What is one main purpose of science fiction apex

The Wesleyan anthology of

Science Fiction . . . .

Edited by Arthur B. Evans,

Istvan Csicsery-Ronay Jr., Joan Gordon,

Veronica Hollinger, Rob Latham, and

Carol McGuirk

w e s l e y a n u n i v e r s i t y p r e s s

Middletown, Connecticut

Wesleyan University Press

Middletown CT 06459

www.wesleyan.edu/wespress

2010 © SF-TH Inc.

All rights reserved

Manufactured in the United States of America

The editors would like to thank DePauw University,

the University of Iowa, and Trent University for their

generous support in making this teaching

anthology possible.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The Wesleyan anthology of science fiction /

edited by Arthur B. Evans . . . [et al.].

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references.

ISBN 978-0-8195-6954-7 (cloth: alk. paper)

—ISBN 978-0-8195-6955-4 (pbk.: alk. paper)

1. Science fiction, American. 2. Science fiction, English. I. Evans, Arthur B.

PS648.S3W39 2010

813′.0876208—dc22

2009053144

5 4 3 2 1

To

rIchard dale mulleN,

founder and benefactor of

Science Fiction Studies

contents . . . .

Introduction xi

chroNologIcal lIStINg of StorIeS Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844) 1

Jules Verne, from Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) 26

H. G. Wells, “The Star” (1897) 39

E. M. Forster, “The Machine Stops” (1909) 50

Edmond Hamilton, “The Man Who Evolved” (1931) 79

Leslie F. Stone, “The Conquest of Gola” (1931) 96

C. L. Moore, “Shambleau” (1933) 110

Stanley Weinbaum, “A Martian Odyssey” (1934) 136

Isaac Asimov, “Reason” (1941) 160

Cliff ord D. Simak, “Desertion” (1944) 177

Theodore Sturgeon, “Thunder and Roses” (1947) 189

Judith Merril, “That Only a Mother” (1948) 211

Fritz Leiber, “Coming Attraction” (1950) 221

Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950) 234

Arthur C. Clarke, “The Sentinel” (1951) 241

Robert Sheckley, “Specialist” (1953) 250

William Tenn, “The Liberation of Earth” (1953) 266

Alfred Bester, “Fondly Fahrenheit” (1954) 283

Avram Davidson, “The Golem” (1955) 303

Cordwainer Smith, “The Game of Rat and Dragon” (1955) 309

Robert A. Heinlein, “ ‘All You Zombies—’” (1959) 324

J. G. Ballard, “The Cage of Sand” (1962) 337

R. A. Laff erty, “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965) 359

Harlan Ellison, “ ‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965) 367

Frederik Pohl, “Day Million” (1966) 379

Philip K. Dick, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966) 385

viii coNteNtS

Samuel R. Delany, “Aye, and Gomorrah . . .” (1967) 405

Pamela Zoline, “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967) 415

Robert Silverberg, “Passengers” (1968) 430

Brian Aldiss, “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” (1969) 443

Ursula K. Le Guin, “Nine Lives” (1969) 452

Frank Herbert, “Seed Stock” (1970) 477

Stanislaw Lem, “The Seventh Voyage,” from The Star Diaries (1971) 490

Joanna Russ, “When It Changed” (1972) 507

James Tiptree Jr., “And I Awoke and Found Me Here

on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972) 516

John Varley, “Air Raid” (1977) 525

Carol Emshwiller, “Abominable” (1980) 539

William Gibson, “Burning Chrome” (1982) 547

Octavia E. Butler, “Speech Sounds” (1983) 566

Nancy Kress, “Out of All Them Bright Stars” (1985) 580

Pat Cadigan, “Pretty Boy Crossover” (1986) 587

Kate Wilhelm, “Forever Yours, Anna” (1987) 598

Bruce Sterling, “We See Things Differently” (1989) 611

Misha Nogha, “Chippoke Na Gomi” (1989) 630

Eileen Gunn, “Computer Friendly” (1989) 637

John Kessel, “Invaders” (1990) 654

Gene Wolfe, “Useful Phrases” (1992) 675

Greg Egan, “Closer” (1992) 683

James Patrick Kelly, “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995) 698

