Imagination and Evolution

IMAGINATION AND EVOLUTION

by John J. Pierce

cover by Jean-Félix Lyon

Genre: “any group of works in close conversation with one another.”
--Hugo-winning sf author Lois McMaster Bujold
 

Imagination and Evolution is the history of that conversation, which brought what we now call science fiction into existence and saw it grow into a global phenomenon.

Others have long traced its origins to the satirical travel tales and serious utopian theories of ancient Greek and Roman times. But there was nothing inevitable about that; it took revolutions in science and literature to create a climate for the genre, with cultural parallels that parallel Darwinian evolution.

 There were a number of mutations among ancestors of sf, most notably what French critics called voyages imaginaires and  utopian tracts, spread through adaptive radiation  Later came several proto-sf genres that didn’t converse with one another. Thery too spread through adaptive radiation, and there were cultural equivalents of Darwin’s finches and even DNA.

Only with the scientific romances of Jules Verne did sf as we know it inspire a common conversation that absorbed those of proto-sf, to  create a literature of ideas that has spread around the world and speaks to us as no other genre can.
 
Bujold: “Science fiction is the most important literature in the history of the world, because it's the history of ideas, the history of our civilization birthing itself,”
 
John J. Pierce, born in 1941, is a long time science fiction fan and critic, who started out with his own fanzines but went on to edit several Best Of collections for Ballantine/Del Rey and commentaries on Cordwainer Smith, He was editor of Galaxy magazine for one year, He made his living as a journalist, but had a long interest in history, beginning at the University of Missouri (1964), That led to the first version of his sf history in 1984-6. He is married to Marcia , nee Feinbaum, and they live in northern New Jersey.