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Edgar Allan Poe
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 Edgar Allan Poe, poet, writer, and critic, is the progenitor of the use of contemporary science as a
literary device to enhance verisimilitude in fiction and thereby encourage the willing suspension of disbelief in
readers; he directly presages Jules Verne (who worshipped his stories). He has therefore some claim to being
the literary founder of science fiction. There is a substantial collection of his works,
The Science Fiction of Edgar Allan Poe (1976), that presents the case well. He is also the principal inventor of the mystery and
detective story genre (the Mystery Writers of America named their "Edgar" Award for him), and of what has come to
be called the horror fiction genre (virtually all current practitioners have been directly influenced by the works
of Poe).
Although during his lifetime he was considered by many to be a genius, his work received
mixed reviews. His literary reputation was severely damaged in the 19th century by an obituary written by his literary
executor, Rufus Wilmot Griswold, published in the Home Journal: "Edgar Allan Poe is dead. He died
in Baltimore on Sunday, October 7th. The announcement will startle many, but few will be grieved by it,"
and goes on to say such things as "...with a single glass of wine, his whole nature was reversed, the demon
became uppermost, and, though none of the usual signs of intoxication were visible, his will was palpably insane."
Many others, from Henry James to the present, have tried to dismiss Poe or denigrate his
achievements, but he remains a giant of American (and world) literature. Still, today, in part because of Poe's role in the
founding of these three kinds of category fiction, adverse critiques of Poe have become part of the
mechanism for retaining the high culture/popular culture split in American literature, despite his status as a
canonical author.
This story, of a man caught by an enormous natural force who uses his knowledge of science to
escape death, is an exemplar of the rigorous methodology of hard science fiction at its best. It is also worth noting
that it is a sea story. Sea stories have a very long history, dating back to Homer's Odyssey and before.
Because of this, sea stories have a highly codified interpretive framework -- all the elements of sea voyages have a
conventional meaning, sometimes allegorical. On the other hand, since throughout the history of sea
stories, real people have made real sea voyages, returning with marvellous tales of their adventures, sea stories
insist upon their literal level, despite the conventional meaning of virtually every element of the sea story.
This story is then a founding document of the whole science fiction approach and attitude of the
Golden Age. And its vision of a great dangerous natural object, the whirlpool, is perhaps the ancestor of such
"black hole" stories as Poul Anderson's "Kyrie."
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The Ascent of Wonder copyright © 1994 by David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer. | ||
Cramer: On Science & Science Fiction || Hartwell: Hard Science Fiction
David G. Hartwell || Kathryn Cramer || About Tor Books || Ordering Info
Interactive Intoduction to THE ASCENT OF WONDER copyright © 1995-1997 by Kathryn Cramer.