In 1916 Hugo Gernsback coined the term 'Scientifiction' to describe the stories his magazines published. And Jules Verne and H.G. Wells provided a lot of his material. But did anyone 'invent' science fiction?
Brian Aldiss believed that "Science fiction is the search for a definition of mankind and his status in the universe which will stand in our advanced but confused state of knowledge (science), and is characteristically cast in the Gothic or post-Gothic mode."
Aldiss references the Gothic in his definition of science fiction because he believes Mary Shelly's Frankenstein is pivotal to the birth of sci-fi. Whether the Gothic is equally pivotal is a moot point.
But before Mary Shelly there is Margaret Cavendish, and before her is Johannes Kepler, and so on and so on. Can we even pin down a science fiction Ur-text?
Well a lot depends on the status yiu afford 'science' in this kind of fiction? Is it just a plot device, offering an otherwise impossible solution to a common human problem as Algis Budrys once said? Is it just magic dressed up as a spaceship?
Well there's certainly a lot of gizmo fiction to be found in sci-fi, and it's true that its roots did thrive in the soil of adventure stories...
But if sci-fi is also a meditation on 'the status of man in the universe' then a lot of hard sci-fi and some science fantasy would fail the test. Aldiss is from the New Wave of 1960s sci-fi which was somewhat esoteric as well as experimental.
Ursula K. Le Guin believed "science fiction changed around 1960... towards an increase in the number of writers and readers, the breadth of subject, the depth of treatment, the sophistication of language and technique, and the political and literary consciousness of the writing."
Others felt that sci-fi was too Western-centric. Kôichi Yamano led the charge with a 1969 essay arguing that SF had the capacity to be avant garde, rather than simply copying the themes of Golden Age American stories.
So what's the difference between science fiction and science fantasy? , Rod Serling claimed that the former was "the improbable made possible" while the latter was "the impossible made probable."
J.G. Ballard believed the biggest developments of the immediate future will take place, not on the Moon or Mars, but on Earth, and it is inner space, not outer, that needed to be explored. "Accuracy, that last refuge of the unimaginative, doesn't matter a hoot."
Michael Moorcock, one of the founders of New Wave sci-fi was highly critical of the Golden Age stories as literature. They lacked "passion, subtlety, irony, original characterization, original and good style, a sense of involvement in human affairs, colour, density, depth..."
New Wave sci-fi began to decline in the early 1970s. "(It) failed to move people" Jack Williamson said. "I'm not sure if this failure was due to its pessimistic themes or to people feeling the stuff was too pretentious. But it never really grabbed hold of people's imaginations."
Without the speculative possibilities of science most sci-fi wouldn't be that different from more prosaic fiction. Sci-fi grabs the imagination by showing possibilities - garbed in technology - that lead to interesting situations, be they unique or familiar ones.
But I've thought for a long time that the real 'science' in sci-fi isn't physics, or biology or engineering:
It's sociology.
Good science fiction is good sociology. It looks at society and asks what transformations might happen in it, and to it, if we continue to progress in a certain way.
And its versatility is due to the huge number of questions we have about society, along with our deep-seated fears that we do not know where we are headed.
So perhaps Swift, rather than Wells, deserves some credit for melding tboughts of social critique with the idea of fantastical adventure and placing them into story form.
Feel free to disagree...
Perhaps we should leave the last word to Frederik Pohl: "Someone once said that a good science-fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam. We agree."
More stories another time...
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Between 1960 and 1970 Penguin Books underwent several revolutions in cover layout, at a time when public tastes were rapidly changing.
Today in pulp I look back at 10 years that shook the Penguin!
Allen Lane founded Penguin Books in 1935, aiming to bring high-quality paperbacks to the masses for the same price as a packet of cigarettes. Lane began by snapping up publishing rights for inexpensive mid-market novels and packaging them expertly for book lovers.
From the start Penguins were consciously designed; Lane wanted to distinguish his paperbacks from pulp novels. Edward Young created the first cover grid, using three horizontal bands and the new-ish Gill Sans typeface for the text.
Today in pulp: a tale of an unintentionally radical publisher. It only produced 42 books between 1968-9, but it caught the hedonistic, solipsistic, free love mood of the West Coast freakout scene like no other.
This is the story of Essex House...
Essex House was an offshoot of Parliament Press, a California publishing company set up by pulp artist Milton Luros after the market for pulp magazines began to decline. It specialised in stag magazines sold through liquor stores, to skirt around US obscenity publishing laws.
By the 1960s Parliament Press was already selling pornographic novels through its Brandon House imprint, though these were mostly reprints or translations of existing work. Luros was interested in publishing new erotic authors, and set up Essex House to do just that.
Today in pulp... one of my favourite SF authors: Harry Harrison!
Harry Harrison was born Stamford, Connecticut, in 1925. He served in the US Army Air Corps during WWII, but became disheartened with military life. In his spare time he learned Esperanto.
Harrison started his sci-fi career as an illustrator, working with Wally Wood on Weird Fantasy and Weird Science up until 1950. He also wrote for syndicated comic strips, including Flash Gordon and Rick Random.
Today in pulp... Blade Runner! Let's look back at the classic 1982 movie and see how it compares to original novel.
"It's not an easy thing to meet your maker..."
Blade Runner is based on Philip K. Dick's 1968 novel Do Androids Dream Of Electric Sheep? However 'inspired' may be a better word, as the film is very different to the book.
In the novel Deckard is a bounty hunter for the San Francisco police. The year is 1992; Earth has been ravaged by war and humans are moving to off-world colonies to protect their genetic integrity. They are given organic robots to help them, created by the Rosen Association.
In the 1970s a fascinating engineering battle took place between America and Japan for control of the future. The prize was the world we live in now. And one of the key battles took place on your wrist.
This is the story of the digital watch...
'Digital' is a magical marketing word. Like 'laser' or 'turbo' it suggests progress, mastery and the future. People like those ideas. They like them enough to spend a lot of money on products that have them, especially if they can be a first adopter.
And so it was with the wristwatch. Electronic quartz watches were already a thing by the 1960s: an analogue movement driven by a quartz crystal resonator, powered by a small button battery.
But one American company was setting out on a new timekeeping odyssey...
Today in pulp... let's look back at a Shōjo manga artist whose work celebrated friendships between women: Jun'ichi Nakahara.
Jun'ichi Nakahara was born in Higashikagawa in 1913 and worked as an illustrator, a fashion designer and a doll maker. His work is highly regarded in Japan and he was a significant influence on modern manga art.
In the '20s and '30s Nakahara often drew for Shōjo no Tomo ("Girl's Friend") magazine. The style at the time was for demure, dreamlike imagery, but Nakahara added to this large expressive eyes, often reflecting the light.