The Leap from Reality
The mythic legacy of those remarkable 'scientific romances' of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells still haunts us today
“The creations of Mr. Wells, on the other hand, belong unreservedly to an age and degree of scientific knowledge far removed from the present, though I will not say entirely beyond the limits of the possible.”
- Jules Verne, writing about H.G. Wells in 1904
Jules Verne was writing novels before H.G. Wells began his career as an author, and there are just ten years (between 1895 and 1905) when both authors were writing simultaneously. Verne began crafting his French serials in 1863, and the first of his ‘scientific romances’ (called Journey to the Centre of the Earth in English) was published the following year. The novella of The Time Machine, Wells’ debut and still among his most-read stories, appeared more than three decades later, in 1895. All of Wells’ most famous tales were in print by 1904, when Jules Verne was drawn to comment upon the widespread comparisons being drawn between the two authors.
Verne was keen to praise Wells’ style, but he also felt that the comparison between their stories was misguided, as the opening quote makes clear. As Verne remarked in the same interview: “I have always made a point in my romances of basing my so-called inventions upon a groundwork of actual fact...” He drew inspiration from the knowledge of his contemporaries in engineering, and his tales used solely those materials and methods of constructions that already existed in his time. Indeed, it was a point of pride for him to do so.
Wells, as Verne suggests, was willing to go much further. The ideal point of comparison, as Verne himself noted, was 1865’s From the Earth to the Moon versus 1901’s The First Men in the Moon. Verne has his travellers shot from a cannon - a method that, later engineers were to realise, was not practically possible but was still based upon what was knowable and achievable when Verne wrote about it. Wells on the other hand invents a magical metal called cavorite that neutralises gravity, and uses this to send his voyagers to the lunar sphere. As Verne points out: “Ça c’est très joli... but show me this metal. Let him produce it.”
In retrospect, we can look back and see that neither author entirely anticipated the facts of this matter, although we can equally see that in grounding his account in terms of the physics of his day, Verne shows greater restraint than Wells. It is this moderation that Verne attests is the distinction between the styles of these two writers of ‘scientific romances’. And this word - romance - serves an important and often forgotten role, for it entails an acknowledgement that from the very beginning science fiction was always a kind of fantasy.
Verne-style ‘hard science fiction’ operates as a kind of non-religious mythos. Indeed, I have suggested elsewhere that we might call this approach to fiction ‘orthodox science fiction’ (in a parallel to ‘orthodox religion’)… it is ‘orthodox’ in its conservative approach to the sciences: nothing is presumed that would violate the scientific orthodoxy held at the time of writing. As the example of the moon shot shows, this ‘orthodoxy’ is fragile and cannot hope to attain any accuracy over the long term, but it is still psychologically compelling in the way any such ideological alignment can feel ‘right’.
However, Wells’ greater inventive freedom also traces a science fiction mythos, one that is anything but conservative. It is essentially that which my mentor, Mary Midgley, once dubbed ‘science as salvation’, a metaphysical faith in technological deliverance that remains largely unrecognised, even today. It is one thing to follow Wells in taking the leap from reality within fiction, but it is quite another when fantastical expectations distort scientific research - or its public discussion - because an ebullient faith in possible futures outstrips the facts on the ground.
I love science fiction, but I approach every story in the sure and certain knowledge that what I am reading has nothing much to do with the work of the sciences. Yet just as with the tales of gods and heroes from times long passed, our science fiction mythology binds us into ways of thinking that have concrete social effects. The gentlemanly dispute between Verne and Wells draws attention to a radical divide in how we relate to our sci-fi mythos that still persists today. Beyond this, they also help to remind us that fantasy still has a hold on reality, precisely because whatever is real is still to be imagined.
Brilliant piece, Chris. Love the last line. Exquisite.
Your post is really well written and interesting.
I have never been much interested in the genre but do occasionally. I appreciated Verne and Wells explorations of what might be possible.
When I was young, Dick Tracey had a special watch. I am wearing one today.
At Xerox PARC in n the early 70’s a Alan Kay and others imagined a notebook computer which they mocked up with the PARC Alto. In the ‘80s John Sealy Brown and others at PARC imagined Liveboard interactive displays and groupware. They mocked up the ideas originally with projection displays but today they are all in widespread use with touchscreens and many devices.
So imagineering with science fiction often leads to invention.
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