REVIEW ARTICLES
BOOKS IN REVIEW
Nadia Khouri and Marc Angenot
Science Fiction In Old San Francisco
Sam Moskowitz. Science
Fiction in Old San Francisco, Volume I: History
of the Movement from 1854 to 1890 and Volume II:
Into the Sun and Other Stories, by Robert Duncan Milne, selected
and with an Introduction by S.M. West Kingston, RI: Donald M. Grant, 1980. 2 vols. 255p.
and 253p. US S15.00 each vol.
Most histories of American SF still seem to imply that "actual" SF began with
the launching of Amazing Stories in 1926 or, if one goes further back into the
Prehistory, with the publication of "Ralph 124C 41 +" in Modern Electrics in
April 1911. Jacques Sadoul's History of Modern Science Fiction (1973), for
instance, takes Gernsback's serial as an obvious point of departure, simply mentioning in
a footnote that there was something he calls "Pre-SF" that existed in North
America before the John-the-Baptist of Science Fiction, and cursively referring here to
Sam Moskowitz's Science Fiction by Gaslight (1968). It is true that any
starting-point for the history of a cultural phenomenon is to a certain degree an
arbitrary convenience, but in the case of SF it is much more than that: it presupposes
that there is a fundamental break somewhere around World War I. The coining of the words
"scientifiction" (1926) and "science fiction" might in fact be
historical indications of changes in social awareness or in institutional status.
Nonetheless if one looks at the bibliographies compiled by Bleiler, Sargent, Negley, and
some other sources, leaving aside tales of "pure" fantasy, spiritualism,
supernatural and semi-gothic stories, it will be easily found that between 1865 and 1911,
over 400 utopian and scientific romances were published in book form by American writers.
This provides a clue that allows one to extrapolate about the thousands of short stories
that might have been published in magazines during that period.
Not only could one contend that there is no break between this important and variegated
output and the post-l911 production, but one can even say that American SF between the two
wars--that so highly admired period of the "Pulps," Amazing, Science Wonder,
Astounding--represents an actual regression--both in aesthetic and critical
value and in sociological status, compared to what the beginning of the century seemed to
promise. From the end of the Civil War to the 1910s, scientific romance, still
substantially laden with utopian and satiric components, not only inspired hundreds of
writers, from dime novelists to political doctrinaires, from writers for the juvenile
press to recognized "high lit." authors, but also seems to have attracted a
faithful and diversified readership, much more diversified in fact than the social group
that will eventually constitute the "pulp" random. One arrives at the following
paradox: that the so-called "pre-SF" was made up of a consistent and successful
production occupying a wide spectrum in the literary institution (a production partly
available today through the dozens of reprints by Gregg, Arno, and other specialized
publishers); that by comparison, Gernsbackian SF, far from representing a sudden
flowering, in fact manifests a thematic and aesthetic impoverishment, parallel to a loss
of status that should be accounted for. The most interesting themes and formulae in the
pulps attempt to revive, in glum and pedestrian ways, fictional motifs that had long been
illustrated by Astor, Bellamy, Chambers, Cook, Donnelly, Gratacap, Hale, Howells, London,
G. Morris, Pope, Serviss, Stockton, Twain, and Waterloo--to mention only a few names.
Though what we are saying here is not in any way original, we want to re-advocate a
change of perspective that a number of critics are reluctant to adopt. We will therefore
put forward this iconoclastic thesis: 90 years ago SF was quite a promising genre
with a potentially powerful critical impact on American society. However, it went through
a rather long period of stagnation and degeneration between 1910 and 1950. For some
unaccountable reasons, this period has been called a "Golden Age" by generations
of critics. It is a well-known fact that popular genres suffer intermittent crises of
amnesia. Changes in publishers' tastes make obsolete entire sections of a previous
production. Such an amnesia is no longer possible for SF, where consistent efforts have
been made to shed light on its whole history. Yet, if the myth of the Miraculous Birth of
SF after the First World War still persists, it might be due to the fact that some of
today's readers remain under the influence of the ideological features of the
"pulp" production: fetishized extrapolations about technological gadgets, naive
fantasies of scientific progress, the magical dissolution of social contradictions and the
elimination of the utopian impulse--all this linked with the shrinking of plot paradigms
to the commonplaces of adventure stories. The best SF writers of the 1960s and '70s,
harking back to the great tradition of American utopianism and social critique in fiction,
should make us feel more clearly this continuity --and the relative slump of SF in the
period between the world wars.
