams and Dream Stories, a beautiful little book (black cloth decorated with silver stars and lettering) containing a collection of Anna Kingsford’s dream diaries, musings, poems, and prose, I was immediately fascinated by her writing and by her story. She was a passionate animal rights activist, anti-vivisectionist, vegetarian, spiritualist, and one of the first women to gain a medical degree (as well as being the only medical student at the time to graduate without experimenting on an animal).

Kingsford had a desire to study medicine in order to give herself more authority in her pursuit of the furthering of the animal welfare-based causes that were so close to her heart. British medical schools did not allow women entry, and so in 1874, aged 27, Kingsford began studying medicine in Paris. Although she was allowed to study, it was not easy: Kingsford recounts in a letter to her husband an incident when, in group of around a hundred students (Kingsford being the only woman), a professor refused to speak or even write her name during a roll call, claiming that she was neither a woman nor a man.

Paris was at the time the epicenter of vivisection-based physiology, and Kingsford had to endure the sights and sounds of live animals being subject to horrific experiments. However, despite the distress this caused her, her refusal to conduct any animal experiments, and her writing her thesis on the medical benefits of vegetarianism (which was initially objected to by multiple professors), she graduated with a Doctorate of Medicine in 1880, going on the give prominent lectures and demonstrations promoting vegetarianism (which was controversial even amongst her fellow anti-vivisectionists) and condemning vivisection, just as she had wished.

What she achieved and withstood in her short lifetime is testament to her incredible strength and determination in the face of a society that was pitted strongly against her beliefs and her sex.

KATHARINE BURDEKIN (1896 – 1963)

Katharine Burdekin was a truly remarkable writer of speculative fiction with an emphasis on the exploration of incredibly advanced and complex feminist and gender-critical concepts, marking her out as undeniably far ahead of her time. Born into an educated, upper-middle-class family, she was highly intelligent and well-read. She wished to attend Oxford like her brothers, but unfortunately her parents forbade it.

Ten of her novels were published during her lifetime, but fell into obscurity until the 1980s when Daphne Patai, a Professor of Women’s Studies, discovered the true identity of “Murray Constantine”, Burdekin’s pseudonym. Many of her novels were subsequently published by The City University of New York’s Feminist Press and are now of great scholarly interest.

We are lucky enough to have on our shelves two Burdekin first editions. The first, Proud Man, is signed and inscribed by Burdekin. In the novel a completely biologically androgynous human from a peaceful, genderless, vegetarian future society travels back in time to 1930s England, and then gives a critique of this comparatively primitive, “sub-human” society. Through this future human’s eyes, Burdekin dissects our adherence to gender roles and the societal and cultural creation of the masculine identity, theorizing that the male sex assumes that all children are inherently effeminate – that girls naturally become women, while boys must be carefully supervised, taught, and tested into becoming men, and that this is borne out of “a great fear of the suppressed power of the female sex”.

Our second Burdekin, The Rebel Passion, is an early work that the author considered to be her first as a mature writer. It is another time travel-based novel, telling the story of a 12th century male monk who is “born with the soul of a woman” and does not fit into society’s ideas of masculinity. In a series of visions shown to him by a spirit, he witnesses events spanning millions of years from the dawn of life to the creation of a utopian, neo-medieval 21st century society where men and women have achieved complete equality.

CATHERINE CARSWELL (1879 – 1946)

Scottish writer Catherine Carswell’s life was lived among artistic and literary circles, and, having little care for playing things safely or for giving up in the face of adversity, was often dogged by drama and controversy. In 1908 she won a historic court case, making her the first woman to have her marriage annulled by proving the insanity of her husband at the time of their marriage. Some years later she moved from Glasgow to London, where she hoped to further her budding career as a journalist and critic. However, after publishing a glowing review of The Rainbow, a novel by her close friend D.H. Lawrence (who was then a contentious figure at best) she lost her job.

Carswell and Lawrence’s friendship is notable for the affection shown on both sides, and for the fact that Carswell, unlike many of his friends, was never the subject or recipient of the criticism for which Lawrence was known. The pair exchanged a huge quantity of letters and frequently and actively encouraged and advised one another on their writing, with Carswell having particular involvement in Women in Love. The two novels that Carswell wrote during this period were eventually forgotten, much like Burdekin’s, until their eventual rediscovery and publication by the feminist publisher Virago, and she is now considered a crucial figure in 20th century Scottish women’s writing.

Deciding to turn her hand to biography, Carswell penned an honest yet sympathetic biography of Robert Burns, who had to many become a legendary, untouchable figure. The book was met with uproar, moving one individual to send a bullet to Carswell in the post and advise her to end her life in order to “make the world a cleaner place”.

