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Nathaniel Hawthorne
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 Nathaniel Hawthorne, one of the great 19th century American writers, was the principal conduit
of Gothic science into American literature in the generation after Charles Brockden Brown, and remains
secondary only to Mary Shelley (in
Frankenstein [1818] and The Last
Man [18 ]) and Edgar Allan Poe as an influence on the Gothic elements that endure in science fiction to this day. "Rappaccini's Daughter," a
masterpiece of the American short story, is one of the founding documents in the depiction of the doctor and scientist
as devoted to (and sometimes perverted by) science and the quest for knowledge.
A scientist who "cares more for science than for mankind" has come up with a novel solution to
keeping his daughter pure: because of an ingenious biochemical innovation, any man who touches Rappaccini's
daughter without his approval will die. The story explores life in this parental garden of Eden when a
handsome young man who falls in love with Rappaccini's daughter becomes a pawn in the rivalry between two
ambitious scientists.
This is a tale of chemistry and medicine, love and poison, set in Italy, traditionally the land of evil
poisoners and wellspring of distinguished physicians. It harks back to Elizabethan drama and folktale, and leads
forward to the Faustian image of the mad scientist -- who sacrifices moral virtue on the altar of knowledge
-- perhaps our primary modern version of original sin. It is in constant competition throughout the history
and development of the literature with the Promethean image of the scientist as benign inventor, whose devotion
to knowledge benefits humanity and whose devices better human life. This Faustian-Gothic strain, with
its echoes of the sublime, is persistent in twentieth century science fiction (Leslie Fiedler and Brian Aldiss
both consider it characteristic of the genre) and reemerges, full-blown, in the early work of J. G. Ballard
(especially in "Prima Belladonna") and Brian W. Aldiss. It is antithetical in imagery and in affect to the ideal of hard
science fiction from Verne and most of Wells through Campbell's Modern sf. Yet this Gothic strain is
always there in a significant number of works, casting a shadow of catastrophe and apocalypse over hard sf,
from Wells' "The Star" to Fred Hoyle's
The Black Cloud (1957) and James Tiptree, Jr.'s "The Psychologist
Who Wouldn't Do Awful Things to Rats."
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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.