It is another and subsidiary paradox that the first historian that thought fit to look
at pre-Gernsbackian SF was a man coming from the Fandom rather than from Academia and one
of the most enthusiastic adulators of the "pulp" novelists. Sam Moskowitz is a
man who elicits at the same time sympathy and exasperation. No doubt he impersonates with
a quasi-diabolic perfection the absolute contrary of whatever SFS is trying to do. His
flights of enthusiasm (and Mr. Moskowitz is certainly not devoid of a great faculty of
enthusiasm) are to our mind frequently misplaced. He is able to praise to the skies the
most garrulous "pulp" stories. He displays a certain taste for anecdotes, which
is but the counterpart of a sanctimonious indifference towards theorizing. But his sins,
which are many, will be forgiven, for he loved much SF under all its forms, and often the
humblest ones. Who had ever heard about Robert D. Milne before Mr. Moskowitz--patiently and
piously--decided to erect a two-volume monument to his glory? Certainly Bleiler does not
know about Milne, whose name is absent from his famous Checklist. However Milne
enjoyed an "unprecedented popularity" on the West Coast over a 30 year period
(i.e., cat 1870-1900). It is right to say here why Mr. Moskowitz's endeavors are, despite
everything, both touching and interesting. First he shows, as he did in his Science
Fiction by Gaslight, that SF-- and especially its popular forms in mass
magazines--does not begin in the 1910s and he illustrates this contention with a lot of
data, titles, and storiettes. Secondly, when investigating the forgotten biographies of
these ancient SF writers, Mr. Moskowitz displays a sense of the epic, of the grandiose,
that almost metamorphoses his topic. A sort of poetry irradiates from his writings, a
poetry that results from the attention paid to the most minute details together with a
stylistic impetus and an untrammelled admiration. The death of Robert D. Milne--the key
figure of what Mr. Moskowitz perhaps a bit abusively calls the Old San Francisco
"Movement" of science-fantasy--is reported in a tragic but punctilious tone:
this report tries to recapture, with a sort of metaphysical awe before the inexorable flow
of time, a city, an epoch, the life and death of a man doomed to oblivion:
Did Milne ever enjoy the brief pleasure of reading that article [quoting him in The
Forum] before, befuddled by liquor and enfeebled from its ravages and poor nutrition,
he spongily started to cross Market Street at the intersection of Montgomery Street, San
Francisco, Friday Morning, December 15, 1899, a few minutes after midnight? Philip Healy,
grip man on the McAllister Street cable car no. 281, claimed he slowed down, rang his bell
and began shouting at Milne but was ignored. The conductor, Thurston, asserted the streets
were wet and the tracks slippery. A witness, liquor-store owner Harry Dobie, said that
Milne, who had cleared the track, suddenly fell backward, striking his head on the car
steps. (I, 251)
Remarkable for its faithfulness to details, its acquaintance with the day-to-day life
of the time (accurateness is difficult to assess since Mr. Moskowitz is quite secretive
about his sources), this monograph provides a treasury of data about journalistic mores,
popular literary writing, and social life in 'Frisco at the end of the 19th century.
There is no doubt that not only Robert Duncan Milne but also his colleagues and
friends, William Henry Rhodes, W.C. Morrow, and Emma Frances Dawson have been
unjustifiably forgotten, for they played a role in late 19th century magazine fiction. In
fact, Milne's talent and inventiveness at least were acclaimed by both Ambrose Bierce and
Robert Louis Stevenson. Moskowitz shows clearly than Randolph Hearst, Jr., for whom Milne
worked at the San Francisco Examiner, seems to have consistently dallied with the
idea of using "scientific" stories as a basic ingredient for launching a mass
newspaper. Ambrose Bierce was approached; and Milne, among others, regularly contributed
to SF serials in the Examiner ever since 1887. The second volume published by
Moskowitz is an anthology of Milne's best SF, an SF that, he shows, was "immensely
popular" at the time. It displays an excellent and effective style and an original
sense of storytelling.
Without trying to disparage Milne's talent, which is real, one should remark that this
selection of texts illustrates a number of narrative formulae that were already profusely
widespread in US and European scientific romances: fall of a comet, world collisions,
utopian society, genetic engineering, matter transmitters, reverse aging, suspended
animation, lost civilizations, aerial warfare, future war, and Yellow Peril, all those
topoi--which
can, of course, be treated in a dull or in a brilliant way--were already there as a sort
of common property of SF. By focussing on Milne and his group, Moskowitz inevitably
underestimates the previous diffusion of these themes and their ideological import. On the
other hand, he seems convinced more than ever that the blue-print value of a short story,
its interest for scientific conjecture and "prophecy," should be an important
element of our literary judgment. This and his indifference to questions of literary
theory and cultural studies as such lead us back to our initial disagreement with his
approach, priorities, and terms of reference. It does not prevent us from admiring his
freshness of mind and his bounteousness of heart vis-à-vis his biographies, and
his archivistic passion. His two books (to be followed soon by a third one on the
1899-1906 period) shed light on an almost totally forgotten moment in the history of SF.
Others will come that will invest in their research at least a degree of theoretical
sophistication, but the pioneer's work also deserves praise and respect.
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