{"id":56410,"date":"2017-12-05T23:35:29","date_gmt":"2017-12-06T04:35:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/hyperallergic.com\/283553\/airships-and-reanimated-corpses-from-the-pages-of-early-science-fiction\/"},"modified":"2024-08-26T16:17:04","modified_gmt":"2024-08-26T20:17:04","slug":"airships-and-reanimated-corpses-from-the-pages-of-early-science-fiction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/2017\/airships-and-reanimated-corpses-from-the-pages-of-early-science-fiction\/","title":{"rendered":"Airships and Reanimated Corpses from the Pages of Early Science Fiction"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Illustration
Illustration from Albert Robida\u2019s \u2018Le vingti\u00e8me si\u00e8cle\u2019 (\u2018The twentieth century,\u2019 Paris, 1880s) (courtesy Smithsonian Libraries)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON, DC \u2014 Science fiction rose to prominence in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when authors like H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Mary Shelley imagined the extraordinary possibilities of advances in technology\u00a0and exploration.\u00a0Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction 1780\u20131910<\/a><\/em>, on view in the newly renovated Smithsonian Libraries Gallery<\/a> at the\u00a0National Museum of American History<\/a>, centers on this era of change and the dreams both dark and hopeful it inspired.<\/p>\n

Curated by\u00a0Kirsten van der Veen and Doug Dunlop, the exhibition is small, but ambitious. Everything from the laying of the transatlantic cable<\/a>\u00a0to the popularity of home aquariums\u00a0is touched on, with plenty of early robots, airships, and Arctic explorers in between. The emphasis\u00a0of the exhibition is on books, with some objects from the Smithsonian joining in the busy glass boxes in the dark gallery. It\u2019s a shame there aren\u2019t more of these objects though, as\u00a0some are just teased\u00a0in photographs, like\u00a0an unsettling mechanized \u201ccreeping baby doll\u201d from 1871 held by the museum.<\/p>\n

\"Fantastic<\/a>
One of the earliest aerial views of Earth, from Thomas Baldwin\u2019s \u2018Airopaidia: Containing the Narrative of a Balloon Excursion from Chester, the Eighth of September, 1785\u2019 (London, 1785) (courtesy Smithsonian Libraries, gift of the Burndy Library) (click to enlarge)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A coinciding online exhibition<\/a>\u00a0explores the ideas more thoroughly, with better room for text than the gallery walls. Nevertheless, the physical iteration of Fantastic Worlds<\/em> includes many beautiful and rare books from the Smithsonian Libraries, such as Rudyard Kipling\u2019s 1909 With the Night Mail<\/em> \u2014 set\u00a0in the year 2000 in a world populated by airships, its deep blue cover showing a dirigible soaring amid the stars \u2014 and Thomas Baldwin\u2019s 1875\u00a0Airopaidia<\/a><\/em>, which features some of the first aerial illustrations of the Earth.<\/p>\n

Arranged in seven sections, including\u00a0\u201cAge of the Aeronaut<\/a>\u201d and\u00a0\u201cTerra Incognita<\/a>,\u201d Fantastic Worlds<\/em> compares concrete science to the fiction it influenced. Shelley\u2019s\u00a01818 novel Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus<\/a><\/em>, with its reanimated corpse, followed physician\u00a0Luigi Galvani\u2019s<\/a> experiments with the \u201canimal electricity<\/a>\u201d he perceived when his charged scalpel touched\u00a0a dead frog\u2019s leg and made\u00a0it kick, and coincided the rise of electrical shocks used for medical treatments in the 19th century.\u00a0Jules Verne channeled\u00a0the doomed Franklin expedition<\/a> to the Arctic in his 1864\u00a0The Adventures of Captain Hatteras<\/a><\/em>, although in that tale his fictional crew found a volcano at the North Pole instead of resorting to cannibalism.\u00a0A few years later, Verne\u2019s\u00a0Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea<\/a><\/em> delved into pioneering\u00a0ocean exploration, with Captain Nemo\u2019s submersible the Nautilus inspired by the author\u2019s viewing of a French submarine at the Paris Exposition of 1867.<\/p>\n

\"Installation
Objects related to flight in\u00a0\u2018Fantastic Worlds\u2019 (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Installation
R.M. Ballantyne\u2019s \u2018The Battery and the Boiler, or Adventures in the Laying of Submarine Electric Cables\u2019 (New York, 1883, left) and a transatlantic cable souvenir made by Glass, Elliot & Co., and Tiffany & Co. (right) in \u2018Fantastic Worlds\u2019 (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Strangely for an exhibition at an\u00a0institution of US history, much of the work is European, and it would\u00a0have been interesting to explore\u00a0how even American writers not generally inclined to write fantasy were experimenting with science fiction\u00a0narratives. For example,\u00a0Jack London wrote The Iron Heel<\/a><\/em> (1908), musing on a future United States where democracy had turned to\u00a0oligarchy,\u00a0and Mark Twain\u2019s 1889 novel A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur\u2019s Court<\/a><\/em> involved time travel.<\/p>\n

