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A Mystical Joining

H., J. B. S. 1937. Messianic Radiation: Review of Star-Begotten: a Biological Fantasia by H. G. Wells. Nature 140: 171. DOI: 10.1038/140171a0 [nature.com]

It is always interesting to see what a scientific fact will look like after Mr. Wells's imagination has been let loose on it. The facts on which this book is based are that particles or photons of high energy provoke mutation, and that such particles and possibly photons are reaching our planet from outside. What if some intelligent extra-terrestial beings, perhaps on Mars, are treating us as we treat Drosophila? If these beings are as benevolent as they are powerful, may we not expect that our mutations will be of a desirable character, and that the mutants will reform the world? So Mr. Wells's characters argues. (H 1937: 171)

Radiation will give you superpowers!

"Star-begotten", like Stapledon's "Last and First Men" and "Odd John", but unlike his recent "Star-Maker", despairs of existing humanity, and demands beings of innate endowments superior to our own to deal with the present crisis of civilization, which it sketches in brilliant phrases. The author is obviously sceptical of the remedies which he and others have propounded. "Haven't all civilised men nowadays the feeling of being dilletantes on a sinking ship?" asks one of his characters. So with unconquered optimism he puts forward a panacea which he knows to be fantastic. (H 1937: 171)

What was the "present crisis"? Economic depression? The onslaught of authoritarianism?

Whether or not the Marxians have correctly diagnosed the cause of our present distresses, it is clear that evolutionary processes, either natural, or directed by terrestial or celestial eugenists, are most unlikely to end them. The time-scale of evolution is altogether longer than that of history: and we probably have not many years, let alone generations, to save our civilization from collapse. If this book encourages a single reader to think, even for one moment, that any natural or supernatural process will take the place of human effort and human thought, then it is a bad look. (H 1937: 171)

It could be said that Stapledon's Last and First Men is 'a future history of evolution'.

Anonymous 1939. Latent Virus Infections: Their Bearing on the Cancer Problem. The British Medical Journal 2(4114): 969-971. [JSTOR]

"Toothless" viruses need not be found only in cancers. Might not the viruses which, as some thought, must persist after infections and be responsible for keeping up a lifelong immunity be capable of being modified or made relatively "edentulous" instead of merely being masked by antibody? (Anonymous 1939: 970)

Define:edentulous - "lacking teeth".

Dr. G. W. M. Findlay recalled a book by Dr. W. O. Stapledon, Last and First Men, in which he pictured the human race some millions of years hence being attacked by the Martians with masses of various particles which had the property of receiving and transmitting short- and long-wave radiations. A large part of the human population was thus killed off, and it was only when man managed to incorporate the various particles into himself, thus converting himself into a receiving and transmitting station, that he overcame the forces arrayed against him. That seemed an analogy on the physical plane for Dr. Andrewes's argument on the biological. (Anonymous 1939: 971)

Leaving out the part where artificially constructed super-brains ("Fourth Men") construct a new species of humans ("Fifth Men"), incorporating the Martian subvital units in them artificially to give them "telepathy".

Lerner, A. P. 1948. An Economist Comments on "Freedom Demands Responsibility". Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 4(10): 306-309. DOI: 10.1080/00963402.1948.11460256 [tandfonline.com]

In Olaf Stapledon's "Last and First Men" the discoverers of atomic energy decide that the secret is too dangerous to be entrusted to the human race. They therefore destroy the formula and it is not rediscovered for hundreds of years. Some atomic scientists in America and in England seem to feel that they should do likewise. They recognize that the nature of modern science makes the burying of a secret possible only in a world controlled by the imagination of the novelist. Nevertheless, the guilt that they feel about their participation in the development of the atomic bomb, emphasized by vivid pictures of Hiroshima and by the spectre of the threatening atomic world war, makes them wonder whether, like Stapledon's heroes, who suffered torture rather than divulge the dread secret, they should not somehow arrange to avoid participation in the development of more powerful forces for a world seeking to destroy itself. (Lerner 1948: 306)

This was written before the USSR made theirs.

Price, George R. 1955. A scientist dreams of Economic Frontiers in 2000 A.D. Challenge 4(3): 52-55. DOI: 10.1080/05775132.1955.11468188 [tandfonline.com]

The economic picture I foresee for the end of the century is that construction will be our major industry, the sun will be our major power source, and the most important raw material will be water. (Price 1955: 52)

Not wrong.

As I mentioned, the sun will certainly become our major power source. Each day the sun supplies the earth with more energy than man has used since he appeared on earth. The technological problems involved in converting sunlight to electricity should be simple once the necessary fundamental knowledge has been gained. And distribution costs will often be extremely low, for most domestic users will be able to generate their power needs on the roofs of their homes. (Price 1955: 53)

Not most, yet, but yeah.

