Maurice Renard
On the Scientific-Marvelous Novel and Its
Influence on the Understanding of Progress
Edited and translated by Arthur B. Evans
(This essay was first published in
Paris in the French journal Le Spectateur in October 1909. Except for
the marked ellipsis of a few obiter dicta, the following version is complete.)
The scientific-marvelous novel touches on a
number of philosophical questions. And the readers of The Spectator will find,
upon examining it, a most efficient application of experimental logic as well as an
exemplary demonstration of the latter's necessity and value. It therefore did not seem out
of place for me to discuss the scientific-marvelous novel in these pages. I do apologize,
however, for not being able to do so in a wholly acceptable fashion--i.e., by restricting
my comments on it to only those aspects which fit the journal's primary interests and by
leaving aside those more literary-oriented observations which would, if discussed
abstractly, only serve to cloud the issue. If it isn't premature to discuss things at the
moment when they have just come into existence, the scientific-marvelous novel is now
ripe for critical study. The present times permit us to define it. The inevitable product
of an era where science dominates but does not extinguish our eternal need for fantasy, it
is indeed a new genre which has just come into its own. The Island of Dr Moreau of
Wells and Derennes' The People of the Pole, for example, furnish us with
two rather typical examples (Dr Moreau being a surgeon who creates humans from animals,
and the people of the Pole being a tribe of intelligent and civilized beings, evolved from
the same antediluvian origins as ourselves but who have remained saurian whereas we became
mammalian).
I say a new genre. Until Wells, one might
well have doubted it. Before the author of The War of the Worlds, those rare portrayers of
what would later be called the "scientific-marvelous" did so only from afar, on
occasion, and (it seems) as a game. Cyrano de Bergerac made it a kind of stepping-stone to
his utopias; Swift used it as a means to construct his satires; more recently, Flammarion
took advantage of it to concretize certain metaphysical notions which might have been too
abstract for the average reader to grasp otherwise; Edmond About took it and turned it
toward comedy and, in doing so, created an early parody of this future genre (compare, for
example, his The Notary's Nose with The Island of Dr Moreau).
In fact, this long succession of mixed and eclectic literary productions is far from
finished: utopists who "need a world" see in the scientific-marvelous a method
of estrangement [dépaysement] too precious to abandon, and satirists will never give up
such a resource which provides them with so many possibilities for allegory and allusion.
It was Edgard [sic] Poe who, in his two
stories The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar and A Tale of the Ragged
Mountains, was the true founder of the pure scientific-marvelous novel, in the same
way as he invented the detective novel with three other prototypical short stories. But
the former were so complete and synthesizing, so absolutely definitive, that he engendered
only imitators and no true disciples during his time. For stories of the
scientific-marvelous, he did have some famous descendants in Villiers de l'Isle-Adam who
wrote The Future Eve, in Stevenson with Doctor Jeckyll [sic] and
Mr. Hyde, and then finally in H.G. Wells.
With Wells, the genre began to flourish in
all its full amplitude. With him, the scientific- marvelous (as some have come to
designate it) was consecrated and given life, as in a baptism.
Let there be no mistake. If the mastery of
Wells in imagining and in fleshing out the themes of the scientific-marvelous constituted
the real glory of this English writer, not all his works are necessarily variants of it. I
count only five novels and a few short stories as such.1 Without mentioning the socialist
prophecies of certain works, there are many writings by Wells which do not belong to this
rubric--wherein the scientific-marvelous is only a pretext for philosophizing, a
secondary factor in the plot, like in The Food of the Gods. (It is not
the case, I hasten to add, that Wells totally avoids satire or philosophy in these
selected five novels and short stories. On the contrary. But the lessons that he gives us
through them seem to emanate so naturally from the scientific-marvelous narrative itself
that he has no need to express them as such. From the beginning to the end of these
novels, he portrays the extraordinary without the benefit of undue digressions or implied
meanings. Example: the formidable fable of The Island of Dr Moreau.) There
are also other works --quite unusual, moreover, and which make of Wells a true
innovator--where it is no longer a question of science but, rather, of logic alone
(considered not as science but as a mental capacity) which somehow becomes imbued with the
marvelous. I set these aside as well, and I propose to apply to them the label of
logical-marvelous (example: "The Wonderful Visit"), reserving the term
scientific-marvelous for those tales which present us with an adventure of science pushed
all the way to the marvelous, or the marvelous envisaged scientifically.2
So here is a definition, as vague as it
might be, but one with which we must content ourselves until such a time as another, more
precise definition someday emerges from some deeper examination.