The Carswell title that we have to offer is a first edition of The Savage Pilgrimage, a fascinating, intimate biography of Lawrence, written soon after his death. It was withdrawn by Chatto and Windus amid fierce accusations of libel from another friend and biographer of Lawrence, John Middleton Murry. Carswell and Murry had developed a strained relationship prior to Lawrence’s death which only intensified in its aftermath, when their biographies conveyed very different ideas about Lawrence’s character and motivations, as well as about each other.

As a final thought, I believe it is worth noting that these women all come from comparatively privileged backgrounds, yet their paths through writing and publication were clearly not easy, not to mention the fact that they were never able to reach the prominence of some of the most acclaimed – overwhelmingly male – writers. It is sobering to imagine how difficult and practically impossible the act and idea of writing would have been for women from less wealthy, more diverse backgrounds – something that we have undoubtedly not yet entirely overcome.

This is only a very small selection of the many amazing lesser-known women writers I’ve recently come across on our shelves, and I am certain there are so many more out there left for me to discover, which is a very exciting thought! I hope you have enjoyed reading about their lives and works as much as I have.

Bibliography

The Scalpel and the Butterfly: The Conflict Between Animal Research and Animal Protection, Deborah Rudacille, University of California Press. (2001)

Proud Man, Katharine Burdekin, Feminist Press at CUNY (1993)

Anna Kingsford: Her Life, Letters, Diary and Work, Edward Maitland Cambridge University Press. (2011)

http://www.humanitarismo.com.br/annakingsford/english/index.htm (2019)

The End of this Day’s Business, Katharine Burdekin, Feminist Press at CUNY. (1989)

Open the Door!, Catherine Carswell, Canongate Books. New Ed edition (2010)

Lying Awake, Catherine Carswell, Canongate Books. 2nd edition (1997)

Published August 11, 2019 by Poppy Connor-Slater .

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Sir Richard Arman Gregory FRS, FRAS (29 January 1864 – 15 September 1952) and Herbert George Wells (21 September 1866 – 13 August 1946)

Lucius Books have just acquired the Sir Richard Gregory archive of H. G. Wells first editions comprising no fewer than 65 inscribed presentation copies including the dedication copy of Select Conversations with an Uncle, The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, manuscript material and letters. Read all about it here. The full catalogue is available on request: info@luciusbooks.com

Richard Gregory and the “small, shabby hobbledehoy called H. G. Wells” first met whilst they were pupils at the Normal School for Science in South Kensington. It was here that Wells co-founded and edited the Science Schools Journal assisted readily by Gregory and a life-long friendship was born. Gregory was the author of many books including three text-books, the first of which, Elementary Physical and Astronomical Geography, published in 1891, ran to seven editions. His fourth, a biology course book entitled Honours Physiography [1893] was a collaboration with Wells which, on account of mutual financial embarrassment, they sold outright to the publisher for £20- splitting the proceeds down the middle. Gregory’s enthusiasm for science was rewarded in May 1893 when he was appointed by Norman Lockyer to the staff of the prestigious scientific journal Nature. As Wells settled down to write essays in the scientific occult like The Time Machine and The Island of Dr. Moreau he would often turn to Gregory for encouragement. That Gregory would take advice and seek the support of Wells for his own work indicates the reciprocity of feelings and interests between the two friends. They were each, in their own way, doing essential work for science; Gregory concentrating on the exposition of the laws of Nature, Wells on their imaginative exploitation. Wells, with his romances of science, did for generations what Gregory could never do: he unlocked the imaginations of thousands, and buoyed them with new hope.

In 1919 Gregory took over as editor of Nature, establishing it in the international scientific community. He introduced weekly editorials on social and political issues, so much so that Nature was dubbed “the most important weekly written in English” and banned in Nazi Germany for criticising the expulsion of Jewish scientists. Memorable moments in science under Gregory’s editorship included the discovery of the neutron and an entire special issue devoted to Albert Einstein’s theory of relativity. Wells wrote for and was reviewed extensively in Nature. He considered it an ideal platform to convey his ideas to an influential audience. Despite decent scientific credentials (first-class honours in zoology and second-class honours in biology), he never managed to obtain a much-coveted Fellowship of the Royal Society and thus wrote as an outsider to the scientific establishment. From their 1886 first meeting at the Normal School for Science up until Wells’ death in August 1946, Gregory and Wells remained in close contact and the best of friends. Indeed it is recorded that Gregory is the only person with whom Wells never quarrelled. Even after Wells’ death, Gregory worked tirelessly in trying to “keep alive this considerable body of thought”, attempting to form a Wells Fellowship (the Wells Memorial).

It is perhaps best left to H. G. W. himself to sum up their extraordinary 60 year relationship. In his 1895 first book of fiction “Select Conversations With an Uncle”, the printed dedication reads: 

                           “To my dearest and best friend R. A. G.”