For example, the three major prophetic novels of the early 1930s - H. G. Wells' The Shape of Things to Come, Aldous Huxley's Brave New World and Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men - have already been outmoded in several respects. Thus the first two do not mention atomic power at all, and in the third it does not appear until about 2100 A.D. (Price 1955: 55)

Maybe it will be "atomic rifles" that appear in the 2100s.

Derleth, August 1952. Contemporary Science-Fiction. The English Journal 41(1): 1-8. DOI: 10.2307/807153 [JSTOR]

Even for many of its most vocal proponents, science-fiction seems difficult to define with precision. For some it consists of fiction dealing solely with speculation about the future; for others it is the fiction of prophecy; for yet others it is fiction concerned only with interplanetary adventure. Actually, however, the term "science-fiction" embraces all imaginative fiction which grows out of scientific concepts, whether in mathematics or geology, nuclear fission or biology, or any scientific concept whatsoever, whether already demonstrtaed or whether projected out of the writer's imagination into future space and time. (Derleth 1952: 1)

How would one delineate scientific concepts from non-scientific concepts?

An attempt to set forth a basic science-fiction library of twenty books in a poll conducted by the Arkham Sampler two years ago among authors, editors, and readers of science-fiction resulted in a wide disparity of selections. In first place stood H. G. Wells's Seven Famous Novels (The Time Machine, The Island of Dr. Moreau, The Invisible Man, The War of the Worlds, The First Men in the Moon, In the Days of the Comet, and The Food of the Gods). This omnibus was followed by nine other titles - Last and First Men, by W. Olaf Stapledon; Brave New World, by Aldous Huxley; The Short Stories of H. G. Wells; Adventures in Time and Space, edited by R. J. Healy and J. F. McComas; Slan, by A. E. Van Vogt; The World Below, by S. Fowler Wright; Strange Ports of Call, edited by August Derleth; To Walk the Night, by William Sloane; and The Lost World, by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. (Derleth 1952: 2)

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle?

Modern science-fiction has little relation to its forebears save in theme. Out of the tales of fabulous travels, which were begun by Plato in the description of Atlantis embodied in his Timaeus and Critias and reached their height in Sir John Mandeville, grew the familiar lost-continent and last-man-on-earth themes so common to science-fiction in our time. Out of the fantastic chronicles of voyages to the moon begun by Lucian of Samosata with his Icaromenippus, ca. A.D. 165, burgeoned the tale of interplanetary exploration, and this in turn opened various secondary themes - invasion from space, the conquest of alien planets, asteroids, stars. (Derleth 1952: 52)

I may finally have to read Lucian's "True History".

Writers now show a concern for matters philosophic, sociologic, psychiatric, and ethnological; and several of them, notably Robert A. Heinlein, with his "Future History" series, Isaac Asimov with his "Foundation" series, and A. E. Van Vogt with his "Weapon Shops of Isher" stories, have set out ambitiously to portray the history of future galaxies. Above all, a sort of Fortean challenge to the imagination has resulted in fresh, new themes, as well as different approaches to the more standard themes of science-fiction. (Derleth 1952: 3)

And Stapledon is not included in this bunch?

In England, however, wellk-onwn writers like C. S. Lewis, S. Fowler Wright, H. F. Heard, and W. Olaf Stapledon had had regular publication of their science-fiction in book form, most of them, clearly, on a far more literate level than the work of their American contemporaries, and most of them, curiously, concerned with the fate of mankind in the distant future or on other planets. Many of the stories stemmed from the utopian theme, which persists in the best novels in the genre, in one form or another, either in the direct portrayal of an imaginary and much improved civilization of the future or in the form of earth's rebuilding after a holocaust leaving but few survivors. M. P. Shiel's The Purple Cloud and, more recently, George Stewart's Earth Abides are excellent examples of the latter theme. (Derleth 1952: 4)

English science fiction was, at least for a while, ahead of the Americans.

Editor-author John W. Campbell, Jr., a nuclear scientist himself, writing under the pen name of Don A. Stuart, as well as under his own name, is best represented by his collection Who Goes There? and Other Stories, from the title story of which (comparable to the earlier "At the Mountains of Madness," by H. P. Lovecraft) the movie The Thing was recently produced. (Derleth 1952: 6)

Noted. I've been curious about The Thing ever since its parody in Futurama but have yet to watch the movie, even.

Huxley, Julian S. 1951. Sui Generis. Science 114(2952): 109. DOI: 10.1126/science.114.2952.10 [science.org]

I read with interest J. R. Pierce's article on "Science and Literature" in your issue of April 20, but I would like to point out one omission in it. He spoke of a book by Heinlein, tracing the imaginary future of man through many periods but omitted to mention what, in my opinion, is by far the best book on this subject, namely, Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men. This pursued the subject in a most illuminating way, on the assumption that with the vast amount of time still ahead of the human species, it might well produce a succession of totally different types. Stapledon's picture of the society in which all the thinking was done by specialized individuals whose brains were cultured out to a gigantic size on some sort of trellis, is unforgettable! (Huxley 1951: 109)

Define:trellis - "a framework of light wooden or metal bars, chiefly used as a support for fruit trees or climbing plants."