Geoff Ryman, “Everywhere” (1999) 717

Charles Stross, “Rogue Farm” (2003) 727

Ted Chiang, “Exhalation” (2008) 742

thematIc lIStINg of StorIeS Alien Encounters

C. L. Moore, “Shambleau” (1933) 110

Stanley Weinbaum, “A Martian Odyssey” (1934) 136

Arthur C. Clarke, “The Sentinel” (1951) 241

Robert Sheckley, “Specialist” (1953) 250

Robert Silverberg, “Passengers” (1968) 430

Nancy Kress, “Out of All Them Bright Stars” (1985) 580

coNteNtS ix

Gene Wolfe, “Useful Phrases” (1992) 675

James Patrick Kelly, “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995) 698

Apocalypse and Post-apocalypse

H. G. Wells, “The Star” (1897) 39

Fritz Leiber, “Coming Attraction” (1950) 221

Ray Bradbury, “There Will Come Soft Rains” (1950) 234

J. G. Ballard, “The Cage of Sand” (1962) 337

Octavia E. Butler, “Speech Sounds” (1983) 566

Misha Nogha, “Chippoke Na Gomi” (1989) 630

Artificial/Posthuman Life-forms

Nathaniel Hawthorne, “Rappaccini’s Daughter” (1844) 1

Isaac Asimov, “Reason” (1941) 160

Alfred Bester, “Fondly Fahrenheit” (1954) 283

Avram Davidson, “The Golem” (1955) 303

Brian Aldiss, “Super-Toys Last All Summer Long” (1969) 443

Ursula K. Le Guin, “Nine Lives” (1969) 452

Ted Chiang, “Exhalation” (2008) 742

Computers and Virtual Reality

Philip K. Dick, “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966) 385

William Gibson, “Burning Chrome” (1982) 547

Pat Cadigan, “Pretty Boy Crossover” (1986) 587

Eileen Gunn, “Computer Friendly” (1989) 637

Evolution and Environment

Jules Verne, from Journey to the Center of the Earth (1864) 26

Edmond Hamilton, “The Man Who Evolved” (1931) 79

Clifford D. Simak, “Desertion” (1944) 177

Frank Herbert, “Seed Stock” (1970) 477

Charles Stross, “Rogue Farm” (2003) 727

Gender and Sexuality

Leslie F. Stone, “The Conquest of Gola” (1931) 96

Frederik Pohl, “Day Million” (1966) 379

x coNteNtS

Samuel R. Delany, “Aye, and Gomorrah . . .” (1967) 405

Pamela Zoline, “The Heat Death of the Universe” (1967) 415

Joanna Russ, “When It Changed” (1972) 507

James Tiptree Jr., “And I Awoke and Found Me Here

on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972) 516

Carol Emshwiller, “Abominable” (1980) 539

Greg Egan, “Closer” (1992) 683

Time Travel and Alternate History

Robert A. Heinlein, “ ‘All You Zombies—’” (1959) 324

Stanislaw Lem, “The Seventh Voyage” from Star Diaries (1971) 490

John Varley, “Air Raid” (1977) 525

Kate Wilhelm, “Forever Yours, Anna” (1987) 598

John Kessel, “Invaders” (1990) 654

Utopias/Dystopias

E. M. Forster, “The Machine Stops” (1909) 50

R. A. Lafferty, “Slow Tuesday Night” (1965) 359

Harlan Ellison, “ ‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965) 367

Geoff Ryman, “Everywhere” (1999) 717

War and Conflict

Theodore Sturgeon, “Thunder and Roses” (1947) 189

Judith Merril, “That Only a Mother” (1948) 211

William Tenn, “The Liberation of Earth” (1953) 266

Cordwainer Smith, “The Game of Rat and Dragon” (1955) 309

Bruce Sterling, “We See Things Differently” (1989) 611

Acknowledgments 757

Further Reading 761

xi

Introduction . . . .

