Back to the stuff from which science fictions are made, I recently picked up on this story about the first space strike when the organiser, William R. Pogue, died on 3 March 2014. He was one of a three-man crew that flew the longest, and the last, manned mission aboard Skylab, from 16 November 1973 to 8 February 1974.
The strike, which took place while in orbit, was staged (amazingly) to negotiate more time for contemplating the universe. Pogue, an Air Force officer, explained his actions and those of the crew as just wanting more time to look out the window and think. In Science News (1985), he said the flight had made him “much more inclined toward humanistic feeling toward other people, other crewmen [...] I try to put myself into the human situation, instead of trying to operate like a machine”. While his reasoning baffled ground controllers, who thought perhaps the strike was a sign of depression, the chance to reflect on what must have been a unique and aweing set of circumstances definitely seems like something worth fighting for.
Venue: Stanley & Audrey Burton Gallery, University of Leeds
To coincide with a current display, 'Dreams of a Low Carbon Future' (10 February - 31 March 2014), this discussion will highlight works from the Science Fiction Collection, held in the University of Leeds Library's Special Collections.
There will be the opportunity to see early pulp magazines, illustrated volumes and rare editions of highly influential works of SF literature. Come along to learn more about these futures past and the history of the collections. A short presentation will be followed by questions and discussion.
In June last year (see my Digital Library post), I publicised the Amazing Stories and Wonder Stories covers by Frank R. Paul, available to view via the University of Leeds' Digital Library.
In that post, I mentioned that Paul's distinctive style became closely associated with these and other Hugo Gernsback publications. Now more than six months later I wanted to follow up with another Paul-related interest story by going beyond the covers of the magazines and into the obsessive, paranoid, and often downright strange territory of readers' letters. Most of these early pulps had a section devoted to readers' letters and the SF magazines were no different. 'The Reader Speaks' was a forum for fans to show their appreciation, or consternation, at the stories featured in each issue. But it was a letter from a Morris Miller of Brooklyn, NY, in an edition of Wonder Stories from January 1934 that drew my attention, primarily for its subject matter:- the artwork of Frank R. Paul. In his letter, Miller writes:
The attractive cover of the
November issue depicts most remarkably the superb ability of its creator, Frank
Paul, whose work, by the way is becoming less fantastic and more convincing, as
well as within the bounds of reason. But I hate to have to see him draw an
insensible picture like the one which appeared on the May 1933 cover. I hope
the editors try their best to avoid such absurd means of arousing wonder
in those not acquainted with our mag. I guess that is about all it can do. I also
note the much improved lifelikeness in the faces of characters drawn by Mr
Paul.
This is not the only topic covered in the letter, of course; there's a summary of the reader's favourite stories, a request for a science news section and speculation about the existence of canals on Mars:- 'perhaps they are not canals but some other super-structures which may account for everything...' However, the editors make it their first priority to address the comments relating to the cover artwork, responding with:
You seem to like our covers, like
the majority of our readers, but there are a few who claim that they are too
‘gaudy’ or ‘loud’. We do not deny the fact, but we do say that it is necessary
in order to have a newsstand sale. These covers are very attractive and draw
the eye of passers-by, who may be persuaded to buy the magazine because of this
fact, and thereby we acquire many new science-fiction fans who would not now be
acquainted with the magazine if it weren’t for this. If we took a vote, we’d
probably find that a large percentage of our readers were introduced to
science-fiction by the cover of Wonder Stories.
Here, a debt is acknowledged to Paul's covers for drawing the eye and exciting interest in a potential 1930s SF reader. It's easy to imagine how these distinctive images would stand out on a crowded newsstand but perhaps this would be small comfort to a reader like Miller. The oddest thing is that a comparison of the 'attractive' November issue and the 'insensible' May issue reveal (to my eye) few discernible differences, although I could be missing something. For a man that can make sense out of canals on Mars, maybe a robot with tentacles is not too much of an imaginative stretch. But a flying man? That's evidently a bridge too far...
This year sees the ninetieth anniversary of the first publication in English of Evgenii Zamiatin’s seminal dystopian novel, We (Russian Mы/My). Pre-dating, and possibly influencing, the two major depictions of all-powerful state control in twentieth-century English literature, George Orwell’s 1984 and Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, it is undoubtedly the least well-known of the three. In part this stems from its troubled publishing history; written in 1920-21, We was not published in the Soviet Union until 1988, though its reputation in the west has continued to grow with the years.
First Edition, 1924
Various copies, including some from University of Leeds Library
With the Bolsheviks having only just secured power, Soviet authorities took a
predictably dim view of Zamiatin’s prescient portrayal of totalitarian
rule, set in the ‘OneState’ of the twenty-sixth century and narrated by
citizen D-503. Its absolute ruler is the Benefactor; every aspect of
life is timetabled, from work schedules to ‘Personal Hours’, and the
buildings are constructed almost entirely of glass, to allow for
constant state surveillance. Given the emphasis on the collective in the
imagined OneState, and also its themes of conformity and psychological
confinement, We can be read as a reflection of Zamiatin’s fears
for the future after the Russian Revolution of 1917. This seems to have
been the interpretation of the literary censors, who immediately banned
it, the first book to suffer this fate in the Soviet Union; the novel
was finally published in the USA, by E. P. Dutton in New York in 1924.
In fact, Zamiatin (a naval engineer by profession) also took inspiration
from a period spent working in the ship-yards of Tyneside, where he
supervised the construction of ice-breakers. We reflects the
contemporary trend toward the mechanisation of labour and ‘scientific
management’, notably the time-and-motion studies of efficiency expert Frederick Winslow Taylor, that the author first observed in the UK. Clarence Brown, translator of a later English edition, comments that:
“characters behave as nearly as possible as if they themselves were fail-safe pieces of hardware.”
