Abstract
Dickens didn't write science fiction - or did he? More to the point, why on earth wouldn't Dickens write science fiction? In an era when writers were experimenting more and more with the fusion of science and the unknown in their writing, the apparent absence of such a work by Dickens appears conspicuous.This article addresses this issue by exploring the confused beginnings of science fiction and goes on to present a detailed study of robotics in Great Expectations. It seeks out the resonances between Dickens's novel and early robot fiction of the nineteenth century, examining Estella's inhumanity and the way in which both she and Pip are 'made' by Miss Havisham and Magwitch. Ultimately, the paper aims to show that Dickens's writing does indeed have a place in the study of science fiction.
Highlights
There are two remarkable features about science fiction which have prompted this article.[2]
Science fiction critics have not considered Dickens, neither exploring his input into the genre, nor questioning his lack of input: why, might we reasonably ask, didn’t Dickens write science fiction? After all, he was frequently responding to contemporary events and trends both in his journalism and fiction
I shall outline the confused beginnings of science fiction and the contradictions that blight the study of its origin, to justify why Dickens’s works can be explored for science fiction themes and what significance this decision has for studies of the genre
Summary
After two early and insubstantial appearances, the term ‘science fiction’ was put into general usage in 1929, by the editor Hugo Gernsback in his new magazine Science Wonder Stories.[5]. Dickens was writing in the same century as Mary Shelley, Edgar Allan Poe, E.T.A Hoffmann, Fitz-James O’Brien, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Samuel Butler, Edward Bellamy and William Morris; all of whom have been identified as heavyweights in the reign of proto-science fiction, their works repeatedly drawn upon retrospectively as examples of the genre before the genre was known These names do not provide the complete picture of the development of science fiction; as Edward James suggests, in mapping out the early cartography of the genre, these names are just the peaks that are easy to spot, ‘but no historian of the genre has examined what sustains them, how they are linked, and whether the landscape between them is made up of deep, separating valleys, or a mass of connecting hills. It is time to see how Dickens’s works contribute to the landscape between the peaks, and, in turn, to see how a consideration of a science fiction theme can afford a new reading of his works
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