The History of the Future - by Eve Edwards

Over Christmas I chanced upon the original Starwars films (parts now called IV and V) being shown on TV.  These were the cult films of my school days - I collected the bubblegum cards and played games based on the world in the playground.

I can't show the Death Star due to copyright but here is Mimas,
a moon of Jupiter that looks just like it! Thanks to NASA.

'These are classics, so much better than the new ones,' I announced confidently to my fifteen year old son so we sat down to watch.

Oh dear.

Yes, they are much better than the more recent clutch of three, saved by a knowing humour missing from the solemnities of parts I-III, but I had forgotten just how stilted the love dialogue was in them - or maybe I didn't notice.  Add to that, I now see how much they reflect their era of late 70s, early 80s - they are a little history of what we thought the future would look like (though technically Lucas claims them for long long ago in a distant galaxy...).  Good (American) guys fighting an evil empire - the men's hair - the futuristic white Leia costume that somehow look like a Biba trouser suit - the 70s is everywhere - I'm sure you know what I mean.  Even the sexual politics is very much of its time - Leia a kind of Germaine Greer fighting for her rights among the masculine warriors while the Hollywood male (Harrison Ford) manages to quell her with a kiss.  I missed this as a kid but now wish Leia had kneed him in the place where he did most of his thinking.

That set me thinking how futuristic films and novels are so often the best way of accessing the preoccupations of the present.  To change my metaphor, they are a boiled down stock of all most intense flavours swirling around in society.  One of the first futuristic novels I can think of is Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826).

This is probably her most interesting novel after Frankenstein.  The scenario is a dystopian one of debates about monarchy and republicanism all swept away by a terrible plague that wipes out all but the lead character - The Last Man.  You don't have to think for very long to see how this reflects her era of the failing romantic spirit, the fears of everything being cancelled by death.  So many of her own generation were dead by then; on the larger political stage, France had gone from beacon of revolutionary ideas back to creaky old monarchy.  The mid 1820s had seen a banking crisis (sounds familiar?) and Mary Shelley was living a marginal existence trying to raise her son.  No wonder all the best days seemed in the past.  (The  human world ends in 2100 by the way; from the increasing alarming pace of climate change, maybe she knew something when she picked that date? Or is that just my 'spirit of the age' showing?)

Next major work I thought of was The Time Machine by H G Wells (1895).  Much better know, you are probably aware that this captures the ripples of the Darwinian evolutionary debate with a society that has divided in to useless, pretty Eloi and underground predators, Morlocks.  There are also fascinating reflections influenced by the Marxist debate of where class and society is going.

And then there is Zamyatin's We (written 1921) - one of the best reflections in the Russian revolution even though it is sci-fi. And George Orwell's 1984 (1949) - we haven't come to the end of the lessons that teaches us, have we?  The examples are popping up everywhere now I am looking for them.

So that leads me to the rather pleasing conclusion that to understand the past we need to be familiar with the future.  I'd love to hear you thoughts as this is a huge topic and I'm sure you'll have your own gems to share.

Carry On Up the Gothic Kyber by Eve Edwards

Terrible dark things happen to British men when they go to India - at least according to the fertile imaginations of the late Victorian short story writers.  While doing some research into the gothic stories of the 1890s - the same decade as Dracula and Dorian Gray - I came across a whole sub genre of what we have to call oriental gothic - and a fabulous little sub group it is too!

I remember reading Edward Said's seminal work, Orientalism, when at college.  He exposed the false assumptions coming from the Western world about the culture of the Middle East and Asia but I don't remember anything quite like these stories.  You have 'The Mark of the Beast' by Kipling - a terrifying tale about what happens to Europeans who disrespect Indian deities.  The offender gets bitten by the Silver Man, a holy leper with no features, and turns into a werewolf-like creature.  In B.M Croker's 'The Dak Bungalow at Dakor', any overnight visitors are haunted to the point of madness by the murdered victim seeking justice.  And in the wonderful 'The Phantom Rickshaw', again by Kipling, a Raj Englishman is tormented to death by the ghost of his former lover, Mrs Wessington. There are many many more, some of which started life as ephemeral pamphlets sold on Indian railway stations to amuse the passengers.  Look out the window and the gothic stared right back.

Bombay station 1905: Courtesy of Special Collections, University of Houston Libraries

H.G. Wells did his own sort which happened to be set largely in the distant west - the Pacific and the Amazon, but I am bending my rules here to include him because the setting is equally exotic - distant empire.  You might be familiar already with the chilling 'The Island of Dr Moreau' - a scientist creating were-creatures in the overweening manner of Frankenstein.  You can probably guess that it doesn't end well for him.  Even creepier to my mind is The Empire of Ants, set far up the Amazon.  In best disaster movie fashion, ants get sentient and start to take over.  I'm half convinced that this is entirely plausible!  They may be small but they are mighty - and invade all orifices.

What is particularly interesting to me is that the Kipling and Wells stories make it quite clear that it is the European who has crossed the line and brought the punishment on himself, like Victor Frankenstein playing god and being pursued by his own creation.  Mrs Wessington is a stalker, in life and after death.  The Indian context is rather by the by, a glamorous backdrop to an old tale of sexual betrayal. Fleete falls foul of a country he doesn't understand, having a just punishment meted out to him for his asinine behaviour in the temple. Dr Moreau, a heartless vivisectionist, creates the cruelty that kills him.  This are all rather clever commentaries on the empire project, questioning European supremacy. The gothic genre is doing its familiar job of making us look into the shadows of our selves as well as the external setting of scary huts in forests, claustrophobic islands, alleyways and jungles.

Kipling

Where has such oriental gothic gone?  I am now thinking that we place out gothic horror in space.  Darth Vader could be seen as a Frankenstein turning into his own creature.  The Borg from Star Trek - if you don't know them take a moment to watch a 1990s episode with Patrick Stewart - for my money one of the scariest monsters of them all.  Even Doctor Who has its moments in this genre.  Anyone got other suggestions?  Warning: once you get going, it is fairly addictive!

Eve

A VICTORIAN VIEW OF THE MAN IN THE MOON

by Essie Fox

A still from Le Voyage dans la Lune directed by George Melies

In 1865 Jules Verne wrote his novel From the Earth to the Moon in which a rocket was fired from America - Florida to be precise - and after safely reaching its destination the craft then returned to Earth, splashing down into the Pacific Ocean. (There's something very familiar - something rather 1960's about that, don't you think?)

In 1901 H G Wells wrote The First Men in the Moon, a romantic science fiction tale in which, by the means of an anti-gravity shield, two men are propelled to the Moon, meeting its inhabitants and having quite a thrilling time. A film was made in 1964, and another in 2010 which stars Mark Gatiss and Rory Kinnear.

Another still from Le Voyage dans La Lune

But back in 1902, over a century before and based on the novels by Verne and Wells, Georges Melies wrote and directed Le Voyage dans La Lune or A Trip to the Moon - the very first science fiction film that I happen to know about. (Admittedly, this was a year after Queen Victoria's death and therefore not strictly Victorian, but I think it's fair enough to say that the conception and preparation would have been well under way before the actual release date.)

   

Although the camera view is somewhat static and rather long with none of the character 'close-ups' exhibited in later cinema drama - indeed when watching this short film the viewer might almost be in a theatre observing some intricate pantomime - when considering the date of its genesis I think it is something extraordinary, especially from about 4 minutes in when the rocket first plunges into the Moon...with some charming animation and, in this particular version, an equally charming voice-over and musical interpretation by the Vancouver folk band Maria in the Shower.