Subject: I did like Perelandra quite a bit
Author:
Posted on: 2020-03-20 21:43:36 UTC
But That Hideous Strength was the one I didn't end up finishing. C'mon, I wanted aliens, not a couple's disintegrating marriage! Little me very much took Tolkien's approach to allegory. I've grown fond of metaphor and allegory now, but I've become less and less patient with Lewis because of it, I'm afraid.
((Friday blog crossposted to Dreamwidth / Livejournal.))
A week or so ago, I chanced across someone responding to a claim that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was the first science fiction novel with the comment that "I appreciate what you're doing, but try to do it without erasing Margaret Cavendish".
'Who?' thought I, and - taking advantage of the bizarre futuristic world we lived in - looked it up on the internet.
Margaret Cavendish was the Duchess of Newcastle in the 17th century. She served as a lady in waiting to the wife of King Charles I (he of the got-his-head-chopped-off), went into exile in France with her, and later returned to England to marry the Duke of Newcastle.
Wikipedia describes her as 'a poet, philosopher, writer of prose romances, essayist, and playwright who published under her own name at a time when most women writers published anonymously', and her masterpiece was The Blazing World, written in 1666 (the year of the Great Fire of London, one year after the Great Plague). This book recounts the adventures of a young woman who sails to the North Pole, and transfers from there to the pole of an adjacent world. There she meets the various inhabitants - Bear-Men, Fox-Men, Bird-Men and so forth - learns their language, and marries their Emperor.
The book was written to be a philosophical treatise: the bulk of it seems to be taken up with the new empress discussing scientific concepts with her subjects. She revamps their religion, meets the Spirits and debates Kabbala with them, and also, quite hilariously, summons the soul of one Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, to be her companion and scribe. ("...she asked her whether she could write? Yes, answered the Duchess's Soul, but not so intelligibly that any Reader whatsoever may understand it, unless he be taught to know my Characters; for my Letters are rather like Characters, then well formed Letters. Said the Empress, you were recommended to me by an honest and ingenious Spirit. Surely, answered the Duchess, the Spirit is ignorant of my hand-writing. The truth is, said the Empress, he did not mention your hand-writing")
The book is unquestionably science fiction. Early on, we're introduced to the jet-powered boats of the Blazing World, and later on the Duchess helps them invent submarines (in the course of launching a wildly successful invasion of Earth, as it happens). But is it the first scifi novel?
Arthur C. Clarke would have us credit The Other World, published 1657, as the inventor of rocket ships, and it certainly has a scifi ring to its voyage to the moon: "When I had, according to the computation I made since, advanced a good deal more than three quarters of the space that divided the Earth from the moon, all of a sudden I fell with my Heels up and Head down... For, said I to my self, that Mass being less than ours, the Sphere of its Activity must be of less Extent also; and by consequence, it was later before I felt the force of its Center."
The Other World itself pays tribute to 1638's The Man in the Moone, by poaching its protagonist (who paid his own trip to the moon, and met, um... Moon Christians). Or perhaps we should look back to 1608, and astronomer Johannes Kepler's Dream, wherein a demon describes the creatures which live on the moon, including a distinction between Nearside and Farside, and apparently includes a description of the Earth as seen from the Moon.
But is this still scifi? Well, Sagan and Asimov said it was... but the only space travel occurs by daemonic magic, so is it really?
If so, then we have nothing to stop us from going back another 1500 years, to second century writer Lucian of Samosata's True History. If travelling to the Moon by magic makes for sci-fi, then surely this also qualifies:
"Upon a sudden a whirlwind caught us, which turned our ship round about, and lifted us up some three thousand furlongs into the air, and suffered us not to settle again into the sea, but we hung above ground, and were carried aloft with a mighty wind which filled our sails strongly. Thus for seven days' space and so many nights were we driven along in that manner, and on the eighth day we came in view of a great country in the air, like to a shining island, of a round proportion, gloriously glittering with light, and approaching to it, we there arrived, and took land, and surveying the country, we found it to be both inhabited and husbanded."
