Evolution of Science Fiction
The Evolution of Science Fiction Worlds:
From Frankenstein to Babel-17
One of the earliest successful science fiction stories was Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley. Since the publishing of that novel, the world and imagery in science fiction novels that would follow would grow to encompass more expansive ideas, images, including other worlds, other dimensions, and vivid alien-like creatures to help tell these richly bizarre, yet human stories. In this paper, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 will be used as prime examples of this evolution over nearly 150 years of science fiction writing. First published in 1818, Frankenstein was a story that was set throughout Europe in a then-modern time and place. Everything about the lives of the characters within the story was completely within the human experience, as we know it, sans the creation of, and the existence of The Creature. From the very beginning, we begin to establish a familiar, earthly setting, as chapter one opens with the line, “I am by birth a Genevese” (Shelley 14). The author continues making various connections throughout the story. In chapter eleven, the Creature says, “I sought a place where I could receive shade. This was the forest near Ingolstadt” (Shelley 71), and “I left Switzerland with you; I crept along the shores of the Rhine, among its willow islands, and over the summits of its hills. I have dwelt many months in the heaths of England, and among the deserts of Scotland” (Shelley 122). Effectively, Shelley has described a world that is very easy for the reader to imagine, since it is a world that we are very much a part of. There are no fantastic elements introduced, in terms of the setting of the story, as those elements are saved for the description and actions of The Creature, himself. In the creation and menacing of The Creature, Shelley begins to let her imagination run into otherworldly images that we so often connect to
From Frankenstein to Babel-17
One of the earliest successful science fiction stories was Frankenstein, written by Mary Shelley. Since the publishing of that novel, the world and imagery in science fiction novels that would follow would grow to encompass more expansive ideas, images, including other worlds, other dimensions, and vivid alien-like creatures to help tell these richly bizarre, yet human stories. In this paper, Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, H.G. Wells’ The Time Machine and Samuel R. Delany’s Babel-17 will be used as prime examples of this evolution over nearly 150 years of science fiction writing. First published in 1818, Frankenstein was a story that was set throughout Europe in a then-modern time and place. Everything about the lives of the characters within the story was completely within the human experience, as we know it, sans the creation of, and the existence of The Creature. From the very beginning, we begin to establish a familiar, earthly setting, as chapter one opens with the line, “I am by birth a Genevese” (Shelley 14). The author continues making various connections throughout the story. In chapter eleven, the Creature says, “I sought a place where I could receive shade. This was the forest near Ingolstadt” (Shelley 71), and “I left Switzerland with you; I crept along the shores of the Rhine, among its willow islands, and over the summits of its hills. I have dwelt many months in the heaths of England, and among the deserts of Scotland” (Shelley 122). Effectively, Shelley has described a world that is very easy for the reader to imagine, since it is a world that we are very much a part of. There are no fantastic elements introduced, in terms of the setting of the story, as those elements are saved for the description and actions of The Creature, himself. In the creation and menacing of The Creature, Shelley begins to let her imagination run into otherworldly images that we so often connect to