Livingston, Dennis 1969. Science Fiction as a Source of Forecast Material. Focus 1(3): 232-238. DOI: 10.1016/0016-3287(69)90026-3 [sciencedirect.com]

The most basic concept developed in the history of science fiction is that the future is not totally unknown. In fact, inherent in science fiction is the notion that there is not one future, but many possible futures, each arising from the infinite variations that could be applied to the extension of present-day trends. (Livingston 1969: 232)

Multiverse.

Voyages to outer space have traditionally been specialties of science fiction, but the first man to think of using some form of rockets as the means of propulsion was Cyrano de Bergerac in A Voyage to the Moon (1650). Edward Everett Hale was the first to think of an artificial earth satellite in The Brick Moon (1869), as an aid to navigation, and George O. Smith made use of a space station to facilitate interplanetary communication in QRM Interplanetary (1942). Finally, Hugo Gernbeck's Ralph 124C41+: A Romance of the Year 2660 (1911-1912), featured a startling array of successful predictions, such as radar, tape recorders, and microfilm. (Livingston 1969: 233)

I think I was only vaguely aware of only Bergerac.

Robert Heinlein in Double Star (1955) suggests a world federal government headed by a constitutional monarch descended from the Dutch House of Orange, while Paul Anderson's Satan's World (1968) features a galactic organisation of loosely cooperating governments, interlaced with a guild of large companies (the 'Polesotechnic league') composed of both human and alien intelligent beings. (Livingston 1969: 234)

For context, Frank Herbert's Dune was first published in 1965 and Star Trek: The Original Series first aired in 1966.

This type of prediction [The sociology of the future] is probably the most valuable contribution science fiction can make to futures research, since it is easier to describe the eventual appearance of a gadget whose technical prerequisites already exist, than it is to predict its social consequences. The informed individual of the late nineteenth century might have foreseen the automobile, but it would have taken a high degree of imagination to have predicted the traffic jam. (Livingston 1969: 234)

Good analogy. Sounds familiar, too.

Three masterpieces of science fiction that presents an overall picture are Wells' The Time Machine (1895), and Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men (1930) and The Star Maker (1937). Two more recent long-range projections include Clifford Simak's City (1953) and Heinlein's stories and novels known collectively as the 'future history' series (of particular importance since the author pioneered the use of trend curves in projecting an integral future setting within which his stories are placed). (Livingston 1969: 234)

Both, huh?

Both Wells, in The Island of Dr Moreau, and Stapledon, in Sirius, discuss man's efforts to increase the intelligence of animals. (Livingston 1969: 235)

Possibly the earliest notice of Sirius I've found.

The information explosion is extrapolated to its logical conclusion in Hal Draper's Ms Fnd in a Lbry (1961) where a galactic human civilisation collapses upon the inability of the 'bibliotechal engineers' to locate, somewhere in the galaxy, the single drawer that contains the sum total of human knowledge impressed on 'nudged quanta'. (Livingston 1969: 235)

Oh wow.

Robert Bloch has conveniently summarised the kind of future society presented by the average science fiction writer as consisting of some variety of totalitarian state in which psycho-chemical techniques are a favourite means of keeping the populace happy (or quiet), an underground which the larger-than-life hero can join, and scientists who gladly turn over their discoveries to those in power. Running throughout such tales are the pervasive assumptions that human nature as we know it will remain stable, that economic incentive will remain the highest motivation, and that twentieth century culture and moral values will continue to dominate the world. (Livingston 1969: 235)

The average future in science fiction is a mixture of Brave New World and Nineteen Eighty-Four, it seems.

E. M. Forster, in The Machine Stops (1909), suggests that a perfectly functioning global communications network, and automatic satisfaction of food and medical needs might prevent the necessity and even the desire for personal contact. (Livingston 1969: 236)

I recall mentions of this "prescient" piece of writing during the pandemic.

In Clarke's Childhood's End, the aliens come not to conquer, but to guide man toward his final destiny, a mystical joining with the cosmic mind. (Livingston 1969: 236)

Also a theme in Stapledon's work.

Psychic powers of teleportation and telepathy are imaginatively explored in The Demolished Man (1952) by Alfred Bester and Slan (1940) by A. E. van Vogt. The superman/mutant type appears evocatively in Stapledon's Odd John (1935) and Heinlein's Gulf (1949), both of which remind us that such an individual may also have super-problems about coping with a society of ordinary mortals. (Livingston 1969: 237)

A positive mention of Odd John?

