19th Century Science Fiction: A Retrospection

Mathew John M & Dr Latha Nair

Abstract

The question that will be explored in this paper would be that of how fiction deviated
from the ancient ways of fantasy, myth, and folklore and started basing itself on
science, biology, and technology, forming the new realm of science fiction in the 19 th
century. A detailed study on the scientific speculations made by Jules Verne and H.G.
Wells will also be done to understand why their writings were so critical of the socio-
political structure of the period.

The root or the etymology of an idea gathers relevance when the idea becomes pivotal

for existence in the future. The first traces of technological predictions came when

philosophers and thinkers prophesized the possibilities of mechanically aided objects, be they

toys or tools for entertainment. From the Age of Enlightenment in the 17 th century to the

Industrial Revolution that panned well into the mid-19th century, the age of mechanics

developed from mere ideas into actual reality. What accelerated the inventions was the

exciting idea of replicating the actions of humans to mimic human parts and the creation of

mechanical arms and heads. This longing paved the way for imaginations that pertained to

mechanics in the 18th and 19th centuries. Jacques de Vaucanson came up with a Mechanical

Duck in 1739 that could toddle around, consume food and digest it. Even though there were

attempts to make a fully mechanical human, they were all deemed futile.

It is relatively impossible to truly trace back the origins of science fiction when

elements of it are found even in Homer's The Odyssey. Theorists argue that science fiction as

a genre has only a history of just over 200 years. Sir Francis Bacon's New Atlantis, a utopian

novel published in 1687, has considerable scientific speculations but was unfortunately not

completed, expanding the timeline back to the 17th century. However, one of the earliest

recognised writers who incorporated the idea of mechanised life forms into literature was
German writer E.T.A Hoffmann. The visions of automation that preceded him gave him ideas

about how they could be presented in ways for the readers to relate and understand. His short

story The Sandman (1816) engenders a gynoid named Olimpia, a beautiful feminine android

who resembles the fiancé of the protagonist. The inability to distinguish between the real

person and the android results in the protagonist trying to throw his fiancé from atop a tower.

Sigmund Freud, who calls Hoffmann "the unrivalled master of uncanny in literature" in his

essay The Uncanny (1919), talks about how the two uncanny elements in The Sandman- the

existence of a humanoid robot and its uncanny resemblance proves the differentiation

between the real and the ersatz quite impossible. Since most of the forebodings in fiction

revolved around mythical plots and mostly resulted in nebulous notions and unholy creatures

made through fantasy and magic, the new narratives in the stream of what is today known as

transhumanism became instantly popular. This was mostly because of the closeness these

narratives shared with reality, making them relatable and comprehensible for the readers.

Closely following this work was Mary Shelley's magnum opus Frankenstein (1818). In her

essay Ecocriticism and the Idea of Culture: Biology and the Bildungsroman (2014), Helena

Feder opines that Shelley's work is an expression of horror towards the ominous futuristic

predictions of science. Feder, in her essay, says, "The drive for technological innovation may

be seen as an extension of or reaction to this horror; while such progress attempts to keep

entropy at bay, it may also become its servant. As a narrative of failed continuity,

Frankenstein also exhibits our fear of capitalist culture and its machinic determinism, of

monstrous production in place of reproduction and sustainability" (p. 3). It can be argued that

in an age where life can be created artificially, such a claim is valid. Shelley's fictional work

holds traces of genetic mutation and cellular regeneration, long before Charles Darwin's The

Origin of Species (1859).

 However, when Shelley's works mainly focussed on the moral ramifications of

technology, Jules Verne provided ideas for technological innovations through his fictional

works. Verne's imagination included mechanical devices that made communication and

transmission of information possible over long distances. Verne was so obsessed with

mechanics that he even extensively described combustion engines, submarines, and

aeroplanes in his works. He was able to speculate on the future applications of the science of

his day. Even if Shelley provided a genre distinct from myth or fantasy and managed to bring

science fiction into existence, Verne catapulted the genre into fame by producing a plethora

of works in the field. Verne was meticulous in teasing out probable scientific outcomes from

his research on scientific findings of the time. His books contained technical details that, for

some strange reasons, the readers of the era found believable. This quality of Verne earned

him the title of being the first truly successful science fiction author. Most of Verne's works

portray his love for travel and adventure. The puzzles that the protagonists decipher in

Verne's Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864), puzzles of intellect, knowledge, or

technology, would become abundant not only throughout his works but science fiction at

large. From the Earth to the Moon (1865), his next work had astonishing details related to

rocketry. Neil Armstrong exclaimed that this work was a shockingly realistic depiction of

space travel because of the application of Lagrange's point, the accurate calculation of the

conditions and the speed a vessel would require to break into space, and even the name of

Verne's space gun, Columbiad, which coincidentally shares an obvious similarity with

NASA's first moon expedition rocket, 'The Columbia.'

