Comparative Literature 342
Introduction to Science Fiction
Some Definitions
• “Science fiction is one of the more secluded parade grounds
where private fantasy and public event meet….[It] is no more
written for scientists than ghost stories are written for ghosts.” –
Brian W. Aldiss
• “Science fiction is what we point to when we say it.” – Damon
Knight
• “Fantasy is the impossible made possible. Science fiction is the
improbable made possible.” – Rod Serling
• “[SF involves] realistic speculation about possible future events,
based solidly on adequate knowledge of the real world, past and
present, and on a thorough understanding of the nature and
significance of the scientific method.” – Robert A. Heinlein
ANTIQUITY
• Xenophanes of
Colophon (c. 500 BC)
• The stars come into
being from burning
clouds
• The Sun consists of
burning clouds ﾉ a
mass of little fires
• Anaxagoras (500-428
BC)-beginnings of the
atomic theory
• Early development of
possible-worlds theory
• Described the moon as
“of an earthly nature”
(qtd in Butler 19), even
possibly harbouring life
• Plutarch (46 AD)
Concerning the Face in
the Orb of the Moon
(De Facie in Orbe
Lunae)
• Recognized that the
moon does not produce
its own light
• Suggested that the
moon was the home of
“the blessed souls” (21)
• Ptolemy (2nd c. AD),
Greek astronomer and
geographer of
Alexandria - geocentric
model of the Solar
system - computational
system
Lucian of Samosata (120-200 AD) True Story (Vera Historia), first
translated into English in 1634
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We told him all, and he began and
told us about himself: that he too
was a human being, Endymion by
name, who had once been ravished
from our country in his sleep, and
on coming there had been made
king of the land. He said that his
country was the moon that shines
down on us. He urged us to take
heart, however, and suspect no
danger, for we should have
everything that we required. "And if I
succeed," said he, "in the war which
I am now making on the people of
the sun, you shall lead the happiest
of lives with me." We asked who the
enemy were, and what the quarrel
was about.
•
"Phaethon," said he, "the king of the
inhabitants of the sun--for it is
inhabited, you know, as well as the
moon--has been at war with us for a
long time now. It began in this way.
Once upon a time I gathered together
the poorest people in my kingdom and
undertook to plant a colony on the
Morning Star, which was empty and
uninhabited. Phaethon out of jealousy
thwarted the colonisation, meeting us
half-way at the head of his Ant
Dragoons. At that time we were
beaten, for we were not a match for
them in strength, and we retreated:
now, however, I desire to make war
again and plant the colony. If you
wish, then, you may take part with me
in the expedition and I will give each of
you one of my royal vultures and a
complete outfit. We shall take the field
to-morrow."
RENAISSANCE (14th - 17th
c.)
• Thomas More, Utopia
(1515)
• Depicts an ideal,
imaginary society,
meant as a satire of
Renaissance Britain
• (eu-topia = good place;
ou-topia = nowhere)
• Not truly SF, but a
formative work
• Johan Kepler (15711630), astronomer
Somnium (publ. 1634)
• Title means “dream”
• Describes an imaginary
voyage to the moon;
incorporates Kepler’s
scientific theories
• Considered the first
‘true’ SF text
• Francis Godwin (1562 1633): Man in the
Moone (publ. 1638)
• First work of SF in
English; a utopian satire
• Influenced by
contemporary travel
and exploration
narratives
• Tommasso
Campanella, City of the
Sun (1602)
• Distinctive among
‘space utopias’ in
imagining its ideal
society on the sun, and
as a benevolent
theocracy
• May have influenced
Godwin
•Francis Bacon, The New Atlantis (1627)
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Like Godwin and Campanella, imagines an ideal society where science, religion, and nature are intertwined
“We have also perspective houses, where we make demonstrations of all lights and radiations and of all colors; and
out of things uncolored and transparent we can represent unto you all several colors, not in rainbows, as it is in
gems and prisms, but of themselves single. We represent also all multiplications of light, which we carry to great
distance, and make so sharp as to discern small points and lines. Also all colorations of light: all delusions and
deceits of the sight, in figures, magnitudes, motions, colors; all demonstrations of shadows. We find also divers
means, yet unknown to you, of producing of light, originally from divers bodies. We procure means of seeing objects
afar off, as in the heaven and remote places; and represent things near as afar off, and things afar off as near;
making feigned distances. We have also helps for the sight far above spectacles and glasses in use; we have also
glasses and means to see small and minute bodies, perfectly and distinctly; as the shapes and colors of small flies
and worms, grains, and flaws in gems which cannot otherwise be seen, observations in urine and blood not otherwise
to be seen. We make artificial rainbows, halos, and circles about light. We represent also all manner of reflections,
refractions, and multiplications of visual beams of objects.”