How does one generate a scientific-marvelous
novel? Where do its subjects come from and how are they treated? What is the technique of
this new art-form? It is fascinating to analyze, work by work, the entire literary
production of the authors heretofore cited--to scrutinize the particular scientific
disciplines which molded their fantasies, from the initial principles used to the
subsequent elaborations--and to distill the laws of a general methodology. It's hard work,
and most novelistic genres would be resistant to it. Ours, however, comes out of this
inquiry triumphantly. Such a dissection shows us that the scientific-marvelous novel is
built on a powerful skeletal frame that is reason itself; it shows us that the organism is
constructed from a fabric made of knowledge and ingenuity. In fact, it is the contemporary
literary genre which is most akin to philosophy--it is philosophy put into fiction, it is
logic dramatized. Born of science and reasoning, it attempts to foreground one
with the aid of the other. And it stands before us, with its noble pedagogical and moral
tendencies, its mediate and immediate educating effects, as one of the most wonderful
creations of the human spirit, a great work of art which (by a kind of optical illusion)
seems small only to those who are too distant from it and seems childish only to those of
juvenile intellect.
It is impossible to analyze here each author
and every novel. I will attempt, however, to indicate some general principles which such
an analysis might yield, and which, considered all together, would almost constitute a
"how-to" manual for authors of the scientific-marvelous (a rather ridiculous
notion, I must admit). I say "almost"--were it not for the necessity, in order
to become a true emulator of Poe, of having that luck or instinct which tends to modify
one's thoughts in the midst of one's quest for where the treasure is buried, inside that
labyrinth where only Logic can guide, saying "It's there."
If we consider the universe as divided into three
parts corresponding to the classical idea of the three degrees of understanding, then
there are three kinds of things: those that we don't know, those that we suspect, and
those that we know. The first two categories--the scope of which is diminishing as our
science develops, but which will doubtlessly always exist because we will never know
everything, and which seems to always be growing because the effect of science is to
instruct us on the nature of things while revealing to us new questions which it cannot
answer--these first two categories constitute the domain of the scientific-marvelous. It
is there, from the world of the unknown or the suspected, that the scientific-marvelous
must draw the material for its diverse creations, not from the world of the known and the
certain. Science is, moreover, incapable of showing us anything marvelous, in the true
sense of the word. It is, in fact, the great killer of the miraculous. There is
marvelous
only in mystery, in the unexplained. All marvels cease to exist at the moment when we
understand their true causes and their true nature, as soon as they pass from the realm of
the unknown or of doubt into that of science.
We are, accordingly, obliged to search for
our novelistic themes either in the unknown or the uncertain. But, since it's a question
of the scientific-marvelous, how are we able to reconcile these two demands--in
appearance so contradictory--that we take our subjects simultaneously from science and
from what is not science? We must act exactly like a scientist who seeks to solve a
problem: we apply to the unknown or the uncertain the principles of scientific method. But
if so, how are our imaginary solutions different from the real solutions of science? In
other words, since we are fully aware that we are not making real scientific discoveries,
what distinguishes the reasoning used for the scientific-marvelous from that used by real
scientists? It is the voluntary introduction into the series of propositions of one or
more abnormal elements which are fashioned in such a way as to render a being, object, or
event marvelous. (Marvelous, that is to say, what appears currently to be
marvelous.
The future may demonstrate that the element which was supposedly abnormal was, in fact,
not so at all, and our scientific-marvelous was purely and simply science--as involuntary
as Monsieur Jourdain's prose. The advance of knowledge may demonstrate that our irrational
speculation was, in fact, not so at all--but at the moment when we write it, it is. Let us
nonetheless note in passing that a fictional text's propensity for generating passionate
interest and a sometimes disturbing verisimilitude is in direct proportion to the small
number of abnormal elements that we put into it. The fewer the falsehoods, the more the
logic--something which imparts to the work its strong texture of truth. Therefore, most
scientific-marvelous novels restrict themselves to falsifying no more than one natural
law, and to showing us the effects of this single modification where all the other lawsremain unchanged.)
This general procedure used to construct the
framework of a scientific-marvelous story can assume an infinite variety of forms.
