Top-5 Tuesday- Subgenres that Died During the Golden Age

There was a definite turning point in science fiction history in the 1930s through the 1950s. Sci-fi became self-aware, fully realizing its potential as a unique genre. However, not all of the subgenres made the transition into this new age of science fiction so well. Now, ‘died’ may seem a bit dramatic, but I do love to be dramatic… In any case,  here are five subgenres of early science fiction that fell out of favor after the first hundred-or-so years.

5. Mad-Scientist-

While many stories today still include mad-scientists, there are fewer stories centered around the life and decisions of one particular scientist designing his destructive magnum opus. Tales like Frankenstein, and Nathaniel Hawthorne’s “The Birthmark”, seem to be a product of Romanticism, as they deal with themes of tampering with nature. During the space age, scientists were represented more often as heroes in popular entertainment.

4. Edisonade-

The early form of the scientist-as-hero story, these pulpy tales of boy-geniuses were retroactively named after superstar inventor Thomas Edison. They usually starred a young protagonist, and saw him save the day with an eccentric invention. However, as a whole, the subgenre lacked believability and thematic depth. While fun, Edisonade stories never really held up as literature.

3. Hollow Earth-

Hollow Earth was an offshoot of the Lost World genre popularized by authors such as Edgar Rice Burroughs. The subterranean worlds encountered often featured primitive civilizations, and extinct creatures. However, due to a lack of plausibility, these stories have faded from the mainstream.

2. Lost World-

Named after one of the last of their kind, The Lost World by Arthur Conan Doyle, this subgenre also featured ‘prehistoric’ flora, fauna, and society. It also had its roots in a Romanticist worldview. However, as the world grew increasingly interconnected, the mystery of far-off lands, as well as the Lost World subgenre, lost its luster.

1.Utopia-

It is rare these days to find a truly utopian tale. The recent Disney film, Tomorrowland, comes close, but it is tainted by many dystopian elements. The Star Trek franchise, while set in a utopian civilization, falls more into the space exploration genre. Most stories about a future society today are strictly dystopian. The two world wars probably had much to do with this transition, as they brought to public attention the depravity of mankind.

Keep on glowing in the dark ,

Elora

Visions of the Future: The 1910s- The World on Fire

In spite of the turmoil that marked the turn of the 19th century to the 20th, this time period showcased the most advanced technology and the highest standard of living of any time in recorded history to that point. The future indeed looked bright. However, the underlying tension in the world would come to a head, and force people to look at the dark side of the prosperity and scientific advancement of the time. The events of the years from 1910-1919 would change humanity’s visions of the future forever.

History:

The reign of technology had as of yet been unchallenged when the builders of the passenger liner RMS Titanic declared their craft unsinkable. However, their hastiness proved to be tragic as the liner was wrecked on an iceberg on April 15, 1912.

Sparked by the death of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, and fueled by the increasing militarization of Europe, the Austro-Hungarians declared war on the Serbians on July 28, 1914. Allies on both sides were dragged into a conflict the likes of which had never been seen before. The scope of the battlefield, and the new military technologies, such as tanks, airplanes, chemical warfare, and advanced weaponry earned this war names such as “The Great War”, or “The World War”. The generations that lived through the war were shaped by the inhumanity and violence they had witnessed, and their worldview was shaped by it.

In 1917, the Bolshevik Revolution overturned the power in Russia, and resulted in the Soviet Union becoming the first official communist state in the world.

Science:

[The Metropolitan Opera House]

Aside from military technologies, transportation and communication continued to be developed in the 1910s.

On January 13th, 1910, the first radio transmission was broadcast from a performance at the Metropolitan Opera House in New York City.

Theoretical physicist Albert Einstein continued to turn scientific theory upside down, and published his general theory of relativity in 1915.

Another earth-shattering discovery occurred in 1919, when Ernest Rutherford successfully transmutation of an atom for the first time.

