The Road to Science Fiction

by James Gunn

  Thus resolved, and having got together what was requisite for such an exploit, upon a Thursday morning, when the heavens were all serene and cloudless, I left the city soon after twilight, to the end that having finished my observations, I might return again that same day; because, being ignorant of futurity, it was not possible I should foresee that I, like another Phaeton, should be flung upon another world, not to revisit my native soil till after a ten years’ peregrination.

  This expedition was undertaken in the year of our Lord 1665, Hans Munthe and Lars Sorensen being consuls of Bergen, and Christian Bertelsen and Lars Sand being senators. I went out attended by four fellows I had hired, who brought with them such ropes and iron crooks as would be necessary to descend by. We went directly to Sandvik, the most commodious way to climb the mountain. Having with difficulty reached the top, we came to the place where was the fatal cave, and being tired with so troublesome a journey, we all sat down to breakfast.

  ’Twas then my mind, foreboding as it were the approaching evil, first began to be dismayed. Therefore, turning to my companions, “Will anyone,” says I, “undertake this task?” But no reply being made, my ardour, that had languished, kindled anew. I ordered them to fasten the rope about me, and thus equipped, I commended my soul to Almighty God. Being now just ready to be let down, I gave my companions to understand what I would have done, viz., that they should continue letting down the rope till they heard me cry out, upon which signal they should stop, and if I persisted to cry out, that then they should immediately draw me up again. In my right hand I held my harpoon, or iron hook, an instrument that might be of use to me to remove whatever might obstruct my passage, and also to keep my body suspended equally between the sides of the cavern. But scarce had I descended so low as about ten or twelve cubits, when the rope broke. This accident was discovered to me by the sudden outcries of the men I had hired. But their noise soon died away; for with an amazing velocity I was hurried down into the abyss, like a second Pluto, allowing my harpoon to be a sceptre.

  For about the fourth part of an hour (as near as I could guess, considering the great consternation I must be in) I was in total darkness, and in the very bosom of night; when at length a thin small light, like twilight, broke in upon me, and I beheld at last a bright serene firmament. I ignorantly thought, therefore, that either by the repercussion or opposite action of the subterranean air, or that by the force of some contrary wind, I had been thrown back, and that the cave had vomited me up again. But neither the sun which I then surveyed, nor the heavens, nor heavenly bodies were at all known to me, since they were considerably less than those of ours. I concluded therefore that either all that whole mass of new heavens existed solely in imagination, excited by the vertigo my head had undergone, or else that I was arrived at the mansions of the Blessed. But this last opinion I soon rejected with scorn, since I viewed myself armed with a harpoon, and dragging a mighty length of rope after me, knowing full well that a man just going to Paradise has no occasion for a rope or a harpoon, and that the celestial inhabitants could not possibly be pleased with a dress which looked as if I intended, after the example of the Titans, to take Heaven by violence, and to expel them from their divine abodes. At last, after the maturest consideration, I fell to imagining that I was sunk into the subterranean world, and that the conjectures of those men are right who hold the Earth to be hollow, and that within the shell or outward crust there is another lesser globe, and another firmament adorned with lesser sun, stars, and planets. And the event discovered that this conjecture was right.

  That violence with which I was hurried headlong had now continued for some time, when at length I perceived that it languished gradually in proportion to my approach towards a certain planet, which was the first thing I met with. That same planet increased so sensibly in bulk or magnitude that at last, without much difficulty, I could plainly distinguish mountains, valleys, and seas through that thicker atmosphere with which it was surrounded.

  Then I perceived that I did not only swim in a celestial matter or ether, but that my motion which had hitherto been perpendicular was now altered into a circular one. At this my hair stood on end, for I was full of apprehension lest I should be transformed into a planet, or into a satellite of the neighbouring planet, and so be whirled about in an everlasting rotation. But when I reflected that by this metamorphosis my dignity would suffer no great diminution, and that a heavenly body, or at least an attendant upon a heavenly body, would surely move with equal solemnity to a famished philosopher, I took courage again, especially when I found from the benefit of that pure celestial ether that I was no longer pressed by hunger or thirst. Yet upon recollecting that I had in my pocket some of that sort of bread which the people of Bergen call bolken, and which is of an oval or oblong figure. I resolved to take it out and make an experiment whether in this situation I had any appetite. But at the first bite perceiving it was quite nauseous, I threw it away as a thing to all intents and purposes useless. The bread thus cast away was not only suspended in air, but (what was very marvelous to behold) it described a little circular motion round my own body. And from thence I learned the true laws of motion, by which it comes to pass that all bodies placed in equilibrium naturally affect a circular motion. Upon this, instead of deploring my wretchedness, as I had done, for being thus the sport of Fortune, I began to plume a little, finding that I was not only a simple planet, but such a planet as would have a perpetual attendant conforming itself to my motions, insomuch that I should have the honour to be reckoned in the number of the greater heavenly bodies or stars of the first magnitude. And to confess my weakness, so elated was I that if I had then met any of our consuls or senators of Bergen, I should have received them with a supercilious air, should have regarded them as atoms, and accounted them unworthy to be saluted or honoured with a touch of my harpoon.

