I have a review of C.S. Lewis massively underrated Space Trilogy up on Culture 11.
But why is it comforting to be insignificant? Isn’t insignificance at the heart of the fiction of Wells and his heirs? Isn’t man’s nothingness at the base of the horror in Wells or (for example) in Lovecraft? At first that seems to be the case, but when you look closer, it’s less clear. In The Time Machine, for example, what terrifies and disgusts the narrator is not the absence of man, but his presence — the hideous hopping creatures which, in more and more degenerate form, populate the far future. Frankenstein’s monster is horrifying not because he isn’t human, but because he is. The gothic tradition on which much of sci-fi rests is about doubling; about recognizing one’s own twisted visage in the face of infinity. The supposed evolutionary ruthlessness, the acknowledgment of the “truth” of man’s insignificance, is, in these books, a kind of ruse. The real emotional power is in man’s proliferation; man is everywhere, inescapable. The future does not create the sci-fi writer; rather it is the sci-fi writer who creates, in his or her own image, the future.
I was thrilled to get a chance to write this. The Space Trilogy is one of my favorite works of twentieth century literature, period. Peter Suderman, the arts editor at Culture 11, very kindly agreed to let me write the piece, and to pay me for it, though there’s no discernible news hook for it anywhere in sight. So thanks, Peter.
the morlocks aren’t really human or at least if they are it’s not their resemblance to what the narrator thinks of as human that frightens him so much but their beastliness or maybe the miscegenation of the two (sets of) traits, as in The Island of Moreau. I also think it’s worth mentioning that in the penultimate episode of The Time Machine we get to witness the end of the world, which is definitely made eerier (if not downright horrifying) by its being devoid of any signs of civilization or recognizable flora and fauna. i don’t know if this really says much to your thesis but at the very least humanity did not seem to be an entirely inescapable presence in that book.
Oh yeah, and I enjoy your blog, I don’t think I’ve commented before but I’ve been reading for probably over a year now. Really happy to see the recent additions as well.
-David Alex
Hey David! Thanks for finally commenting; it’s always nice to hear we have regular readers.
The Morlocks and the creatures they prey on are definitely supposed to be descended from humans; he has a long disquisition where he imagines that the surface dwellers were the intellectuals and the Morlocks were the workers; it’s a kind of Marxist class-war apocalypse.
In the original serialized version of the story, there’s an incident which is cut out of many later printings, in which the time traveler comes across weird hopping things; they’re kind of rabbit-like, but they are clearly meant to be descended from humans. Then finally, at the very end of eternity, the last, most horrible thing he sees is a weird football thing out in the water — and it’s hopping. Again, the implication is that this ugly, completely alien thing is in fact the end of human evolution. (Without the missing chapter, this moment doesn’t actually make any sense; it’s only when you know that it’s supposed to be descended from human beings that the reason for the time traveler’s visceral disgust becomes clear.)
Great writing Noah. I copied and saved it, even.
Hey, thanks Uland! You read them recently, right? (I think I vaguely recall that from a TCJ message board thread.)