Pietrkiewicz, Jerzy 1962. Krajewski's Warsaw on the Moon. The Slavonic and East European Review 40(95): 308-323. [JSTOR]

The first Polish contribution to science fiction was printed in 1785 and happens also to be one of the earliest novels in the language. The mood of the 18th century is reflected in its title: Woyciech Zdarzyński. Życie i przypadki swoie opisuiący (Adalbert Zdarzyński. Describing his life and adventures). According to the fashion, fiction is here presented as a true account, and the hero performs the function of a story teller, advertising his goods by his very name. (Pietrkiewicz 1962: 308)

Like Lucian's "True History".

His books are still dismissed as mere imitations; his name, if mentioned at all, means almost nothing even to the students of Polish classicism; the little that was said of him a century ago is echoed to-day, sometimes with the same disparaging remarks cursorily repeated. The first edition of 1785 remains the only edition of Woychiech Zdarzyński, and it does not seem probable that it will be reprinted in the near future. (Pietrkiewicz 1962: 308)

Very nearly the fate of Odd John but looking it up now, it did have an edition by Galaxy Publishing Corp, and Dover bundled it with Sirius.

Within the Polish ground of reference, Zdarzyński seems important as a highly conscious stylistic exercise, and there are, after all, not many of them in 18th-century prose. One might go even further and say that the prose of Zdarzyński is as succinct as that of its model, Krasicki's Doświadczyński. At times it has an experimental quality. Nomet et omen, Adalbert Adventure turns out to be more adventurous than Nicolas Experience, at least in language. (Pietrkiewicz 1962: 310)

I really like this author's style.

Chesterton is right about the people who are always 'playing the game of Cheat the Prophet'. Prophetic fantasy should remain volatile, [|] even without the help of balloons and rockets, for nothing destroys the illusion more than the heavy-handed attempt to nail it down to a particular moment in time. The late Olaf Stapledon, novelist and philosopher, unfortunately chose to imagine an Anglo-French war and the destruction of Paris by the British Air Force in the first chapter of his Last and First Men. His prediction was confounded only nine years later by Hitler and Stalin. Many novels about the future have dated beyond redemption because they gambled on dates. (Pietrkiewicz 1962: 316-317)

Not wrong. Putting in exact dates is silly.

Krajewski kept his science fiction well within the bounds of his own century. He would not venture out into a distant to-morrow. Even when he complains about the menace of coach-drivers to pedestrians in the streets of big cities, he does not predict the dangerous mechanised version of to-day, but simply remarks in the footnote on p. 148 that the danger is sufficiently real in the present to speculate about what might happen in the year 2044. This attitude saves him from other temptations which would destroy the verisimilitude of his incidents. He may be far too cautious, as his critics seem to imply, but he certainly does not commit the folly of describing the 21st century in terms of the 18th. (Pietrkiewicz 1962: 317)

The exact example discussed above (cf. Livingston 1969: 234).

The satire against science in Zdarzyński has a formal validity, and it seems unfair to discuss it only in relation to Krajewski's sources. Besides, the source hunters cannot be altogether trusted. Wojciechowski exaggerates Krajewski's debt to Swift and makes a misleading statement that chapter XX in the Polish novel paraphrases chapter V in the third [|] book of Gulliver's Travels. (Pietrkiewicz 1962: 317-318)

Allikajahtijad.

In his study on 'the technique and function of the Polish novel in the times of Stanislas Augustus', Z. Skawarczyński not only repeats the reference to Peter Wilkins but also perpetuates the name of Mercier as Merces, which is an obvious printing error in Gubrynowicz's study. Sometimes one has to use the petty weapon of pedantry in order to fight pedantry of a heavier kind, for it certainly did weigh down Zdarzyński's chances. (Pietrkiewicz 1962: 319)

I am seriously tempted to look into what else this Pietrkiewicz has written.

Clarke, I. F. 1976. From Prophecy to Prediction: 13. Science and Society: prophecies and predictions 1840-1940. Futures 8(4): 350-356. DOI: 10.1016/0016-3287(76)90131-2 [sciencedirect.com]

From 1920 onwards the debate about the consequences of the First World War was summed up in phrases that have since become familiar signals in any discussion of the rational use of scientific discoveries - the impact of science on society, the pace of progress, the challenge of the future, technology and social change, the need for planning. At the same time, the tale of the future went through a rapid and total transformation. The once common prophecies of the technological paradise-to-come and the many confident visions of a triumphant technology changed to admonitory accounts of a future time when human folly has destroyed all life on earth. (Clarke 1976: 353)

Not the first to make a note of this in my recent readings (cf Scheick 1981: 19).