  For almost three days I remained in this condition. For as without any intermission I was whirled about the planet that was next me, I could distinguish day from night; and observing the subterranean sun to rise, and set, and retire gradually out of my sight, I could easily perceive when it was night, though it was not altogether such as it is with us. For at sunset the whole face of the firmament appeared of a bright purple, not unlike the countenance of our moon sometimes. This I took to be occasioned by the inner surface of our Earth, which borrowed that light from the subterranean sun, which sun was placed in the center. This hypothesis I framed to myself, being not altogether a stranger to the study of astronomy.

  But while I was thus amused with the thoughts of being in the neighbourhood of the gods, and was congratulating myself as a new constellation, together with my satellite that surrounded me, and hoped in a short time to be inserted in the catalogue of stars by the astronomers of the neighbouring planet, behold! an enormous winged monster hovered near me, sometimes on this side, now on that side, and by and by over my head. At first view I took it for one of the twelve heavenly signs in this new world, and accordingly hoped that, if the conjecture was right, it would be that of Virgo, since out of the whole number of the twelve signs, that alone could yield me, in my unhappy solitude, some delight and comfort. But when the figure approached nearer to me, it appeared to be a grim, huge griffin. So great was my terror that, unmindful of my starry dignity to which I was newly advanced, in that disorder of my soul I drew out my university testimonial, which I happened to have in my pocket, to signify to this terrible adversary that I had passed my academical examination, that I was a graduate student, and could plead the privilege of my university against anyone that should attack me.

  But my disorder beginning to cool, when I came to myself, I could not but condemn my folly. For it was yet a matter of doubt to what purpose this griffin should approach me, whether as an enemy or a friend; or, what is more likely, whether, led by the sole novelty of the thing, he had only a mind to feast his curiosity. For the sight of a human creature whirling about in air, bearing in his right hand a harpoon, and drawing after him
a great length of rope like a tail, was really a phenomenon which might excite even a brute creature to behold the spectacle. For the unusual figure I then exhibited gave to the inhabitants of the globe round which I revolved an occasion of divers conjectures and conversations concerning me, as I afterwards learned; for the philosophers and mathematicians would have me to be a comet, being positive that my rope was the tail; and some there were who, from the appearance of so rare a meteor, prognosticated some impending misfortune, a plague, a famine, or some other such extraordinary catastrophe; some also went further, and delineated my figure, such as it appeared to them at that distance, in very accurate drawings; so that I was described, defined, painted, and engraved before ever I touched their globe. All this I afterward heard with no small pleasure, and even laughter, when I was conveyed to that planet, and had learned their language.

  It must be noted that sometimes there appear new stars, which the Subterraneans call sciscisi, or blazing stars, which they describe as something looking horrid with fiery hair, and after the manner of our comets, bushy on the top, so as that it projects in form of a long beard; and these, as in our world, so in that, are reckoned ominous.

  But to resume my history. The griffin advanced so near at last as to incommode me by the flapping of his wings, and even did not scruple to attack my leg with his teeth, so that now it openly appeared with what disposition he pursued me. Upon this I began to attack this troublesome animal with arms and grasping my harpoon with both my hands, I soon curbed the insolence of my foe, obliging him to look about for a way to escape; and at last, since he persisted to annoy me, I darted my harpoon with such a force into the back of the animal between his wings, that I could not pull it out again. The wounded griffin, setting up a horrible cry, fell headlong upon the planet. As for myself, quite weary of this starry station, this new dignity, which I saw exposed to infinite hazards and evils, I held to the harpoon and fell with him. And now this circular motion I had described altered once more into a perpendicular one. And being for some time agitated and tossed with great violence by the opposite motions of a thicker air, at length by an easy, gentle descent, I alighted upon the aforesaid planet, together with the griffin, who soon after died of his wound.

  It was night when I was conveyed to that planet. This I could gather from the sole absence of the sun, and not from the darkness; for there still remained so much light that I could distinctly read my university testimonial by it. That light by night arises from the inward surface of our Earth, whose surface reflects a light like that of the moon among us. And hence, with respect to light alone, there is little difference between the nights and days, only that the sun is absent, and his absence makes the nights a little colder.

  Visitors from Space

  The eighteenth century brought Enlightenment to the world—the rationalist, liberal, humanitarian, and scientific approach to life, knowledge, and government that gave that era the name of The Age of Reason. It was a new direction in humanity’s evaluation of the universe and its position in it that had its origins in the Renaissance recovery of classical manuscripts and philosophies. Thomas Aquinas, in the thirteenth century, adopted Aristotelian logic to defend Catholic dogma; so-called “humanists” emerged in Italy and France in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries to argue that God was best worshiped by celebrating His crowning creation, humanity. In the sixteenth century François Rabelais, in Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532–1562), ridiculed many religious doctrines while Martin Luther was offering a revolutionary alternative to Catholicism and Michel de Montagne in his Essays created the foundations for cultural relativism with his repeated question, “What do I know?” In the seventeenth century Galileo displaced Earth as the center of the universe.

