Origins of Futuristic Fiction

166 Pages·1987·11.71 MB·English

by  Paul K. Alkon

Origins of
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FUTURISTIC
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PAUL 1(. 4,LI<ON
THE UNIVERSITY OF GEORGIA PRESS
Athens and London
Contents
Acknowledgments XI
Part One
PREHISTORY, 1659-1703
l. Temporal versus Spatial Imagination: Epigone, histoire
du siecle futur 3
2. Towards an Aesthetics of Extrapolation: Iter Lunare
and The Sacred Theory of the Earth 45
Part Two
STARTING POINTS, 1733-1827
3. Formal Variations: Memoirs of the Twentieth Century 89
4. From Utopia to Uchronia: L'An 2440 and Napoleon
apocryphe 115
IX
CONTENTS
5. The Secularization of Apocalypse: Le dernier homme 158
6. Fantasy and Metafiction: From Les Posthumes to The
Mummy 192
Part Three
THE END OF THE BEGINNING, 1834
7. A Poetics for Futuristic Fiction: Le Roman de l'avenir 245
Notes 291
Index 327
Acknowledgments
A John Simon Guggenheim.Memorial Foundation Fellowship facil
itated research for this book, as did concurrent award of a sab
batical year by the University of Southern California. The William
Andrews Clark Memorial Library provided office space, hospi-.
tality, and bibliographical guidance at every stage. I am very
grateful to its director Norman J. W. Thrower, to its librarian
Thomas F. Wright, and to all the members of its staff, especially ··
John Bidwell, Carol R. Briggs, Susan Green, Patrick McCloskey,
Monika Savic, Nancy M. Shea, Carol Sommer, and Leonard White.
Victoria Steele aided my work at the History and Special Collec
tions Division of the UCLA Biomedical Library. Capable assistance
was always available at the Houghton Library of Harvard Univer
sity, the Huntington Library, and the British Library. Extraordinary
courtesy and patience were extended to me at the Bibliotheque
X XI
If~
l
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Nationale. In Yverdon, Switzerland, time and bibliographical ex ®!lim
lP~lli~
pertise were generously provided by Pascal Ducommun, curator of
the Maison d'Ailleurs.
Prehistory, 1659-1703
Pierre Versins, whom I shall perhaps meet somewhere in the
future, graciously approved necessary photocopying and has also
provided indispensable inspiration in the great French tradition of
encyclopedists. George E. Slusser, curator of the Eaton Collection
at the University of California in Riverside, has been an unfailing
source of practical assistance and intellectual stimulation. Valu
able aid has come too from Paul-Gabriel Bouce, Terry Castle,
Ronald Gottesman, George Guffey, John Huntington, Paul llie,
Moshe Lazar, Marjorie Perloff, Richard Popkin, Kathleen L.
Spencer, Halina Stephan, Pascal J. Thomas, Howard D. Weinbrot,
and the late David S. Wiesen. I thank Science Fiction Studies and
Southern Illinois University Press for permission to reprint parts of
this work that have appeared in different form in Science Fiction
Studies 12, pt. 2 (July 1985); in George E. Slusser and Eric S.
Rabkin, eds., Hard Science Fiction (Southern Illinois University
Press, 1986); and in George E. Slusser, Colin Greenland, and Eric
S. Rabkin, eds., Storm Warnings: Science Fiction Confronts the
Future (Southern Illinois University Press, 1987). Nancy Holmes
provided expert copyediting. Karen Orchard of the University of
Georgia Press gave steady encouragement and editorial help for
which I am most grateful. If I ever write a utopia, its press will he
called Georgia and its editors will all be replicas of Karen Orchard.