The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction was conceived and developed by the editors of the scholarly journal Science Fiction Studies (SfS). It refl ects no single editor’s viewpoint but rather a consensus among us that a good an- thology should include stories ranging from the nineteenth century to today, should exemplify a number of themes and styles characteristic of the genre, and should represent both the best and—not always the same thing—the most teachable stories in the fi eld. While our journal is known for a lively engagement with critical and cul- tural theory, it is also committed to exploring the disparate body of texts grouped under the rubric “science fi ction” (sf ). Any sf anthology necessarily declares a provisional canon of classics by prescribing a limited course of essential reading. Canonization is a dubious as well as a diffi cult enterprise, but we hope that our canon is less prescriptive than provocative. Our goal has been to suggest how varied the genre is, to showcase writers from the justly famous (Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Ursula K. Le Guin) to the unjustly neglected (Robert Sheckley, R. A. Laff erty, William Tenn), and to serve as a starting point for further reading. Many of the stories reprinted here, especially those published before 1960, fi rst appeared in the pulp magazines or later digests that served as the chief training ground for sf writers. Authors who published in these formats often spent their careers writing for pennies a word—if that—while in our own day, high-budget sf fi lms and television series continue to recycle their ideas without so much as a screen credit. Despite the ongoing popularity of Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, there was no signifi cant North American market for full-length sf novels until the 1950s. The pulp magazines and postwar sf digests were therefore cru- cial publishing venues for the fi rst generations of American sf writers, from C. L. Moore and Edmond Hamilton to Robert A. Heinlein and Theodore Sturgeon. Their work appeared alongside reprinted tales of Wells, Verne, and Edgar Allan Poe, so that early readers of the pulps were being simul- taneously introduced to new writers and immersed in some of the best nineteenth-century sf. Although today’s North American sf market is geared

xii INtroductIoN

predominantly toward novels (the form in which most writers now make their reputations), a number of professional and semiprofessional venues— magazines, reprint anthologies, and, more rarely, original short-fiction an- thologies—still publish short sf. The more recently published selections in this volume strongly demonstrate the form’s continuing vitality.

Historical Origins and the Megatext

Origin narratives are always shaped by complex historical and ideological perspectives. Depending on the sf historian’s particular assumptions, the genre can trace its roots back to Lucian of Samosata’s satirical second- century story of a trip to the moon in his True History. Alternatively, the case has been made that sf began with the utopias and tales of great voy- ages of discovery written from the Renaissance through the eighteenth cen- tury—voyages echoed in the nineteenth century by Jules Verne’s Voyages extraordinaires. Many historians have argued that sf ’s origins lie in the techno-scientific cataclysms of the Industrial Revolution; in this context Mary Shelley’s cautionary tale Frankenstein (1818) is of particular interest. A different reading locates the genre’s origins in Darwinian views of evolu- tion, which shaped the scientific romances of H. G. Wells. Still others would set the starting point in the early twentieth century, arguing that science fiction developed generic coherence only after being popularized in the pulp magazines of the 1920s. This “new” genre, originally named scientifiction in Hugo Gernsback’s Amazing Stories, saw rapid expansion in the pages of pulps such as Wonder Stories and Weird Tales, where Hamilton’s “The Man Who Evolved” (1931) and Moore’s “Shambleau” (1933) first appeared. While each of these positions about the genre’s “true” origins has its defenders and the debate is unlikely ever to be resolved, these very different accounts, when taken together, offer striking testimony to science fiction’s complex history. At its core, science fiction dramatizes the adventures and perils of change. Although not always set in the future, sf ’s consistent emphasis on transfor- mation through time demonstrates the increasing significance of the future to Western techno-cultural consciousness. At the same time, sf retains its links to older literary forms and maintains strong generic connections to its literary cousins epic, fantasy, gothic horror, and satire. One of the more interesting developments in contemporary sf is the near disappearance of genre boundaries in such stories as John Kessel’s postmodern “Invaders” (1990). Meanwhile, sf elements are now frequently incorporated into the work of many writers usually associated with the literary mainstream, re- sulting in slipstream fictions by such writers as Thomas Pynchon, Jeff Noon, and Margaret Atwood.

