Discovering the Lost Race Story: Writing Science Fiction, Writing Temporality

Discovering the Lost Race Story: Writing Science Fiction, Writing Temporality This thesis is presented for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy of The University of Western Australia 2008 Karen Peta Hall Bachelor of Arts (Honours) Discipline of English and Cultural Studies School of Social and Cultural Studies ii Abstract Genres are constituted, implicitly and explicitly, through their construction of the past. Genres continually reconstitute themselves, as authors, producers and, most importantly, readers situate texts in relation to one another; each text implies a reader who will locate the text on a spectrum of previously developed generic characteristics. Though science fiction appears to be a genre concerned with the future, I argue that the persistent presence of lost race stories – where the contemporary world and groups of people thought to exist only in the past intersect – in science fiction demonstrates that the past is crucial in the operation of the genre. By tracing the origins and evolution of the lost race story from late nineteenth-century novels through the early twentieth-century American pulp science fiction magazines to novel-length narratives, and narrative series, at the end of the twentieth century, this thesis shows how the consistent presence, and varied uses, of lost race stories in science fiction complicates previous critical narratives of the history and definitions of science fiction. In examining the implicit and explicit aspects of temporality and genre, this thesis works through close readings of exemplar texts as well as historicist, structural and theoretically informed readings. It focuses particularly on women writers, thus extending previous accounts of women’s participation in science fiction and demonstrating that gender inflects constructions of authority, genre and temporality. The continued and evolving presence of lost race stories shows that their inherent thematic concerns of space, time and cultural memory have implications for the analysis of science fiction as a whole. In representing movement through time, these stories ask how pasts exist in dialogue with the present. iii iv Table of Contents Abstract iii Table of Contents v Illustrations vi Acknowledgements vii Statement of Contribution ix Introduction Discovering the Lost Race Story 1 Chapter One Writing Origins: Nineteenth Century Foundations 23 Chapter Two Writing Desire: Sexuality, Space and Empire 65 Chapter Three Writing Pulp: Magazines and Generic Identity 105 Chapter Four Writing Memory: Narrative, Nostalgia and Generic Memory 153 Chapter Five Writing Onwards: Replication, Challenge and Progression 193 Chapter Six Writing Temporalities: Biology, Evolution and Medievalism 231 References 267 Appendix A Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Darkover Series 289 Appendix B Lois McMaster Bujold’s Vorkosigan Series 293 v Illustrations pages Figure 1. Frank R. Paul’s illustration, ‘12,000 Years Ago’, 146 for the back cover of Amazing Stories, May 1940. Figure 2. Frank R. Paul’s illustration, ‘Life on Callisto’, for the back cover of Amazing Stories, August 1940. 146 Figure 3. Frank R. Paul’s illustration, ‘Life on Uranus’, for the back cover of Amazing Stories, May 1940. 146 Figure 4. Leo Morey’s illustration of Leslie F. Stone’s ‘The 170 Rape of the Solar System’, for the cover of Amazing Stories, December 1934. Figure 5. ‘“Two minutes, Shane,” said Thaldrek, “and the 186 time bomb is still to be destroyed! Can you reach it –”. Hubert Rogers’s illustration of Leigh Brackett’s ‘The Treasure of Ptakuth’, Astounding Science-Fiction 25.2 (April 1940), p. 73. vi Acknowledgements Writing a thesis and letting it go is an act of faith, one that would not have occured without the belief and grace that I have relied on in so many people around me. First and always, my supervisors have been invaluable for their rigorous engagement with my work and understanding of the inevitable ups-and-downs associated with it. Jane Long gave thoughtful guidance in the initial stages of the project. Judy Johnston has been a generous critic, enthusiastic audience and calm refuge throughout. Chantal Bourgault has been the ideal model of a scholar and a gracious, patient and downright cool mentor. I have been more than fortunate in finding many supportive circles that have sustained my research. The Discipline of English and Cultural Studies has been all I could want in an intellectual home, and the staff, particularly Alison Bartlett, Tanya Dalziell, Kieran Dolin, Van Ikin, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Gail Jones, Andrew Lynch and Chris Wortham, have encouraged me throughout the transition from student to scholar. The administrators – especially Linda Cresswell and Sue Lewis – have provided both practical knowledge