Skip to main content

Before Superman (SF) - Joshua Glenn (ed.) ***

This is the latest in MIT Press's Radium Age series, which aims to fill in the largely ignored proto-SF work that was produced between the end of the nineteenth century and the flourishing of science fiction of the 1930s and 40s. These have ranged from the dire Theodore Savage to the interesting opening book of the series Voices from the Radium Age.

The idea of this volume is to give us stories with characters who are more than human, with distinctly mixed results. A lot of what we get are actually extracts from novels (or in one case a George Bernard Shaw play), which makes the useful as illustrations, but not particularly engaging as stories in their own right.

A starting point would be to point out that most 'superhuman' stories are more fantasy than science fiction. The same applies to superhero comics and films of today. With the exception of Batman and Iron Man, the vast majority of superheroes have abilities that are nothing more than magic powers wearing scientific fancy dress (the same applies to Star Wars, of course). In his introduction, Joshua Glenn gives us several reasons for the rise and popularity of this kind of story, inevitably going into deep possibilities like being responses to Dawinian evolution or being inspired by Nietzsche. But for me it seems more likely these are simply children's fantasies of being big and powerful writ large.

A lot of writing of this period is turgid - in the case of some of these, notably the magnificently tedious Hannibal Lepsius by M. P. Shiel from 1909, not having any plot development. This is also the case amongst others with the extract from Shaw's 1921 play Tragedy of an Elderly Gentleman: A.D. 3000, extracted as Zoo. 

Others are moderately readable. We get, for instance, Hugo Gernsback's 1912 Ralph 124C 41+, a story often cited in the SF literature, which I'd never actually read. Admittedly the plot is essentially 'Damsel in distress; scientist waves magic wand (sorry, engages ridiculously unlikely technology) and rescues her.' But at least something happens. Then there's Francis Stevens' 1904 The Curious Experience of Thomas Dunbar, where an accident with a new element (groan) gives the eponymous Dunbar super strength. Also reasonably readable, though already featured in the series in The Heads of Cerberus. One of the best is Glenn's own translation from the French of the closing chapter of Alfred Jerry's 1902 The Supermale - it's perhaps because the translation is modern that the style is more readable (though the premise is somewhat painful).

We also get a couple of pieces from better remembered authors H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs - both very pulpy producers of fiction that has dated fairly badly, but at least authors with some concept of storytelling. It's not that stories from this period have to be badly written by modern standards. The Sherlock Holmes stories still hold up wonderfully, and much of H. G. Wells' writing is very readable, but it does seem that one of the reasons this is a largely forgotten period is that much of the writing was painfully slow for the modern reader.

Paperback:   
Kindle:  
Using these links earns us commission at no cost to you
These articles will always be free - but if you'd like to support my online work, consider buying a virtual coffee or taking out a membership:
Review by Brian Clegg - See all Brian's online articles or subscribe to a weekly email free here

Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Beyond Belief - Helen Pearson *****

Apparently it comes as a surprise to many that medicine was not particularly scientific until the end of the twentieth century (to be honest, it's no surprise to me - we had a GP who used homeopathy in the 90s). Instead it was based on anecdotal guidance - the kind of thing that appeared to work. Evidence-based medicine has since improved the field, trying where possible to base decisions on evidence, ideally based on randomised controlled trials. The first part of Helen Pearson's book covers this well - though I think it's by far the least interesting part of what we discover. Instead what's truly fascinating is the rest of it, looking at a wide range of other fields where evidence was rarely properly used and that are only now starting to dip a toe in the water. These include social policy, policing, conservation, business and education. The main part of the book gives us examples of how bad these areas have been in terms of basing decisions on what's always been ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Infinite Book – John D. Barrow ****

Authors are often asked to review books on a topic they’ve written on themselves. The reasoning is sensible – they ought to know something about the subject – but there’s always that uneasy suspicion that there’s going to be a bit of bias creeping in. So I think it’s only fair to admit up front that I have written a book on infinity (of which more later). Infinity is a wonderful subject, because it’s intimately mind-bending (if the combination sounds paradoxical, that’s what infinity is all about) and gives you the chance to pull in all sorts of different concepts and assocations along the way, something Barrow does with great gusto. There’s a surprisingly large amount of coverage here for God, and for the universe, and the book jumps around from Aristotle to Hilbert’s Infinite Hotel (explained at great length), from the paradoxes of infinite sets to the paradoxes of time travel. Overall it’s an enjoyable journey that gives plenty of opportunity to be amazed and surprised. The...
Post a Comment
Read more

Adventures of a Computational Explorer - Stephen Wolfram ***

Stephen Wolfram, the man behind the scientist's mathematical tool of choice, Mathematica, plus a whole host of other software products, including the uncanny Wolfram Alpha knowledge engine, is undoubtedly a genius of the first order. In this book, we get an uncensored excursion into the mind of genius - which is, without doubt, a fascinating prospect. The book consists of a collection of essays and speeches that Wolfram has produced over the last ten to fifteen years, covering an eclectic range of topics. Like all such collections, the result is something that lacks the coherence of a book with a narrative that runs through it, inevitably introducing a degree of repetition and a mix of interesting and not-so-interesting topics - but there's likely to be something to catch the attention anyone who is into computing or mathematics. One of the most interesting pieces is the opening one, where Wolfram describes being a consultant on the SF movie Arrival. He seems to hav...
Post a Comment
Read more