Sense of Wonder: A Century of Science Fiction (27 page)

I had no time to talk, I was becoming very weak and it was with difficulty that I controlled my mind at all.

But, with a final effort, as I sank weakly to my knees I hurled the nine thought waves at that awful thing before me. The Martian had crawled to my side and with staring eyes fixed on the single panel before us we waited in the silence of death.

Slowly the mighty door receded before us. I attempted to rise and follow it but I was too weak.

“After it,” I cried to my companion, “and if you reach the pump room turn loose all the pumps. It is the only chance Barsoom has to exist tomorrow!”

From where I lay I opened the second door, and then the third, and as I saw the hope of Barsoom crawling weakly on hands and knees through the last doorway I sank unconscious upon the ground.

CHAPTER XXVIII

AT THE ARIZONA CAVE

It was dark when I opened my eyes again. Strange, stiff garments were upon my body; garments that cracked and powdered away from me as I rose to a sitting posture.

I felt myself over from head to foot and from head to foot I was clothed, though when I fell unconscious at the little doorway I had been naked. Before me was a small patch of moonlit sky which showed through a ragged aperture.

As my hands passed over my body they came in contact with pockets and in one of these a small parcel of matches wrapped in oiled paper. One of these matches I struck, and its dim flame lighted up what appeared to be a huge cave, toward the back of which I discovered a strange, still figure huddled over a tiny bench. As I approached it I saw that it was the dead and mummified remains of a little old woman with long black hair, and the thing it leaned over was a small charcoal burner upon which rested a round copper vessel containing a small quantity of greenish powder.

Behind her, depending from the roof upon rawhide thongs, and stretching entirely across the cave, was a row of human skeletons. From the thong which held them stretched another to the dead hand of the little old woman; as I touched the cord the skeletons swung to the motion with a noise as of the rustling of dry leaves.

It was a most grotesque and horrid tableau and I hastened out into the fresh air; glad to escape from so gruesome a place.

The sight that met my eyes as I stepped out upon a small ledge which ran before the entrance of the cave filled me with consternation.

A new heaven and a new landscape met my gaze. The silvered mountains in the distance, the almost stationary moon hanging in the sky, the cacti-studded valley below me were not of Mars. I could scarcely believe my eyes, but the truth slowly forced itself upon me—I was looking upon Arizona from the same ledge from which ten years before I had gazed with longing upon Mars.

Burying my head in my arms I turned, broken, and sorrowful, down the trail from the cave.

Above me shone the red eye of Mars holding her awful secret, forty-eight million miles away.

Did the Martian reach the pump room? Did the vitalizing air reach the people of that distant planet in time to save them? Was my Dejah Thoris alive, or did her beautiful body lie cold in death beside the tiny golden incubator in the sunken garden of the inner courtyard of the palace of Tardos Mors, the jeddak of Helium?

For ten years I have waited and prayed for an answer to my questions. For ten years I have waited and prayed to be taken back to the world of my lost love. I would rather lie dead beside her there than live on Earth all those millions of terrible miles from her.

The old mine, which I found untouched, has made me fabulously wealthy; but what care I for wealth!

As I sit here tonight in my little study overlooking the Hudson, just twenty years have elapsed since I first opened my eyes upon Mars.

I can see her shining in the sky through the little window by my desk, and tonight she seems calling to me again as she has not called before since that long dead night, and I think I can see, across that awful abyss of space, a beautiful black-haired woman standing in the garden of a palace, and at her side is a little boy who puts his arm around her as she points into the sky toward the planet Earth, while at their feet is a huge and hideous creature with a heart of gold.

I believe that they are waiting there for me, and something tells me that I shall soon know.

* * * *

Copyright © 1912 by Frank A. Munsey Co.

