INSIGHTS. General Editor: Give Bloom, Senior Lecturer in English, Middlesex Polytechnic

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1 INSIGHTS General Editor: Give Bloom, Senior Lecturer in English, Middlesex Polytechnic Editorial Board: Give Bloom, Brian Docherty, Gary Day, Lesley Bloom, Hazel Day. Insights brings to academics, students and general readers the very best contemporary criticism on neglected literary and cultural areas. It consists of anthologies, each containing original contributions by advanced scholars and experts. Each contribution concentrates on a study of a particular work, author or genre in its artistic, historical and cultural context. Published titles Give Bloom (editor) JACOBEAN POETRY AND PROSE: Rhetoric, Representation and the Popular Imagination TWENTIETH-CENTURY SUSPENSE: The Thriller Comes of Age Give Bloom, Brian Docherty, Jane Gibb and Keith Shand (editors) NINETEENTH-CENTURY SUSPENSE: From Poe to Conan Doyle Gary Day and Give Bloom (editors) PERSPECTIVES ON PORNOGRAPHY: Sexuality in Film and Literature Brian Docherty (editor) AMERICAN CRIME FICTION: Studies in the Genre AMERICAN HORROR FICTION: From Brockden Brown to Stephen King Robert Giddings, Keith Selby and Chris Wensley SCREENING THE NOVEL: The Theory and Practice of Literary Dramatisation Mark Lilly (editor) LESBIAN AND GAY WRITING: An Anthology of Critical Essays

2 Christopher Mulvey and John Simons (editors) NEW YORK: City as Text Jeffrey Walsh and James Aulich (editors) VIETNAM IMAGES: War and Representation Series Standing Order If you would like to receive future titles in this series as they are published, you can make use of our standing order facility. To place a standing order please contact your bookseller or, in case of difficulty, write to us at the address below with your name and address and the name of the series. Please state with which title you wish to begin your standing order. (If you live outside the Uniterl" Kingdom we may not have the rights for your area, in which case we will forward your order to the publisher concerned.) Customer Services Department, Macmillan Distribution Ltd Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire, RG21 2XS, England.

3 Science Fiction Roots and Branches Contemporary Critical Approaches Edited by RHYS GARNETT Principal Lecturer in English Staffordshire Polytechnic and R. J. ELLIS Senior Lecturer in English Staffordshire Polytechnic M MACMILLAN

4 the Editorial Board, Lumiere (Co-operative) Press Ltd, 1990 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended), or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 33-4 Alfred Place, London WCIE 7DP. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. First published 1990 Published by THE MACMILLAN PRESS LTD Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 2XS and London Companies and representatives throughout the world Typeset by Wessex Typesetters (Division of The Eastern Press Ltd) Frome, Somerset British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Science fiction roots and branches: contemporary critical approaches- (Insights). 1. Science fiction in English, to Critical studies I. Garnett, Rhys II. Ellis, R. J. Ill. Series 823'.0876'09 ISBN ISBN (ebook) DOI /

5 To Pamela and Maggie

6 Contents Notes on the Contributors ix 1 Introduction 1 R. J. Ellis and Rhys Garnett PART ONE SOME ROOTS: VICTORIAN SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY 2 Counter-Projects: William Morris and the Science 7 Fiction of the 1880s Darko Suvin 3 H. G. Wells's The War of the Worlds 18 Stanislaw Lem 4 Dracula and The Beetle: Imperial and Sexual Guilt and 30 Fear in Late Victorian Fantasy Rhys Garnett PART TWO SOME BRANCHES: POSTWAR SCIENCE FICTION 5 Scientists in Science Fiction: Enlightenment and After 57 Patrick Parrinder 6 The World as Code and Labyrinth: Stanislaw Lem's 79 Memoirs Found in a Bathtub Jerzy Jarz~bski 7 The Neglected Fiction of John Wyndham: 'Consider 88 Her Ways', Trouble with Lichen and Web Thomas D. Clareson and Alice S. Clareson 8 Frank Herbert's Dune and the Discourse of Apocalyptic 104 Ecologism in the United States R. J. Ellis vii

7 viii Contents 9 Ursula Le Guin and Time's Dispossession 125 Robert M. Philmus PART THREE SOME BRANCHES: CONTEMPORARY FEMINIST RESPONSES 10 Men in Feminist Science Fiction: Marge Piercy, Thomas 153 Berger and the End of Masculinity Marleen Barr 11 The Destabilisation of Gender in Vonda Mcintyre's 168 Superluminal Jenny Wolmark 12 Man-Made Monsters: Suzy McKee Charnas's Walk to 183 the End of the World as Dystopian Feminist Science Fiction Anne Cranny-Francis Index 207

