Science Fiction: A
Literary History
Edited by Roger Luckhurst
British Library hardcover £20
***** (5 stars)
review by Christopher Geary
A splendidly concise historical narrative emerges from this
collection of new essays, exploring conceptual sources, miscellaneous
influences, unpredictable developments, and - nowadays, especially - the vast
scope of genre SF, roughly defined as speculative storytelling balancing
utopian and dystopian streams, alongside many alternaties and writing styles.
With incisive commentaries on proto-SF and the effervescent pulps,
the book ploughs through assorted definitions and revisions, noting the murky
origins of a genre which poetically agrees with the uncertainty of quantum
theories rather than the cosmology of a Big Bang. The ‘new stranger’ of Mary
Shelley’s Frankenstein might be a
favourite, but the journeys of H.G. Wells and the voyages of Jules Verne form a
foundation with greater variety that consolidates ideas from romanticism into a
mono-mythic quality. Each chapter concludes with a listing of ‘what to read
next’ that any genre newcomers might find an extremely useful guide to
essential classics and other canonical texts.
The book’s editor Roger Luckhurst contributes much
contextual evidence in chapter two: From
Scientific Romance To Science Fiction, explaining how framed discussions
about ‘creative destruction’ shouldered aside challenges to a marvellous
authenticity from occultism and colonialism, to embrace a ‘global modernity’. Caroline
Edwards’ chapter, Utopian Prospects,
charts the rise of racial tensions and feminism in dreams of decadence, and the
menace of increasingly apocalyptic visions, where all optimistic viewpoints
fail because of human imperfections and hard truths fuel harder SF where only
maths might reign supreme.
The New Wave
Revolution by Rob Latham notes “R.A. Lafferty... sometimes labelled a New
Waver because his fiction is weird and delirious, but a careful reading of his
work makes clear that the only faction he belonged to was extraterrestrial in
origin.” It’s an amusing jest that further characterises the typically off-beat
nature of SF when examined in light of the genre’s formative apprehension from
speculative rationalism. Chapter six also offers, among other astute
comments, a corrective to wild tales of pro and fandom woe about ‘holy wars’
between pulp-inspired empires of trad SF and canny rebels of a New Wave
alliance. This book notes that 1960s’ cultural aspirations changed ‘golden age’
SF, not by revolutionary upheaval against existing social mores but by
enlightenment and mutation of an already stable form.
There are considerable overlaps in the informative coverage
between the chapters on eras, generations, and specific genre movements, but
it’s all to be expected because everything is connected - whether by common
themes, technological advances of the publishing industry and systems of book
distribution, or new thinking about future possibilities heralded by political
and social changes at global scales. Great minds of various writers might simply
imagine the same things, of course, without any actual copycat books being the
result.
“We live in an era of obsolete futures and junked dreams,” suggests
Gerry Canavan’s New Paradigms chapter,
where dodged bullets and post-millennial anticipation runs the gamut of prediction
from SF in today’s cultural dystopia and climate change when the post-normalism
of the inadequate Singularity becomes our Anthropocene period. Can a space
opera renaissance and escapism into virtual gaming provide sufficient SF thrust
to lift human spirits beyond a one-world horizon?