INtroductIoN xiii

The original subtitle of Wells’s The Time Machine (1895) was “An Inven- tion,” and as the genre’s tangled history suggests, sf is constantly reinvent- ing itself, responding to contemporary scientific and cultural concerns and adapting or challenging prevailing narrative conventions. Polish author Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (1961; trans. 1970), for instance, gains much of its impact from how it revises the assumptions of earlier first-contact stories such as Stanley G. Weinbaum’s optimistic “A Martian Odyssey” (1934). By stressing the difficulties—indeed, the impossibility—of comprehending the alien, Lem intervenes in sf ’s ongoing generic dialogue, showing that first contact might in the event be more of a non-contact. In contrast, James Tiptree Jr.’s “And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill’s Side” (1972) takes a queer-feminist approach to first-contact conventions, with its dire tale of loving the alien all too well. Perhaps because of its twentieth-century history of publication in spe- cialized or niche formats such as pulp magazines, mass-market paperbacks, and sf digests, writers in the genre maintain unusually strong links with each other and with the community of sf readers. Writers of sf conduct long- distance conversations across generations, cultures, social settings, and his- torical challenges. Like all complex cultural forms, sf is rooted in past prac- tices and shared protocols, tropes, and traditions—all of which contribute to what is often called the sf megatext. A fictive universe that includes all the sf stories that have ever been told, the sf megatext is a place of shared images, situations, plots, characters, settings, and themes generated across a multiplicity of media, including centuries of diverse literary fictions and, more recently, video and computer games, graphic novels, big-budget films, and even advertising. Readers and viewers apply their own prior experience of science fiction—their own knowledge of the sf megatext—to each new story or film they encounter. Looking back to one of the earliest novels associated with sf, it is easy to see that the monstrous Creature in Frankenstein is a precursor of both Hawthorne’s Beatrice Rappaccini and the artificial intelligence hal in Stanley Kubrick’s film 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968). Mark Twain’s Con- necticut Yankee informs Wells’s Time Traveller, who in turn establishes the basic template for all the time-travel tales of the twentieth century, including Heinlein’s “ ‘All You Zombies—’” (1959), which nonetheless offers its own original twist. The sf megatext encompasses specific characters (the mad scientist, the renegade robot, the savvy engineer, the mysterious alien, the powerful arti- ficial intelligence), environments (the enclosures of a spaceship, an alien landscape, the inner space of subjective experience), events (nuclear and