Stories:

[Frankenstein- 1910]

The 1910s saw many great science fiction classics on the silver screen for the first time. In 1910- nearly 100 years after its initial publication, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein was adapted into a silent film. It was followed by Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde in 1913, and Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1916.

Film had not displaced the written word, however, and several influential stories were released by new and beloved authors.

In 1911 Hugo Gernsback published his story “Ralph 124C41+” in serialized form in the magazine, Modern Electrics. It told the story of the protagonist, Ralph, saving the heroine from disaster using technological marvels. It was highly predictive of coming technologies. Some of the most notable predictions Gernsback made are the video phone, television, transcontinental air travel, solar energy, sound movies, synthetic food and materials, space flight, and radar.

In  1912, Edgar Rice Burroughs, who would become known for his pulp adventure science fiction stories, published the first of his Mars based stories, Under the Moons of Mars, (later known as A Princess of Mars), which introduced the iconic space traveler John Carter.

The same year, Arthur Conan Doyle, most notable for his Sherlock Holmes mysteries, published The Lost World. This is one of the last novels in the subgenre that has since been named after Doyle’s story. The Lost World tells the tale of an expedition to a forsaken plateau in the Amazon basin where prehistoric creatures such as dinosaurs still roam.

Always innovative and predictive, H.G. Wells published The World Set Free in 1914, in which he predicted nuclear weapons, and their potential effects on the world.

“The City of Endless Night” by Milo Hastings was an early tale of the dystopian genre, first appearing in serialized form in 1919. In the spirit of the post- Great War world, it described a revitalized Germany, and predicted the rise of fascism.

Keep on glowing in the dark,

Elora

Top-5 Thursday- New Mediums for a New Century

Until this point, every piece of  science fiction we have seen has been in the form of either a novel, a short story, or a serialized story. The written word was the medium that science fiction was born into, and it continues to be important to the genre to this day. However, after the turn of the century, many new forms of entertainment exploded onto the scene, and science fiction was often at the forefront of their popularity. Here are five new mediums that were monumental for the growth of science fiction in the twentieth century. This list is in chronological order based on the development of the medium.

5. The Motion Picture (1893)-

[A Trip to the Moon, 1902]

The kinetoscope, or motion picture device, was invented in Edison’s labs, mainly by an employee of Mr. Edison’s, William Dickson. The first ‘film’ shown publicly, was the brief Blacksmith Scene, released in 1893. The medium quickly became very popular,  with one of the earliest movie theatres, The Electric Theatre, opening in Los Angeles in 1902.

Science fiction creators were quick to utilize the genre as a way to project their visions of the future onto other people's’ imaginations. What is widely recognized as the first science fiction film, A Trip to the Moon, was released by French director Georges Méliès in 1902. The first two-hour, or ‘feature length’, sci-fi film was the revolutionary tale of the broken utopia Metropolis, directed by Fritz Lang and released in 1927. Science fiction has continued to be on the cutting edge of the motion picture industry ever since.

4. Radio (1910)-

On January 13, 1910, the first radio transmission was broadcast from the Metropolitan Opera House. The technology quickly became a popular means of telling stories, and science fiction stories constituted a great deal of these.

[Orson Welles]

One of the earliest radio programs of science fiction was the serialized Buck Rogers in the Twenty-Fifth Century which premiered in 1932. It told the story of a time-lost war veteran and his adventures in the future. Another notable accomplishment of sci-fi radio is the adaptation of The War of the Worlds, directed by and starring Orson Welles. Released as a sort of prank on Halloween night of 1938, this broadcast had some listeners believing Martians really were invading the planet.

3. Television (1926)-

The 1920s saw the success of early motion picture broadcast technologies. The first  television broadcast was a picture of a moving human face on January 26, 1926. Television soon became an important method of communication and storytelling, especially for serialized stories.

[Rod Serling on The Twilight Zone]

Captain Video was one of the first science fiction television show is in America, lasting from 1949-1955. Perhaps one of the most influential speculative fiction shows ever was The Twilight Zone, created by Rod Serling. It’s anthology of strange and twisted tales has been pillaged by sci-fi writers of all sorts ever since its inception. Two other incredibly influential and long lasting tv series of the genre are the British-made Dr. Who (1963), and American Star Trek (1966).

