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Explorers of the Infinite: Shapers of Science Fiction

Sam Moskowitz

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Mar 08, 2008 Werner rated it really liked it · review of another edition

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Despite my interest in the serious study of literature, and a sense of its history and traditions, on the whole I read far less secondary books about literature than I do literature itself. (I'm conscious of having so much of the latter still to read that time taken to read the former sometimes feels almost stolen!) But this is a book that caught my attention in the BC library; and prompted by my liking for speculative fiction, I decided to indulge my curiosity. I'd recently taken a corresponden Despite my interest in the serious study of literature, and a sense of its history and traditions, on the whole I read far less secondary books about literature than I do literature itself. (I'm conscious of having so much of the latter still to read that time taken to read the former sometimes feels almost stolen!) But this is a book that caught my attention in the BC library; and prompted by my liking for speculative fiction, I decided to indulge my curiosity. I'd recently taken a correspondence course in the history of science fiction from the Univ. of Iowa, and for several years around this time was toying with the idea of developing a college-level course in it myself (though that idea fell through eventually), so this reading followed along very much with that interest. (The date I assigned for finishing this book --1997-- is a rough guess, but it was before the autumn of 1998.)

Author Sam Moskowitz (1920-97) was, like his friend and contemporary Isaac Asimov, an avid teenage fan of SF in the days when its American scene was a tiny and insular literary ghetto of sorts, centered around a handful of pulp magazines (book publishers weren't interested back then), and comprised mostly of passionate and defensive readers who formed a conscious fan community, and mostly shared the ethos of secular humanist, technophilic optimism. Moskowitz was one of the leading lights of this little world --he chaired the first World Science Fiction Convention, while still in his teens!-- and went on to make the genre basically his career; but unlike Asimov, his interest in SF wasn't so much in writing it (though he dabbled a bit) as in studying it, writing about it, and promoting it. Not a trained literary scholar, he nonetheless built up an impressive knowledge of the field that commanded considerable respect (in later life, he was sometimes asked to teach college courses on it), though his interpretations were sometimes questioned by others. He wrote a number of serious books covering the whole development of the SF tradition, as well as editing several anthologies and single-author collections (one I can personally recommend is Science Fiction by Gaslight: A History and Anthology of Science Fiction in the Popular Magazines, 1891-1911).

This particular book is a collection of 18 chronologically arranged biocritical studies of major writers in the historical development of the genre, from Cyrano de Bergerac in the late 1600s to 1930s luminary Stanley G. Weinbaum. It's rounded out by a chapter on how the term "science fiction" came into use (the genre itself, of course, is much older than the modern term), which also gives a thumbnail history of the genre from Wells' "scientific romances" up to the pulp "Golden Age," and a final chapter that continues the story of the trends up to the time of the book's writing, around 1963. The author also provides a short (about 4 pages) introduction that traces elements of SF back to the Odyssey and sketches developments up into the Romantic period and talks about the significance of the genre, as well as briefly introducing the book. It's written for serious lay fans, not scholars; there are no footnotes, though there is a three-page index of people referred to, and no high-faluting literary-critical jargon.

My four-star rating reflects the fact that I found this absolutely fascinating, and totally readable! I learned an enormous lot about the lives and work of some writers I was already aware of, which really fleshed them out for me; and I was introduced to several authors I'd never heard of before, a few of whom whose work I went on to read later, notably Fitz-James O'Brien, Abraham Merritt (The Ship of Ishtar) and Karel Capek (R.U.R.). And in some cases, while I knew about the writer, I was ignorant of his contribution to SF; for instance, I knew Edward Everett Hale as the author of "The Man Without a Country," but had no idea he was the first fiction writer to treat the idea of a man-made orbiting satellite (in The Brick Moon, 1869). Almost all of the writers treated are male, reflecting the male dominance of the genre up to and beyond the mid-20th century; but the author deserves credit for including Mary Shelley as one of his 18 "shapers" of the tradition.

There are quibbles that could be noted here. Apparently, Moskowitz didn't know about the conventional use of italics for the titles of full-length works, but quotation marks for those of shorter works; he tends to italicize every title, a quirk that can be irritating and confusing. Some critics have accused him of exaggerating the rivalry between Edgar Rice Burroughs and Otis Adelbert Kline. And he has his personal fondness for the more gadget-oriented and "hard" brand of SF, and for tropes involving outer space, rather than for "soft" SF and for the strand that's more concerned with sociology than technology. That influences his selection of writers (though the "soft" school isn't ignored), and his discussion in the last chapter. He also doesn't set the historical development of the genre in the context of the history of literature as a whole, though I had enough general knowledge to make those connections for myself.

None of these criticisms, though, takes away from the four-star quality of this work. It's one I highly recommend for any reader who wants an introduction to the genre's history --though it isn't the only work worth reading on the subject, and not the only one I've read. Another very worthwhile source is Anatomy of Wonder: A Critical Guide to Science Fiction --I personally recommend the 3rd edition, as having more detailed treatment of the early period than the current edition. (Even though this is a reference book, I've pretty much read the third edition cover to cover!) ...more

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