Hugo Gernsback, Ralph 124C 41+
Jan. 4th, 2009 01:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
This novel by one of the putative Fathers of Science Fiction was first serialized in 1911 in Gernsback's first magazine, Modern Electrics, which was a mostly non-fiction magazine aimed at technogeeks and amateur inventors, something along the lines of the later Popular Mechanics. The novel was apparently substantially revised for its first book publication in 1925, the year before Gernsback founded Amazing Stories, the first magazine dedicated solely to science fiction (or scientifiction) stories. My sense is that it has stayed in print pretty consistently since then. The edition I read came out in 2000 in the Bison Frontiers of Imagination series of early science fiction from the University of Nebraska Press.
I've been aware of the novel since I became a serious reader of science fiction in my teens, but I had never been interested in it in the past because it has a reputation as being creaky and old-fashioned -- a gadget tale without any narrative to speak of. There's some truth to all of this, but the reputation is also somewhat misleading, at least to the extent that it obscures what the novel is up to by contrasting it with post-Campbellian SF rather than placing it in the context of earlier SF.
It is a techno-utopia, and the books it most reminded me of in my own recent reading are Jules Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century (written in the 1860s, but not published until well after both Verne and Gernsback were dead) and Albert Robida's The Twentieth Century (1882). One of the big differences is that both Verne and Robida's utopias are satirical (or even dystopian in the case of Verne) and feature characters who do not fit into the far flung future and represent the croggled and anxious 19th century reader. Gernsback's characters are happy members of the techno-utopia and believe their lives are better for all the technological advancement. This is perhaps an American point of view versus a European point of view, although Gernsback was an immigrant from Luxembourg who only arrived in the US in 1904.
So it's true that a large part of the novel is a typical utopian work in which the titular genius inventor (all the characters have alphanumeric last names, but only geniuses have a plus at the end) explains the latest scientific and technological advancements, from a miraculous method for preserving and reviving a dead dog to an automated packaging and distribution system in all stores to a new agricultural process that grows five crops of super wheat per year to feed the huge population of Earth in the year 2660 and on to antigravity spaceships. There are all kinds of gadgets described, and the book includes an index of "Specially Named Inventions and Technological Devices", and even has a few technical diagrams to accompany Frank R. Paul's wonderful illustrations (which were for the book publication, not for the serialization). This aspect of the book is squarely aimed at the new audience of autodidact inventors and futuristic speculators and technological dreamers that Gernsback sought to appeal to his whole career.
Even the more narrative parts of the story are sometimes cast as something like a story problem for the seriously scientific-minded reader, as in this passage about a chase in space:
This latter paragraph is further footnoted for the book edition to remind us that "Up to 1911 over 650 asteroids had been discovered." It fails to point out that by 2660 even more than 4,000 will have been discovered, making Ralph's prospective task even more impossible!
Yes, there is a chase in space, and there's actually quite a bit more drama than I had expected from the book's reputation. The story opens with an avalanche in Switzerland that Ralph averts from afar by blasting it into steam with super rays beamed from his New York City laboratory. He does this to save a beautiful young woman's life, and she comes to NYC with her father to thank Ralph. He courts her by showing off the city and his inventions, and it is revealed that she has two other jealous suitors, one of them a Martian. Martians aren't allowed to marry Terrestrials, but when has that ever stopped a Martian from lusting after an Earth woman?
So there are elements of space opera in the Utopian mix, pointing to the pulp SF of the near future. There are abductions, invisibility cloaks, chases, knock out rays, scientific subterfuge, and a bit of derring do (although not much, to be honest). Yes, these adventures are quaint and old-fashioned, but Gernsback also generates at least one utterly remarkable sequence that reminded me obscurely of the perverse death kiss in Samuel R. Delany's Nova (1968). [SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS] Ralph's beloved, Alice 212B 423, is killed by the Martian villain, and Ralph thinks back to the process he used to preserve and revive a dog earlier in the book. This involves draining the blood from the corpse, which he proceeds to do to Alice. This is prime pulp territory! "He opened her large artery, and it was only with supreme courage that he forced himself to complete the heartbreaking task, while scalding tears ran down his cheeks unheeded." Well, it's clearly not easy being a super-scientific genius. It's interesting that like real-world techno-utopian movements such as cryonics and the Extropians, the ultimate goal here seems to be to defeat death. The chapter that contains this episode is entitled "The Supreme Victory".[END SPOILERS END SPOILERS END SPOILERS]
It should also be mentioned that perhaps typically for serious-minded science fiction, there is a fair amount of hand-waving, too. As Jack Williamson says in his introduction, "When actual science failed him, Gernsback invented new 'rays' as readily as did Edgar Rice Burroughs, making the entire book a lively mix of plausible speculation and sheer fantasy." Well, as I've often said, science fiction is about fictional science as much as anything else, plausibility be damned. What matters is grappling with our mortality, right?
I found the book a lot of fun. It helps that it's pretty short. From a scholarly point of view, it's another interesting bridge between Utopian literature and the scientific adventure story that would soon dominate the field. It was the very next year, in 1912, that All-Story (the real womb of genre SF) published Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Under the Moons of Mars," putting its thumb on the "sheer fantasy" side of the stefnal scale.