After the banning of We,
and with cultural life suffering from the same authoritarian clampdown
as the rest of Soviet society, Zamiatin, possibly fearing the purges
which were to come, wrote directly to Stalin, asking to be allowed to
leave the Soviet Union and pursue his artistic freedom elsewhere.
Remarkably, his plea succeeded, and in 1931, he left the country. Though
his exile was to Paris, rather than Siberia like so many of his
literary colleagues and peers, he barely wrote again and died, by all
accounts disillusioned and impoverished, in 1937.
This beautiful feature from the Guardianrepresents the best pictures sent back from NASA rovers Spirit and Opportunity, over a decade spent photographing Mars.
From dazzling dunes to vast craters to space blueberries, these amazing shots are full of imaginative possibilities and offer a glimpse of life on the Red Planet.
What better way to start 2014 than with Isaac Asimov's 1964 New York Times article, 'Visit to the World's Fair of 2014', a speculative glimpse 50 years into the future, published on the occasion of New York City's hosting of the World's Fair. In it, Asimov imagines a world which sounds very much like our own:
“The world of A.D. 2014 will have few routine jobs that cannot be done better by some machine than by any human being. Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders. Schools will have to be oriented in this direction…. All the high-school students will be taught the fundamentals of computer technology will become proficient in binary arithmetic and will be trained to perfection in the use of the computer languages.”
“Communications will become sight-sound and you will see as well as hear the person you telephone. The screen can be used not only to see the people you call but also for studying documents and photographs and reading passages from books. Synchronous satellites, hovering in space will make it possible for you to direct-dial any spot on earth, including the weather stations in Antarctica.”
“Mankind will suffer badly from the disease of boredom, a disease spreading more widely each year and growing in intensity. This will have serious mental, emotional and sociological consequences, and I dare say that psychiatry will be far and away the most important medical specialty in 2014.”
Even those domestic issues close to home do not escape scrutiny:
“The appliances of 2014 will have no electric cords, of course, for they will be powered by long- lived batteries running on radioisotopes. The isotopes will not be expensive for they will be by- products of the fission-power plants which, by 2014, will be supplying well over half the power needs of humanity. But once the isotope batteries are used up they will be disposed of only through authorized agents of the manufacturer.”
Mindful of the threat of nuclear war that overshadowed the Cold War years, Asimov writes, “if a thermonuclear war takes place, the future will not be worth discussing. So [...] let us observe what may come in the nonatomized world of the future”, a sentiment that perfectly embodies the spirit of SF literature and seems an apt way to see in the New Year.
Since 2009 I've been jointly responsible for maintaining the Leeds Verse database, creating catalogue entries for poetry from 17th and 18th century manuscripts. I rarely find anything in the way of interesting SF-related stories but I recently came across a poem called On seeing the Microcosm, dated September 1774, an extract of which reads:
Here all Copernicus's pains,
The labour of great Newton's brains,
What puzzled ages - one short view
(Each knowledge of the mind) can shew.
Inigo Jones with envious eyes
Might see the finished orders rise;
Raphael, outdone, behold, with grief,
The painted figures spring to life.
The description of painted figures springing to life was intriguing. After a bit of research, I discovered that the Microcosm in question referred to an automaton, one of the clockwork machines that became popular in the 17th and 18th centuries. From the Greek meaning 'to act of one's own will', automata enchanted the courts of Europe, with their lifelike movements and musical chimes. During the French Revolution, they were so much associated with the ruling classes that revolutionaries likened them to the wealthy elites, 'bodies without souls, covered in lace'.
However, automata were sometimes exhibited to wider audiences for publicity purposes, hence the poem's full title of On Seeing the Microcosm, Now Exhibiting in the Red Lion Assembly Room, which originally appeared in Swinney's Birmingham and Stafford Chronicle. This particular automaton was credited to the British goldsmith James Cox, who was best known for producing mechanical clocks.
Along with Belgian inventor John JosephMerlin, Cox was also the creator of the famous Silver Swan, now the star attraction of the Bowes Museum at Barnard Castle. Mark Twain describes his own encounter with the swan in Innocents Abroad:
I watched the Silver Swan, which
had a living grace about his movement and a living intelligence in his eyes –
watched him swimming about as comfortably and unconcernedly as if he had been
born in a morass instead of a jeweller’s shop – watched him seize a silver fish
from under the water and hold up his head and go through the customary and
elaborate motions of swallowing it.
Of course, the automaton has been a continuing source of fascination for scientists and novelists alike. Inspiring characters from Isaac Asimov's Bicentennial Man to Douglas Adams' Marvin the Paranoid Android (for a more comprehensive list see this Wikipedia entry, 'List of fictional robots and androids'), it has become a classic trope of SF literature. Perhaps one of its most memorable incarnations is in the character of 'False Maria', the Maschinenmensch (German for 'machine-human') from Fritz Lang's 1927 film Metropolis. Also notable for being the first feature length film of the SF genre, Metropolis tells the tale of a divided city: a utopian idyll above ground but below the surface a dark pit, where workers run the heavy machinery that keeps the city functioning. The image of Lang's Maria, a female automaton created to cause unrest among the workers, is an enduring and haunting screen icon.
Those interested to know more about the history of automata (as I was) can watch this excellent documentary, Mechanical Marvels: Clockwork Dreams, presented by Simon Schaffer:
