Mary Shelley's Frankenstein launched the entire genre of science fiction. What made it unique? What did Shelley create, and how did her view of the possibilities of science shape the way we imagine our world even today?
Industrialization and the Age of Reason benefitted society in many ways, but also created an atmosphere of dehumanizing mass production. The Romantic literary movement rose up to assert the value of emotion in a modern world, and praised science as a marvel whose discoveries bounded on magic made real.
Frankenstein's monster discovered three books that shaped his understanding of the world, including the Sorrows of Young Werther. Werther's unrequited love for a woman eventually leads him to commit suicide. Frankenstein's monster wants to experience love as well, but Mary Shelley has her own critique of this idea of love.
Mary Shelley drew heavily from the style of biography first pioneered by Plutarch, creating characters like Victor Frankenstein and the monster whose lives parallel each other, but whose differing circumstances lead them to embody very different values.
Paradise Lost told the story of Satan, a creation who rejected his creator just like Frankenstein's monster did. But even Satan had a loving creator, beauty, and friends. The monster had nothing, and his life in Mary Shelley's eyes was not a horror story, but a tragedy.
What draws us to Frankenstein, and to sci fi as a whole? As the novel wraps up and our time with its characters draws to an end, Mary Shelley lays out the final theme which shaped the identity of science fiction as a genre: radical alienation and the search for a place to belong.
After Star Wars, the science fiction genre suddenly became a pop culture darling, and a flood of schlocky imitations followed. William Gibson led the charge to reclaim space in the genre for his concept of future history - one that, in turn, eventually launched cyberpunk.
Ways that we dream about the world sometimes create a shared vision that we start to believe is real. When William Gibson first explored these "semiotic ghosts" of a pristine American future in the Gernsback Continuum, he showed how these visions of modern technology can separate us from our own reality and the personal meaning our world should hold for us.
Would you give up what made you unique in order to fit in everywhere? This is the question posed by William Gibson's short story, The Belonging Kind, where an awkward professor finds himself drawn into the mystery of a young woman who seems like a perfect fit everywhere she goes.
The Canals of Mars ignited so many imaginations, especially in science fiction stories, but they never really existed. What made us believe in them? And why did so many writers keep dreaming about them even after the theory had been disproved?
We're diving into Ray Bradbury's short stories about life on Mars--and how that life reacts when it encounters human life, and what *their* reaction says about American society in the Cold War era.
The second half of Ray Bradbury's Martian Chronicles can be described as "the human cycle"--a reflection on humanity's seemingly insatiable need to conquer and consume every last bit of our own culture.
Ray Bradbury's last Martian story, "The Million Year Picnic," offers a much more optimistic look at humanity. We have proven ourselves very capable destroyers, but we also have the capacity to improve and learn from our mistakes.
Let's start our journey to the center of hard science fiction: the works of Jules Verne, who imagined the technological wonders humanity could--and would--create in the twentieth century.
H.G. Wells brought his socialist perspective to science fiction, creating great works that really ask us to look at where the human condition will take us hundreds of years from now.
The turn of the 20th century brought a lot of new ideas and inventions to the world. Suddenly, nature's laws were not quite what they seemed. Thus, many folks drifted into explorations of the occult, which directly influenced 19th and 20th century science fiction.
This week, we explore the obscure authors from the turn of the 20th century whose weird and wacky stories impacted our modern-day sci fi consciousness and inspired works from authors like H.P. Lovecraft and Terry Pratchett.
We're gonna dive into the TRULY wacky and wild stories of early science fiction, including a Czech play that invented the word "robot."
Dunsany is arguably the "father of fantasy," bringing to life the classic worldbuilding tropes that inspired so many authors, from H.P. Lovecraft to Ursula K. Le Guin. But his short stories and novels have sadly fallen out of memory...
Sci fi "pulp" stories sometimes have a reputation for being cheesy and over-dramatic, but they were extremely important for building up the sci fi genre as something *anyone* could write for AND get paid for--not just famous authors.
Weird Tales was a pulp magazine that started out as a collection of detective stories before getting taken over by writers like H. P. Lovecraft and Robert E. Howard, whose fantastic tales instilled both good and bad tropes that we still see in modern sci fi.
Many sci fi writers, especially in the United States, had backgrounds in reading and writing detective stories. They introduced to the sci-fi genre the action hero--no longer just scientific or philosophical protagonists.