Xll
CHAPTER ONE
Temporal versus Spatial
Imagination: Epigone, histoire
du siecle futur
By "futuristic fiction" I mean prose narratives
explicitly set in future time. The impossibility
of writing stories about the future was so widely
taken for granted until the eighteenth century
that only two earlier works of this kind are
known: Francis Cheynell's six-page pamphlet
of political propaganda published in 1644,
Aulicus his dream oft he Kings sudden comming
to London; and Jacques Guttin's incomplete
romance of 1659, Epigone, histoire du siecle
futur.l Before Guttin's remarkable book the fu
ture was reserved as a topic for prophets, as
trologers, and practitioners of deliberative rhetoric. Even the latter,
who might have included cautionary fables of the future in their
orations, lived under the shadow of Aristotle's dictum that "in politi
cal oratory there is very little opening for narration; nobody can
'narrate' what has not yet happened. If there is narration at all, it will ··
be of past events, the recollection of which is to help the hearers to
make better plans for the future."2 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."3
Works that break the taboo against tales of the future are a sig
nificant development marking the emergence of a form unknown to
3
I
.jI
ORIGINS OF FUTURISTIC FICTION TEMPORAL VERSUS SPATIAL IMAGINATION
classical, medieval, and renaissance literature. They mark too the possibility for a new form clearly existed without yet being al
beginning of what is arguably the modern world's most revealing together achieved, is sufficiently distinctive if not unique in literary
mode of literary statement. Our fantasies of utopian or dystopian history to warrant closer scrutiny than it has received. In this book
futures, even more clearly than other dreams that we share, tell I describe the most important eighteenth- and early nineteenth
what we are by showing our collective desires and fears. In the century forms of futuristic fiction taking shape in contexts that de
hands of such masters as Yevgeny Zamyatin, Aldous Huxley, and flected-and still deflect-attention from the significance or even
George Orwell, futuristic fiction also offers our most powerful liter the fact of its emergence as a distinct genre. Those very few pre
ary defense against unthinking collusion with the impulses behind vious investigations which do not entirely overlook this new literary
our worst nightmares. development have dealt with fictional resort to future time either as
In the evolution of forms that prepared the way for achievements a notable, though puzzling, episode in the long history of utopian
like Nineteen Eighty-Four the French maintained their early lead, thought and science fiction or as an opportunity for tracing the ways
although the next futuristic fiction after Guttin's-and the first to in which technology has shaped visions of the future. 5 I shall con
be located with specific future dates-was Samuel Madden's Mem centrate instead on the structure of some key works chosen not for
oirs of the Twentieth Century, a satire published anonymously in what they betray of past expectations but for what they reveal about
1733. It was followed in 1763 by The Reign of George VI, 1900- the formal problems that had to be resolved before tales of the
1925: a fantasy of relentless conquest enthusiastically endorsed by future could achieve their full power.
its unknown author, who may claim the ambiguous distinction of If none of the pioneering efforts I discuss warrant that sustained
initiating the genre of future warfare. 4 In 1771 Louis-Sebastien applause earned by the masterpieces of H. G. Wells and the most
Mercier's L'An 2440 decisively moved utopia from the ineffectual skillful of his followers, neither do the originators of futuristic fic
realms of no place to the influential arena of future possibilities. tion deserve anything like the almost total oblivion into which they
This is the first utopia set in future time. In 1802 Restif de la have fallen. Their attempts were often highly original. Even when
Bretonne's Les Posthumes portrayed a very far future marked by far from completely successful, they remain of great relevance to
planetary and biological evolution. Jean-Baptiste Cousin de Grain the history of literary forms. That relevance is not diminished by
ville's Le dernier homme in 1805 initiated 'the secularization of our inability to trace direct lines of causation from early experi
apocalypse. In 1834 Felix Bodin's Le Roman de l'avenir provided ments to later triumphs. Whether Nineteen Eighty-Four and its.
the first literary criticism of works set in future time as well as the peers could have existed without L'An 2440 is an unanswerable
first poetics of that genre, for which Bodin invented the term lit question. I suspect but cannot prove that, without such pioneers as
terature futuriste. Bodin also remarked, quite correctly, that no Mercier, there would not have been towards the end of the nine
fully realized novelistic example of the new form yet existed. I teenth century a literary climate favoring The Time Machine and its
believe his discussion is the first instance of generic criticism writ acknowledged progeny. What I do argue in the following pages is
ten predictively before emergence of the genre in question for the that issues of causation and cultural context, though relevant,
purpose of encouraging its creation: an altogether fitting sequence should yield priority to matters of form until the forms we seek to
for futuristic fiction. explain have been more adequately identified. It is to such identifi
The situation that Bodin so perceptively identified, in which the cation of futuristic fiction's formal attributes that I primarily ad-
4 5
ORIGINS OF FUTURISTIC FICTION TEMPORAL VERSUS SPATIAL IMAGINATION
dress this study of representative works. I claim too, presenting in possible futures must appeal to us." Secondly, Scholes addresses
this book the evidence for my case but mostly leaving contempo ~hat he calls a metaphysical issue: given widespread rejection of
rary applications to my readers, that we can better appreciate the the ideas that language can or should refer to anything outside its
achievements of such modem masters of the future as Orwell by own system, a solipsistic notion that undercuts all relationship of
looking back to the origins of futuristic fiction. Later accomplish literature to life, futuristic fiction offers a way out because "all
ments can only be fully understood as solutions to problems that future projection is obviously model-making, poesis not mimesis."