The intention of the new myth makers was to get outside the closed circle of progress and technology so that they could make radical statements about their society. Olaf Stapledon put this new imperative with uncompromising [|] clarity in the preface to his most original story of Last and First Men:
To romance of the future may seem to be indulgence in ungoverned speculation for the sake of the marvellous. Yet controlled imagination in this sphere can be a very valuable exercise for minds bewildered about the present and its potentialities. Today we should welcome, and even study, every serious attempt to envisage the future of our race; not merely in order to grasp the very diverse and often tragic possibilities that confront us, but also that we may familiarise ourselves with the certainty that many of our most cherished ideals would seem puerile to more developed minds.
That proposition of 1930 was characteristic of the reactions to the immense changes thta had followed on the First World War; for all those many changes put a requirement on the prophet and the predictors to describe what lay in waiting for the world. (Clarke 1976: 354-355)

A historical-causal explanation.

Myers, Alan 1978. Science fiction in the classroom. Children's Literature in Education 9: 182-187. DOI: 10.1007/BF01150170 [springer.com]

Robert Heinlein's novel Starship Troopers, with exciting military episodes of an unashamedly Earth-chauvinist nature, propounds the idea that political power in a society should be restricted to those willing to defend it in actual physical combat. (Myers 1978: 183)

Oh wow, didn't know that was Heinlein's.

Time travel is often used as a device to permit tinkering with the past, but this is usually on a personal level and is often treated light-heartedly. Altering history is normally frowned upon in the future and the Time Police are notoriously efficient. Poul Anderson, in his Corridors of Time takes the reader to Carthage and ancient North America to avert twists in the time-line. A popular theme with amateurs is the expedition to Calvary with a machine-gun to prevent the crucifixion. (Myers 1978: 184)

That is literally the plot of a movie titled Assassin 33 A.D. (2020).

Wells' The Time Machine deals with the future evolution of the human race and can be used as discussion material on the rise and fall of civilisations (or warnings on the dangers of extrapolation in general!). A student who develops great interest in this topic can be given Olaf Stapledon's Last and [|] First Men. I personally find this arid, but I seem to be in a minority and there is no doubt that Stapledon's staggering vision of the evolution of the race of man over the eons has been a major formative influence on several science fiction writers, including Arthur C. Clarke. (Myers 1978: 184-185)

Understandable. Stapledon is not for everyone.

Roberts, Thomas J. 1973. Science Fiction and the Adolescent. Children's Literature 2: 87-91. DOI: 10.1353/chl.0.0169 [Project MUSE]

But it is science fiction prose - by far the most sophisticated and demanding of all these genres - that is capturing that adolescent reader. We seriously underestimate him if we suppose we understand science fiction prose merely because we have watched The Creature from the Black Lagoon or read Flash Gordon when we were young. It would be like supposing we know Moby-Dick because we have seen Joh Huston's film. The science fiction film may be lovable but it is stupid. Science fiction prose is often clumsily written but it is intelligent. (Roberts 1973: 87)

Well put.

The truth is that a large part of science fiction is not about science at all; it is about the supernatural. And much of the rest of it is either covertly or quite openly doubtful about scientific values: we all think of Ray Bradbury as a writer of science fiction but he knows very little about modern science and is blatantly antagonistic to it. (Roberts 1973: 88)

Which may be why he is not the darling that he was in the 1950s (e.g. for Derleth).

There are some good novels which only the exceptional adolescent will find absorbing: Stapledon's Last and First Men and Star Maker, and Frank Herbert's Dune, and John Brunner's Stand on Sanzibar, and the oeuvre of H. G. Wells (when read as anything more than gadget-stories). (Roberts 1973: 88)

Stapledon is not for everyone.

Adult science fiction manifests moral and philosophical and theological concerns and gives greater emphasis to the people in that strange new world, but it is the adolescent variety that interests us. (Roberts 1973: 88)

All present in L&FM.

Michaelis, Anthony R. 1978. Energy 2000. Interdisciplinary Science Reviews 3(2): 87-88. DOI: 10.1179/030801878789826357 [tandfonline.com]

Man's luck appears to hold again - at least for the next two decades. The present climatic cooling cycle of the Earth is just about compensated by the 'greenhouse effect' caused by the carbon dioxide liberated from the profligate burning of fossil fuels. No dramatic changes of climate are foreseeable until the year 2000 A.D. (Michaelis 1978: 87)

Oh, thank god. After the year 2000 let it come what may. Who would want to live after that date anyway.

What hope remains then for the Western World to maintain its present high level of energy consumption? Will Olaf Stapledon's prediction, made in his classic book of 1930 Last and First Men, come true? He foretold that The squandering of fossil fuels on useless and ritual transportation ended the first of the many human civilizations of the future described in his mythology. Only fusion and solar power appear to offer new technologies of sufficient magnitude. Geothermal energy, wind and tidal power as well as the burning of artificially produced biomass, are either too local or too small to have a world-wide impact. (Michaelis 1978: 87)

Cool, at least some dirty energy hounds took notice.