Who wrote the first work of science fiction? Before answering that question, we must first ask ourselves “What makes a work of literature science fiction?” Scholar and science-fiction writer James Gunn, in his book
The Road to Science Fiction
,
vol. 1
, calls the genre “the literature of change” and notes the change is frequently “scientific and technological” (vii). Darko Suvein refines this definition: to him change in science fiction means “a mapping of possible alternatives” where the audience can be warned, awakened from complacency, or given a diagnosis (
Metamorphoses of Science Fiction
, 12). Science fiction can snap us out of thinking about and living only in the present time, according to Suvein, because the genre is “wiser than the world it speaks to” and encourages its audience to speculate about humanity’s future (36). Before you could have science fiction, according to Gunn, authors first had to be capable of imagining humankind as a collective, facing adversity from some outside group or element. He also notes science fiction requires the capability to envision the future as a time when things will be vastly different. This desire for a future where humans might be able to control what happens to them, Gunn notes, can be found in literature as old as the Babylonian epic poem,
Gilgamesh
(vii–xi). This kind of literature often asks the question “What will life be like many years from now?” in a way that makes the audience consider many possibilities for the future.

Although much science fiction takes place on other worlds far from earth, the genre does not limit itself to describing space travel or tales about aliens. Another way to define the genre would be to look at how scientific discovery and new technological developments have inspired audiences to think about their options for the future. The earliest examples of this kind of story can be found in Greek mythology, such as the tale of Icarus’s disastrous flight toward the sun. While Greek myth predates science fiction’s invention, this kind of story resonates with readers who can identify in this abuse-and-misuse-of-technology-myth a precursor to modern science fiction works. If you think of science fiction as the literature of technology, then it can be defined as a genre that requires its audience to be open to innovation and willing to imagine that scientific principles and technology could be applied in new ways to either solve problems or create hazards for society. A science fiction author can critique modern society by providing new insight into a common problem, or offering a solution to a dilemma, but the resolution offered in the science fiction story will often be an extraordinary one. Science fiction asks the question “What if?” but it does so with an eye towards making the audience ask, “What is wrong in this society?” or “How can this world be improved?”(Gunn, xiii–xviii). This is similar to satire, in which it is common to find social commentary as well.

It might seem as if it would be easy to establish who invented science fiction once you have a definition. When you look at early works of literature that can meet the criteria for being called science fiction, however, it is still hard to decide, because there are so many stories written throughout time that include science fictional elements. Since science fiction deals with events occurring beyond the realm of ordinary human possibility, some scholars argue Mary Shelley, whose novel Frankenstein was published in 1818, was the first science fiction author. Her story of a talented inventor is tragic and horrifying. The inventor loses his family and friends because he cannot control his creation, a monstrous being made from repurposed parts of dead corpses. Like many modern science fiction works, Frankenstein serves as a warning against allowing one’s ambition to get out of hand. It might be possible to argue science fiction began even earlier, since there was a tradition of travel stories about fantastic voyages to extraordinary places in existence before Shelley wrote Frankenstein. The Greek writers Homer and Herodotus first fostered a sense of wonder in their audiences with travel tales that could be considered precursors to speculative fiction: Homer’s Odyssey describes magical creatures and monstrous beings the hero Odysseus encounters on his voyage home to Ithaca. Herodotus in his Histories also describes fantastic creatures that would be more commonly expected to appear in legends and fairy tales, such as the Cynocephali, or dog-headed men. Many modern authors—both science fiction writers and satirists—were inspired by another early Greek writer, Lucian, whose satire A True Story features a trip to the moon. One example of this would be Danish author Ludvig Holberg, whose book The Journey of Niels Klim to the World Underground was published in 1741. Holberg’s story features a main character, Niels Klim, who is an ordinary Dane who happens to fall into a cave in Norway, and while he is exploring, finds the earth is hollow and contains a sun and a series of planets. When Holberg wants to amaze his audience with the wonders of an alternate universe, his story uses science, not magic, as a way to explain extraordinary events. The problems Niels Klim encounters while visiting these planets, including his experiences with the ways in which power can corrupt leaders, would have resonated with Holberg’s contemporary Danish audience. This story also has much in common with later science fiction works. Science fiction authors can critique contemporary society by recreating the same problems we encounter as humans in an alternate reality—a reality that takes place either far in the future and far from earth (e.g., Firefly) or in the present in a place on earth different from the one we know (e.g., Eureka).

