A Brilliant Void: A Selection of Classic Irish Science Fiction

by Jack Fennell

  At length I grew so pale and emaciated, from want of rest and continual brooding over my insane love and its cruel conditions, that I determined to make some effort to wean myself from it. ‘Come,’ I said, ‘this is at best but a fantasy. Your imagination has bestowed on Animula charms which in reality she does not possess. Seclusion from female society has produced this morbid condition of mind. Compare her with the beautiful women of your own world, and this false enchantment will vanish.’

  I looked over the newspapers by chance. There I beheld the advertisement of a celebrated danseuse who appeared nightly at Niblo’s. The Signorina Caradolce had the reputation of being the most beautiful as well as the most graceful woman in the world. I instantly dressed and went to the theatre.

  The curtain drew up. The usual semicircle of fairies in white muslin were standing on the right toe around the enamelled flower-bank of green canvas, on which the belated prince was sleeping. Suddenly a flute is heard. The fairies start. The trees open, the fairies all stand on the left toe, and the queen enters. It was the Signorina. She bounded forward amid thunders of applause, and, lighting on one foot, remained poised in the air. Heavens! was this the great enchantress that had drawn monarchs at her chariot-wheels? Those heavy, muscular limbs, those thick ankles, those cavernous eyes, that stereotyped smile, those crudely painted cheeks! Where were the vermeil blooms, the liquid, expressive eyes, the harmonious limbs of Animula?

  The Signorina danced. What gross, discordant movements! The play of her limbs was all false and artificial. Her bounds were painful athletic efforts; her poses were angular and distressed the eye. I could bear it no longer; with an exclamation of disgust that drew every eye upon me, I rose from my seat in the very middle of the Signorina’s pas-de-fascination and abruptly quitted the house.

  I hastened home to feast my eyes once more on the lovely form of my sylph. I felt that henceforth to combat this passion would be impossible. I applied my eyes to the lens. Animula was there, but what could have happened? Some terrible change seemed to have taken place during my absence. Some secret grief seemed to cloud the lovely features of her I gazed upon. Her face had grown thin and haggard; her limbs trailed heavily; the wondrous lustre of her golden hair had faded. She was ill – ill, and I could not assist her! I believe at that moment I would have forfeited all claims to my human birth right if I could only have been dwarfed to the size of an animalcule, and permitted to console her from whom fate had forever divided me.

  I racked my brain for the solution of this mystery. What was it that afflicted the sylph? She seemed to suffer intense pain. Her features contracted, and she even writhed, as if with some internal agony. The wondrous forests appeared also to have lost half their beauty. Their hues were dim, and in some places faded away altogether. I watched Animula for hours with a breaking heart, and she seemed absolutely to wither away under my very eye. Suddenly I remembered that I had not looked at the water-drop for several days. In fact, I hated to see it; for it reminded me of the natural barrier between Animula and myself. I hurriedly looked down on the stage of the microscope. The slide was still there – but, great heavens, the water drop had vanished! The awful truth burst upon me; it had evaporated, until it had become so minute as to be invisible to the naked eye; I had been gazing on its last atom, the one that contained Animula – and she was dying!

  I rushed again to the front of the lens and looked through. Alas! the last agony had seized her. The rainbow-hued forests had all melted away, and Animula lay struggling feebly in what seemed to be a spot of dim light. Ah! the sight was horrible: the limbs once so round and lovely shrivelling up into nothings; the eyes – those eyes that shone like heaven – being quenched into black dust; the lustrous golden hair now lank and discoloured. The last throe came. I beheld that final struggle of the blackening form, and I fainted.

  When I awoke out of a trance of many hours, I found myself lying amid the wreck of my instrument, myself as shattered in mind and body as it. I crawled feebly to my bed, from which I did not rise for many months.