earlier writers had struggled with in different ways. We do not dis It follows, according to Scholes, that because such extrapolation is
parage Cayley, Penaud, and Lilienthal because the Wright brothers bounded only by "current notions of what is probable"- notions
achieved more decisive results. The first voyagers in time deserve that science renders increasingly latitudinarian-the resulting lit
similar courtesy. If mentioned at all, however, they have too often erature is morally useful in the sense Sartre urges as an imperative
been dismissed with a few sentences or paragraphs. Another pur for improving the human condition. It is also a literature in which I i
pose of this bo?k is to encourage better appreciation of the most "realism and fantasy must have a more intricate and elaborate rela
significant early futuristic writers by inviting closer attention than tionship with one another."6 There is thus an aesthetic advantage
has yet been given to the forms of their key works. along with the utilitarian possibilities of encouraging efforts to im
prove our lot. This is our best defense of futuristic fiction: as a form
Let us start by glancing ahead to Felix Bodin's tour of the horizon in uniquely appealing because it is potentially more able than any
1834, approaching him by glancing even further ahead to a repre other kind to further progress by serving a variety of cognitive pur
sentative text dealing with parallel problems in our own period: poses without sacrificing either the appeal of fantasy or the claim to
Robert Scholes's Structural Fabulation: An Essay on Fiction of the probability that is a hallmark of realism.
Future. I single out Scholes's excellent discussion both for its Bodin too regards futuristic fiction as an instructive mode that
'
comfort to students of futuristic fiction and for the purpose of under better than any other, can enlist writing in the service of progress
scoring by comparison the astonishing prescience of Bodin's crit by combining the pleasures of fantasy with the reassurance of ver
icism in a book almost totally neglected, to their loss, by twentieth isimilitude. He identifies the main philosophical dispute of his day
century critics, who could find its insights of more than merely as an opposition between those who locate mankind's golden age in
historical interest. Scholes argues "that the most appropriate kind the past, regarding the world as going downhill to an iron age that
of fiction that can be written in the present and the immediate would mark its deathbed, and those who believe in the possibility
future is fiction that takes place in future time." He rightly notes of progress and locate the golden age in a future which presents
that such fiction can achieve a power unequalled by other kinds itself to the imagination "resplendent with light." In ages domi
and supports his case on several grounds, of which two are es nated by conviction that things are getting worse, Bodin notes, our
pecially relevant to the origins of futuristic fiction. There is first an dreams are of endings for the world and of the last man. 7 When
ethical argument: "If we accept Jean-Paul Sartre's imperative for belief in progress prevails, other dreams are possible. But as yet
literature, that it be a force for improvement of the human situa futuristic literature, Bodin laments, has offered nothing but utopias
tion, and if we nevertheless would not see fiction reduced to the or apocalypses: he does not know of any novelistic action trans
level of propaganda, then the idea of fiction freely speculating on ported to the setting of a future social or political condition. 8
6 7
ORIGINS OF FUTURISTIC FICTION TEMPORAL VERSUS SPATIAL IMAGINATION
The trouble with utopian literature, according to Bodin, is that appeal, he says, because everyone shapes an ideal future accord
its authors only try to find a basis for unfolding some religious, ing to his own fantasies, and such fantasies are more likely to differ
political, or moral system without attaching it to an action, without than are those perceptions of the existing world which become our
giving either depth or movement to things or persons, and without yardstick for measuring verisimilitude in realistic fiction. ll
finally achieving the living creation of any kind of world to come. 9 At the end of his discussion, Bodin turns from the relationship
Apocalypses, in Bodin's view, may at best provide poetic visions of between literature and society to the "purely literary considera
the sort exemplified in "the mysterious and gigantic scenes" found tions" involved in the question of how people view the future-in
in the Book of Revelation and its derivatives focusing on the Last terms of progress or decay. He quotes from one of his other works
Judgment. But such images, although respectable, are not consol an aphorism which, he affirms, contains the entire poetics of the
ing. Nor do they encourage either hope or efforts to work for prog novel of the future: "Civilization tends to separate us from all that
ress. They lead to despair and apathy. Bodin's critique of previous is poetic in the past; but civilization also has its poetry and its
futuristic literature thus firmly links the aesthetic issue of imagina marvelous."12 Applying this thought to novels set in future time,
tive appeal with the moral issue of how readers may best be roused Bodin winds up his essay with a remarkably accurate prediction of
from indifference to their own futures. future novelistic possibilities as well as a perceptive location of
When Bodin considers what futuristic fiction ideally ought to be, such possibilities with respect to previous literary history. The two
he specifies with even greater precision the most desirable rela most striking statements from this section especially deserve wider
tionships between verisimilitude, imaginative appeal, and the familiarity not only for their historical interest but also for the help
moral consequences of the new genre: they can still provide to students of futuristic fiction.