xiv INtroductIoN

other apocalypses, galactic conflicts, alien encounters), and, of particular significance, ethical and political concerns (questions about scientific re- sponsibility, about encounters with otherness, and about shifting definitions of what it means to be human). Every element in the megatext has been re- imagined many times; these reimaginings form the rich intertextual back- drop behind and between all sf stories. The more familiar readers are with the sf megatext, the more readily they will find their way into and through new stories. More experienced readers can appreciate how any particular work both depends and expands on the stories that have preceded it. William Gibson’s celebrated cyberpunk novels and stories—“Burning Chrome” (1982), for instance—borrowed many plot elements from familiar hard sf and noir conventions at the same time that they expanded the sf universe by challenging readers to imagine radically intimate relationships between human beings and increasingly pervasive cybernetic technologies. The impact of Gibson’s fiction lay in its revisionary use of familiar figures such as the cyborg to reveal the degree to which con- temporary techno-scientific culture has itself become science-fictionalized. Stories such as Greg Egan’s “Closer” (1992) and Charles Stross’s “Rogue Farm” (2003) build on cyberpunk’s posthuman foundations in their further explorations of the human-machine interface. In general, techno-scientific verisimilitude (not quite the same thing as scientific accuracy) is considered to be a sine qua non of works in the genre. More particularly, stories about science and technology constitute a sig- nificant strand of the sf megatext, from the dystopian nightmare of E. M. Forster’s “The Machine Stops” (1909), to the efforts of lunar explorers to decode the meaning of the mysterious alien artifact in Clarke’s “The Sen- tinel” (1951), to James Patrick Kelly’s revisionary story about the “cold equa- tions” of the physical universe in “Think Like a Dinosaur” (1995). From the perspective of the sf megatext, every story is in dialogue with others in the genre, even as it aims to say something new. Like “Chicken Little,” the teem- ing, amorphous protein source of Frederik Pohl and C. M. Kornbluth’s novel The Space Merchants (1952), the megatext is always growing and chang- ing, continually fed by new texts, new scientific speculation, new historical events, and new readers. Although authors in the genre share many concerns, they take diverse historical and cultural positions. They extrapolate unique futures, although many—from Heinlein, Le Guin, and Gibson to Frank Herbert and Cord- wainer Smith—set much of their fiction in different quadrants of one par- ticular future. Such writers settle in to explore the universes of their own making, their own personal megatexts. Some of our selections, such as

INtroductIoN xv

Asimov’s “Reason” (1941) and Smith’s “The Game of Rat and Dragon” (1955), suggest in miniature their authors’ consistent concerns, while other stories, including Heinlein’s “ ‘All You Zombies—’” and Herbert’s “Seed Stock” (1970), at first glance appear to be atypical. Our headnotes outline the author’s place in the genre and sketch the relationship of each selected story to the author’s work as a whole. As editors, we have aimed to include stories that not only repay a chrono- logical approach, illustrating sf ’s generic evolution, but that also intersect with some of the genre’s most frequently recurring topics. Among those spe- cifically highlighted here are the alien encounter, apocalypse, dystopia, gen- der and sexuality, time travel, and virtual reality.

Reading Sf

Readers who are new to science fiction learn new ways of reading. Many of the genre’s stories are set in the future, although its worlds are usually linked by extrapolation—a logic of projection—back to our own. Readers of sf must not only adjust their time-space positioning but also learn to nego- tiate connections between individual tales and the sf megatext. Further, they must often deal with neologisms (newly coined words) and other conjectural vocabulary that require them to fill in the semantic blanks with their imagi- nations. In contrast to mainstream fiction, science fiction represents worlds that do not exist here and now, although their existence might be possible in some other part of the universe or, more often, some other time. That time is usually ahead of readers: the future. Simplifying in the extreme, we might say that realist fiction writes about what exists while fantasy fiction deals with hopes and fears and dreams—emotional states rather than ideas. Science fiction, in contrast, writes about things that might be, although they are not yet and may never come to be. Science fiction’s “worlds of if ” (to cite the title of a Weinbaum story of 1935) are connected to the readers’ world through a logical (linear, causal, extrapolative) relationship, yet these sf worlds can also be metaphorical or symbolic. As Darko Suvin has argued, sf is a literature of cognitive estrange- ment that shows readers futures in which the present has shifted or meta- morphosed: they mirror our own world but in a distorted way. Cognitive estrangement is produced by a novum—a puzzling innovation—in every sf story. This novum distances (or estranges) readers from some received “truth”—for example, the idea that human nature is essentially unchanging is called into question in Frederik Pohl’s “Day Million” (1966). To Suvin, sf ’s “worlds of if ” offer estranged versions of the author’s/reader’s here and now; nonetheless, the future in sf is logically (cognitively) tied to the present.