I've been aware of the novel since I became a serious reader of science fiction in my teens, but I had never been interested in it in the past because it has a reputation as being creaky and old-fashioned -- a gadget tale without any narrative to speak of. There's some truth to all of this, but the reputation is also somewhat misleading, at least to the extent that it obscures what the novel is up to by contrasting it with post-Campbellian SF rather than placing it in the context of earlier SF.
It is a techno-utopia, and the books it most reminded me of in my own recent reading are Jules Verne's Paris in the Twentieth Century (written in the 1860s, but not published until well after both Verne and Gernsback were dead) and Albert Robida's The Twentieth Century (1882). One of the big differences is that both Verne and Robida's utopias are satirical (or even dystopian in the case of Verne) and feature characters who do not fit into the far flung future and represent the croggled and anxious 19th century reader. Gernsback's characters are happy members of the techno-utopia and believe their lives are better for all the technological advancement. This is perhaps an American point of view versus a European point of view, although Gernsback was an immigrant from Luxembourg who only arrived in the US in 1904.
So it's true that a large part of the novel is a typical utopian work in which the titular genius inventor (all the characters have alphanumeric last names, but only geniuses have a plus at the end) explains the latest scientific and technological advancements, from a miraculous method for preserving and reviving a dead dog to an automated packaging and distribution system in all stores to a new agricultural process that grows five crops of super wheat per year to feed the huge population of Earth in the year 2660 and on to antigravity spaceships. There are all kinds of gadgets described, and the book includes an index of "Specially Named Inventions and Technological Devices", and even has a few technical diagrams to accompany Frank R. Paul's wonderful illustrations (which were for the book publication, not for the serialization). This aspect of the book is squarely aimed at the new audience of autodidact inventors and futuristic speculators and technological dreamers that Gernsback sought to appeal to his whole career.
Even the more narrative parts of the story are sometimes cast as something like a story problem for the seriously scientific-minded reader, as in this passage about a chase in space:
At the same time the results of his calculations dismayed him greatly, for they revealed that Llysanorh's machine was making no less than 88,000 miles an hour. At this rate, Ralph was gaining only 2,000 miles an hour, and it would take thirteen or fourteen days to overhaul the other flyer. But as the Martian could not hope to reach Mars under twenty-nine days himself, Ralph figured that he, barring some unforeseen accident, would overtake him long before he landed there.
It was absolutely imperative that he do so, for once the Martian left Mars and headed for the Asteroids, further pursuit would be useless. There were over 4,000 of these little planets already known and it would be the work of a lifetime to search on each one for the fugitive and his victim. Speedy action on Ralph's part was urgent.
This latter paragraph is further footnoted for the book edition to remind us that "Up to 1911 over 650 asteroids had been discovered." It fails to point out that by 2660 even more than 4,000 will have been discovered, making Ralph's prospective task even more impossible!
Yes, there is a chase in space, and there's actually quite a bit more drama than I had expected from the book's reputation. The story opens with an avalanche in Switzerland that Ralph averts from afar by blasting it into steam with super rays beamed from his New York City laboratory. He does this to save a beautiful young woman's life, and she comes to NYC with her father to thank Ralph. He courts her by showing off the city and his inventions, and it is revealed that she has two other jealous suitors, one of them a Martian. Martians aren't allowed to marry Terrestrials, but when has that ever stopped a Martian from lusting after an Earth woman?
So there are elements of space opera in the Utopian mix, pointing to the pulp SF of the near future. There are abductions, invisibility cloaks, chases, knock out rays, scientific subterfuge, and a bit of derring do (although not much, to be honest). Yes, these adventures are quaint and old-fashioned, but Gernsback also generates at least one utterly remarkable sequence that reminded me obscurely of the perverse death kiss in Samuel R. Delany's Nova (1968). [SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS] Ralph's beloved, Alice 212B 423, is killed by the Martian villain, and Ralph thinks back to the process he used to preserve and revive a dog earlier in the book. This involves draining the blood from the corpse, which he proceeds to do to Alice. This is prime pulp territory! "He opened her large artery, and it was only with supreme courage that he forced himself to complete the heartbreaking task, while scalding tears ran down his cheeks unheeded." Well, it's clearly not easy being a super-scientific genius. It's interesting that like real-world techno-utopian movements such as cryonics and the Extropians, the ultimate goal here seems to be to defeat death. The chapter that contains this episode is entitled "The Supreme Victory".[END SPOILERS END SPOILERS END SPOILERS]
It should also be mentioned that perhaps typically for serious-minded science fiction, there is a fair amount of hand-waving, too. As Jack Williamson says in his introduction, "When actual science failed him, Gernsback invented new 'rays' as readily as did Edgar Rice Burroughs, making the entire book a lively mix of plausible speculation and sheer fantasy." Well, as I've often said, science fiction is about fictional science as much as anything else, plausibility be damned. What matters is grappling with our mortality, right?
I found the book a lot of fun. It helps that it's pretty short. From a scholarly point of view, it's another interesting bridge between Utopian literature and the scientific adventure story that would soon dominate the field. It was the very next year, in 1912, that All-Story (the real womb of genre SF) published Edgar Rice Burroughs' "Under the Moons of Mars," putting its thumb on the "sheer fantasy" side of the stefnal scale.