"We have also sound-houses, where we practise and demonstrate all sounds and their generation. We have
harmony which you have not, of quarter-sounds and lesser slides of sounds. Divers instruments of music likewise to
you unknown, some sweeter than any you have; with bells and rings that are dainty and sweet. We represent small
sounds as great and deep, likewise great sounds extenuate and sharp; we make divers tremblings and warblings of
sounds, which in their original are entire. We represent and imitate all articulate sounds and letters, and the voices
and notes of beasts and birds. We have certain helps which, set to the ear, do further the hearing greatly; we have
also divers strange and artificial echoes, reflecting the voice many times, and, as it were, tossing it; and some that
give back the voice louder than it came, some shriller and some deeper; yea, some rendering the voice, differing in
the letters or articulate sound from that they receive. We have all means to convey sounds in trunks and pipes, in
strange lines and distances.”
Cyrano de Bergerac - Voyages to the
Moon and Sun (1647)
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with Beef-Marrow I anointed my Body, for I was all over mortified from Head to
Foot: Then having taken a dram of Cordial Waters to strengthen my Heart, I
went back to look for my Machine; but I could not find it, for some Soldiers, that
had been sent into the Forest to cut wood for a Bonefire, meeting with it by
chance, had carried it with them to the Fort: Where after a great deal of
guessing what it might be, when they had discovered the invention of the Spring,
some said, that a good many Fire-Works should be fastened to it, because their
Force carrying them up on high, and the Machine playing its large Wings, no
Body but would take it for a Fiery Dragon. In the mean time I was long in search
of it, but found it at length in the Market-place of Kebeck (Quebec), just as they
were setting Fire to it. I was so transported with Grief, to find the Work of my
Hands in so great Peril, that I ran to the Souldier that was giving Fire to it,
caught hold of his Arm, pluckt the Match out of his Hand, and in great rage
threw my self into my Machine, that I might undo the Fire-Works that they had
stuck about it; but I came too late, for hardly were both my Feet within, when
whip, away went I up in a Cloud.
ENLIGHTENMENT (18th c.)
• John Locke, Essay
Concerning Human
Understanding
(1690)
• David Hume, Isaac
Newton, Voltaire
and French
encyclopaedists
• Innovations in
philosophy and
science
• Believed in the
supremacy of
reason
• Jonathan Swift,
Gulliver’s Travels
(1726)
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Parody of travel narratives; also
satirized British society
Book III is most recognizably SF,
partly based on actual research
conducted by the Royal Society
Other three books can be
characterized as utopian and/or
anti-utopian
• Voltaire,
Micromégas (1752)
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Title means “small giant”
Ironic observer narrative: literal and
figurative alien visits and comments upon
earthly society
“On a planet revolving around the star
Sirius there lived a young man of great
intelligence, whose acquaintance I had
the honor of making during his recent visit
to our little anthill. He was called
Micromegas, an appropriate name for
great people. He had a stature of eight
leagues, or 24,000 geometrical paces of
five feet each, or 120,000 statute feet.”
• Ludvig Holberg, The
Journey of Niels Klim to
the World Underground
(1741)
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Similar to Gulliver’s Travels, but
describes a journey to an
underground “inner planet”
populated by sentient animals
and plants
Gives detailed descriptions of
each world’s population and
society
A formative work of modern
Danish literature
• Johan Herman Wessel,
Anno 7603 (1781)
• Time-travel fantasy,
also satire on gender
roles (roles of men and
women are reversed)
• Was never performed in
its author’s lifetime and
is not well known today
• Anonymous, Symzonia (1820)
• Based on the hollow-earth theory of John Cleves Symmes Jr.
