Irish Science Fiction

IRISH SCIENCE FICTION Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies, 48 Liverpool Science Fiction Texts and Studies Editor David Seed, University of Liverpool Editorial Board Mark Bould, University of the West of England Veronica Hollinger, Trent University Rob Latham, University of California Roger Luckhurst, Birkbeck College, University of London Patrick Parrinder, University of Reading Andy Sawyer, University of Liverpool Recent titles in the series 30. Mike Ashley Transformations: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazine from 1950–1970 31. Joanna Russ The Country You Have Never Seen: Essays and Reviews 32. Robert Philmus Visions and Revisions: (Re)constructing Science Fiction 33. Gene Wolfe (edited and introduced by Peter Wright) Shadows of the New Sun: Wolfe on Writing/Writers on Wolfe 34. Mike Ashley Gateways to Forever: The Story of the Science-Fiction Magazine from 1970–1980 35. Patricia Kerslake Science Fiction and Empire 36. Keith Williams H. G. Wells, Modernity and the Movies 37. Wendy Gay Pearson, Veronica Hollinger and Joan Gordon (eds.) Queer Universes: Sexualities and Science Fiction 38. John Wyndham (eds. David Ketterer and Andy Sawyer) Plan for Chaos 39. Sherryl Vint Animal Alterity: Science Fiction and the Question of the Animal 40. Paul Williams Race, Ethnicity and Nuclear War: Representations of Nuclear Weapons and Post-Apocalyptic Worlds 41. Sara Wasson and Emily Alder, Gothic Science Fiction 1980–2010 42. David Seed (ed.), Future Wars: The Anticipations and the Fears 43. Andrew M. Butler, Solar Flares: Science Fiction in the 1970s 44. Andrew Milner, Locating Science Fiction 45. Joshua Raulerson, Singularities 46. Stanislaw Lem: Selected Letters to Michael Kandel (edited, translated and with an introduction by Peter Swirski) 47. Sonja Fritzsche, The Liverpool Companion to World Science Fiction Film IRISH SCIENCE FICTION JACK FENNEll LIVERPOOL UNIVERSITY PRESS First published 2014 by Liverpool University Press 4 Cambridge Street Liverpool L69 7ZU Copyright © Jack Fennell 2014 The right of Jack Fennell to be identified as the author of this book has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Design and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher. British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication data A British Library CIP record is available print ISBN 978-1-78138-119-9 epdf ISBN 978-1-78138-605-7 Typeset by Carnegie Book Production, Lancaster Printed and bound by Booksfactory.co.uk. Contents Contents Acknowledgements vii Introduction 1 1 Mad Science and the Empire: Fitz-James O’Brien and Robert Cromie 32 2 “Future War” and Gender in Nineteenth-Century Ireland 62 3 Nationalist Fantasies of the Early Twentieth Century 85 4 States of Emergency: Irish SF during World War II 104 5 The 1960s: Lemass, Modernisation and the Cold War 133 6 The Wrong History: Bob Shaw, James White and the Troubles 152 7 Exotic Doom: The SF of Ian McDonald 172 8 The Dystopian Decades: From Recession to Tiger and Back Again 187 9 The Shape of Irish SF to Come 214 Notes 235 Bibliography 247 Index 259 v Acknowledgements Acknowledgements This book owes its existence to the generosity of a great many people. First and foremost, I want to thank Prof. Tom Moylan and Dr. Michael J. Griffin. Thanks also to Dr. Mark Bould and to Prof. Margaret Harper for their kind words, encouragement and constructive criticism. I would also like to thank all those who offered feedback on my work, in particular Prof. Anthony McElligott, Prof. Peadar Kirby, Prof. Tom Lodge, Dr. Joachim Fischer, Prof. Antonis Balasopoulos, Kim Stanley Robinson, Darko Suvin, Anthony Cond, Sue Barnes, Sebastian Manley and Prof. Philip O’Leary. The whole undertaking would have been practically impossible without the generous support of the Irish Research Council for the Humanities and Social Sciences (now known simply as the Irish Research Council). Huge thanks also to Prof. Bríona Nic Dhiarmada, without whose help this book would probably not exist at all. In my experience, it seemed that while no comprehensive bibliography of Irish science fiction exists, everyone I spoke to was aware of at least one such work. This project would have been significantly shorter if not for people suggesting texts for me to look at. Much thanks to Dr. Michael G. Kelly, John and Mary Fitzgerald and countless others. Thanks are also due to the University of Limerick’s Glucksman Library, the library of Mary Immaculate College, the National Library of Ireland and Cork City Library, whose staff were all very helpful and gracious in allowing me access to odd and hard-to-trace materials. Here I would especially thank Éadaoin Ní Chléirigh for her