However,\u00a0one of the most fleshed out incidents \u2014 the \u201cGreat Moon Hoax<\/a>\u201d of 1885 \u2014 was based in New York City. Richard Adams Locke with The Sun<\/em> newspaper published fictional reports from real British astronomer\u00a0John Herschel<\/a> that he had spotted life on the moon, specifically\u00a0\u201cmanbats.\u201d It was intended as satire, but the public loved it so much that, according to the Smithsonian<\/a>, \u201cthe Sun<\/em>\u2019s owner would not allow Locke to expose the truth.\u201d As an odd footnote, none other than horror and mystery writer Edgar Allan Poe had penned his own moon hoax before The Sun<\/em>, and was outraged at what he perceived as plagiarism. Like much of Fantastic Worlds<\/em>, the incident pivots at the intersection of science and fiction, at a time when both fields were looking to\u00a0a future that would surely be\u00a0just as wondrous as it was strange.<\/p>\n

\"Installation
A medical induction coil by Benjamin Pike Jr. (New York, 1850) on view in \u2018Fantastic Worlds\u2019 (photo by the author for Hyperallergic)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Sheet
Sheet music for \u201cNorthward Ho!, or, Baffled, Not Beaten\u201d (London, 1879) with words by Commander John P. Cheyne; music by Odoardi [i.e. Odoardo] Barri (courtesy Smithsonian Libraries). Cheyne was a veteran of three Arctic expeditions that searched for the missing explorer John Franklin and his crew. His lecture tour and the song publication were aimed at gaining public support.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\""Frank
\u201cFrank Reade, Jr. and His Engine of the Clouds\u201d (New York, 1903), from \u2018Frank Reade Weekly Magazine\u2019 (courtesy Smithsonian Libraries, gift of the Burndy Library). The \u2018Frank Reade Weekly Magazine\u2019 was a popular series of dime novels, starring Reade as a brilliant, world-traveling inventor.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Fantastic
Illustration from Albert Robida\u2019s \u2018Le vingti\u00e8me si\u00e8cle: la vie \u00e9lectrique\u2019 (\u2018The twentieth century: the electric life,\u2019 Paris, 1893) (courtesy Smithsonian Libraries)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"The
Harry Kennedy, \u2018The Flying Man, or the Adventures of a Young Inventor,\u2019 from The Boy\u2019s Star Library (New York, 1891) (courtesy Smithsonian Libraries)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Illustration
Illustration from Leopoldo Galluzzo\u2019s \u2018Altre scoverte fatte nella luna dal Sigr. Herschel\u2019 (\u2018Other lunar discoveries from Signor Herschel,\u2019 Naples, 1836) (courtesy Smithsonian Libraries)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Fantastic
Gustave Dor\u00e9\u2019s illustration of a ship sailing to the moon from \u2018The Adventures of Baron Munchausen\u2019 (London, 1867) (courtesy Smithsonian Libraries)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
\"Illustration
Illustration from Asa Smith\u2019s \u2018Smith\u2019s Illustrated Astronomy: Designed for the Use of the Public or Common Schools in the United States\u2019 (New York, 1849) (courtesy Smithsonian Libraries, gift of the Burndy Library)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction 1780\u20131910<\/a>\u00a0from the Smithsonian Libraries continues through February 26, 2017, at the Smithsonian National Museum of American History<\/a> (1 West 14th Street and Constitution Avenue NW, Washington, DC).<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

Source: Airships and Reanimated Corpses from the Pages of Early Science Fiction<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Illustration from Albert Robida\u2019s \u2018Le vingti\u00e8me si\u00e8cle\u2019 (\u2018The twentieth century,\u2019 Paris, 1880s) (courtesy Smithsonian Libraries) WASHINGTON, DC \u2014 Science fiction rose to prominence in the 19th and early 20th centuries, when authors like H. G. Wells, Jules Verne, and Mary Shelley imagined the extraordinary possibilities of advances in technology\u00a0and exploration.\u00a0Fantastic Worlds: Science and Fiction 1780\u20131910, […]<\/p>\n<\/a>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":56411,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[880],"tags":[208,344,495,596,614,615,728,738],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56410"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=56410"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56410\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76563,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56410\/revisions\/76563"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=56410"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=56410"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thatgrrl.com\/site\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=56410"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}