Tag: Science Fiction

The next new wave of science fiction will be Chinese

Cixin Liu’s The Three-Body Problem, tr. Ken Liu

Back in the middle of the 20th century, during the height of the Cold War, Soviet science fiction was an exotic commodity. As Judith Merril wrote about her 1966 anthology of Soviet SF:

[This anthology] contains some startling insights into the philosophical premises of the contemporary imaginative outlook in the U.S.S.R. And it provides a rather shocking reminder of how uneven the exchange has been so far.

For nearly a century, the center of gravity for science fiction has been the U.S and the U.K. But there is much in “the rest of the world” (as one anthology somewhat condescendingly puts it) that English fans never get a chance to read. More than fifty years after Merrils’ anthology, the exchange between U.S and foreign science fiction readers is still uneven, with very little foreign SF being translated. Some of the great works of the Strugatsky brothers remain in print in the U.S. And Stanisław Lem is still the great exception; nearly all of his works are available in English. But by and large non-English science fiction doesn’t really exist for American readers. Continue reading “The next new wave of science fiction will be Chinese”

End of the World 1906: The Haunted Apocalypse

George Long’s Valhalla (1906)

Valhalla1906Post-apocalyptic worlds are always haunted. The empty ruins of great cities, the artifacts of lost technologies, the mouldering books, and the memories of the vanished civilization make it clear that the survivors are now living in the world of the dead. In George Long’s Valhalla, the haunting is literal: the world is now one great hall of the dead, with a billion spirits ready to lend their ghostly hands to help the survivors build a better future. While it’s stiffly written and poorly plotted, this short book is nevertheless an interesting artifact from that optimistic time before the First World War. As he describes a new civilization rebuilt under the guidance of the dead from the last one, Long suggests that the root of human dysfunction is simple: jealousy of love and power. Without jealousy, there would be no serious conflict and people will get along just fine.

Like The Purple Cloud, Valhalla is one of those post-apocalyptic books where the world has been almost entirely depopulated, but those who are left don’t really have to struggle for survival. Living in the aftermath of the greatest natural disaster ever, Long’s characters don’t worry about the challenges posed by nature; more threatening are the challenges they pose to each other. The catastrophe itself is a vaguely described series of events that resemble the biblical apocalypse: Continue reading “End of the World 1906: The Haunted Apocalypse”

Apocalypse 1901: Adam and Eve in the Empty World Asylum

M. P. Shiel’s The Purple Cloud (1901)

NorthPoleNOAAThe Book of Revelation isn’t the only part of the Bible that inspires post-apocalyptic fiction — Genesis plays a big part too. The Bible’s story about the beginning of the world has become a popular way to think about the world’s end. Adam and Eve, a paradisiacal Eden, and humanity’s fall get transformed into a last couple, a post-apocalyptic haven, and the forbidden fruit of some unexplored territory or lethal knowledge. What could be called the very first post-apocalyptic novel was explicitly written as a bookend to Genesis. Nathaniel Hawthorne later wrote a replay of Genesis that takes place within the empty remnants of civilization. M.P Shiel’s The Purple Cloud, an overwritten but under-read classic, is also a post-apocalyptic Adam and Eve story: the fall of civilization is brought about by a reach for the unexplored North Pole, and a last couple must consider the moral dilemma of repopulating an empty world.

The Purple Cloud is the first post-apocalyptic novel of the 20th century, but it starts with a throwback, by putting the whole thing within a mystic frame story of the sort employed much earlier by de Grainville and Mary Shelley. Most of the novel consists of the first-person record of the last man as he wrote it down in his notebooks; to get those notebooks in the hands of 20th century readers, Shiel has them dictated by a medium to her physician, who then passes the manuscript on to M.P. Shiel. Finding a plausible explanation for how a future story comes into the hands of present-day readers was a particular concern of 19th century SF writers, but would soon be largely abandoned. Continue reading “Apocalypse 1901: Adam and Eve in the Empty World Asylum”

Can science fiction cure our innovation starvation?

Over at Pacific Standard this week, I look at Arizona State University’s fascinating Project Hieroglyph – a project to inspire us to think big with science fiction. The project, inspired in part by Neal Stephenson, just put out an excellent anthology of SF edited by Ed Finn and Kathryn Cramer, featuring thought experiments worked out as SF stories.

In the preface to the anthology, Stephenson looks back at the great technological achievements of the mid-20th century, notably the Apollo program, and worries that we are no longer a society that can get big things done. We’re unwilling to think big, attempt truly ground-breaking ideas, or solve society’s biggest problems. We need to unshackle our imaginations, and SF can help us do that.

You can read my response at Pacific Standard, but here’s the tl/dr version:

Scientists and engineers have plenty of imagination. What they don’t always have are the incentives and support to take big intellectual risks. Making the case that we should tackle big ideas that might fail is Project Hieroglyph’s most valuable contribution. Neal Stephenson writes that “the vast and radical innovations of the mid-twentieth century took place in a world that, in retrospect, looks insanely dangerous and unstable.” Pursuing insanely dangerous ideas—like nuclear weapons—is probably not the best way to build a better society. But risking failure is critical in science and technology. Unfortunately, failure is expensive, and the lack of money is probably the best explanation for why our society isn’t “executing the big stuff” that Stephenson wants to see. Scientists facing increasingly poor career prospects become risk-averse. Venture capitalists who complain that they only have 140 characters instead of flying cars are nevertheless hesitant to fund the expensive and risky development of technology that could be genuinely transformative. We certainly need imagination in science, and we should tell inspiring stories about big ideas. But to realize those ideas, we have to pay for them.

Thoughts?

End of the World 1843: The Disease of Civilization

Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The New Adam and Eve” (1843)

Before we move on to the 20th century works of what Josh has aptly named the “post-apocalyptome,” let’s recap what happened in the 19th. Basically, early writers of post-apocalyptic fiction came up with just about all of the major themes, plots, characters, and settings of the genre that we know and love today (the zombie apocalypse excepted). Plagues, comets, environmental catastrophes, or a dying sun lead to ruined cities, collapsed civilizations, and roving bands of marauders; there is the next evolutionary step, a reversion to barbarism and superstition, and the lonely Last Man.

It all pretty much started in 1805 with de Grainville’s The Last Man, a Miltonian, futuristic religious fantasy authored by a French priest. At first this book seems to have little to do with science fiction — it’s an inversion of Genesis, featuring a Last Couple that has to choose whether to obey God and fulfill his plan or pursue their own desires. But despite the heavy Gothic atmosphere, The Last Man is one of very first futuristic romances of the century: there are airships, great engineering projects, and scientific discoveries of unlimited sources of power. It’s as much a vision of scientific progress as it is one of religion, and is the first solid entry in the Dying Earth sub-genre. Humans, through their technology, control nature until God decides to wrap it all up. Continue reading “End of the World 1843: The Disease of Civilization”