Just the opposite appears to be true to harness the power of the Sun. Only a gigantic satellite with about 100 km2 of solar cells or Brayton engines in geosynchronous robit, 35 700 km above the equator, looks like the most effective way to tap solar power continuously. Solar heaters for individual houses can make a useful but only a very limited contribution. (Michaelis 1978: 88)

Solar cells can only go on top of houses or in space. No point in placing a lot of them in an array on a field, for example.

Smith, Curtis C. 1985. Review of Slusser, George E.; Rabkin, Eric S.; Scholes, Robert eds., Coordinates: Placing Science Fiction and Fantasy; Rabkin, Eric S.; Greenberg, Martin H.; Olander, Joseph D. eds., The End of the World; and Dunn, Thomas P; Erlich, Richard D. eds. The Mechanical God: Machines in Science Fiction. Modern Fiction Studies 31(2): 462-464. DOI: 10.1353/mfs.0.0136 [Project MUSE]

But the more successful essays see science fiction as reflective of broader social trends. Bruce Franklin in "America as Science Fiction" discusses, among other things, the New York World's Fair of 1930 as a kind of science fiction. Susan Gubar, in "She in Herland: Feminism and Fantasy," not only makes extensive comments on Haggard and Gilman but considers feminism itself as a kind of fantasy; and by fantasy she means a broader, ennobling power of the sort mentioned by Eric Rabkin, who concludes in another fine essay that "it is by well made fantasy that homo sapiens shapes the world." In his essay on Jules Verne, Mark Rose characterizes science fiction broadly as containing the tension between materialism and spiritualism. (Smith 1985: 462)

Noted. Coordinates is available on lg.

Two essays should be singled out: Gary K. Wolfe's "Autoplastic and Alloplastic Adaptations in Science Fiction: 'Waldo' and "Desertion'" and Leslie Fiedler's "The Criticism of Science Fiction." The former is the best essay on science fiction fandom that I have seen. (Smith 1985: 462)

Again, noted. I've been somewhat interested in the terms auto- and alloplasticity for over a year now.

The slogan "let's get science fiction back in the gutter where it belongs" has made the rounds of the conventions. Now here is Fiedler to tell us that science fiction never left the gutter after all. Even the best science fiction differs from mainstream literature in its effects, he says, and must accordingly be judged by different standards: "If, therefore, Stapledon [for example] moves [...] us, it is not [...] as Joyce, Proust, Mann, Kafka [...] move us." Rather, Stapledon - like other science fiction - is "sub or para literature." Fresh from books on freaks ad on Olaf Stapledon, Fiedler would lump science fiction with the previous two. In Stapledon, though, Fiedler picks a poor example to make his point, as recognition of Stapledon's (conventional) literary quality is growing. (Smith 1985: 463)

Stapledon is indeed a poor example of the worst tendencies in science fiction. His books are still blowing minds in the early 21st century.

Typically, essayists in this book assume that evaluative standards from outside can and should be imposed on science fiction, and they also take science fiction seriously as a source of ideas. Fiedler says that "the reader is not made better in any sense of the word, not wiser, not more pious, nor more sensitive by the reading of sf." The contrary assumption of The End of the World is that science fiction does at least attempt to make the reader all of these things. Several essays in the book discuss apocalyptic literature as a modern attempt to find in the face of threatened annihilation new images of order and meaning. (Smith 1985: 463)

Too bad that this very same Fiedler is one of the first to publish a monograph about Stapledon. Such a poor outlook.

Gravest of all defects is the omission of Olaf Stapledon, who is not listed even in the bibliography. The conflict in Stapledon's Last and First Men (1930) between a future species of humans, the Third Men, and their creations the "Great Brains" (or Fourth Men) may be the most profound struggle between human and human creation in science fiction. After the Great Brains win the struggle, they come to realize that - because they can experience no emotion - there is something they are missing. In effect they make a decision to relinquish control, creating their supplanters, the Fifth Men. Any extensive study of machines in science fiction should include discussion of this conflict. (Smith 1985: 464)

This Smith might be a fan. Evidently (sf-encyclopedia.com) he edited the first and second edition of Twentieth-Century Science-Fiction Writers (1981; 1986), which primarily delved into Olaf Stapledon and Mack Reynolds.