Writer-turned-famous-editor of Astounding Stories, John W. Campbell helped usher in the golden age of science fiction, driven by a new authorial understanding of real science and real psychology.
The golden age of science fiction represents a very flawed but fascinating American view of the future; authors Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, and Robert Heinlein were all influential to this time period.
Isaac Asimov didn't have a birthday. Nobody knew the exact date of his birth, so he picked one for himself at a young age--and that choice, quite possibly, was what gave us one of his best creative periods.
Asimov is famous for coining the Three Laws of Robotics, but to him they weren't the "answer" to how robots could be used in the future--they were an intentional reflection of humanity's potential failings.
Asimov's Foundation stories were absolutely foundational for science fiction--they introduced the concept of a space empire, bringing along analogies from historical civilizations to the social issues of advanced technology and humanity's future.
Before we delve into Robert Heinlein's famous works, let's look at an overview of his writing career and the philosophical ideals he was known for: particularly his libertarian worldview, although even this is still hotly debated.
Heinlein's novels made science fiction mainstream and even contributed to modern libertarianism. His novels vary widely in the philosophies they explore, but ultimately they all reflect how Heinlein saw himself: as the self-reliant "competent man" protagonist of his stories, despite glaring inconsistencies.
From Aldous Huxley to Philip K. Dick, early references to virtual reality simulations abound in science fiction literature, and tremendously impacted consumer anticipation for VR technology available in the modern day.
The godson of Dr. Sun Yat-Sen, Paul Linebarger led an exciting life of unusual achievements well before he got into writing science fiction--including setting up one of the United States' first psychological warfare units. Under his pen name, he wrote the trend-bucking work Scanners Live in Vain.
Alfred Bester is known for bridging the gap between science fiction and detective comics, creating villains like Solomon Grundy in the Green Lantern and Superman stories and for his long-form stories "The Demolished Man" (which won the first Hugo award) and "The Stars My Destination" which influenced later writers.
Mythic worldbuilding and intentionality just weren't staples of science fiction until the works of J. R. R. Tolkien and Frank Herbert were published. We'll be doing an analysis of The Lord of the Rings and Dune, respectively--works that still stand out today because they are meticulously crafted.
J. R. R. Tolkien wasn't *just* a fantasy author--he was a mythology master. As a result, he ended up inventing some of the most popular genre tropes that science fiction heavily draws upon. Fellowship of the Ring introduces the theme of the "lessening of the world" and the decay of humanity.
Tolkien's writing was majorly influenced by the world he lived in--the concerns of World War II and the aftermath thereof were reflected in the themes of industrialization, more highly nuanced good-and-evil, and "questing" that The Two Towers emphasizes.
Tolkien lived in a dark time in history, but he believed not only in having hope, but in sacrifice as a means to redemption, which is why we get such a satisfyingly bittersweet ending in the Lord of the Rings.
Frank Herbert's epic novel Dune began as a photograph of the Oregon coastline--literally, the dunes themselves. From there it grew into a poem, then three books, then a serial in John W. Campbell's Analog magazines, and then at last... a car repair manual publisher?
On the surface, Dune appears to be a peak demonstration of "the competent man" trope so popular in Golden Age science fiction, but Herbert deconstructs this by carefully demonstrating how all of the characters make bad assumptions on faulty premises...
Dune is an ecological novel. Nature isn't just the background setting, but firmly integrated into the science and systems of the world. Frank Herbert explores big ideas around environmental conservation, through the spice that must flow.
Charismatic leadership can conceal corruption, and Frank Herbert saw how dangerous this was in the political events he lived through. Leto Atreides, Valdimir Harkonnen, and Paul Atreides (Muad'dib) each represent different types of charismatic but very faulty leadership practices.
We kick off a new season of Extra Sci Fi exploring the theme of dystopias and apocalypses. We begin with Aldous Huxley's *Brave New World*--a very early novel that make a compelling argument for *why* the dystopia exists at all.
What makes 1984 still relevant to modern readers is that it serves as a warning against fascism in all its possible forms. George Orwell's service fighting in the Spanish Civil War led him to see that the heart of totalitarianism is about xenophobia and nationalism no matter which kind of government it came from.