While on the Moon, Lucian's protagonist gets caught up in a war between the Moon and the Sun; he describes strange creatures such as Lachanopters and Hippomyrmicks, and has armies coming from assorted stars to join the Moon's forces; and in the end the Heliotans and Selenitans establish a joint colony on Venus (which they reach by giant spider web). With very minimal reworking, this portion of the True History could pass as 1950s science fiction... but does that mean it is?
What it means, I think, is that fiction is like the world: much stranger than we imagine, and not easy to put into boxes. Lucian, Kepler, Cavendish, Shelley - all of these authors stand as pioneers in science fiction. To try and pick who 'invented' the genre, and who was just taking steps towards it, seems to be missing an opportunity to embrace them all.
hS
PS: I've read all of the True History, and can highly recommend it; The Blazing World I've begun, but Cavendish's paragraphs are unholy things that make reading her work quite a challenge. I checked out when she started debating microscopes.
I think we must first define science.
I suspect most of what we think of as science fiction deals with the modern, empirical science that came about in the wake of the scientific revolution. Science fiction is about biologists, physicists, and chemists, not naturalists, philosophers, and alchemists. Not that you can draw a sharp distinction based solely on vocabulary pulled out of a hat, but you get the idea. {= )
Another thought: at some point, I came across the idea that science fiction looks forward, either optimistically or pessimistically projecting consequences of the amazing/scary new things we're dealing with in the world today. Stories about space travel and alien invasions in the wake of the moon landing; stories about gamma rays and superpowers in the wake of the Manhattan Project; stories about virtual realities and killer AIs in the wake of the digital revolution. I'll bet we're heading for a bajillion new zombie apocalypse (or just regular apocalypse) stories in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Just wait and see. It'll be interesting to see if the scientists get painted more often as the heroes or the villains, considering there are already plenty of fictional accounts of conspiracy floating around...
Ahem. Lemme just sweep up that salt. Moving on now.
Fantasy, in contrast, looks backward or inward, reminding us of where we come from, what our cultural values are, and that, e.g., even the smallest of us still have their part to play. Science fiction is more likely to challenge the status quo; fantasy is more likely to reinforce it. Again, it's not cut and dry, you can't say there are never any elements of the one contained in the other, but in general.
That helps classify something like Pern, which contains both fantasy and sci-fi tropes: a low-tech feudal society and fire-breathing dragons on the one hand, space travel and genetic engineering on the other. It's sci-fi of the optimistic sort, because it leans into the use of technology to better the lives of the people and the need to overturn old ways of thinking when they're no longer beneficial—while still valuing morality and honoring traditions that have served well.
... Y'know, I think it might be thematically significant that proper noun and proper noun verb at the same time? They're both obsolete, in a way. Necessary and honored, even loved, in their time, but doomed to be crutches or weights if not let go. It seems so obvious, but I never really thought about it before. (Am I an adult now? Can I have a sticker?)
But, it's late, and this post has meandered a fair way from where it started. That's enough for now. ^_^
~Neshomeh
I am still very confused about why the book is considered to be children's fantasy. In the book, there are multiple science fiction devices, or in this case sweets. Yes I know that the glass elevator exists, and the second book is full blown science fiction. Heck Charlie and Willy Wonka go to space! But I'll leave out the second book for this post, and just stick to the original.
One of the many sweets that Wonka has managed to create, is the never melting ice cream. According to Grandpa Joe, it can never melt even in the hottest sun. Even though that's a really cool food item and maybe it would have fixed our problem with ice cream, would you ever imagine eating solid room temperature ice cream?
Another food stuff mentioned in the book as a plot device, is the stick of gum. Yes, that is what it's refereed to in the book. Wonka develops this gum in his witch like food lab, and it apparently has the nutrients and the taste of a full course meal. According to Violet, the courses include tomato soup, steak, a baked potato and blueberry pie. It unfortunately has the side effect of making Violet inflate and turn purplish blue, resembling a blueberry( and now you know the reason why this was tagged as NS4M).
