Intercultural Interplay

The time is long past when the history of a nation’s SF was viewed merely as an extension of its local folklore. And the contemporary study of SF as a world literature would seem to call for a more detailed analysis of how the American model—which carried the genre to its current level of maturity—affected both the historical evolution of SF as a whole and that of certain national literatures. Such an investigation requires a look at the prehistory of the genre (inasmuch as SF, from the 17th century onward, developed as an autonomous fictional form) and the manner by which it assumed its generic identity around the works of Jules Verne and H.G. Wells. Although a number of SF-type narratives were indeed published in America during this period, the European SF model tended to dominate the genre, at least until Bellamy’s Looking Backward. Between the world wars—a period when the publishing industry in France was far from dynamic and French SF itself seemed increasingly to turn toward motifs of anti-science and the fantastic—American SF began to distinguish itself not only as a new category of publishing but also as a cogent and highly original mythos—a “new” SF whose identity was perhaps reinforced and strengthened by its literary “ghettoization” during the Gernsback years. The end of World War II brought a flood of American SF into France and—despite the initial shock—ultimately served to reawaken and reinvigorate its nearly moribund French cousin. From this imported American SF production, French authors discovered new thematic models and references (R. Bradbury, P.K. Dick, et al.) which, during the subsequent decades, they have consciously imitated, adapted, modified, and—in some measure—attempted to distance themselves from. The resulting new French SF has produced a number of interesting texts like those of Michel Jeury and Serge Brussolo, but it still has not achieved the success to which it aspires, particularly in the American SF marketplace. The reason for this is that French SF, while it needed American SF to revive and redefine itself, has not really influenced the latter since the era of Jules Verne. American SF has developed according to its own internal dictates and in the context of other English-speaking SF authors (like the British who published New Worlds). This does not mean, of course, that SF will forever remain essentially a US-derived literary form: French SF could, for example, stand as an excellent generic model for the hybridizing of SF culture and avant-garde literature. (ABE)

Shore · Geology · History · Oceanography · Utopian, Dystopian, and Speculative Fiction

• Hommage à Roger Bozzetto

  Open Access•Comité de rédaction de Res Futurae•ReS Futurae•2024

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