To find subject matter, Bodin suggests leaving what he calls "the
If ever anyone succeeds in creating the novel, the epic of the future, sad past," which has been sufficiently exploited, and making a leap
he will have tapped a vast source of the marvelous, and of a mar into the more seductive unknown future: ''There [in the future] can be
velous entirely in accord with verisimilitude ... which will dignify found the revelations of those under hypnotic trance, races in the air,
reason instead of shocking or deprecating it as all the marvelous
voyages to the bottom of the sea-just as one sees in the poetry of the
epic machinery conventionally employed up to now has done. In
past sibyls, hippogriffs, and nymphs' grottoes; but the marvelous of the
suggesting perfectibility through a picturesque, narrative, and dra
future ... is entirely different from these other poetic marvels in that
matic form, he will have found a method of seizing, of moving the
it is entirely believable, entirely possible, and on that account it can
imagination and of hastening the progress of humanity in a manner
strike the imagination more vividly and seize it by means of realism.
very much more effective than the best expositions of systems pre
Thus we will have discovered a new world, an environment utterly
sented with even the highest eloquence. 10
fantastic and yet not lacking in verisimilitude."13 Here the imagina
What Bodin envisions is a literature of rational wonders that can tive role of plausibly extrapolated scientific wonders such as voyages
play a useful role in the real world without surrendering the lure of under the sea and aerial races-very workable themes indeed, as we
the fantastic. He also recognizes a problem peculiar to the issue of now know thanks to Verne and his imitators-is clearly affiliated with
verisimilitude in novels attempting to enact plausible dreams of those purposes formerly served by the fantastic marvels of classical
possible futures: it will be harder for such works to attain universal literature. Bodin affirms the need for such marvels as emotional and
8 9
TEMPORAL VERSUS SPATIAL IMAGINATION
ORIGINS OF FUTURISTIC FICTION
toward that self-consciousness which has become one hallmark of
imaginative. Bodin also suggests a way of enlisting such marvels,
futuristic fiction. But despite Bodin's foresight, his essay was nei
changed to modem form, in the service of rational speculation. This
ther widely known nor instrumental in bringing about the develop
insight is still a valid answer to those who question our need for fic
ment he recommended. There was no rush to adopt his useful term
tions of the future. Such fictions, perhaps uniquely among literary
litterature futuriste by way of encouraging the realization of a new
kinds, may serve cognitive purposes both necessary and acceptable to
form designed to achieve what had previously been accomplished
reason in a scientific age while also feeding our hunger for the
only separately by the fantastic voyage, the marvelous machinery
marvelous.
of epics, the utopian projection, and the conte philosophique. Isola
The final paragraph of Bodin's essay is even more specific in
tion from one another is one of the most striking features of early
spelling out the tradition to which novels of the future should be
futuristic fiction writers and· of that genre's origins. I have found
affiliated:
little evidence that futuristic writers before 1850 knew of their
For the moment the question is to know whether, after the grotesque predecessors' efforts apart from Mercier's famous book. Nor are
and audacious fantasies of Rabelais, the amusing and satiric in
there textual signs that their readers were expected to recall many
ventions of Cyrano and Swift, and the sparkling philosophical nov
earlier works of the same kind for comparison with the book in
els of Voltaire, it would be possible to find something new and at the
hand. It is not until much later that one commonly finds mutual
same time analogous; something which would be neither of a too
awareness manifested by writers of futuristic fiction, along with
licentious fantasy, nor of a purely critical intent, nor of that philo
inclusion of obviously conventional elements such as time ma
sophical spirit which is an obstacle to interest and illusion by always
chines or future warfare in the didactic mode popularized in 1871
substituting ideas for people, and by subordinating both action and
by G. T. Chesney's The Battle of Dorking.