and empathy. My fellow ECS postgraduate students created a vibrant and welcoming community: special thanks to Stacey Fox, Alison Jaquet, Darren Jorgensen, Tama Leaver, Olivia Mair, Jessica Needle, David Nel, and Lorraine Sim. Thanks are also owed to my homes away from home: the Discipline of History, who have welcomed an interdisciplinary interloper at numerous seminars and functions; the Institute of Advanced Studies, for the opportunity to participate in discussion on areas of relevance or merely of interest; the Limina collective, for teaching me all I needed to know about constructive criticism and compulsive proof reading; and my colleagues in the Study Smarter team and the Graduate Research School, who have supported me through the intersections of theory and practice in postgraduate life. An Australian Postgraduate Award allowed me to take this path up in the first place. I have also benefited from travel funding from the Graduate Research School vii and the School of Social and Cultural Studies. Funding from the Network for Early European Research enabled me to attend advanced postgraduate training seminars, and provided a concrete demonstration of the exciting possibilities of dialogues across disciplines and periodisation. I am especially indebted to Stephanie Trigg for an advance copy of her article, ‘What is Happening to the Middle Ages?’. The staff of the Reid Library, especially the Scholars’ Centre, provided a vital workspace and library services. Special mention must go to Michele Coles, for her heroic interlibrary loan efforts. I also relied on the patient assistance of the staff in the special collections of the Fisher Library, University of Sydney, who allowed me – even when crumpled and grumpy from midnight flights – repeated access to the science fiction magazines that were crucial for the formation of this thesis. Thank you to the Scholars Crew, who were always ready for coffee, complaining or celebration as required. You guys are the best people to go thesis- crazy with: Andrew Broertjes, Sarah Brown, Nicole Crawford, Margaret Dorey, Fiona Groenhout, Marianne Hicks, Joanne McEwan, Lisa McKinney, Graeme Miles, Lesley O’Brien and Kate Riley. In particular, Alicia Marchant stepped in as a last minute saviour by checking references in Sydney. And finally, my very dearest: Jon Addison, who lent me courage; Lindsay Renner, who insisted that it could be finished; Lee Renner, a wonderfully bad influence; and Sue, John, Nicole and Tara Hall, who patiently endured having a thesis in the family, having signed up without realising what they were in for but sticking around anyway. This was always for you. viii ix x Introduction: Discovering the Lost Race Story Lost race stories imagine encounters between the past and the present, and in this process destabilise teleological temporalities. I argue that lost race stories form part of the genre of science fiction, and that they contribute through their thematic preoccupations to the broader exploration of technological, historical and cultural change that characterises science fiction. From their origins in the nineteenth century though to the present, lost race stories demonstrate a potential for popular fiction to interrogate simplistic and linear conceptions of imperialism, science and technology, and modernity. In particular, I argue that both the conceptual work and generic role of lost race stories is influenced by gender, and articulated through gendered discourses. The focus, therefore, is on lost race stories by women writers, whose use of the form engages with the issues of gender that impinge upon the production of and representations within such texts. By taking lost race stories seriously, my work expands considerably on previous accounts of the historical and conceptual range of the lost race story. For the purposes of this discussion, I define a lost race story as a narrative where a recognisably human group is found by members of another recognisably human group. That discovering group is usually contemporary, while the ‘lost’ group often stands in for a past society; nonetheless, there is some form of biological and/or historical connection between the two groups. In standard form, the lost race is exotic, racially and culturally different, and often connected to past empires – real or imagined – such as the Atlanteans, Mayans, or Phoenicians. The loss embodied by the lost race only becomes meaningful when found, when absence is apprehended through presence, rupture replaced by reunion. This definition is rough and open, and meant to be so. Throughout this work I explore the evolution of lost race stories, demonstrating that they react to other lost race texts with both continuity and alteration, conditioned by wider issues of genre and cultural change, rather than through conformation

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