extraordinary kindness in granting me access to her late father’s personal library. I would also like to thank those whose friendship and support kept me sane through the past number of years, namely David Smart, John “Donny” Rowe, Aaron Smart, Ciara Williams, Jana Bedanˇová, Claire Crowley, Pádraig Baggott, Alan Collins, Shane and Jason Sibbel, Gary, Aidan and Ryan O’Doherty, Aoife Harney, Eoghan O’Brien, Barry Cronin, Rory Devane, Jean Cronin, Trish and Roberto, Liam and Finola, Tom and Joan, Mark Fennell, Johnny and Anna, Martin and Liz (and vii viii IRISH SCIENCE FICTION the rest of the Hamburg crew). My apologies to anyone I may have omitted; I know there must be some… Last but most certainly not least, I want to thank my parents, who have put up with my fascination for the bizarre since I was old enough to talk. Introduction Introduction Science knows it doesn’t know everything – otherwise, it would stop. Just because science doesn’t know everything doesn’t mean you can fill in the gaps with whatever fairytale most appeals to you. – Dara Ó Briain, Dara Ó Briain Talks Funny (2008) This book is not an encyclopaedia. I began with the expectation that the area I had chosen to scrutinise would be small and manageable. Little did I know that there were many more Irish SF works than I suspected, in English and in Irish, going back at least as far as the 1850s. Everyone I spoke to knew of one or two books or short stories and assumed that was the extent of it, but the one or two examples given were different every time. There was a general awareness of this stuff, but nobody had pulled it together systematically. With every week that went past, more and more novels and short works were brought to my attention. The project expanded far beyond what I originally expected, until I was forced to abandon my ambition to cover every single Irish SF text. To begin with, I have omitted films, firstly because film studies is not my forte, and secondly because the few Irish films that could have been included – The Boy from Mercury and Zonad, for example – make tongue-in-cheek use of the genre while keeping it at arm’s length (in the former, the science-fictional elements occur only in the imagination of the daydreaming young protagonist, while in the latter, an escaped criminal cons the moronic inhabitants of a small village into believing that he is an extraterrestrial). Other productions, such as Éireville, parody known SF works in order to poke fun at aspects of Irish society, but the SF is never more than exotic window-dressing for an over-the-top satire. For the most part, Irish films have not engaged with the genre on its own terms, though this is starting to change, as evidenced by the genetic-engineering horror Isolation and the alien-invasion comedy Grabbers. When it comes to deciding what to omit from a strictly literary study, the most obvious question is who exactly gets included under the label 1 2 IRISH SCIENCE FICTION “Irish”? Is such a distinction meaningful at all? There are political concerns to take into account, for a start: the island of Ireland contains two different countries, though the name “Ireland” is colloquially assumed to refer only to the twenty-six county Republic. I devote an entire chapter of this book to analysing the work of Bob Shaw and James White, and another to the SF of Ian McDonald; C.S. Lewis is briefly mentioned as well, along with the many anonymous and pseudonymous authors of nineteenth-century “future war” fiction, all of whom were/are Northern Irish. My get-out-of-jail-free card here is that when I say “Ireland” I am referring to the island as a whole, both territories included, and I am not attempting to construct any single, overarching definition of “Irishness.” This gives rise to a host of other problems, though: when I say “Irish SF,” am I simply referring to SF produced on the island of Ireland? If so, this survey ought to include the work of writers such as Harry Harrison and Anne McCaffrey, who had established their careers as SF authors in the USA long before moving to take advantage of the Republic’s tax exemption for writers and artists. For some reason their inclusion would seem odd, and yet their exclusion seems quite unfair – both were of Irish descent (Harrison had one Irish grandparent on his father’s side, while the surname “McCaffrey” quite clearly demonstrates an Irish heritage), both of them became Irish citizens, and both of them resided in Ireland from the 1970s onwards. As I have explained, the present study is not intended to be encyclopaedic, but it looks suspicious when I conveniently omit any mention of authors who might complicate my terms of reference.

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