Scientific Romance - Definitions

Definitions

Brian Stableford, in Scientific Romance in Britain: 1890-1950 argued that early British science-fiction writers who used this term differed in several significant ways from American science fiction writers of the time. Most notably, the British writers tended to minimize the role of individual "heroes", took an "evolutionary perspective", held a bleak view of the future, and had little interest in space as a new frontier. Regarding "heroes", several novels by H. G. Wells have the protagonist as nameless, and often powerless, in the face of natural forces. The evolutionary perspective can be seen in tales involving long time periods—two examples being The War of the Worlds and The Time Machine by Wells and Star Maker by Olaf Stapledon. Even in scientific romances that did not involve vast stretches of time, the issue of whether mankind was just another species subject to evolutionary pressures often arose, as can be seen in parts of The Hampdenshire Wonder by J. D. Beresford and several works by S. Fowler Wright. Regarding space, C. S. Lewis's Space Trilogy took the position that "as long as humanity remains flawed and sinful, our exploration of other planets will tend to do them more harm than good"; and most scientific romance authors had not even that much interest in the topic. As for bleakness, it can be seen in many of the works by all the already cited authors: humanity was deemed by them flawed—either by original sin or, much more often, by biological factors inherited from our ape ancestors.

Nonetheless, not all British science fiction from that period comports with Stableford's thesis. Some, for example, reveled in adventures in space and held an optimistic view of the future. By the 1930s, there were British authors (such as Eric Frank Russell) who were intentionally writing "science fiction" for American publication. At that point, British writers who used the term "scientific romance" did so either because they were unaware of science fiction or because they chose not to be associated with it.

After World War II, the influence of American science fiction caused the term "scientific romance" to lose favor, a process accelerated by the fact that few writers of scientific romance considered themselves "scientific romance" writers, instead viewing themselves as "just writers" who occasionally happened to write a scientific romance. Even so, the influence of the scientific romance era persisted in British science fiction, and indeed had some impact on the American variety.