  They say now that I am mad; but they are mistaken. I am poor, for I have neither the heart nor the will to work; all my money is spent, and I live on charity. Young men’s associations that love a joke invite me to lecture on optics before them, for which they pay me, and laugh at me while I lecture. ‘Linley, the mad microscopist’ is the name I go by. I suppose that I talk incoherently while I lecture. Who could talk sense when his brain is haunted by such ghastly memories, while ever and anon among the shapes of death I behold the radiant form of my lost Animula!

  The Age of Science

  FRANCES POWER COBBE (1877)

  Satirical extracts from future

  newspapers almost constituted a

  subgenre of their own in the nineteenth

  and early twentieth centuries, and few

  of them carried glad tidings of things to

  come. The following abridged novella

  by Frances Power Cobbe is similarly

  pessimistic, but it stands out from the

  crowd in the way that it communicates

  the author’s worries about women’s civil

  rights and cruelty to animals with irony

  and dark humour. In Cobbe’s imaginary

  future, reactionaries use the language

  of science and rationality as they try

  to reverse social advancement; thus,

  scholarly apes aside, this piece seems

  oddly prescient.

  THE GREATEST DISCOVERY ever achieved by man is beyond all question that which it is now our privilege to announce, namely, that of the new Prospective Telegraph. By this truly wonderful invention (exquisitely simple in its machinery, yet of surpassing power) the obstacle of Time is as effectually conquered as that of Space has been for the last generation by the Electric Telegraph; and future years – even, it is anticipated, future centuries – will be made to respond to our call as promptly and completely as do now the uttermost parts of the earth wherewith the magic wire has placed us in communication.

  For obvious reasons the particulars of this most marvellous invention, and the name of its author, must be withheld from the public till the patents (and the enormous profits) be secured to the Company which is invited to undertake to work it (with limited liability). We are only permitted by special favour to hint that the natural Force relied on to set the machinery in action is neither Electric, Magnetic, nor Galvanic; nor yet any combination of these; but that other great correlated imponderable agency, whose existence has been for some time suspected by many intelligent inquirers, called the Psychic Force. That no scepticism may linger in the minds of our readers, we desire to add that we have at this moment in our hands a complete transcript of a newspaper dated January 1st, 1977. As the printed matter of this gigantic periodical equals at least in bulk the whole of Gibbon’s History, or Mr Jowett’s edition of Plato, we cannot attempt to do more than offer our readers a few brief extracts.

  The name of this journal (which, we conclude, may be considered the Times of the twentieth century) is THE AGE OF SCIENCE, and obviously refers with pride to the consciousness of its readers that they live in a period of the world’s history when Science reigns supreme over human affairs, having triumphed over such things as War, the Chase, Literature, Art, and Religion. This appropriate title is printed, we may remark, in the largest and clearest possible Roman type: judging from the opticians’ advertisements of ‘Spectacles for Infants’, ‘Spectacles for Elementary Schools by the gross’, and ‘Cautions to Mothers’ against allowing babies to use their eyes, it would appear that unassisted vision has become rare, if not unknown. There are ten columns on each page, each ten times as long as it is broad, and there are a hundred pages in the journal, proving that the decimal system has been thoroughly adopted even in such details.

  Spread out open, the Age of Science would cover the floor of a very large hall. The familiarity of the contributors with all substances of chemistry, all the b
ones of all the beasts, birds, and fishes, alive or dead, and all the diseases incidental to humanity, speaks volumes for the superiority of their scientific education over our own. At the same time, on two or three occasions when illustrations have been chosen from past History or Poetry, the writers betray that their studies have not been much extended in the direction of Literature. One gentleman thinks that Mr Gladstone wrote the Iliad on hints afforded by Dr Schliemann, and that Milton was the author of the Book of Genesis. Another refers to the period when Rome was founded by Romeo and Juliet, while a third mentions the ‘once-celebrated Divina Commedia by Molière’, and regrets that ‘so curious a specimen of archaic Japanese art as Titian’s Assumption should not have been spared from the pile in which the Transfiguration of Phidias and the Last Supper of Praxiteles were destroyed by order of the Committee of the Royal Academy, to stop the propagation of bad aesthetic taste’.

  The first page is rationally devoted to Telegraphic Intelligence, which everyone may be supposed to desire first to read. However, since the invention of the ‘Army Exterminator’ forty years prior, followed up so rapidly by the invention of the ‘Fleet Annihilator’, international policy has necessarily undergone a great modification. As war has become impossible as an ultima ratio in any case, and the principle of Arbitration, on which such hopes were founded, has proved ineffective, a permanent state of discord between nations seems to have become established. The foreign news of the hour is somewhat unsatisfactory. In consequence of the generally lawless condition of the Southern Russian Republics, the great corn districts of those regions have for some years been falling out of cultivation; and no hopes are entertained that any more grain shall be imported from Odessa, or indeed from any quarter of the world.

  Despite these developments, instead of political news these telegrams consist mainly of minute verbatim reports of the proceedings of over ninety Scientific Congresses, which seem to be taking place at the same time in Europe, Asia, America, Australia, and Africa. It would occupy more space than the whole of this volume to offer even the briefest condensation of these reports, as they are carried on in terms quite unintelligible to us, and refer to scientific disputes to which we do not possess a clue. Following this is a Report of the Assembly of Convocation – a topic which we were surprised to find possessed such prominent interest, till we discovered that the Convocation of 1977 will consist exclusively of Medical men. The Upper House seems to be formed of Physicians and Surgeons who have obtained titles of Nobility, and the Lower House to be a representative body elected by medical graduates throughout the kingdom.

  After the Report of Convocation, the Age of Science contains one column of Stocks and Shares, not possessing any special interest for readers of the present day, but appearing to prove, strangely enough, that investments are much fewer than in our time, and cannot be made in any Foreign securities. It seems the dream of Free Trade has been exploded; following the example of the American Empire (which ceased to be a Republic decades beforehand), prohibitive duties are placed on each state’s own exports and the imports of other countries, meaning that commerce is considerably hampered. The restored native rulers of what was formerly called Britain’s Indian Empire, and China after its brief occupation, have adopted American and European ideas as to placing for this next year such duties on rice and tea as will almost prohibit the importation of those articles into the English market, while they have positively forbidden the introduction of English cotton or iron into their respective States. The bad and deceptive quality of the goods furnished by British manufacturers is the alleged cause of these unfortunate regulations.

  After these, in lieu both of Naval and Military Intelligence, and of the Church, five columns are devoted to Medical Appointments and Promotions. After all these we find twenty columns devoted to Latest Intelligence, in short paragraphs, of which we cull a few of the most interesting.

  ‘OCCASIONAL NOTES. The magnificent Joss House now in process of erection by the Chinese of London forms a striking ornament to Regent Street, standing as it does on the site of the old deserted Langham Chapel. It will, we imagine, be the only place dedicated to religion’s purposes which has been built during the last twenty years in the metropolis, and almost the only one in actual use. Although we cannot, as a Scientific nation, formally join in the worship of Buddha, we must all regard with sympathy and satisfaction the honours paid to that great Teacher by the very important section of our community, the Chinese, of whom it is said more than half a million have contributed to the erection and adornment of this Temple. The statue of Buddha is a noble work of modern sculpture by Mr Merino. The traditional pose of the crossed legs is slightly altered to bring them within the rules of scientific anatomy, and the Sage is obviously pondering those profound lessons of Pessimism (that it is a bad world we live in, and that we need not expect a better) which have justly secured for him the reverence of cultivated Europe.’

  ‘An Accident of the ordinary sort occurred last night to the new Magnetic train, which was at the moment passing under the Channel, about ten miles from Dover. It appears that the engineers have been again at fault in the construction of the roof of the tunnel, and that the sea was rushing in with such violence that little hopes were entertained of bringing the train to the next watertight compartment; it must he assumed that the unfortunate passengers – numbering, it is supposed, about 800 – have been drowned like so many rats in a trap. The accident is unfortunate for the proprietors of Submarine Tunnel Stock, and also for several Insurance Companies, as extensive repairs will be required; but Science teaches us to regard these occurrences with composure, as serving to check the increase of a superabundant population.’

