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An eo-stefnal confession
Mar. 2nd, 2007 12:51 pmI am currently reading Garrett P. Serviss' extremely enjoyable 1909 novel about a trip to Venus, A Columbus of Space, and have been struck many times by the ways in which he struggles with the difficulties of inventing science fiction. In this passage, they have just discovered a Venusian library, evidence of a written language which hitherto the telepathy by which the Venusians communicate amongst themselves had not even hinted at:
Jack, unusually impressed, whispered to me that Edmund must have been playing us some Hindoo bedevilment trick, for he could not believe that we were actually in a foreign world. The same impression came over me. This was too earthlike; too much as if, instead of being on the planet Venus, we had been transported to some land of antique civilization in our own world.
This echoes my own wondering, as I've read this book, about how much of early SF was a transposition of Oriental adventure stories to outer space. The reference to "Hindoo bedevilment" is very curious in that context. The difficulty of how to write about the alien comes up again and again in this book:
A thousand times I have tried to put into words, simply for my own satisfaction, a description of the things that we saw, and the impressions they made on my mind -- but it is impossible. I understand now why the tales of travelers into strange lands never convey a tithe of what is in the writers' minds; they simply cannot; the necessary words and analogies do not exist. I can only use general terms, ransacking the vocabulary of adjectives -- "beautiful," "wonderful," "fascinating," "marvelous," "indescribable," "magical," "enchanting," "amazing," "inexplicable," "sans pareil" -- what you will -- but all that says nothing except to my own mind. Only the language of Venus could describe the charms and the wonders of Venus!
Alas, so far there has been no Venusian sloth, although I haven't given up all hope. And these are basically notes toward a piece I'm supposed to write for Rich Coad.
Jack, unusually impressed, whispered to me that Edmund must have been playing us some Hindoo bedevilment trick, for he could not believe that we were actually in a foreign world. The same impression came over me. This was too earthlike; too much as if, instead of being on the planet Venus, we had been transported to some land of antique civilization in our own world.
This echoes my own wondering, as I've read this book, about how much of early SF was a transposition of Oriental adventure stories to outer space. The reference to "Hindoo bedevilment" is very curious in that context. The difficulty of how to write about the alien comes up again and again in this book:
A thousand times I have tried to put into words, simply for my own satisfaction, a description of the things that we saw, and the impressions they made on my mind -- but it is impossible. I understand now why the tales of travelers into strange lands never convey a tithe of what is in the writers' minds; they simply cannot; the necessary words and analogies do not exist. I can only use general terms, ransacking the vocabulary of adjectives -- "beautiful," "wonderful," "fascinating," "marvelous," "indescribable," "magical," "enchanting," "amazing," "inexplicable," "sans pareil" -- what you will -- but all that says nothing except to my own mind. Only the language of Venus could describe the charms and the wonders of Venus!
Alas, so far there has been no Venusian sloth, although I haven't given up all hope. And these are basically notes toward a piece I'm supposed to write for Rich Coad.
