Adam Roberts’ Swiftly

Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels remains an ever-popular work, represented in literature, film, on stage, on radio, and in art. Adapted frequently since its conception, the work presents a kind of satire on issues that remain relevant throughout history: a  skepticism of science and pseudo-science, on the justness of rulers, and on moral standards.

Adam Roberts’ Swiftly takes this satire and investigates it in a far more literal, and long-term way. The Lilliputians have been enslaved and are factory workers, the Brobdingnagians have been recruited by the French to help them invade England. By adapting Gulliver’s Travels in this way, Roberts puts a more realist spin on Swift’s satire. Realism itself as a genre doesn’t inherently disable social commentary or satire. However, Roberts largely takes the sting out of Swift’s satire in his attempts to contextualize the various societies: because Swift largely presented the societies he introduces and placed his focus on their elements that leant themselves to satire, the text’s apt observations and commentary were preserved. Roberts, however, takes these images and attempts to contextualize them, treating them as real subjects, rather than treating them as devices to deliver a particular perspective.

In this transition, Roberts brings a fresh view to Swift’s original work: he introduces a human context and elements into a largely satirical and political text, humanizing it in the process. By explicating Swift’s world as he does, do you think that he strikes a balance between presenting a “real world” kind of perspective and presenting a satirical one?

Penny Dreadfuls & Early Pulps

My familiarity with penny dreadfuls and pulps extends to cover ones published focussing on crimes, gossip, and novels in installments – I didn’t know they included serial stories that qualify as early science fiction. The earlier tales like “Varney the Vampire” or Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf” surprised me and strengthened the connections that Edgar Allen Poe had previously reminded me of between the Gothic and science fiction.

Later stories, like “Friend Island” and “Via the Hewitt Ray” inspired the thought that these twentieth-century pulps seem to rely very heavily on the “novum” or “new thing,” rather than on plot or character. This of course makes sense, given the restricted length of these stories, as was necessary for them to be published in magazines. In such a short piece, there is little time to expand a plot, or to establish a character and then describe their subsequent growth or development.

“Friend Island” and “Via the Hewitt Ray” both fulfill this recurring choice: “Friend Island” essentially just introduces the concept of a living island with its own personality, demonstrates how and when it manifests that personality and responds to people interacting with it, and then the story ends. “Via the Hewitt Ray” also introduces a (slightly more complex) novum in the form of various levels of civilization coexisting, and a female-dominated society. The characters in the story, like Lucille Hewitt and her father, do not undergo any personal development – Lucille’s entire personality seems to be based around one principle (adventure) and one goal (to rescue her father).

The form of penny dreadfuls and early pulps allowed for a proliferation of science fiction and the development of the genre, introducing numerous tropes (like the alien, or the strange civilization), and making it widely available to the public.

Edgar Allen Poe: Gothic vs. Science Fiction

Up till this point, I’ve only been familiar with Edgar Allen Poe as a writer of Gothic fiction and of detective fiction – I hadn’t come across his more science fiction-oriented works. At first, the two genres didn’t seem very compatible to me: Gothic works tend to focus on the supernatural, and science fiction tends to explain occurrences and  offer scientific or technological reasoning for things. A combination of the two genres seems even more unlikely – how would one reconcile the image of the spectral, of the supernatural, of the mysterious, with a genre that offers explanations, vivid images, and logical machinery?

Despite this seeming contradiction, the two genres are indeed related: “science fiction conspicuously reaches back to the genre of the Gothic novel, with its frequent interest in the speculative and the monstrous” (Mikics 273). The image of the ‘other,’ and imagining alternate possibilities unite the two. This correlation is present in Edgar Allen Poe’s more science-fictional stories: “The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” certainly unites the image of the other – a man suspended on the edge of death in a way not considered possible – with an explanation of its possibility (however tenuous). Because science fiction is essentially any work that considers “the influence of scientific advances on human life” (Mikics 273), this short story could be considered science fiction, or at least science-fictional: the story is spent documenting the effects of using mesmerism to suspend someone on the edge of death.

Stories like “MS Found in a Bottle” and “A Descent into the Maelström” have somewhat more tenuous connections to science fiction, though they maintain a more Gothic aspect: they present a mysterious other (in this case a black galleon, a giant whirlpool near Antarctica, or various whirlpools viewed from a cliff) but do not offer an explanation for their cause.

As a whole, Edgar Allen Poe mars an important transition stage between Gothic fiction and science fiction. He manages at the same time to reconcile two genres that at first seem contradictory, and explore their shared elements of the speculative and the monstrous in various ways.

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Mikics, David. “Science fiction.” A New Handbook of Literary Terms, Yale University Press,       2007, pp. 273.

H. Rider Haggard’s She

H. Rider Haggard’s novel She, first published in 1886, tells the story of Horace Holly and Leo Vincey’s journey to Kôr in the heart of Africa, following instructions on the Sherd of Amenartas that eventually, after a shipwreck and being captured by the Amahagger people, lead them to Ayesha, the queen.

Like many books of the period, and particularly science fiction, She promotes an imperialist mindset. The voyage into the heart of Africa embodies the race to colonize Africa that occured throughout the nineteenth century. Holly and Leo’s journey is an image of the British self that projects itself into unfamiliar territory, with the goal of imposing its behaviours and standards onto anyone it encounters.

Haggard’s description of the Amahagger people contributes to the presence of British imperialism: Haggard aims to differentiate the explorers from the Amahagger people at any opportunity, and notably does so when the Amahagger people kill and attempt to eat Mahomed. In this instance, not only do the Amahagger people enact what was considered one of the most ‘uncivilized’ practices of native peoples, but Holly also reasserts his superiority by shooting some of them. In this action, Holly views himself as superior, as the one to decide what qualifies as acceptable behaviour and to dole out punishment accordingly.

Haggard participates in a British imperialist tradition, and not only reinforces the differences between the British and the people they are colonizing, but also asserts British superiority in morality and behaviour.