characters to the thesis which it argues; something at once fantastic,
novelistic, philosophic, and a little critical; a book where an imag
ination brilliant, rich, and wandering can range at ease; and, finally, Early futuristic fiction is indeed as Pierre Versins, I. F. Clarke,
a book amusing without being futile. I believe such a book would Darko Suvin and others have•suggested, a series of largely inde
be possible; but I am still perfectly convinced that it is not yet pendent efforts that cut across various national, cultural, and for
written.14 mal boundaries. 15 The degree to which previous forms were tran
scended by the evolution of futuristic fiction has been obscured by
Bodin's own novel of the future, to which his discussion serves as
its scattered origins. Despite the popularity of Mercier's L'An 2440,
preface and to which I shall return in my last chapter, was pub
there was nothing in the rise of futuristic fiction exactly comparable
lished in incomplete form. Although even this lengthy fragment is
to what Raymond Trousson describes as the monogenesis of forms
of considerable interest both as a revealing historical document
like the utopia or the Robinsonade-forms for which a single text
and as an intriguing story, Bodin was not up to following his own
is clearly so distinctive that it sets the parameters for recognition of
counsel of perfection. That remained for the successors of Verne
all subsequent examples while also retroactively casting some ear
and Wells, whose best writing provides just the kind of analogues
lier works in the role of forerunners, as More's Utopia did for Pla
to Rabelais, Cyrano, Swift, and Voltaire which Bodin here urges.
to's Republic .16 Nor on most theories of genre has resort to future
Bodin's statement of the tradition for which novels of the future
time as the setting for narrative action seemed a variation suffi-
could be the logical next development marks a noteworthy step
11
10
l
ORIGINS OF FUTURISTIC FICTION
TEMPORAL VERSUS SPATIAL IMAGINATION
ciently distinctive to count as a form in its own right. Usually that
chronotope, by which he means "the intrinsic connectedness of
resort, if noticed at all, has simply been taken for granted as noth
temporal and spatial relationships that are artistically expressed in
ing more than one attribute of science fiction. But tales of the fu
literature." The word signifies "time-space." It is ·borrowed from
ture are not necessarily science fiction. Although it is closely re
the mathematical terminology of relativity theory, although its ori
lated and undeniably liberated by the possibilities of displacing
gins (and the term itself) are of less moment than Bakhtin's applica
action to the future, science fiction does not require such displace
tion of the idea that what matters in literature is the relationship
ment, as Mary Shelley's Frankenstein may remind us along with
between portrayal of time and portrayal of space-the ratio or bal
other early science fiction set in the present or close past-most
ance between attention to spatial and to temporal aspects of narra
notably, of course, all the major works of Jules Verne.17
tion. Other critics have tended to focus on either time or space
To understand the history of futuristic fiction it is useful to take
while neglecting the issue of how their relationship may alter the
what Trousson calls in his lucid account of utopias a heuristic
import of narrative prominence given to each of these dimensions.
model of genres endowed with a relative permeability that allows
The consequences for questions relating to genre have also been
them, in the course of their evolution, to borrow themes and pro
neglected. Bakhtin, however, argues that the chronotope is above
cedures from neighboring genres. On this model individual works
all "a formally constitutive category of literature" which "has an
may fall under several categories at once. Thus it is possible to
intrinsic generic significance"; "it is precisely the chronotope that
identify utopias that also display to a significant degree the traits of
defines genre and generic distinctions, for in literature the primary
other kinds: the mirror for princes in Harrington's Oceana, for ex
category in the chronotope is time."l9
ample, or science fiction in Souvestre's Le Monde tel qu'il sera.18
I believe Bakhtin is the only critic who posits portrayal of time,
Works that, by virtue of a future locus for their action, achieve
in its relationship to space, as the most fundamental determinant of
effects otherwise unattainable may often be described accurately if
genre. The various historically identifiable chronotopes, he insists,
incompletely as satires, utopias, fables, science fiction, allegory or
"provide the basis for distinguishing generic types; they lie at the
fantasy-to name only some of the most closely related forms. By
heart of specific varieties of. the novel genre, formed and developed
assuming for heuristic purposes that futuristic fiction is a distinct
over the course of many centuries. "20 His theoretical justification
genre which may, however, coexist to varying degrees with other
for this conclusion is persuasive by virtue of its emphasis, in the
genres within a given text, it is possible to address more precisely
tradition of Lessing, on the essentially temporal character of all.
the question of how forward displacement of temporal setting alters
literature as an art form whose medium inescapably valorizes time
the impact of narratives. We can then see more clearly how master
over space throughout the duration of reading. But this is not the
pieces like Nineteen Eighty-Four rely on such displacement to
place to rehearse arguments for and against accepting Bakhtin's -.
achieve their distinctive power. A pluralistic model of genre also
view of genre to the exclusion of more traditional definitions. In
accords most accurately with that interweaving of kinds to create
critical practice his perspective does not preclude others. It offers a
new forms which especially characterizes the eighteenth century,
complementary angle of vision allowing better appreciation of rela
when futuristic fiction took its first sure steps.
tionships between time and literature that have too often escaped
Additional precision in describing the mixture of forms operative notice.
in particular texts is afforded by Mikhail Bakhtin's concept of the
In surveying "Forms of Time and of the Chronotope in the
12
13