The Cold War prompted science fiction to take a turn from the darkness of humanity, to the end of humanity itself. Earth Abides is a keystone novel at this turning point, exploring the viewpoint of a lost hiker who returns to his California residence to find that humanity is gone... and yet, is rebuilding.
A Clockwork Orange reflects a cultural fear of society's moral decay in the 1960s. Its usage of a mashup slang language known as "nadsat" illustrates the complexities of rebellious youth culture. Ultimately, Anthony Burgess's work asks us to think about if or when free will should ever be suppressed, but the major differences between the book and the film version of this story present contrasting takeaways.
How do we cope with a crowded world we as humans were never evolutionarily designed for? Stand on Zanzibar was written in 1968 but it uncannily, accurately predicts many of our present day's social tensions and stressors. However, it also has a certain optimism that makes it stand out among other dystopic fiction we've discussed.
Harlan Ellison was a little dismissive of this short story that you've might only heard of because you saw it on a Steam summer sale, but at the time of its publication (1967) its ideas about the possibility of "evil AI," as well as the possible degeneracy of humanity, were shocking and unexpected, and it set the stage for the wave of sci-fi we'll talk about next season: New Wave!
We talked a little bit about Ray Bradbury on our Fahrenheit 451 episode, but he contributed so much more to the world of literature and science fiction. While he may not be "technically" considered a part of the New Wave sci fi, but he certainly influenced it. His works touch on the fantastical, the psychedelic, and even the theological. So why did Ray Bradbury refuse to consider himself a science fiction writer, even when his stories were filled with space travel and other technological wonders? Let's explore!
Philip K. Dick is well known in the sci-fi genre for his work "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", the story that inspired Blade Runner. He struggled often from mental illness and depression and had a uniquely weird childhood experience that led him to question the very fabric of his reality. A common theme of Philip K. Dick's work is the presence of doppelgangers or copies who can't tell who the original is. And this unraveling of reality or treatment of reality as fluid is a huge influence on the New Wave.
We've talked about Harlan Ellison's I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream before on Extra Sci Fi, but Dangerous Visions is the title that truly kicks off the New Wave. An anthology helmed and edited by Ellison, Dangerous Visions featured short stories written by many sci-fi household names like Roger Zelazny & Samuel R. Delany. But most importantly, it introduced human sexuality to sci-fi in a way we hadn't seen before. It also questioned the taboo, like addressing religion or death. Not all of the stories are winners, but all of them give you something to think about.
The Chronicles of Amber occupy a weird space in the New Wave. Is it fantasy? Is it sci fi? Is it both? We think so. While Zelazny is often left out of sci fi considerations, he has a lot in common with the other writers we've spoken about. He also deals with a topic that we see come up again and again in sci fi: What is the real? Even though The Chronicles of Amber are difficult to categorize, they still stand out, especially as our real & virtual lives continue to mix and mingle.
There is no text that better sums up the heart of the New Wave than Samuel R. Delany's Dhalgren. The text twists and turns, written with an eye towards modern and post-modern writing. Where the story even begins is up to interpretation. But one thing is certain. There's nothing else quite like it in all of science fiction. It pushed the boundaries of what science fiction could do and proved that sci fi could be just as unique (and sometimes confusing) as high art.
J.G. Ballard's work has influenced so many parts of media that it felt right to kick this episode off with a quote from Joy Division. Instead of breaking down any one of his texts, we thought that it would be better to break down his writing into three distinctive themes or periods. No matter what piece of work you pick up, you'll find J.G. Ballard's writing evocative and boundary-pushing: an exemplar of the New Wave.
Despite science fictions foundation in Mary Shelly's Frankenstein, women authors of sci fi were few and far between. That is, until the women's movement saw a wave of new writers who took home Hugo and Nebula awards, leaving their mark on science fiction forever. One of these writers was Ursula K. Le Guin. The daughter of anthropologists, Le Guin's family frequently had famous academics and scientists over, and they deeply influenced her writing like her first science fiction novel, The Left Hand of Darkness. The Left Hand of Darkness is a story about isolation and exclusion from a very interesting perspective and asks the question, what would a society without gender look like?
There's no better way to end our season on the New Wave then talking about the work that brought it crashing down: Star Wars. Wait wait wait! We promise we aren't talking about the pros and cons of any particular trilogy. There are a hundred other videos you can watch for that. Instead, we want to talk about something a little unusual. We want to talk about how Star Wars paved the way for the cyberpunk generation.