With works caressing the unknowns of the Earth and the unknowns of space, it was

no wonder that Verne's next destination was the unknowns of the deep ocean. Twenty

Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870) teased the first-ever electrical submarine manned by

the infamous, often criticised as single-minded, Captain Nemo. Dubbed as his most radical
work, the novel offers a bold critique of Imperialism and the European social structure

without deviating from his trademark of a sci-fi adventure into the unknown. Verne acceded

that this work was inspired by John Milton's Paradise Lost and J.W. Goethe's The Sorrows of

Young Werther. It even has references that date back to Homer's Odysseus and Plutarch's

Parallel Lives proving Verne's acknowledgement of the adventure classics. Most science

fiction narratives often explored the possible outcomes of the intermixing of two cultures- the

terrestrial and the extra-terrestrial. In an age where notions of the 'other' were innate, Verne

came up with his next seminal novel, Around the World in Eighty Days. This novel depicted

how the Earth was no longer vast and unexplorable but shrinking. The possibilities that

modern-day technology provided in the realm of transportation and communication were

aptly conveyed in the work, along with the intermingling of different cultures worldwide.

One of Verne's earliest works remained unpublished until it was discovered nearly a

century after his demise. The novel titled Paris in the 20th Century is rumoured to have been

completed in 1863, but due to the innovations that Verne predicts in the novel, it seems as

though he thought the work would have been incomprehensibly advanced for the 19 th-century

readers. Verne was one of the writers who was criticised for being too radical and that might

have been why this work did not see the light till 1994. Jean-Paul Sartre discusses this lack of

freedom of thought and expression the French writers of that period like Verne had to endure.

In his essay What Is Literature? Sartre says, "it was not necessary for him to get on his high

horse in a vain effort to escape all class determination, nor to brood over the proletariat, but

on the contrary to think of himself as a bourgeois who had broken loose from his class and

who was united with the oppressed masses by a solidarity of interest" (p. 148). Verne's works

challenged the orthodox French literary conventions of the time by mixing science and

literature. Arthur B. Evans extends this argument in his essay Jules Verne: Exploring the

Limits. He says:
 …in an era where art for art's sake continued to be the reigning aesthetic, and a work's
"literariness" was in part defined by its disdain for the exterior world, Verne's narratives were
unrepentantly pedagogical and extrovertive. At a time when it was strictly for "serious"
authors to write against their public, Verne's novels sought to entertain and instruct and
became hugely popular. And, finally, during a period where a refined style constituted the
litmus-test for literary acceptability, Verne's brash experiments in co-mingling literary and
scientific discourse were generating unprecedented similes" (p. 267).

Verne, in a way, deviated from the literary norms of his period and instead offered exposure

to the idea of the "other" and new branches of imagination through his speculative fiction.

Without restricting the ideas to a theoretical level, Verne explored the applicability of

technology. Verne was only allowed to express his ideas of technological innovations in his

later works, which were deemed too radical and often seen as constituting a social critique.

That is perhaps why the title of "Father of Science Fiction" was never truly presented to

Verne. The one worthy competitor for this title was H.G. Wells, the writer who had no

barriers in bringing social critique to science fiction.

Herbert George Wells showed how science fiction is a vital addition to the literature.

Verne's works were commercially successful but faced a lot of scrutiny due to their clunky

merit. One of the reasons Wells was considered a better author than Verne was his

extrapolation of present-day science. His works were political and gave no impression that

technology would eventually make the world better. His works had a tinge of scepticism of

the science and carefully speculated what would eventually come of it. This was, of course,

aimed at showing what could go wrong, with the intention that humanity would correct

themselves rather than give an open invitation to an apocalypse. Simon J. James, in Science

