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H. BRUCE FRANKLIN Future Perfect: American Science Fic- Tion of the Nineteenth Century Revised Edition. Oxford: Oxford Universit

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H. BRUCE FRANKLIN Future Perfect: American Science Fic- Tion of the Nineteenth Century Revised Edition. Oxford: Oxford Universit also sets out separate sections for Lectures [London: St. James Press, 1972], p. 726). and Broadcasts, Contributions to Books, Since then, the fraction has changed only and Contributions to Periodicals. The Ency slightly—6 novels out of 31 volumes—and clopaedia of Sexual Knowledge and the Bantam editions of Darkness at Noon L'Encyclopédie de la Famille, both published now number 10. The bibliography makes under the pseudonym Dr. A. Costler, and a clear just how international the interest in diatribe. Von Weissen Nächten und Roten his fiction really is: The Gladiators (1939) Tagen (1933), the original title of which was exists in 9 languages, Darkness at Noon to have been The Soviet Land through (1940) in 32, Arrival and Departure (1943) in Bourgeois Eyes, are mentioned in the'pre­ 12, Thieves in the Night (1946) in 10, and The face, but, at Koestler's request, are exclud­ Age of Longing (1951) and The Call Girls ed from the bibliography. In "Works (1972) each in 9. The fact that translation about Arthur Koestler" (403 items), pre­ of early Koestler fictions continues into the pared by Thomas Frazier, arrangement is seventies implies the breadth, currency, by topic as well as by the individual Koestler and importance of his imaginative thought. works considered. Theses and dissertations Darkness at Noon, for example, appears as are included. Annotated references to C. E. Slepiashchaia t'ma in 1978 (New York: M. Joad's Decadence: A Philosophical Inquiry Chekhov); Arrival and Departure, as Hacsiz (1948), Langston Hughes's I Wonder as I haclilarm 1973 (Istanbul: Varlik Yayinevi). Wander (1956), W. T. Stace's Mysticism and Philosophy (1960), and Ludvig von As the above account suggests, Professors Bertalanffy's "Evolution: Chance or Law" Merrill and Frazier have provided a valu­ (from his Perspectives on General Systems able assist to those who would cross bound­ Theory [ 1975]), for example, are evidence of aries, to come to an integrated, comparative the thoroughness and, therefore, the use­ understanding of Koestler's achievement as fulness of Frazier's compilation. a thinker and a novelist. The volume provides a number of ser­ Camille R. La Bossière vices. Professor Merrill's introductory essay on Koestler's ideas, with its epigraph from The God that Failed (1939)—"It is this unity underlying diversity which makes me hope that my story is worth telling"—lucidly outlines the synthesist's search for that point where the sciences and the H. BRUCE FRANKLIN humanities coincide. Centering his account Future Perfect: American Science Fic­ on Koestler's Holon and Bisociation tion of the Nineteenth Century theories, Professor Merrill traces a well Revised Edition. Oxford: Oxford defined progress, from Insight and Outlook University Press, 1978. Pp. xi + (1949) and The Act of Creation (1964), through The Ghost in the Machine ( 1967), The 404. Paper $4.95. Roots of Coincidence (1972), and The Chal­ lenge of Chance (1973), tofanus: A Summing Up (1978). The essay persuasively argues Anthologies of science fiction frequently that to know Koestler at all one must take have an ephemeral interest since they too all of him into account: the litterateur and often are based on a personal preference of the man of science are inseparable. The an editor. Frequently, also, they are collec­ thesis is analogically sustained by the very tions of well-known stories easily found shape of the bibliography. Beginning with elsewhere, presented with little or no Koestler's fiction and drama, it ends with rationale. Neither of these criticisms is an appendix listing recent scientific litera­ applicable to Franklin's collection of ture citing his works. nineteenth-century science fiction. The reissue of this 1966 anthology attests the The bibliography also shows that Koes­ interest it aroused then as well as its tler is most widely known for his fiction. In continued usefulness—not only for the 1971, he referred to himself as "only stories themselves, but also for Franklin's one-fifth of a novelist"—of his 25 volumes illuminating and provocative comments. only 5 were novels—while observing in the same sentence that one of his novels, In this new edition, there are two sub­ Darkness at Noon, had sold more copies than stantive and valuable additions—stories by all his