Imagination and Evolution: A Truer History of SF

IMAGINATION AND EVOLUTION: A TRUER HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION

by John J. Pierce

cover by Jean-Félix Lyon

US$29.95 - 6x9 tpb, 392 p. - ISBN-13: 978-1-64932-454-2

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. They, 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, née Feinbaum, and they live in northern New Jersey.

REVIEW BY JESS NEVINS:

I have, at various times, grumbled or ranted or...verb form of screed (scridded?)...about the ways in which people inaccurately claim that this author or that book was the creation of science fiction. Like any genre, it has no clean beginning, more of a gradual edging up to a tipping point.

And for a long time I've had it in mind to write a history of science fiction that was truly global in scope and reach, went back many centuries to cover the proto-science fiction stories and poems and novels, and gave as much credit to Chinese literature from the Zhou dynasty eras as to M. Shelley.

I am extremely pleased to see that John J. Pierce has done it for me with his IMAGINATION AND EVOLUTION: A TRUER HISTORY OF SCIENCE FICTION.

It quite properly begins with an insightful discussion of definitions and what we mean when we talk about science fiction, and then begins its coverage of science fiction with Zhang Zhen (ca. 307-313) and "Yanshi" (in Liezi, 450-375 BC) and the Mahabharata and "The Ebony Horse."

Pierce covers it all, Anglophone and non-Anglophone, all the way up to HG Wells, which I think is the proper endpoint for a discussion of the history of the genre. (Since, yes, at the end of the 19th century there was a widespread acceptance of the idea that what Wells & Verne wrote was something different and unique from the other genres of literature).

I can't recommend the book enough; if you're at all curious about the real history of sf, buy this book.

REVIEW BY DWIGHT DECKER:

The morning mail brought this — a copy of the newly published first volume of J. J. Pierce's history of science fiction. Years in the making, it has finally seen daylight, published by Black Coat Press. The main text is just over 370 pages and it takes you as far as H. G. Wells, who would be around Chapter Three in most histories (after Verne and maybe Mary Shelley and the "proto-SF" allegories and satires like Lucian of Samosota's True History). There is a vast backstory to science fiction before Jules Verne, with books and authors few people have ever heard of, not just in English-speaking countries, and J.J. provides an introduction to largely uncharted territory. It's written in plain English accessible to the lay reader, not in academic jargon, and the pioneering works covered are discussed objectively, in the context of their times.

I helped J.J. on the project by reading several foreign-language works for him, and he gives me some flattering acknowledgement at the back of the book.
If you're interested in the *deep* history of fantastic fiction, this is a place to find out how various scientific and literary trends converged to result in science fiction long before there was a name for it.