The naivete of early SF

[CS Johnson]

Aha, IW, my other half says "Of course, James Blish. Not heard of him in years." However, we've decided instances are quite rare. We wonder what other significant facets of life are underrepresented in SFF.

[Jeffbert]

For my part, I have often wondered about the ways people regarded those stories when they were 1st published, as opposed to how, we, with our modern science do. I suppose that religion may have restricted their inclination to even wonder if Mars had intelligent life, but other than that, some may have actually wondered if an invasion was possible or even imminent.

Can this really be compared to us as children, when we may have believed in hand-held lasers vaporizing people in an instant? Or, when we worried about the closet monster after our parents tucked us in bed, & turned out the light? Though those were adults, their imaginations were not restricted by firm knowledge that some things were simply absurd. I believe it was a serious astronomer who interpreted what he saw on Mars as evidence of intelligent life. Wells took this & ran with it. I would like to see a program or book that examined the then-current and accepted science of past centuries. I recall Sagan's COSMOS had a bit of this in it, but those views were far from the central point of the series.

[AE35Unit]

Also the thing is , in 100 years time people are unlikely to look back and say how naive people were 100 years ago....Modern SF just lacks that wow factor, the Sense of Wonder! Authors seem to think its 'all been done' but surely there's still so much more to discover and to chronicle in book form!

[Jeffbert]

I agree, but as the true science progresses, imaginative SF authors will have fewer chances to 'predict' by sheer chance, future developments. Can anyone say with certainty, that Verne actually believed in even a fraction of the things he wrote about, or that Welles actually knew the so-called canals on Mars were formed naturally, & that he was merely relying on the common belief otherwise to give his story greater impact?

I doubt it. Verne just got a few things right. I doubt the Science channel's program (discussed elsewhere) would cover any of the things that did not come true.

[VideoChrist]

Originally Posted by AE35Unit

Also the thing is , in 100 years time people are unlikely to look back and say how naive people were 100 years ago....Modern SF just lacks that wow factor, the Sense of Wonder! Authors seem to think its 'all been done' but surely there's still so much more to discover and to chronicle in book form!

The more things change . . . People have been complaining that the "sense of wonder" is gone from sf since at least the 1950s, probably earlier. The Golden Age of sf is still 12.

Prediction: 100 years from now people will look back at the concept of the "Singularity" as hopelessly naive. And they'll laugh their arses off at military sf.

[Parson]

Originally Posted by VideoChrist

Prediction: 100 years from now people will look back at the concept of the "Singularity" as hopelessly naive. And they'll laugh their arses off at military sf.

Or they will think the military SF writers prescient.

[VideoChrist]

Originally Posted by Parson

Or they will think the military SF writers prescient.

I'll take odds on that...

[Parson]

I think you've got to give odds on that. I'm the one whose likely wrong here.

[VideoChrist]

Fair enough. Let's hope we're both around in a hundred years to find out!

[andyw1691]

I was given 3 books that were each compilations of 10 stories from comics. Two were from the Commando series of comics while the third was 10 stories of Rick Random Space Detective. I must admit I had never heard of Rick Random but I read it anyway. There are no actual dates for the stories but the covers are shown in an appendix. The prices start at 9d for the earlier books rising to one full shilling for the last few. This makes them before 1971 when decimalisation for the UK came in. The blurb on the back says Rick random first appeared in 1954.

Anyway, what got me about the stories was the naivete. Many of the characters are drawn smoking, even in enclosed environments. There's also talk of 'space tides' and our hero lands his spaceship on the surface of Neptune, where they have built a space port. They happily get out of the ship and walk about in normal earth gravity! Anti-gravity units are often used but hyper-space appears in one story as a new invention.

It's classic stuff and worth picking up a copy if you see it.

Andy

[Toby Frost]

I've got that book too! I really must get round to looking at it: thanks for reminding me.

[nightdreamer]

One of the things that attracts me to some of the older science fiction is precisely the fact that they didn't know what we do today. That left things wide open, and in many ways left more room for adventure into the unknown. I grew up on the Tom Swift, Jr., series, where his building a rocket ship was something amazing. I still read them over again from time to time, mentally placing myself back in the '50s or '60s so I can forget that we have already been to the moon and that there are no longer unexplored regions in New Guinea.

[Jeffbert]

I had only 2 TOM SWIFT books, 1 about a heat ray & the other about an ultrasonic cycloplane or something like it. When I was a kid, reading was about the only academic skill I really had.

I do not think I could place myself in a 60s mentality, though; so I cannot enjoy the possibilities of the then unknown as you do.

[Vertigo]

I loved one bit of Jules Verne's Journey to the Interior of the Earth explaining volcanoes. It was written in the 1860s and plate tectonics (or continental drift) was only first proposed shortly after the turn of the century.

"Yet it is evident that the surface of the globe has been subject to the action of fire," I replied, "and it is quite reasonable to suppose that the external crust cooled down first, whilst the heat took refuge down to the centre."

"Quite a mistake," my uncle answered. "The earth has been heated by combustion on its surface, that is all. Its surface was composed of a great number of metals, such as potassium and sodium, which have the peculiar property of igniting at the mere contact with air and water; these metals kindled when the atmospheric vapours fell in rain upon the soil; and by and by, when the waters penetrated into the fissures of the crust of the earth, they broke out into fresh combustion with explosions and eruptions. Such was the cause of the numerous volcanoes at the origin of the earth."

I wonder just how much potassium and sodium it would take for that theory to work!

[Jeffbert]

I suppose the writers grasp at any convenient theory known to them, if not simply fabricate their own.