Examples: we can accept as viable certain scientific hypotheses and then deduce the direct
consequences of them (e.g., life on Mars accepted as obvious, combined with what long
study of this planet has taught or suggested to us, and we have Wells' War of the
Worlds). We can substitute one idea for another, give to one the properties of
the other, a trick which will permit us to apply to it a system of investigation which
would be in reality quite impractical, but which might help us to find the solution to a
problem by supposing it already solved (e.g., give the qualities of space to time, and we
have The Time Machine). We can apply methods of scientific exploration
to imaginary objects, beings, or phenomena through rational analogy and logical
assumptions (e.g., suppose an empirical study of extraterrestrials, and we have
[Derennes'] The People of the Pole). It's all about extending science
fully into the unknown, and not simply imagining that science has finally accomplished
such and such a feat currently in the process of coming to be. It's all about, for
example, having the idea of a time machine to explore time, and not about a fictional
protagonist who has managed to construct a submarine at a time when real engineers are hot
on the trail of such an invention. And I strongly assert that this, in essence, is what
differentiates Wells from Jules Verne--two writers so frequently lumped together. Jules
Verne never wrote a single sentence of scientific-marvelous. In his time, science was
pregnant with many impending discoveries; Verne simply supposed them already born before
they actually were. He only barely extrapolated on discoveries that were already
on their way to seeing the light of day. At the most, there was usually only one unknown
element in his narratives. And since we're on the topic, a deeper distinction should be
made between Wells and Robida. The latter, in his celebrated Twentieth Century, did
nothing but envision the fulfillment of a few of our least important and most superfluous
wishes--without bothering either to portray the results coherently or to draw conclusions
from them.
Such is, then, the elemental structure of
all works of the scientific-marvelous whatever their literary form might be: whether they
seem to be the theatrical portrayal of a paradox or the active paraphrase of a metaphor.
And if we push our analysis even further, this voyage from the known into the
unknown--this perpetual oscillation between science and ignorance so rapidly accomplished
as to make these two opposites sometimes seem melded into one indeterminate
supernatural--takes the form most often of a syllogism in which one of its premises is
purposely false. A scientific-marvelous novel is always based on a sophism;3 and, most of
the time, one single sophism placed at the beginning of the work--one deviation from the
norm--is sufficient to preserve its double character of marvelous and scientific, without
the author introducing into his work any additional falsehoods. Often the tightest
mathematical demonstration is susceptible to being adapted to a long series of facts which
proceed very logically from one to the next, all the while getting further and further
away from its initial point of truth (where the intentional falsehood was placed). Ah!
What a study it would make to analyze this shadowy realm between the world of certainty
and the world of conjecture, and the various stratagems that writers use to dissimulate
it! Nothing is more specious than their ruses which try to mask the introduction of this
equivocating idea which, on the basis of its apparent axiomatic (albeit false) evidence,
creates such stunning postulations! Nothing is more fascinating than the patient skill
they use to skew a chain of reasoning or to change a preconception with these tiny and
almost imperceptible doses of what appear to be common sense--but a common sense that has
been duped. But we nonetheless find a certain pleasure in allowing ourselves to be duped
by these tricks, and we accept them willingly because of the overall value of the
end-product itself.
It would be redundant to state that the
scientific-marvelous novel has a salutary effect when it contains the demonstration of a
social theory, however utopian, or when it consists of a satire. These kinds of works
always tend to have moralizing or reformist intentions that are obvious, and therefore
have immediate salubrious effects. But one can also say that the scientific-marvelous
novel is highly pedagogical: a fictional work of this sort often contains an entire course
in paleontology, or in optics, or in chemistry, or in surgery, etc. And these lessons are
not wholly superficial, because the author often goes beyond the basics of the science
itself to its very metaphysical core--a question too often neglected.
Another benefit: I have observed among many
people a kind of meditative wonderment when they have finished reading a
scientific-marvelous novel. I have asked them what they attribute this to (having often
asked myself the same question), and I am now convinced of the following: after reading a
work like The Invisible Man or "In the Abyss," we no
longer see things in the same way. Analyzing this change in perception, I have come to the
conclusion that it is due to the influence of the scientific-marvelous novel on our
understanding of progress.