Smith, Curtis C. 1989. Review of Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction by Darko Suvin and Crossley, Robert ed. Talking Across the World. Modern Fiction Studies 35(2): 400-401. DOI: 10.1353/mfs.0.0316 [Project MUSE]

Darko Suvin's book is a collection of essays he wrote for periodicals, particularly for Science-Fiction Studies. Therefore, there are some duplications, and because most of the essays were written in the 1970s, the book is somewhat dated as well. Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction is incidental work by Suvin, necessarily of less importance than his massive and major Metamorphoses of Science Fiction. However, Suvin is easily the most important critic of science fiction, and Science-Fiction Studies by far the most important journal in the field. Incidental Suvin makes for worthwhile reading. (Smith 1989: 400)

Thus far I've only read one piece by Suvin but it wasn't bad.

The only link between Suvin's book and Robert Crossley's is that Olaf Stapledon (1886-1950) is one of the cognitive science fiction writers Suvin most respects. (Smith 1989: 400)

Makes sense. Stapledon represents the extreme of cognitive estrangement.

With Crossley's magnificent and important book, which is essential to understanding Stapledon, this important writer may finally be coming into his own. Author of such vast future histories as Last and First Men and Star Maker, [|] Stapledon is surely the most ambitious science fiction writer who has ever lived. His aim is no less than to synthesize all human knowledge, to summarize all human history past and future, and to justify the Star Maker's ways to man. His sweep and even his style are Miltonic. Yet Stapledon has lived in the shadow of H. G. Wells the storyteller, and, especially after his death in 1950 until about 1970, his reputation was in almost complete eclipse. With now five full-length studies of Stapledon, one from Oxford University Press, and with an entire issue of Science-Fiction Studies devoted to Stapledon, this situation may well be changing. (Smith 1989: 400-401)

Very usable quotes. The chronology is correct - Stapledon was as-if rediscovered in the late 1980s.

Their exchange by mail during the war years makes for an affecting love story with which we all may identify at the same time that it is a striking period piece - no one writes such letters or has such a seemingly endless engagement today. Yet the book also involves far more. Olaf and Agnes give us erudite and witty talk about everything from a rail strike in Sydney to feminism to H. G. Wells and Walt Whitman to a near-riot in Liverpool when the Abbey Players come to perform Synge's Playboy of the Western World. (Smith 1989: 401)

Casting some doubt on the claim that Stapledon had not read Wells's Time Machine before he wrote his own L&FM.

Huntington, John 1989. Review of McCarthy, Patrick; Elkins, Charles; Greenberg, Martin Henry eds. The Legacy of Olaf Stapledon. Modern Fiction Studies 35(4): 810-811. DOI: 10.1353/mfs.0.1452 [Project MUSE]

The admirers of Olaf Stapledon find his continued obscurity a puzzle. While the defenders of Shakespeare, Austen, Joyce, or Woolf develop critical angles and languages to convey what they value in these artists, the defenders of Stapledon still can only say, "Read him." Such a failure to enunciate value may be a sign of the inadequacy of our criticism, or it may be a sign of something hidden in Stapledon that enthusiasm fails to see. (Huntington 1989: 810)

Just watched Media Death Cult's review of L&FM. "Read him" very well summarizes that review.

Robert Shelton explicates Stapledon's philosophical works. Patrick McCarthy discusses in general terms what Stapledon shares with modernism. Two essays, Charles Elkins' challenge of Stapledon's quest for totality and Cheryl Herr's posing the dichotomy of convention and spirit as the deep structure of Stapledon's thought, begin to raise questions about Stapledon's goals, although neither develops a thorough and convincing argument. (Huntington 1989: 810)

Convention and spirit?

Louis Tremaine's essay, "Ritual Experience in Odd John and Sirius," comes closest to identifying the unease that represents Stapledon's strength and prevents his recognition. Using ideas from Eliade, Van Gennep, and Turner, Tremaine reads both novels as rendering a transitional moment between a conventional social "structure" and an enlightened "communitas." He persuasively argues that the murders in the books are sacrifices in which the protagonists encounter death by substitute. The essay does justice to the transformational ideal without losing sight of the moral atrocities depicted in these works and the problems they pose for the reader. (Huntington 1989: 810)

Stapledon's works indeed do not lack moral atrocities. Whether or not this is the cause of the "unease" I'm not yet certain.

The last two selections in the volume put us in touch with aspects of Stapledon's failure. Curtis Smith describes unsympathetically Stapledon's struggle in the late 1930s to defend his pacifist position in letters to newspaper editors. The sense of intellectual impotence that Smith conveys is amplified by the final selection, Stapledon's "Letter to the Future." Like late James, late Stapledon can sound like self-parody. The advice is entirely abstract; all assertions are withdrawn as soon as made; and although repeatedly disclaiming preaching, the letters are sermons. There is one fine atheistic apothegm, which has an angry energy quite unlike anything else in these letters: "I shall not forget the joy with which my slow mind first discovered that the human race and the stars are not a poultry farm for the production of moral foie gras for a gluttonous God." In his fiction Stapledon could give life to such an experience of intellectual discovery. As philosophy, however, it remains, as he himself seems at times aware, adolescent. Stapledon's "legacy" is not all of equal value, and it should be part of his admirers' task to discriminate. This book suggests some beginning points. (Huntington 1989: 811)

A nice addition to the discussion about Stapledon's use of language (e.g. Branham 1980: 16).