other books put together Jack London ("A Thousand Deaths") and (Contemporary Novelists, ed. James Vinson Washington Irving ("The Men of the 82 The International Fiction Review, 8, No. 1 (1981) Moon"). Franklin has also omitted a prefat­ ory argument for the legitimacy of science PETER K. GARRETT fiction as literature, since, he says, "that is The Victorian Multiplot Novel: no longer necessary." Studies in Dialogkal Form New Haven: Yale University Press, In his "Introduction," Franklin states that: "There was no major nineteenth 1980. Pp. 227. $17.50. century American writer of fiction, and indeed few in the second rank, who did not write some science fiction, or at least one This book grapples with the structural Utopian romance" (p. ix). His selection problems of Victorian novels, particularly illustrates this with a set of important the "loose baggy monsters" of Dickens, stories from the work of Poe, Hawthorne, Thackeray, George Eliot, and Trollope. In Ambrose Bierce, Edward Bellamy, and a it Garrett reacts against two opposing views number of lesser known writers. of a novel's structure: the traditional no­ tion, derived from drama, of a central plot After dealing with Hawthorne and Poe complemented by one or more subplots on separately in valuable introductory essays the one hand, and Jacques Derrida's notion to the three stories of each of these writers, of "free play" on the other. Garrett pro­ Franklin classifies the remainder of the poses to make the case for "dialogical form" selections into groups. His sections are: as a way of avoiding the rigidity of the Automata (Melville, "Bell Tower"); Mar­ former approach and the incoherent ran­ velous Inventions; Médecine Men; Into the domness of the latter. By "dialogical form," Psyche (Bierce, "A Psychological Ship­ a term adapted from Bakhtin, the author wreck"); Space Travel (Irving, "The Men in refers to the "voices"—points of view, the Moon"); and Time Travel (Harben, "In structural principles, perspectives—which the Year Ten Thousand"). Each of these compete for the reader's attention and sections is prefaced by a short (in some remain unsilenced at the novel's end. Gone cases all too brief) essay on the background are the usual distinctions between main plot of the theme and the authors of the and subplot and the links (Garrett calls selections. them "interrelationships") between them, and instead is a discussion of the forces Without exploring the full import of which make these novels ambiguous. Most their work on later developments in science prominent among these are the interplay fiction, Franklin's essays on Poe and between development of character and Hawthorne establish them as important static, descriptive detail (between what Gar­ early contributors to the genre. The ques­ rett calls the "temporal" and the "spatial"), tion of Poe's paternal relationship is and closely allied to this, the complex queried; and Hawthorne's futile attempts relationship between the narrator's de­ to be realistic are seen in the perspective of tached perspective and his attention to his other creative impulses. minute detail. One of Franklin's passing remarks indi­ After the theoretical abstractions of the cates a fertile area for critical speculation. introductory chapter (a kind of pons He says that the birth of American fiction at asinorum for non-structuralists) Garrett the height of gothicism and romanticism turns to Dickens's use of these basic pat­ did not permit American writers to develop terns before offering a treatment of his realistic tendencies until the end of the mystery plots in the late novels. One of the century. It may be that herein lies the most stimulating sections of the book, this literary foundation of the pre-eminence of chapter follows the shifting significance of Americans in the field of twentieth-century mystery in these novels as concealed infor­ science fiction. mation becomes less important to the working out of the plot and as Dickens's Although one would have welcomed an attention turns to mystery as an aspect of extensive bibliography of other nineteenth- human relationships in Our Mutual Friend. century American science fiction, this is In discussing Thackeray, Garrett's thesis is still a more than usually valuable anthology that while Dickens adapted already-existing for both teachers and students of the genre. forms, Thackeray rejects their arbitrariness in his attempt to reach the truth they William Prouty obscure. Next, Garrett explores the princi­ ple in George Eliot by which each character becomes an "equivalent centre" with a Brief Mentions 83 .
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