By the word "progress," I mean the
public's idea of progress. What is it? What concept of progress do the majority of people
have? Putting aside all notions of political or moral progress--which gets rid of a host
of wide-ranging opinions on questions which most people don't even think about, and which
has nothing to do with the concept at hand--I believe that the most popular understanding
of the word "progress" is the whole of human acquisitions considered at a given
moment in comparison to another moment. This definition is sufficently broad to satisfy
most people, and it seems to express quite well the first idea that pops into the mind of
someone when the word "progress" is mentioned: the continual enrichment of human
knowledge.
But how does humanity become conscious of
progress? By its concrete materialization, by those practical manifestations which are the
only criteria and the only possible measure of it that are normally perceptible. Progress,
to the general public, is thus an essentially utilitarian notion. The public demands that
science make discoveries that are applicable. All those branches of science which have
sufficiently "produced" are viewed as being adequately developed: there is no
need to pursue them further. In contrast, those which do not appear to produce an increase
in our well-being or in our power over nature seem superfluous to us, and we tend to make
fun of them--as we sometimes do of poetry--even though it was not so long ago that
astronomy itself was nothing more than the leisure musings of dreamers.
In effect, we have few ambitions: we desire
only discoveries that will either decrease any danger to our material well-being or
increase our physical or psychological comfort. Such inventions will therefore either
abolish an evil or produce a good; in this sense, some--like the elimination of a
disease--are essentially negative; others--like the telegraph--are positive. Anything that
is capable of intensifying our actions or extending our influence over time and space, and
anything that removes obstacles to this process, are thought of in the public mind as
"progress."
For example, a "philanthropist to all
humanity" might be an ingenious chemist who finds a cure for a disease that is widely
reputed to be incurable. But the real hero--the divine creator, the true descendant of the
God of Genesis--is the engineer who manages to enhance our bodies either by amplifying our
strength or by extending our powers of perception....
The creation of the first hand-ax was the
first discovery to mark "progress" in the eyes of primitive Man because, with
its flint head, it made one's punch deadlier and gave one's arm a longer reach. The
successive improvements of the sling, the bow, the crossbow, the musket, and the modern
rifle are all steps in the same progression, throughout which our punches have become more
and more deadly and our arm's reach longer and longer. Man has seen his dreams fulfilled
and his fairytales become reality; climbing into a car is like stepping into the shoes of
a fleet-footed sylph, firing a cannon is like putting on a grey glove that can touch
things miles away.
In addition to these devices that extend our
muscular abilities, we also consider as manifestations of progress those which correct the
imperfections of our senses and are, thus, to our sense organs what a prosthesis might be
to our appendages: the microscope which enhances our micro-vision; the telescope and the
telephone which powerfully amplify our macro-vision and our hearing over great distances;
the phonograph which preserves sounds for us over time and in our absence; the
cinematograph which is a machine that can visually explore the past; and those many other
famous discoveries which provide us with the eyes or ears of Titans.
Among other such dynamic improvements,
humans have always desired legs that were immeasurably long: the rapidity of movement and
transport has always been very important to us. Now, finally, with the advent of flight,
we appear to have reached the apogee of progress because it opens a whole new era in human
locomotion.
A new era--perhaps even more than we might
have guessed. All those positive discoveries prior to this one have developed in us
certain ancient powers that our ancestors have possessed since the dawn of time: they
serve to improve on those capacities that we have always had and that we share with
various animals. To use a telescope is to see farther, to see very far; these are but the
comparative and superlative of the verb to see--to see even better than an eagle whose
vision is already better than our own. To submerge beneath the waves in a submarine, in a
diving suit, or even totally naked is still diving, like our lakeside ancestors did ages
ago. And to sprint along in a 100 horsepower vehicle, this is still sprinting--albeit much
faster than the pithecanthropus along the paths of the Pliocene forest floor. A great many
of our most-admired modern machines are simple refinements of swimming or walking.
In contrast, the possibility of aerial
navigation adds an entirely new dimension: an access to something for which we have no
natural capacity--our arms are able to become fins but not wings. And it makes us masters
of the previously untouched immensity of the skies, something we have dreamed of for
millenia.... It makes us sovereigns of a realm vaster than the surface of the Earth--a
realm so pure and azure, so forbidden yet so promised, that even the ancient myths sang of
the presence of mortals therein (it was there we put our gods and our heavens) and we even
put wings on our angels and portrayed the pharaohs of Egypt beneath the wings of a swan or
an ibis. Give us wings! We have uttered this cry for centuries upon centuries, so much so
that it has become a cliché. Aviation has finally given us wings and has made us equal to
the birds, the only animals in creation who remained somehow superior to us. It thus
symbolizes the epitome of progress.... [This is how] the general public goes about
defining such a notion.