(American writer), may even have been written by him, or else
inspired by his ideas
• Inspired Edgar Allan Poe’s Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym
(1838)
• "I declare the earth is hollow, habitable within;
containing a number of solid concentric spheres; one
within the other, and that it is open at the pole twelve
or sixteen degrees. I pledge my life in support of this
truth, and am ready to explore the hollow if the world
will support and aid me in the undertaking."
The 19th Century
• German romantics:
E.T.A. Hoffmann,
Ludwig Tieck,
Adelbert von
Chamisso
• Mary Shelley, Frankenstein
(1818)
• Borderline between SF and
horror/suspense; still often
cited in debates of scientific
and medical ethics
• Influenced Brian W. Aldiss’
definition of SF as “a lively
subgenre of Gothic”
• Edward S. Ellis, The
Steam Man of the
Prairies (1865)
• Edward Bellamy,
Looking Backward
(1888)
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• Set in the year 2000; portrays
the new millennium as an age
of peace and prosperity
• A socialist utopia, based on
Bellamy’s beliefs of what was
necessary to improve
American society
• Very popular in its time but fell
out of favour after World War I
First popular work of American SF
Early depiction of robots in literature
"It was about ten feet in height, measuring to the top of the
'stove-pipe hat,' which was fashioned after the common
order of felt coverings, with a broad brim, all painted a
shiny black. The face was made of iron, painted a black
color, with a pair of fearful eyes, and a tremendous
grinning mouth. A whistle-like contrivance was made to
answer for the nose. The steam chest proper and boiler,
were where the chest in a human being is generally
supposed to be, extending also into a large knapsack
arrangement over the shoulders and back. A pair of arms,
like projections, held the shafts, and the broad flat feet
were covered with sharp spikes, as though he were the
monarch of baseball players. The legs were quite long,
and the step was natural, except when running, at which
time, the bolt uprightness in the figure showed differed
from a human being.”
• James de Mille, A Strange Manuscript
Found in a Copper Cylinder (1888)
• First work of Canadian SF; a utopian
satire set in Antarctica
• Imagines prehistoric animals surviving
in the present day; the human society
venerates death and poverty
19th-Century Scientific
Romances
• Jules Verne (18281905), Extraordinary
Voyages
• The umbrella title given
to his published works
• Emphasizes the
‘science’ in the fiction,
with considerable
attention to details
• Herbert George Wells
(1866-1946), The Time
Machine, The War of
the Worlds, The
Invisible Man, The
Island of Doctor Moreau
• Wells’ fiction was influenced
by his socialist beliefs
• Popularized (but did not
invent) themes of time travel
and extraterrestrial contact
The 20th Century
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European dystopian novel:
Huxley, Brave New World (1932)
Zamyatin, We (1923)
Čapek, RUR plays
Stapledon, Last Men in London (1932)
Orwell, Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949)
Hugo Gernsback (1884-1967),
Amazing Stories
• Artwork by Frank R. Paul (1884-1963), first
commercially successful SF illustrator
Post-Enlightenment, post-cognitive
epistemology
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F. Nietzsche (philosophy)
M. Heidegger (philosophy)
J. Derrida (philosophy of deconstruction)
K. Goedel (mathematics)
W. K. Heisenberg (quantum mechanics)
I. Prigogine (chemistry, non-equilibrium
thermodynamics)
• M. C. Escher (art)
Key Themes and Subgenres
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“hard” SF: emphasizes the natural and physical sciences
“soft” SF: emphasizes the social and behavioural sciences
New Wave: self-conscious literary experimentation, meant to break down literary
and/or sociopolitical boundaries
Cyberpunk: treatment of human/technological interaction, usually dark and
dystopian
Time travel: allows writers to speculate on the future and/or rethink the past
Alternative history (uchronia, meaning ‘no time’): what would happen if history
had turned out differently?