Rovit, Earl 1983. Review of Olaf Stapledon: a man divided by Leslie A. Fiedler. Library Journal 108(3): 208.

Fiedler brings belated attention to the British pioneer (1886-1950) whose work (especially, Star Maker) has had enormous influence on the scope and apocalyptic proclivities of the genre in America as well as in England. Although Stapledon was somewhat neglected by American readers, Fiedler demonstrates the seminal importance of novels like Last and First Men, Odd John, and Sirius. At the same time, he places Stapledon in relation to the social and intellectual milieu between 1914 and 1945. Using the scanty biographical materials available in conjunction with the fiction, Fiedler makes a sympathetic effort to reveal a portrait of what was a decidedly bizarre, conflicted, and reclusive personality. Recommended. (Rovit 1983: 208)

Recommended.

Hoch, Paul 1988. Review of In the Name of Eugenics by Daniel J. Kevles. The British Journal for the History of Science 21(2): 252-254. DOI: 10.1017/S0007087400024808 [cambridge.org]

The book also gives what may be a partly misleading impression, that the sterilization programmes for mental incompetents, victims of hereditary diseases, and - disproportionately - for racial minorities in various American states, had been effectively ended by the rise of the new social sciences and the recoil from Nazi eugenics in the 1930s and '40s. However, a few chapters later, it turns out that such programmes were also uncovered in various parts of the United States in the late '60s and early '70s. (Hoch 1988: 253)

Fighting the Nazis taught the Americans very little.

It might also have been interesting to delve further into literary reflections of the eugenics debates - over and above the three works mentioned by J. B. S. Haldane, Hermann Muller and Aldous Huxley - to include some of the genetic utopias (and anti-utopias) of H. G. Wells, Olaf Stapledon's Last and First Men, and possibly even Norman Spinrad's satirical heroic fantasy of Hitler's eugenics conquests, The Iron Dream. (Hoch 1988: 253)

Genetic utopia?

Alkon, Paul 1985. Samuel Madden's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century. Science Fiction Studies 12(2): 184-201. [JSTOR]

The impossibility of writing stories about the future was so widely taken for granted until the 18th century that only two earlier anticipations are known: Frances Cheynell's six-page pamphlet of political propaganda set in a very near future, Aulicus his dream of Kings sudden comming to London (1644); and Jacques Guttin's heroic romance, Epigone, histoire du siécle futur (1659). Before their publication, the future was reserved in Western literature for prophets, astrologers, and practitioners of deliberative rhetoric. As a trope for madness, John Donne could use the proverbial castigation Chronica de futuro scribet: "He undertakes to write a Chronicle of things before they are done, which is an irregular, and a perverse way" (2:77). (Alkon 1985: 184)

"[...] we cannot speak literally of shaping the future. The future exists only potentially." (Lawler 1980: 2).

The first English book to discard this aversion to chronicling the future is Samuel Madden's Memoirs of the Twentieth Century. Perhaps in deference to the taboo against tales of the future, it was published anonymously in 1733, and then immediately suppressed by its author, an Irish Anglican clergyman who destroyed almost all copies of his extraordinary work as soon as they came from the press. (Alkon 1985: 184)

Good to know.

It would be stretching our generosity to praise Madden for being the first to show a traveller arriving from the future, although what the narrator's guardian angel does in appearing one evening in 1728 to hand over 20th-century documents makes me think of such tales as Robert Silverberg's The Masks of Time (1968). Madden is, however, to my knowledge the first to write a narrative that purports to be a document from the future. He deserves recognition as the first to toy with the rich idea of time-travel in the form of an artifact sent backwards from the future to be discovered in the present. This too is an original variation on a familiar literary tradition: the discovery and interpretation of some ancient document (an artifact from the remote past) containing political or other prophecy. This convention has been used both seriously and satirically. (Alkon 1985: 186)

Stapledon can quite easily be placed in this literary-historical context, what with his Eighteenth Man making contact with him (telepathically) from the future.

No matter how inept as a satire, Madden's book remains noteworthy as the first work of prose fiction to adopt the central technique of those S-F and related modes that are formally distinct from previous narrative traditions by virtue of inviting readers to imagine themselves looking backwards from a far future to their own present and immediate future, which are thus also to be regarded as the past. Here, for the first time in prose fiction, is the proleptic structure identified hy Hanzo as the narrative method most closely affiliated with SF. (Alkon 1985: 196)

This mode invites the reader to consider his present and future as a past, as having already occurred, somehow.

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