Now one of the more prominent plot devices that screams science fiction, is the glass elevator. It's this elevator that can fly anywhere, and it's indestructible. It's a Tardis, but made from glass and it can't time travel. In the second story, it's used as a spaceship, but I don't want to talk more. I really don't want to spoil Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator for anybody.
So why was the book marked as Children's fantasy? My guess is that it was a marketing gimmick, or it's because of the Oompa Loompa. I guess that they are kind of fantastical, I mean after all they are from the country of Loompaland. It is apparently a very terrible place, because there are predators such as the Whangdoodles, Hornswogglers, and yes how could I have forgotten, the Whangdoodles. It's so bad that the only source of food are green caterpillars and not much else. Heck, even the caterpillars taste terrible.
But the problem with this "theory" is that anything magical/fantastical about the Oompa Loompas just die after their chapter. The Whangdoodles or the crappy tasting green caterpillars are never brought up again. Their fantastical elements have been stripped away, and that kind of sucks. Because I would have liked to hear more Oompa Loompa folk tales, and maybe get a description of a Whangdoodle. So my conclusion is that child's fantasy label really was a marketing gimmick.
Pls reply, I spent quite a lot of time on this post and I am still angry that my computer decided to close the page when I was writing the post.
Sorry for posting this late, I was kind of busy and why are there threads popping up often? I guess that it's a coincidence really.
~SomeRandomPersonAccount
Here's a link to a Japanese version!
And here's another, to the UK version I was thinking of when I started searching. Either way, it's pretty cool stuff!
~Z
Since the popsicle can’t melt, you might as well chip a tooth trying to eat one.
~SomeRandomPersonAccount
-wise normal.
~Z
IMO, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory isn't about science, and whatever science happens to be present is so soft it might as well be magic. To me, it's more or less a modern morality play, meant to teach kids to Be Good Little Boys And/Or Girls, Or Else. ... Well, to be fair, that might be more true of the first movie (the one with Gene Wilder) than the book. I only read the book once, forever ago, and I seem to recall hearing that the movie went heavier on that stuff.
But, it's still Roald Dahl. He's not exactly known as a science fiction writer. His other books (that I remember reading) are definitely of a fantastical bent, not a sciencey one.
Of course, Your Mileage May Vary. {= )
~Neshomeh
"It's like Dante's Inferno for kids!"
George's Marvellous Medicine is the prototypical, nay, archetypical chemistry fiction book! It's literally book-length empirical/experimental chemistry, complete with all the usual blunders and non-repeatable results.
Okay, yes, it's a bit fantastical that the various potions compounds make various parts of animals grow when ingested, rather than, eg, giving them cyanide poisoning, but, but, but... all right, maaaaybe you have a point. ;)
But still, this is the book that sparked off my interest in chemistry, and look where that's gotten me. ^_~
hS
Honestly, a lot of older space travel stuff seems pretty fantastical. I tried reading C.S. Lewis's Perelandra series, and that has some fairly fantastical aliens, as well as a thing about how each planet has a spirit, and earth is inhabited by Satan? So it might just be that most early sci-fi leans more towards flaming ships in the sky, rather than our more modern space stations and rockets.
I came thiiis close to using the names Malakandra and Perelandra to refer to my children online. Those were some odd books... 'Perelandra' was my favourite, I think, because it was a sort of story I've not really seen elsewhere (probably because it was a parable... oh Lewis).
Come to think of it, I know Tolkien commented on the Space Trilogy, in part to say that spaceships were a rubbish storytelling device, and it would have been better to use dreams. All very mystical-spiritual.
hS
But That Hideous Strength was the one I didn't end up finishing. C'mon, I wanted aliens, not a couple's disintegrating marriage! Little me very much took Tolkien's approach to allegory. I've grown fond of metaphor and allegory now, but I've become less and less patient with Lewis because of it, I'm afraid.