Journals: The Worlds of H. G. Wells, says, "Behind Wells' enormous output was a desire to

use writing to make the world better — by projecting either a utopian vision of a perfected

future, or dystopias revealing how the lessons of his work went unheeded" (p. 163). Wells did

have a science background which made his speculation all too relevant. But he wanted to be

known as a 'journalist' more than a scientist or a writer due to his interest in politics.
Wells believed that the hegemonic social divide that existed in the 19 th century would

continue well into the future. In his famous work, The Time Machine (1895), he prophesized

that the marginalisation of a segment of the society or as post-colonial critics refer to as the

'other' was embedded so deeply that it would remain so for yet another 800,000 years. The

depiction of the innocent child-like Eloi and the brutish much-dreaded Morlocks defines how

a higher class of people would live off the labour of the lower class. This division is literally

shown in the novel as the Elois live on the surface while the Morlocks dwell in the

underground. Being a socialist, Wells believed in a better distribution of power and wealth

and subtly injected his ideologies to the masses through his adept futuristic narratives with

sufficient scientific backing. Having roots in biology made Wells explore the possibility of

fictional narratives related to genes. This led him to his next novel, The Island of Doctor

Moreau (1896). Wells extensively described human-animal hybrids or embryonic chimaeras

(a term popularised by popular Japanese manga Full-Metal Alchemist) and how anything

incomprehensible is eventually seen as a threat to humanity and ultimately eliminated.

The Invisible Man (1897) is seen as an anti-libertarian novel where a character is

bestowed with the ability to become invisible. It also poses the idea of immortality and

speculates how human behaviour would be without repercussions. The novel infers that

humans would definitely deviate from morality and commit crimes if given a chance to live

with no consequences for actions. Hence accountability over actions is an ineluctable force

that restricts one from wreaking absolute havoc. The last of H.G. Wells' 19 th century'

scientific romances' was The War of the Worlds (1898), which aimed to topple the

anthropocentric fog that corroded the minds of the elite. Wells gave the readers a scenario

where an extra-terrestrial entity came and attacked humans irrespective of which

class/race/nationality they belonged to. At the very least, the Martians attacked without bias,

which is ironic since they saw humans as equal, while the humans could not. This was also a
critique of the Social Darwinism that was celebrated during the end of the 19th century. The

novel also suggested that no matter how well science burgeoned, microbes would outshine all

of humankind's most powerful defences. This prediction seemed surreal when it was written

but not so much given what COVID-19 has done to the world in recent times. Wells' science

fiction writings continued well into the first half of the 20 th century, where he kept adding

more layers to his imagination. Wells' The World Set Free (1914) predicted the atomic bomb,

and The Shape of Things to Come (1933) foreshadowed the Second World War.

Unlike Verne, Wells lived through the scientific upheavals of the late 19th and the

early 20th century and two world wars, which turned his fiction into a critique of society

rather than blindly chasing after adventures in the unknown. Wells was particular about not

adding science as a flavour to spice up the novel so that the reader feels awe. Even when

Wells knew that time travel or invisible are near impossible concepts, he saw them as good

windows through which he could examine the socio-political situation of the society. While

Verne built his tower on meticulous hard science fiction, Wells made his by providing

technical discussions on technology, aiding the reader to eliminate any form of disbelief.

Hence the title "Father of Science Fiction" would fit Wells more than Verne or Hugo

Gernsback (who has been conveniently omitted from this paper due to the restricted

timeline). Verne is better suited to a term such as the Father of Scientific Explorations or, as

John Derbyshire calls him, "Father of Tech-Fi". Other notable populizers of science fiction of

the time include Edward S. Ellis, author of The Steam Man of the Prairies (1968), Auguste

Villiers de l'Isle-Adam, author of Tomorrow's Eve (1886) and Jerome K. Jerome, author of

Three Men in a Boat (1893), all depicting a humanoid powered by steam or other fuel to

function as humans. No matter how obscure or irrational the ideas portrayed in these works

might have been at the time of their publications, it is an undeniable fact that these authors of

the 19th century did usurp the existing literary notion of imagination from magic to science.
References

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 Mathew John M is a Doctoral Research Fellow in English Literature at Amrita

Viswa Vidyapeetham, Edappally North, Amrita Nagar, Brahmasthanam, Kochi,
Kerala 682024. E-mail: mathew2mathewmjm@gmail.com
 Dr. Latha Nair is a Professor and Research Guide at Amrita Viswa Vidyapeetham,
Edappally North, Amrita Nagar, Brahmasthanam, Kochi, Kerala 682024. E-mail:
drlathanairr@gmail.com