Of course, the longer and more fervently
something has been desired, the more its eventual materialization seems to qualify as
progress. Inversely, certain important discoveries--like those of X-rays or radium, whose
need was not felt and whose immediate practical applicability was not obvious-- seemed
less so, despite the astonishment they might generate. Roentgen and Curie did not enjoy
the instantaneous and widespread public acclaim of the Wright Brothers or of Blériot.
Thus, we have become accustomed to considering
science as something which is obedient to our wants and desires. We believe that it
develops and grows in order to better satisfy our human appetites--given the space and
conditions that humans have lived in since prehistory--and we admire science only for
that. For if the Earth is no longer the center of the universe, Man is nevertheless still
riveted to its surface, and each of us wishes to believe that we are still at the center
of things.
The influence of the scientific-marvelous
novel on such a concept of progress is considerable. Being forcefully convincing by its
very rationality, it brutally unveils for us all that the unknown and the uncertain
perhaps hold in store for us: all those wonderful or horrible things that might emerge
from the depths of the unexplainable, all that science is able to discover by extending
itself beyond those many inventions which seem to mark its end, all those unforeseen yet
possible byproducts of such inventions, and all those new sciences which might develop to
study such unsuspected phenomena.... It portrays our daily, humdrum lives shaken up by
various cataclysms of the most natural yet unexpected sort. It reveals to us, in a new and
startling light, the instability of everyday occurrences and the omnipresent threat of the
possible. It causes us to feel the uncomfortable queasiness of doubt and, with frightening
intensity, the horror of the unknown. It opens up for us an immeasurable space outside of
our immediate sense of well-being; it removes from our ideas about science all notions of
domestic applicability or sentimental anthropomorphism. It fragments our habitual
lifestyle and transports us to other points of view outside of ourselves.
Although we intuitively know that the
eventualities which truly threaten us are probably not the same ones we are reading about,
we nevertheless feel that very similar surprises are probably awaiting us or our children
at some point in the future--events that will confront mankind with catastrophes or
miracles very analogous to those described in such novels. We feel it and we know it by
experience because the current creations of science would seem miraculous and impossible
to our ancestors, because recent and unexpected discoveries like X-rays and radium have
not been any less awe-inspiring to us than the one described in Wells's "The New
Accelerator."
But I will not insist further on the many
questions raised by the birth of the scientific-marvelous novel. The above summary should
be sufficient; I do not wish to lengthen such a discussion into unnecessary redundancy
when no additional clarity of the question might be gained from it.
On the other hand, the preceding
observations about this new literary genre seem to contain all the ingredients necessary
for its definition. And I will end this essay by attempting to provide one. I don't
believe that one could better serve the cause of Wells and his disciples, nor generate
more attention to and respect for their works within the public's mind, than by saying:
"The scientific-marvelous novel is a kind of fiction which has at its base a
sophism, the object of which is to transport the reader to a new and more accurate
understanding of the universe, and the methodology of which is the application of
scientific method to the comprehensive study of the unknown and the uncertain." (Oct.
6, 1909)
NOTES
1. Five novels of this type: The War of the
Worlds, The Island of Dr Moreau, The First Men in the Moon, The Invisible Man, and The
Time Machine. A few short stories: "In the Abyss," "The New
Accelerator," "The Stolen Body," "The Truth About Pyecraft," etc.
2. It should be noted, moreover, that the
scientific-marvelous novel--although it was born earlier--is only a modality of the
logical-marvelous, and not a genre that is distinct from it.
3. The sophism is not always where the reader
thinks it is. It is not always, for example, in an apparently extraordinary phenomenon,
but sometimes in the methodology used to portray it. Such is the case in Wells' "The
New Accelerator" where the invention has the effect of speeding up the life-functions
of the protagonist--to a point where everything around him seems to slow down. Here it is
only a case of transferring into a fiction what occurs naturally during critical
circumstances, during a dangerous moment, during an accident. Everyone is aware of how
time seems to slow down during a perilous fall or an automobile accident. The sophism of
"The New Accelerator" is the fictional invention of certain pharmaceutical
procedures which artificially recreate this accelerated state--not in the state itself, as
one might be tempted to believe.
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