> De : Mike Resnick <[log in to unmask]>
> Nicola says: "I wish to remind you that sf/fantasy/horror was born in
> the pulp magazine."
> I wish to remind Nicola that sf goes back beyond Burroughs, beyond Wells
> and Verne, beyond Mary Shelley, at least as far as the 16th Century,
> when Cyrano de Bergerac wrote A VOYAGE TO THE SUN and A VOYAGE TO THE
MOON.
> Similarly, DRACULA pre-dates the pulp magazines, as do the works of Poe.
And fantasy,
> depending on your religious orientation, goes back anywhere from
> 3000 to 6000 years, minimum.
Hello. I agree with Mike, the origins of science fiction are to be searched
far beyond our century. Everything depends on the point of view you choose
to say that something is SF, and something not. As contemporary SF often
deals with political problems, the origin of SF could be searched in
Utopian litterature, again in the XVI century, but with the texts of Thomas
More, Campanella and Francis Bacon, not only Cyrano de Bergerac. Or maybe
further : there's an Antic text who describes, more in a litterary mode
than in a philosophical one, an ideal city, a form of Utopia. This text is
Plato's Critias, the ultimate root of Atlantis tradition. I don't mean
that this text is SF, of course. But if we define Utopian litterature as
the origin of SF (I don't mean fantasy), or SF as the evolution of Utopian
litterature, we have to consider so ancient texts. For example, texts as
Bug Jack Barron has something to do with political philosophy, as for John
Brunner's Shockwave Rider. And will they be considered as SF for a pulps
reader ? I don't know, but I'm not sure he willtake the pain to read these
books.
I think that the major stake when someone says that SF is born in pulps, is
to know if SF comes from popular litt�rature. I have a great respect for
popular litterature, but I think that immediately, SF had a speculative
stake you won't ever find in popular litterature. And there is popular SF,
of course : Ron Hubbard, for example ! On the other hand, there are SF
novels that are quite never considered as SF by Niven's fans : think of a
novel like Time out of Joint, or The Man in the High Castle, by Phil Dick.
This writer's importance is that with his work, and with other works
(Brunner, for example), SF is no longer simply a pulp litterature in our
century's social representation of SF.
Hoping you will undersatnd my ungly English,
Have a great day,
Yves
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