xvi INtroductIoN

A number of critics have discussed what they term the reading protocols of sf—the approaches required for understanding the genre. Sf readers know that much of the story will not be clear at the beginning; they live with un- certainty through much, if not all, of a story such as Tenn’s “The Liberation of Earth” (1953). Some stories might introduce a single novum (for example, the cloned siblings in Le Guin’s “Nine Lives” [1969]), while others might teem with new things. As is fitting, the genre that addresses innovation and change can, in its own storytelling protocols, shift dramatically in response to social changes or new scientific ideas. Two important reading protocols identified for sf are Marc Angenot’s notion of the absent paradigm and Samuel R. Delany’s analysis of sf ’s sub- junctivity. The absent paradigm refers to those semantic blanks, noted above, that challenge the reader’s imagination to construct a new and dif- ferent world out of scattered hints and clues. Sf ’s stories strand readers in an unfamiliar place or time, forcing them to supply contextual meaning for the bits of alien information with which they are bombarded. Fritz Leiber’s “Coming Attraction” (1950), for instance, is set in a post-apocalypse Man- hattan, but the nature and dimensions of the cataclysm must be puzzled out from the narrator’s offhand comments. The estranging effects of sf ’s absent paradigms are experienced in concentrated form in the short story, which can pack a density of futuristic or otherworldly implication into its brief space. The result can be dizzying, as in Ellison’s “ ‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman” (1965), with its pyrotechnic style and array of new words—swizzleskid, minee, Smash-O, fallaron—that draw readers into a place and time ruled by a lethally efficient future form of capitalism. Sf ’s subjunctivity further complicates the reader’s task. According to Delany, the language of an sf text works differently from language in real- istic—or, to use his term, “mundane”—fiction. In his famous example, the sentence “Her world exploded” can, in a mundane story, only be a metaphor for a woman’s emotional state, whereas in science fiction it could be a literal description of the destruction of her home planet. This linguistic openness or indeterminacy means that sf always operates at a sentence-by-sentence level in the subjunctive mode: sf stories narrate not what can realistically happen at the present moment, but what might happen in future times and alien places—in sf ’s “worlds of if.” Philip K. Dick’s “We Can Remember It for You Wholesale” (1966) displays subjunctivity in its very title, which sug- gests that what we take to be a settled referent (the processes of memory) can mean something quite different in an sf context—in this case because technological advances in Dick’s future world allow for the implantation, at a price, of artificial memories. Readers must accept that the referential

INtroductIoN xvii

functions of language in science fiction are usually, whether subtly or signifi- cantly, estranged. Although these terms—cognitive estrangement, absent paradigm, sub- junctivity—may seem forbidding, they are fully compatible with an intu- itive insight long held by fans: the genre conveys a sense of wonder. This experience—of the exhilarating, mind-expanding power of the best sf—is brought about by the same processes that such critics as Suvin, Angenot, and Delany have analyzed. As readers negotiate the distance between the estranged world of an sf story and their own reality—a process in which they must reconstruct an absent paradigm and decode the text’s subjunctivity— they come to grasp, and be dazzled by, the extraordinary span of time and space; they see the possibility of almost unthinkable social and technological changes. For those who are open to it, the genre’s unique demands provide rare delights, including a sense of awe at the vast transformative power of futurity.

