Book Review: Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century Howard Bruce Franklin (editor)

 

 

Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century
Howard Bruce Franklin (editor)

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1966

Most of my reference and non-fiction book reviews are generally going to be shorter but this is not your typical history book about the science fiction genre. The split is about 50/50 between history and context and actual Science Fiction stories from the 19th century, some having been written 50 to 70 years before Hugo Gernsbeck gave the genre as a marketing name. While some of the names such as Edgar Allen Poe is known for writing gothic and horror, and well his detectives his story ‘Mellonta Tauta’ about a hot-air balloon ride a thousand years in the future was a revelation. 

The same with a robot story by Moby Dick author Herman Melville, decades before that was a term. Time travel stories and weird fiction tales by greats like Nathaniel Hawthorne. I personally enjoyed the historical non-fiction context a little more than the actual stories. Let's get into the idea that these are actually SF because those who like to narrow genre definitions will think so. 

It is true none of these are as clear early examples as HG Wells or Frankensteins and of course The Blazing World' by Margaret Cavendish a SF novel from the 17th century if we are going to spilt hairs. You can’t read those Poe and Melville stories and not acknowledge them as SF retroactively. Let's be real. 

The author of this book just recently and sadly that is how he got on my radar when he recently passed away. Seemed like a scholar who was doing really good work. He was known as a cultural historian and not so much a SF guy. He had almost twenty books as editor or author. His histories of the Vietnam War and the movements against it were the books he was most famous for. Two books I really NEED to check are Countdown to Midnight, an anthology of SF stories about nuclear war released in 1984, and his Bush-era book Crash Course to Forever War. 

 Good stuff. Anyone who is serious about the study of science fiction should have this on their shelf.