Apocalyptic fiction: imagines the end of the world as we know it, originally with
religious undertones, but nowadays not always
Space opera: nickname for an adventure story that just happens to have a
futuristic and/or extraterrestrial setting
Speculative fantasy and magical realism: may be considered ‘borderline’ SF
Other genres such as mystery, suspense, and horror often have SF elements
Possible-Worlds Theory
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The Atomists: Democritus and Leucippus (4th century BC)
“Though the earth is at the centre of our world, that world is merely one
of an infinite number of worlds which come into and go out of existence
in endless sequence throughout a universe infinite in space and time”
René Descartes, Principles of Philosophy (1644)
“From this it can also be easily inferred that the matter of the heaven
does not differ from that of the earth; and that even if there were
countless worlds in all, it would be impossible for them not to all be of
one and the same kind of matter. And therefore there cannot be several
worlds, but only one.”
Gottfried Wilhelm von Leibniz (1689, 1710)
“best of all possible worlds” (Theodicy, 1710); fictional characters
inhabit their own worlds (On Freedom, 1689)
Saul Kripke (1963, 1972): possible worlds and
modal logic
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Possible worlds are logical and/or fictional constructs used to explain
hypothetical situations in the actual world
Necessary vs. contingent truths: is a statement true in all, some, or no
possible worlds?
The two basic laws of logic: non-contradiction (a statement and its
converse cannot both be true in the same world); excluded middle
(every statement in any one world is either true or false)
Counterpart theory: can the same entity exist in more than one possible
world?
Rigid and nonrigid designators: properties true of the same entity in all
or some possible worlds
Possible worlds can contain entities not found in the actual world, and
vice versa
David Lewis (1979, 1986): modal realism, or
modal relativism
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“I believe that there are possible worlds other than the one we happen
to inhabit”
“You can’t get into a ‘logical-space’ ship and visit another possible
world”
‘actuality’ is a relative term: the actual world is actual to us because we
are in it
Essential properties, not necessarily names, identify transworld
counterparts
SF works which involve travel to other possible worlds in fact represent
part of the same possible universe, part of a larger multiverse
Possible Worlds and Fictional Worlds
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Jonathan Hart (1988): “Possible world theory is the modal logical delineation of
relations. Fictional world theory is the analysis of how fictional texts are read.”
Principle of minimal departure
Marie-Laure Ryan (1991): “we reconstrue the central world of a textual
universe...[and] the alternate possible worlds of counterfactual statements as
conforming as far as possible to our representation of [the actual world]”
We would assume the fictional world is like the real world unless the author tells
us otherwise
Narrative/dialogic conventions of SF: characters and/or narrator must make
explicit references to phenomena not found in the actual world (expository
dialogue/narration; “infodumping”)
Postmodernism
• Began as a movement in art and architecture
• As literary theory, involves the breaking down
of boundaries and power structures
• Related to deconstruction and
poststructuralism
• e.g. Derrida, Foucault, Lyotard, Rorty,
Baudrillard
Jean Baudrillard, Simulacrum
and Simulation (1981)
• Simulations create their own reality
(“hyperreality”)
• Human experience is thus a simulation
and not reality itself
• Based in part on Borges’ On Exactitude
in Science
• Influenced The Matrix, though
Baudrillard himself denied it
Donna Haraway, A Cyborg
Manifesto (1991)
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www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/Haraway/CyborgManifesto.html
Uses the cyborg as a metaphor for socialist feminism: hybridization of
previously binary oppositions
“the boundary between science fiction and social reality is an optical
illusion”
Represents not only blurring of the human/machine distinction but also
of the human/animal distinction
Paradox of technology: the cyborg both liberates and undermines the
human
“The replicant Rachael in...Blade Runner stands as the image of a
cyborg culture’s fear, love, and confusion”
SF and Postmodernism
• Role of popular culture and new media,
in fiction and reality
• Examination and critique by SF authors
of both the actual world and their own
literary genre(s)
• Use of SF texts by postmodern theorists
(esp. New Wave and cyberpunk texts)
The New Wave
• Movement of the 1960s and 1970s
• Regarded SF as a serious literary form, reacted against ‘pulp’
fiction
• Began with Michael Moorcock in 1964; reached its height c.
1971
• British and American New Wave authors generally reacted
against the politics of Vietnam War-era America
• Key themes: left-wing political visions; sexual liberation;
philosophical and existential undertones; experimental narrative
techniques
• Ancestor of the cyberpunk movement