Different Viewpoints, Different Worlds

Writers in the genre offer widely disparate visions of the world. Readers of sf therefore are invited to analyze divergent ideas as well as literary styles. Scholars, too, represent any number of critical and theoretical approaches, and the editors of SfS are no exception. We have designed this anthology to demonstrate the diversity of the genre and to encourage a broad range of thinking about it. While no anthology can incorporate all of sf ’s richness, we sought in choosing stories to acknowledge as much as possible the genre’s stylistic variety and its many topical interests. For several years, we read, dis- cussed, compared, analyzed, argued, compromised, conducted straw polls, and voted on dozens of potential stories. We asked members of the Science Fiction Research Association and the International Association for the Fan- tastic in the Arts for suggestions on what would be the ideal balance be- tween older and newer tales and what pedagogical materials would be most useful. Finally, we arrived at these fifty-two selections, printed in historical sequence, beginning with a story by Nathaniel Hawthorne published in 1844 and ending with a 2008 story by Ted Chiang. We hope that The Wesleyan Anthology of Science Fiction will serve as a bridge not only to an appreciation of some of the best works of sf ever written but also to the world of sf scholarship. With that in mind, and using the many suggestions we received from our colleagues, we have included ancillary material: a critical bibliography that lists many of the most impor- tant studies in the field and an online “Teacher’s Guide”—available on the Wesleyan University Press website at

xviii INtroductIoN

sfanthologyguide>—that includes discussion questions for each story, avail- able Internet resources, illustrations such as magazine and book covers, sug- gestions for course design, and advice on student research. This anthology was created for the purpose of teaching sf at many levels, as well as for casual and critical reading by both neophytes and experts. Science fiction is complex and provocative as well as stimulating and enjoyable, rewarding thoughtful study in and out of the classroom. Welcome to the words and worlds of science fiction.

The Wesleyan anthology of

Science Fiction . . . .

1

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Rappaccini’s Daughter . . . . { 1844 }

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) was born and raised in Salem, Massachusetts, and used his family’s history there most famously in his novel The Scarlet Letter (1850), which drew on his ancestor’s role as a judge in the infamous Salem witch trials. According to his biographer James R. Mellow, Hawthorne borrowed from his own life for “Rappaccini’s Daughter.” Like Giovanni, Hawthorne was a handsome and intense man prone to romantic entanglements who had an aff air with the metaphorically poisonous Mary Silsbee. Beatrice’s personality, however, seems closer to the character of the woman he eventually married, the secluded and in- telligent Sophia Peabody. Peabody suff ered from health problems that may have stemmed from her physician father’s overuse of drugs in treating her ailments as a child, so Dr. Peabody may have served as a model for Doctor Rappaccini. Hawthorne was part of the American Romantic movement of the mid- nineteenth century and was friends with other major fi gures in American Roman- ticism such as Emerson, Thoreau, and Melville. In the spirit of the times, he did not draw distinctions between art and science, using both in ways that would now be considered science fi ctional, not only in the story collected here but also in other stories such as “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment” (1837), “The Birth-mark” (1843), and “The Artist of the Beautiful” (1844). As Hawthorne himself put it in “The Custom-House,” his introduction to The Scarlet Letter, his literary concern was with “a neutral territory . . . where the Actual and the Imaginary may meet and each imbue itself with the nature of the other.” In this neutral territory, Hawthorne allows science to be imbued with evocative metaphorical signifi cance and off ers plausible explanations from the world of the Actual to undermine seemingly im- possible events from the world of the Imaginary. Just as in The Scarlet Letter every miraculous event has a rational explanation and Dr. Chillingworth and Hester Prynne’s secret powers are explained in terms of medicine, so in “Rappaccini’s Daughter” selective breeding and the powers of suggestion can explain many of the story’s seemingly fantastic elements. Hawthorne’s description of the neutral territory in which he works is very much like that of the English Romantic and

2 NathaNIel haWthorNe

Gothic writer of Frankenstein (1818), Mary Shelley, sometimes considered a found- ing mother of science fiction, who herself made a point of eschewing the super- natural. Much of what makes Hawthorne’s story so powerful, so psychologically and emotionally convincing, and so eerie, is its use of ambiguous metaphor and sym- bol to layer the tale with multiple meanings. This is a technique that later writers will continue to use to good effect, for example Gene Wolfe in “Useful Phrases” (1992).

