Theme: British fantasy fiction in the 20th century.(J. K. Rowling) Contents: Introduction

Chapter II. The 20th century Roots of fantasy Fiction and British fantasy fiction in the 20th century
2.1. The 20th century Roots of fantasy Fiction
⁴A few months back, a friend of mine finally bought a new phone. Her old phone, an iPhone 4, had become so dated that it wasn’t capable of keeping up with all the things she needed it for, and so she finally gave in and swapped it for a newer model. All in all, not a particularly interesting story. Technology moves fast and getting caught behind the curve — even if just by a handful of months — can be a pretty big problem.

But that wasn’t always the case. In fact, for most of human history, technology moved at a glacial pace. For the layperson, a whole generation could come and go and only see one or two — if any — significant changes to their lives or the world around them because of a new invention or breakthrough in science. When that finally changed, during the 19th century, the transition was hard and fast as the industrial revolution produced machines and ideas that fundamentally altered the world around them. New means of travel and transportation, new forms of communication, Darwin’s On the Origins of Species — all brought forth a storm of changes to the way people in all countries lived and thought.

In Victorian England and the United States especially, this endless wave of new machines and ideas and fields of study enthralled the public. A fascination with scientists and progress (both technological and social) took hold in the minds of 19th-century civilians, and soon that interest found its way into literature — specifically, literature that would come to be known as some of the earliest pieces of ‘true’ science fiction. Inspired by the immense change happening right before their eyes, early science fiction writers began to take a look at how science was changing their world and how it might change their society and found a tremendous amount of success.

Perhaps the most prominent of these writers to capitalize on that growing interest was Jules Verne, one of the several men often dubbed ‘the father of science fiction.’ His stories were often centered around the public interest in the exploration of areas made accessible or understandable only by the inventions of new technologies and the advancements made in transportation, seen in novels like Journey to the Center of the Earth or Around the World in Eighty Days.

While this interest, in the hands of other writers (particularly in the United Kingdom), manifested largely in the form of the lost-race or lost-city stories used to discuss colonialism and imperialism, for Verne, it was an opportunity to make a new genre called the roman scientifique, in which he focused on writing educational stories that readers found interesting — often valuing the educational content of his works above the literary content. The defining feature of his work, prominent, optimistic, and educational discussion of the natural sciences mixed seamlessly with the ‘adventure tale’ is what made Verne’s stories so successful, and allowed his works specifically to be selected as some of the foundational pieces of science fiction as a genre.

Much of Verne’s work, however, was strongly edited by his publisher, Pierre-Jules Hetzel, who likely had significant sway in determining this defining feature. It can be seen that, in stories written by Verne before his work with Hetzel and following Hetzel’s death near the end of the century, there is a much more pessimistic tone regarding science and progress and far less reverence for the ‘scientist protagonist’ found in much of Verne’s most popular works, suggesting that the intended tone and ideals Verne meant to express was often altered by Hetzel to fit the roman scientifique format.

While Verne’s stories strongly utilized examinations of the sciences in what can be described as an early version of hard, or didactic, science fiction, another 19th-century writer often given the title of ‘the father of science fiction’ — Herbert George Wells — wrote in the opposite manner, in a way that might be described as an early version of soft, or speculative, science fiction. It would be inaccurate to say that Wells’ stories ignored or overlooked the scientific or technological advancements that they stemmed from, but Wells’ works focused far more heavily on the stories or ideas he wanted to express, using scientific discussion as a means rather than the end in a manner meant to ground his ideas in a reality that readers could understand and think about in more concrete terms.

Stories by Wells, called ‘scientific romances,’ turned science into a literary device with which he created engaging tales full of social commentary or speculation about the ways in which humanity’s social perception of itself and the world might be altered as technology progressed. Nowhere is this more clear than in his works The Time Machine or War of the Worlds, both of which utilize a soft science fiction concept — such as a time machine or extraterrestrial conquerors — in order to express the anxieties of the century: shifting class dynamics brought on by industrialization and fear of ever-increasing imperialist zeal respectively.

Unfortunately, not long after the turn of the century, Wells stopped writing scientific romances, deciding instead to use the respect he had earned as a popular writer of such fiction to focus instead on more ‘realist’ novels and stories while also taking his political stances beyond that of the written word, delving significantly into politics, eventually meeting with President Roosevelt and interviewing Josef Stalin.

H. G. Wells wasn’t the first to use the scientific progress of the 19th century as a theme or literary device, however. Two other famous writers from the century, Edgar Allan Poe and Mary Shelley, have both, in the last several decades of science fiction scholarship, been looked at as having written things that could be considered the ‘true’ start of science fiction. While discussing either of them — or Verne or Wells for that matter — as the ‘start’ of science fiction as a genre has its own criticisms rooted in the themes and tropes present in written works dating all the way back to the second century, there is some merit in looking to either Poe or Shelley as deeply influential early science fiction writers.

Poe, though most well known for his supernatural stories, often would weave science into his stories to enhance them. Hugo Gernsback, the most prominent publisher of the late 19th and early 20th century, identified Poe as the father of ‘scientifiction,’ Gernsback’s term for the stories he identified as having the traits we now assign to science fiction. For Gernsback, Poe was the most influential writer in the genre of scientifiction, and while Poe did have a large influence over Verne, most scholars believe Gernsback overestimated Poe’s overall influence in the genre.

In place of Poe as the origin of science fiction as a genre, however, the general consensus is that Mary Shelley, with her novel Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus was the one to truly ‘begin’ the genre, earning her the title of ‘mother of science fiction.’ Like Wells, Shelley used science more as a theme in Frankenstein than as the core of her novel, and (possibly) like Verne without Hetzel, she was more cynical of scientific progress and the growing tradition of the time to put scientists in an inherently good, protagonist role.

More specifically, Frankenstein touches on the growing tension of the time between the rapid, seemingly unstoppable progress of the industrial revolution and longstanding traditions deeply ingrained in the day-to-day life of 19th-century citizens. Shelley’s protagonist rejects tradition, delves too deeply into the pursuit of scientific progress, and suffers the consequences. Not only was this an enormous departure from the literary traditions of the time, but it also helped define a cornerstone trope of science fiction since — that of the mad scientist.

All of this ignores and skips over the dozens of other important and influential writers from the 19th and early 20th century (as well as the millennia of science fiction ‘tradition’ mentioned earlier), but it makes clear the effect of the immense industrialization and progress of the 1800s on English literature. Specifically, it shows how rapid progress makes fertile ground for science fiction, which we see today, where, as we struggle to keep up with the speed of innovation, the genre is arguably more popular than ever. Guessing the tropes and archetypes that might come from our own, increasingly fast-paced innovation is difficult and, for the most part, impossible, but with any luck, we’ll be able to see the rise of great writers and works in the same way our 19th-century counterparts were able to.