The haunted space show full#
The haunted space show series#

Tellingly, she goes on to say how her then-teenage self had wondered whether “erhaps a corpse would be re-animated galvanism had given token of such things”. The story didn’t simply appear from nowhere, though, and in the introduction to the 1831 edition of Frankenstein Shelley talks of how “various philosophical doctrines were discussed, and among others the nature of the principle of life”. Mary Shelley concocted the idea of Frankenstein during a parlour game designed to liven her holiday on the banks of Lake Geneva in 1816, a holiday made dismal by the damp weather of the gloom-ridden ‘Year Without Summer’. Frankenstein, being the crux between the two, does this wonderfully. Crucially, though, they use these speculative elements to investigate their contemporary worlds and beliefs. Firstly, the links between sci-fi and Gothic horror and, secondly, why is it that both of them have so often been derided as empty of worth by the literary Establishment.īoth sci-fi and Gothic horror are ultimately speculative genres they talk about the what-ifs of strange places, distant times and alien thoughts. I will compare and contrast these selected works to investigate how they use their shared philosophical concerns to talk deeply about the biggest of Big Ideas not just what it means to be human but what it means to be.īefore that, however, I’ll use this introduction to talk about two major strands that weave through all of those forthcoming articles.

The haunted space show series#

In this series of articles I will look more deeply at some classic works of sci-fi and Gothic horror, in both film and print, to refute the claim that they have “neither principle, object, nor moral”. Two men (our anonymous critic is almost certainly a man) separated by two centuries but saying the same things – the writing we have here, they claim, is laughably empty of worthwhile content and could only become something worth attention given proper discipline by proper people – about two genres of writing that are not just deeply related but which are effectively, as I will argue, the same genre seen at different times. What, then, is this scorn being directed at? Nothing less than that masterpiece of Romantic Gothic horror and, according to the likes of Brian Aldiss, progenitor of the science fiction genre that Ian McEwan dismisses as little more than so many pairs of anti-gravity boots: Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein. This astonishingly sneering, scornful review was written over two hundred years before Ian McEwan’s comments but it’s easy to see the same dismissal of the source material. Anonymous review in The British Critic, New Series, Vol. We need scarcely say, that these volumes have neither principle, object, nor moral the horror which abounds in them is too grotesque and bizarre ever to approach near the sublime, and when we did not hurry over the pages in disgust, we sometimes paused to laugh outright: and yet we suspect, that the diseased and wandering imagination, which has stepped out of all legitimate bounds to frame these disjointed combinations and unnatural adventures, might be disciplined into something better. Only the time machine of internet archives is needed to listen to them: The same voices mouthing the same words, time and time again throughout history. Ironically, however, it’s often not the fiction being criticised that’s vapid and repetitive but those very criticisms themselves. Someone proper, the implication is stark, like him. If only someone proper came along to write it properly, McEwan mutters.

The haunted space show full#

With his dismissive opinion of science fiction – writing, it’s implied, that’s full of fun and gadgets but which is ultimately ignorant of more important concerns – Ian McEwan not only set the genre internet alight but also added himself to a long list of authors and critics who’ve blithely dismissed genre fiction as little more than children playing with toys while the adults look on indulgently. If a machine seems like a human or you can’t tell the difference, then you’d jolly well better start thinking about whether it has responsibilities and rights and all the rest.” Ian McEwan: ‘ Who’s going to write the algorithm for the little white lie?’

“There could be an opening of a mental space for novelists to explore this future, not in terms of travelling at 10 times the speed of light in anti-gravity boots, but in actually looking at the human dilemmas of being close up to something that you know to be artificial but which thinks like you.