While both Shelley and Holberg’s stories contain elements of science fiction, it is also possible to make the argument that their works, and similar works written around the same time, came before science fiction was truly invented and established as a genre. Holberg’s novel contains previously unimagined devices and planets, but it can be classified as a satire instead of science fiction because the author is primarily highlighting problems from his own society humorously, although in an otherworldly setting. Gunn suggests that depending on how you define science fiction, Frankenstein is either the first science fiction novel or it is a work that shows us the possibility of what science fiction can become in the future. While Shelley’s work contains many elements fitting science fiction’s definition, Gunn concludes that because the novel does not encourage scientific exploration, it does not share “the philosophy that runs through science fiction’s hard core” (147–8). Jules Verne, however, can be called the first science fiction author because he did not just write a work or two that contained elements of science fiction; he made a career out of writing in this genre. His novel The Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) was inspired by Holberg’s work and encourages the pursuit of scientific discovery (Gunn, 225–6). It is important to consider how science fiction has changed the way we imagine what the future can hold for us. When you read the first stories in this anthology, think, for example, about how authors such as Jules Verne (1828–1905) and H.G. Wells (The Time Machine, 1895) invoke a sense of wonder in their audiences—Verne through his talent of making an amazing invention or discovery seem as if it could be included in our future someday and Wells through his ability to cause us to question everything we think we know about the human race and its aspirations, limitations, and adaptability.

The stories you are about to read are some of the earliest stories that can be considered part of the science fiction genre. But before you read them, it is important to understand why they are defined as science fiction. You may notice, for example, that these science fiction stories often have multiple characteristics in common with other types of literature, but they are categorized as science fiction because of the way in which they make their readers rethink what they thought they knew about humanity. Some of the first science fiction stories deal with a basic question humankind has been asking for centuries: Is there life beyond what we know of on earth? Science fiction also appeals to our sense of wonder. In both Edgar Rice Burroughs’s “A Princess of Mars” (written in 1911) and Robert E. Howard’s short novel, “Almuric” (1939), the human characters find themselves in amazing settings on far-away planets. Alien encounter stories such as the ones found in Burroughs’s “A Princess of Mars,” are common in early science fiction. “Almuric” is another alien encounter story. It appeals to humanity’s fascination with imagining what it would be like to rule over aliens.

Early science fiction novels often explored the questions, “What are humankind’s greatest hopes for the future?” and “What are humans most afraid will happen in the future?” There is often a sense of anxiety regarding future discoveries or the future in general. In 1931, H. P. Lovecraft wrote the novella “At the Mountains of Madness.” The story features a scientific expedition in Antarctica which discovers an ancient alien war spawned humanity. This is a horror story wrapped in science fiction garb, because the monsters are aliens. Lovecraft’s influence on later science fiction would be significant; the fusion of horror with science fiction in modern authors’ works such as Stephen King’s novels owes much to Lovecraftian horror. By showing us what we thought we knew about human life’s origins is wrong, Lovecraft’s work plays on humanity’s greatest fears. These anxieties bring us back to how science fiction is the literature of change—it can warn us not to become too complacent with who we are and what we think we know about ourselves and our future existence.

* * * *

Jennifer A. Rea
is Associate Professor of Classics at the University of Florida in Gainesville. Her publications include
Legendary Rome
(Duckworth Academic, 2007) and several articles on the origins of science fiction and fantasy in classical literature. Her most recent research is on themes of the Golden Age myth, exile, and dystopia in Vergil, Ovid, and modern science fiction and fantasy.