The golden age of science fiction is the name given to the period between 1940 and 1965. The same years are also considered the golden age of cinema. The previous years of the genre, on the other hand, are usually seen as clearly inferior, mainly pulp fiction, and it's common to say that science fiction was in an incipient state, that it had barely emerged from the mists of literary prehistory.
This would be clearly wrong. During those years there were noteworthy works, such as the first version of Murray Leinster's The forgotten planet (1920-21); R.U.R. by Karel Capek (1920), with the first appearance of the word robot; Zamyatin's We (1921), which influenced Aldous Huxley and George Orwell; Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (1932); and towards the end of this period, Out of the silent planet by C.S. Lewis (1938).
We could also cite some of the works by Edgar Rice Burroughs, such as the Pellucidar series (the hollow Earth), which I mentioned in another blog post, and some of the titles in his Martian series (especially The Master Mind of Mars) although in my opinion his series of Venus cannot be strictly considered science fiction, as they are simple fantastic adventure novels taking place on Venus. The only scientific element in this series is the fact that the spaceship of the protagonist, Carson Napier, arrives at Venus by mistake, for he wanted to go to Mars and made a slight miscalculation. (!!!)
But science fiction didn't start there. It dates back since at least the early 19th century (Frankenstein, 1818, although some argue that it actually started earlier, in the 2nd century). The last years of that century and the first of the 20th are dominated by two exceptional authors, Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. I am not going to talk about them, but about another author from the same period, less well-known, but who can be considered exceptional, for his science fiction works are loaded with philosophical connotations. I mean Edward Bellamy. Let's look at two of his stories and one novel:
- To whom this may come (1888). An anonymous traveler is the only survivor of a shipwreck
near an undiscovered island in the Indian Ocean, where he meets a society
made up of human beings who have forgotten speech, for they have developed
telepathic powers and don't need speech to communicate. Bellamy analyzes
in detail the consequences this could have for society: the need to
control critical thoughts towards other people, which would be impossible
to hide; the unfeasibility of lying, murdering and other crimes, which
would be discovered before they were carried out; the ease of making
lasting friendships with people whose thoughts have a pattern similar to
ours; the little importance of physical appearance for the relation
between the sexes and the deeper and indissoluble union that could be
achieved in couple relationships; the effects on the concept of self, as the
false ego that we normally use as a mask would disappear, even for
ourselves.
- The blindman's world, where an astronomer, transported to Mars during a dream, meets there
a race of men who, rather than remembering their past as we do, remember
their future, which gives rise to curious philosophical digressions about
what would happen if this were possible. I wonder if this tale may have inspired
Brian Aldiss's novel Cryptozoic (1967). But Bellamy forgets to
mention an inevitable consequence of his starting assumption: if we could
remember the future, we wouldn't be free. That property is incompatible
with human freedom.
- Looking Backward,
2000-1887, a utopian novel that became a bestseller in
the United States, spawned the creation of numerous Bellamy clubs and
sparked an avalanche of emulators, among which can be counted such famous
authors as William Morris (News from Nowhere, 1890) and H.G. Wells (When the
sleeper wakes, 1899). In this novel, the narrator falls in
1887 in a hypnotic trance and awakens 113 years later, in the year 2000.
The Boston he discovers is very different from the city he knew, since the
nineteenth-century industrial society of the U.S. has been transformed
into an advanced society based on the nationalization of industry.
Bellamy believes in the myth of indefinite progress,
as is clear from the foreword he wrote for his novel: The almost universal theme of the
writers and orators who have celebrated this bimillennial epoch has been the
future rather than the past, not the advance that has been made, but the
progress that shall be made, ever onward and upward, till the race shall
achieve its ineffable destiny. This is well, wholly well... He
also believes, like Rousseau, that man is good, but society makes him evil,
and therefore thinks that a change in society can deal away with most evil in
human beings. It seems surprising that, being a Calvinist, Bellamy seemed to
have forgotten about original sin and its effect on human nature.
Bellamy's utopia is quite similar to Thomas More's,
except that More's is located on a remote island and Bellamy's in the future.
In both cases, the new society has abolished money (in Bellamy's case replaced
by credits, the same for all citizens), so different wages cannot be used as
incentives to make people work. As a reward for those who do their best for the
common good, public honors and distinctions are awarded. This is one of the
main weaknesses in both utopias, as was shown in the USSR by the failure of
Stakhanovism.
A few of Bellamy's proposals for a better
organization of society are quite reasonable, and I'd like to see them
implemented. I am not surprised that this book gave rise to the creation of
many Bellamy Clubs, which tried to put those ideas into practice. However, it
must be noted that some of his predictions have taken place inside the
capitalist system that Bellamy abhors.
One final observation: although many of Bellamy's
predictions for the year 2000 have not come true, he was correct in the fact
that the United States of America remains one of the very few countries in the
world that has not adopted the Metric Decimal System.
And I must confess that the end of Bellamy's novel
surprised me.
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