2. Comic Books (1933)-

The first publication in the modern strain of comics was Famous Funnies, a comedic magazine first released in 1933. The medium of comic books became the birthplace of the superhero story. The quintessential superhero, Superman, made his debut in the June 1938 issue of Action Comics, in the story “A Champion of the Oppressed”.

The masked detective who would later become Superman’s ally and foil, Batman, first appeared in Detective Comics in May 1939.

1. Video Games (1948)-

[Spacewar!]

The earliest known interactive video device was a missile simulator, based off radar displays from World War II. It was patented by Thomas Goldsmith Jr. and Estle Ray Mann in 1948. Early video games certainly seemed like something out of sci-fi. As the visual aspect of video games became more prominent, science fiction often served as a basis for the mood and setting. One of the first examples of this is Spacewar! released on the PDP-1 in 1961.

Eventually, as story became more important to games, sci-fi was a dominant genre. Many fascinating science fiction stories have been told through video games, such as the haunting science-gone-awry tale of the Portal series (2007, 2011).

Keep on glowing in the dark,

Elora

Visions of the Future: The 1900s- An Electric Theatre

It was a new decade, a new century, and a new era of technology and ideas. However, the troubles of the past were not left in the 19th century. As new discoveries and theories abounded, old rivalries and injuries festered. By the end of the decade that lasted from 1900-1909, the affairs of the world were almost ready to explode.

History:

From 1904 to 1905, the Japanese and the Russians engaged in a power struggle called the Russo-Japanese war, the conclusion of which established Japan as a leading nation in the world.

In 1905, during the aftermath of this war, Russia began a period of turbulent revolution, as the working and peasant classes were awakened to a desire for more equal treatment.  

Science:

The 1900s saw some of the most groundbreaking discoveries and inventions in recorded history.

In 1905, a young German-born physicist introduced his latest theory in a paper called “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies”. The physicist’s name was Albert Einstein, and his theory of special relativity was to completely change man’s perception of the universe around him.

After the invention of the motion picture camera in the late 19th century, movies caught on as an art form and as a means of entertainment. The first movie theatre, “The Electric Theatre”, opened in Los Angeles in 1902.

The next year, one of mankind’s oldest dreams was realized when the Wright Glider, the first fully controllable aircraft made its first flight in 1903.

In 1906, the Victrola, a mass-market recording device was released, bringing recorded sound into the everyday lives of ordinary people. The automobile gained similar popularity two years later, when the Ford Motor Company released the assembly-line produced Model T, which was the first automobile affordable by the middle class.

Also during the 1900s, Marie Curie did much of her research into the nature of radioactivity.

Stories:

H.G. Wells continued to dominate the science fiction genre with his fantastic stories. In 1901, he published The First Men in the Moon. It tells the tale of a scientist and a businessman who travel to the moon, and discover a civilization there. This novel went on to spark the imagination of later sci-fi writer, C.S. Lewis, whose Space Trilogy was released in the 1930s and 1940s.

An early dystopian story by E.M. Forster, “The Machine Stops” was released in 1909. It takes place in postapocalyptic, underground society, and foresees technological and social developments such as the internet,and instant messaging.

Le Voyage dans la Lune, (A Trip to the Moon), released in 1902, is widely considered to be the first ever science fiction film. This twelve-minute, French silent film, directed by  Georges Méliès, was inspired by many sci-fi sources, the most notable of which was Jules Verne’s From the Earth to the Moon. It even has a fight scene with exploding aliens. (The entire movie is on YouTube. You should check it out when you have twelve minutes to spare).

With the transition into a new genre, science fiction had entered a new era that was to absolutely transform the way it was enjoyed in the decades and centuries that followed the first ten years of the 20th century.

Keep on glowing in the dark,

Elora