8 Notes on the Contributors Marleen Barr is Associate Professor of English at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University. She has edited issues of Women's Studies, Women's Studies International Forum, Future Females: A Critical Anthology and the forthcoming Discontented Discourses: Feminism/Textual Intervention/Psychoanalysis. Her book Alien to Femininity: Speculative Fiction and Feminist Theory has been recently published. She is currently completing another book, Feminist Fabulation: Space and Postmodern Fictions. Alice S. Clareson has taught at both high school and college levels. She is now a reference librarian at the Wayne County Public Library in Wooster. She is collaborating with her husband Tom on the first book-length study of the fiction of John Wyndham. Thomas D. Clareson, Professor of English at the College of Wooster (Ohio), has e&tedextrapolatwn since f959~0ne ofthe founders of the MLA Seminar on Science Fiction in 1958, he was also the first president of the Science Fiction Research Association from 1970 to His publications include Science Fiction: The Other Side of Realism, A Spectrum of Worlds, Science Fiction: An Annotated Checklist and two books on Robert Silverberg. He is the editor of both Science Fiction Periodicals, and Science Fiction in America: 1870s to 1930s. He is at present completing an overview of contemporary American science fiction, from the 1950s to the 1980s. Anne Cranny-Francis lectures at the University of Wollongong in New South Wales. An authority on Victorian and Australian literature, and the author of articles on the work of James Tiptree Jr, Dracula and Arthur Conan Doyle, she is preparing a study on Christina Stead. R. J. Ellis lectures at Staffordshire Polytechnic, and has published articles on, amongst other topics: Mark Twain; 'Publishing, Pornography and Censorship'; 'The Frontier Myth in Popular Culture'; 'Little Magazines and Small Presses'. He is also the editor of Sow's Ear poetry series. Present research interests focus on evolving practical methods to interrelate writing, ideology and contexts. ix

9 X Notes on the Contributors Rhys Garnett is Principal Lecturer in English at Staffordshire Polytechnic. He has published articles on Malcolm Lowry, and his current research interests are in the areas of Victorian popular fiction, late Victorian fantasy, and the sensation novels of Mary E. Braddon. Jerzy J arzebski is Assistant Professor of Polish Literature in Cracow, and author of many books and articles on contemporary Polish literature, including 'The Gombrowicz Game' and 'The Novel as Autocreation'. His studies have focused particularly on Gombrowicz, Bruno Schulz, Czesfaw MMosz and Stanislaw Lem. His recent book on Lem, Chance and Order, is at present only available in a German translation. Stanislaw Lem has now been translated into 36languages. From over forty published books some twenty are available in English translations. Lem is considered to be the most prominent science fiction writer residing in Eastern Europe, and was the recipient of the Austrian State Award for European Literature in His major piece of science fiction theoretical speculation, Fantastyka i Futurologia, unfortunately remains untranslated. Patrick Parrinder, Professor of English at the University of Reading, is author of Science Fiction: Its Criticism and Teaching and editor of Science Fiction: A Critical Guide. He is Chairman of the H. G. Wells Society, and has received the 1987 President's Award of World Science Fiction. His latest book is a collection of essays, The Failure of Theory. Robert M. Philmus has co-edited three books on H. G. Wells (H. G. Wells: Early Writings in Science and Science Fiction with David Y. Hughes; H. G. Wells and Modern Science Fiction with Darko Suvin; and H. G. Wells's Literary Criticism with Patrick Parrinder). He has also published Into the Unknown, a study of the evolution of science fiction from Francis Godwin to H. G. Wells, and numerous articles. He is Professor of English at Concordia University in Montreal, and edits Science Fiction Studies. Franz Rottensteiner is editor of the 'Fantastic Library' series published by Suhrkamp. He has compiled numerous anthologies, and has published several essays of science fiction criticism. His

10 Notes on the Contributors xi recent editing work includes the anthology The Slaying of tjie Dragon and an edition of Stanislaw Lem's Microworlds. Darko Suvin, F.S.R.c., taught in Yugoslavia until 1967, and is now Professor of English and Comparative Literature at McGill University in Montreal. His numerous writings include To Brecht and Beyond, Metamorphoses of Science Fiction, Victorian Science Fiction in the United Kingdom and, most recently, Positions and Presuppositions in Science Fiction. Jenny Wolmark is Senior Lecturer in Media and Cultural Studies at Humberside College of Higher Education. Her research interest is women in popular culture, and she has contributed articles on science fiction and feminism to Foundation and Cultural Studies.