A young man, named Giovanni Guasconti, came, very long ago, from the more southern region of Italy, to pursue his studies at the University of Padua. Giovanni, who had but a scanty supply of gold ducats in his pocket, took lodgings in a high and gloomy chamber of an old edifice, which looked not unworthy to have been the palace of a Paduan noble, and which, in fact, exhibited over its entrance the armorial bearings of a family long since ex- tinct. The young stranger, who was not unstudied in the great poem of his country, recollected that one of the ancestors of this family, and perhaps an occupant of this very mansion, had been pictured by Dante as a partaker of the immortal agonies of his Inferno. These reminiscences and associations, together with the tendency to heartbreak natural to a young man for the first time out of his native sphere, caused Giovanni to sigh heavily, as he looked around the desolate and ill-furnished apartment. “Holy Virgin, Signor!” cried old dame Lisabetta, who, won by the youth’s remarkable beauty of person, was kindly endeavoring to give the chamber a habitable air, “what a sigh was that to come out of a young man’s heart! Do you find this old mansion gloomy? For the love of heaven, then, put your head out of the window, and you will see as bright sunshine as you have left in Naples.” Guasconti mechanically did as the old woman advised, but could not quite agree with her that the Paduan sunshine was as cheerful as that of southern Italy. Such as it was, however, it fell upon a garden beneath the window, and expended its fostering influences on a variety of plants, which seemed to have been cultivated with exceeding care. “Does this garden belong to the house?” asked Giovanni. “Heaven forbid, Signor!—unless it were fruitful of better pot herbs than any that grow there now,” answered old Lisabetta. “No; that garden is culti- vated by the own hands of Signor Giacomo Rappaccini, the famous Doctor, who, I warrant him, has been heard of as far as Naples. It is said he distils

raPPaccINI’S daughter 3

these plants into medicines that are as potent as a charm. Oftentimes you may see the Signor Doctor at work, and perchance the Signora his daughter, too, gathering the strange flowers that grow in the garden.” The old woman had now done what she could for the aspect of the cham- ber; and, commending the young man to the protection of the saints, took her departure. Giovanni still found no better occupation than to look down into the gar- den beneath his window. From its appearance, he judged it to be one of those botanic gardens, which were of earlier date in Padua than elsewhere in Italy or in the world. Or, not improbably, it might once have been the pleasure- place of an opulent family; for there was the ruin of a marble fountain in the center, sculptured with rare art, but so woefully shattered that it was im- possible to trace the original design from the chaos of remaining fragments. The water, however, continued to gush and sparkle into the sunbeams as cheerfully as ever. A little gurgling sound ascended to the young man’s win- dow, and made him feel as if the fountain were an immortal spirit that sung its song unceasingly, and without heeding the vicissitudes around it, while one century embodied it in marble and another scattered the perishable garniture on the soil. All about the pool into which the water subsided grew various plants, that seemed to require a plentiful supply of moisture for the nourishment of gigantic leaves, and in some instances, flowers gorgeously magnificent. There was one shrub in particular, set in a marble vase in the midst of the pool, that bore a profusion of purple blossoms, each of which had the luster and richness of a gem; and the whole together made a show so resplendent that it seemed enough to illuminate the garden, even had there been no sunshine. Every portion of the soil was peopled with plants and herbs, which, if less beautiful, still bore tokens of assiduous care, as if all had their individual virtues, known to the scientific mind that fostered them. Some were placed in urns, rich with old carving, and others in com- mon garden-pots; some crept serpent-like along the ground, or climbed on high, using whatever means of ascent was offered them. One plant had wreathed itself round a statue of Vertumnus, which was thus quite veiled and shrouded in a drapery of hanging foliage, so happily arranged that it might have served a sculptor for a study. While Giovanni stood at the window, he heard a rustling behind a screen of leaves, and became aware that a person was at work in the garden. His figure soon emerged into view, and showed itself to be that of no common laborer, but a tall, emaciated, sallow, and sickly looking man, dressed in a scholar’s garb of black. He was beyond the middle term of life, with gray hair, a thin gray beard, and a face singularly marked with intellect and cultiva-