I've found myself reading a couple of early twentieth century precursors of science fiction over the last couple of weeks. It's really quite fascinating stuff. It has me wondering if they two samples I read: The Clockwork Man by E.V. Odle and Man's World by Charlotte Haldane (wife of J.B.S.) are representative of Edwardian and early twentieth century sf.
In the nineteenth century, the "scientific romance", what is commonly understood to be the precursor to the gee-whiz-bang rockets-and-mad-scientists science fiction of the mid twentieth century (when the genre really took off) was preoccupied with biology. If you think of the work of H.G. Wells - War of the Worlds, The Island of Dr. Moreau, or even Stevenson's Jekyll and Hyde - they all employed ideas of evolution, devolution, and social Darwinianism in their subtexts.
The stuff we think of most often when we think science fiction - and the stuff Margaret Atwood thinks of when she defines herself as NOT a science fiction writer - really came into being in the 1940s and 1950s - the BEMs (bug eyed monsters) and rocket ships, Flash Gordon, and all that jazz. The sf of this period is really more about physics than it is about biology.
[which makes me wonder, will science fiction ever go through a phase where it's all about chemistry?... I can't imagine, but it seems a bit unfair for chemistry to not have its moment in the sun]
This stuff from the 1920s that I'm reading still retains a lot of that social Darwinism, but the new emphasis on physics is also creeping in as well. The narratives are a real sharp contrast with the modernist texts we usually think of from the period - Woolf, Joyce etc. and I would love to read more of it to figure out exactly how those differences play out.
Since I've not studied modernism extensively, it's a project that I'm not equipped to undertake right now, but I do think it might be an interesting avenue to pursue after the dissertation gets finished. See? I am working hard at keeping myself from getting distracted. It's just there are so many really interesting things to read!
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Hi there.
I own a copy of The Clockwork Man and just sent chapter 1 to http://www.worldswithoutend.com/novel.asp?ID=2261
It sort of deals with darwinism and evolution. It has been a while since I read it but The Cockwork man is from the future where most people have been equipped with clocks. Clocks are machines, think steampunk like, los of gears and buttons all very tiny in a box in your head, of course with a glass dome like covering. So we have augmented ourselves, our society in the future has. This allows for some amazing abilities (when the clock runs well) but it seems at a great loss to our humanity.
In the end I would say it is a cautionary tale of technological advancement and losing ourselves to it or in it. Not that the Clockwork Man is evil, just sort of mechanical, a sympathetic but empty character and when his clock is not functioning a helpless and sad creature.
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