  ‘The Simian Educational Institute (on Frobel’s system), for members of the Ape family, continues to attract the strongest interest. In testing the educability of the Simian tribe, we are solving one of the most important problems of Science, and hitherto everything seems to promise the triumphant success of the experiment. There are now three Chimpanzees among the pupils at the Institute, whose grandfathers and grandmothers have all been well-educated monkeys; so that the set of the brain of these young people is already marked towards progress and civilisation. It is needless to observe that all the students are required to wash and dress themselves every morning in the becoming male and female habiliments provided by the taste of the Governors of the Institute. Great pains are also taken with their manners at meal times, and, to avoid temptation, nuts are not admitted at dessert.

  ‘One of the young gentlemen (Joseph Macacus Silenus, Esq., generally known by his intimates as “Joe”) is said to exhibit extraordinary talents, and to be able to answer any question in elementary science by means of an alphabet and a system of knocks – the best substitute for a spoken language, having been formerly invented by an ingenious race of impostors named Mediums, who flourished in the obscurity of the Victorian age. The plan adopted in France to employ the anthropoid apes as domestic servants has proved, we are informed, altogether successful in several families. Madame Le Singe, a fine specimen of the Gorilla tribe, has acted for some months as confidential Nurse in the family of M. Gobemouche, and is said to maintain discipline among her charges excellently well. It is an instructive spectacle to see Madame Le Singe walking on a fine day with the children, and pushing a perambulator in the Gardens of the Tuileries. The more ordinary employment found, however, for domestic Apes is that of cooks, when it is observed they occasionally call in the services of the household cat to assist them as kitchen-maid, especially when roast chestnuts form part of the entertainment.’

  ‘The absolute prohibition to Women to read or write – even in cases where they may have formerly acquired those arts (now recognised as so unsuitable to their sex) – will, we apprehend, tell importantly on the health of infants, and of course eventually on that of the community. So long as females indulged in no more deleterious practices than dancing in hot rooms all night, unclothing their necks and chests, wearing thin slippers
which exposed their feet to deadly chills, and tightening their waists till their ribs were crushed inwards, the Medical Profession very properly left them to follow their own devices with but little public remonstrance. The case was altered, however, when, three or four generations ago, a considerable movement was made for what was then called the Higher Education of women. The feeble brains of young females were taxed to study the now forgotten Greek and Latin languages, and even Mathematics and such Natural Science as was then understood.

  ‘The result was truly alarming; for these poor creatures flung themselves with such energy into the pursuits opened to them, that, as one of their critics remarked, they resembled “the palmer-worm and the canker-worm – they devoured every green thing”, and not seldom surpassed their masculine competitors. At length they began to aim at entering the learned Professions – the Legal, and even the Medical. Our readers may be inclined to doubt the latter fact, which seems to involve actual absurdity, but there is evidence that there once existed two or three Lady Doctors in London, who, like Pope Joan in Rome, foisted themselves surreptitiously into an exalted position from which Nature should have debarred them.

  ‘Of course, it was the solemn duty of the Medical Profession to put a stop at once to an error which might lead to such a catastrophe, and numerous books were immediately written proving (what we all now acknowledge) that the culture of the brains of women is highly detrimental to their proper functions in the community; and, in short, that the more ignorant a woman may be, the more delightful she is as a wife, and the better qualified to fulfil the duties of a mother. Since Science has thoroughly gained the upper hand over Religious and other prejudices, the position of women, we are happy to say, has been steadily sinking, and the dream of a Higher Education has been replaced by the abolition of even Elementary Schools for girls, and now by the final Act of last Session, which renders it penal for any woman to read a book or newspaper, or to write a letter. We anticipate the very happiest results from this thoroughly sound and manly legislation.’