  In the seventeenth century, as well, René Descartes made a valiant effort to defend faith with logic, but Enlightenment philosophers added something radical to the mix: common sense supported by observation. Though known as the Age of Reason, the eighteenth century also could have been called the Age of Revolution, since it featured two of the three great revolutions in human history, the American and the French (the Russian is the third). One of the major figures whose speech and writings led up to the French Revolution was François Marie Arouet de Voltaire (1694–1778).

  The eighteenth century was a period of change in many ways, energized by the wealth brought back from Asia and the Americas to a rising middle class. The ideals of individualism, freedom, and change began to replace the older values of community, authority, and tradition upheld by the Church, the King, and the aristocrats. Voltaire was one of the aristocrats, dining at their tables, taking an aristocratic mistress, counseling monarchs, and charming everyone with his wit.

  But wit has its enemies, and Voltaire was unjustly imprisoned twice in his youthful years and then exiled to England where he added an admiration for English liberalism to his hatred of judicial arbitrariness. When he returned to France he wrote tragedies for the stage, including Brutus (1730) and Zaïre (1732), and Letters Concerning the English Nation (1733). After the death of his mistress in 1749, Voltaire went to live at the court of Prussia but left in 1753 after quarreling with Frederick II and settled on an estate near Geneva in Switzerland. He wrote The Age of Louis XIV (1751) and Essay on Manners (1756), but most important the Philosophical Dictionary (1764), setting down his political and religious concerns, and his satirical masterpiece Candide (1759).

  Candide’s only relationship to science fiction is its naïve hero’s eventful journey to explore the truth of his tutor’s (Dr. Pangloss’s) belief that “all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds.” Seven years earlier Voltaire published Micromegas (1752), which tells of a journey not from here to there but there to here by a giant creature from Sirius who comes to earth accompanied by a companion, a six-thousand-foot dwarf from Saturn. Only with great difficulty do they detect life on Earth, but they finally converse with human beings and find their ideas as petty as their height. The Age of Enlightenment prepared the way for the age of science fiction.

  From Micromegas

  BY FRANÇOIS MARIE AROUET DE VOLTAIRE

  CHAPTER 1. A VOYAGE TO THE PLANET SATURN BY A NATIVE OF SIRIUS

  In one of the planets that revolve round the star known by the name of Sirius was a certain young gentleman of promising parts, whom I had the honor to be acquainted with in his last voyage to this our little ant-hill. His name was Micromegas, an appellation suited to all great men, and his stature amounted to eight leagues in height, that is, twenty-four thousand geometrical paces of five feet each.

  Some of your mathematicians, a set of people always useful to the public, will perhaps instantly seize the pen and calculate that Mr. Micromegas, inhabitant of the country of Sirius, being from head to foot four and twenty thousand paces in length, making one hundred and twenty thousand royal feet, that we, denizens of this earth, being at a medium little more than five feet high, and our globe nine thousand leagues in circumference; these things being premised, they will then conclude that the periphery of the globe which produced him must be exactly one and twenty millions six hundred thousand times greater than that of this, our tiny ball. Nothing in nature is more simple and common. The dominions of some sovereigns of Germany or Italy, which may be compassed in half an hour, when compared with the Ottoman, Russian, or Chinese empires, are no other than faint instances of the prodigious difference that nature has made in the scale of beings. The stature of his excellency being of these extraordinary dimensions, all our artists will agree that the measure around his body might amount to fifty thousand royal feet, a very agreeable and just proportion.

  His nose being equal in length to one-third of his face, and his jolly countenance engrossing one-seventh part of his height, it must be owned that the nose of this Sirian was six thousand three hundred and thirty-three royal feet, to a hair, which was to be demonstrated. With regard to his understanding, it is one of the best cultivated I have known. He is perfectly well acquainted with abundance
of things, some of which are of his own invention; for, when his age did not exceed two hundred and fifty years, he studied according to the custom of the country, at the most celebrated university of the whole planet, and by the force of his genius discovered upwards of fifty propositions of Euclid, having the advantage by more than eighteen of Blaise Pascal, who (as we are told by his own sister), demonstrated two and thirty for his amusement and then left off, choosing rather to be an indifferent philosopher than a great mathematician.

  About the four hundred and fiftieth year of his age, or latter end of his childhood, he dissected a great number of small insects not more than one hundred feet in diameter, which are not perceivable by ordinary microscopes, on which he composed a very curious treatise, which involved him in some trouble. The mufti of the nation, though very old and very ignorant, made shift to discover in his book certain lemmas that were suspicious, unseemly, rash, heretic, and unsound, and prosecuted him with great animosity; for the subject of the author’s inquiry was whether, in the world of Sirius, there was any difference between the substantial forms of a flea and a snail.