futures volume 5 issue 5 1973 [doi 10.1016%2f0016-3287%2873%2990041-4] i.f. clarke -- 8....

5/21/2018 Futures Volume 5 issue 5 1973 [doi 10.1016%2F0016-3287%2873%2990041-4] I.F. Clarke -- 8. 17501850- the discovery of the future.pdf - slid

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Prophets and Predictors

94

but on

indeed,

level.

a much more profound-and

much more subversive-

Nonetheless, I would use Franklins

case as evidence of the postulated link

between the subject and everyday

reality. This subject matters. It matters,

whether you are a reader of the hard-

line establishment type of writer, like

Heinlein or Asimov, or whether you go

for the type of writer who, like Tom

Disch or Kurt Vonnegut, uses the

medium to delineate the horrors of our

deteriorating society. Maybe the cynics

will prove right as dystopia takes over:

maybe the cynicism will bring its own

healing wave of idealism as a reaction.

More likely, the dichotomy will struggle

on in the future as it has in the past,

now one side in the ascendant, now

the other. Whichever wins, those on the

sidelines will pay the price of admission

to the show, and to them, that price

matters also, be it slow death from

radiation poisoning or the cost of a

ticket on the spaceways.

To those of us with a deeper involve-

ment in the genre, science fiction

matters because we believe that, solitary

in all the fields of literature, it now

holds the key to the gates known and

valued by the Greeks of old: those

gates of horn and ivory which alone

allow entry to dreams when they would

commune with men.

eferences

1. Locus, No. 137, 31 March, 1973

2. James Blish, The Function of Science

Fiction in Harry Harrison, ed, The

Light

Fantastic

Science

Fiction

Classics

of

the Main-

stream Scribners, 1971)

3. John W. Campbell Anthology: Three JVovel.7,

with introductions bv Lester de1 Rev and

Isaac Asimov, page 44

4.

Locus, No.

108,

26

February 1972

5. Locus, No. 97, 2 October 1971

Prophets and

A series of articles that expose the

Predictors

theme that utopian and social fiction

has always responded to the society

of its day and its needs.

8.

175 485 : the discovery of the

future

I. F. Clarke

ROM

1750 onwards the idea of pro-

gress had begun to permeate European

society and by 1850, at the time of the

preparations for the Great Exhibition

of 1851, the principle of continuing

improvement had become established

doctrine for the new industrial nations

of the world. Two pronouncements

show the extent of the change in

Professor I. F. Clarke is Head of the English

Studies Department, University of Strathclyde,

Glasgow, UK.

thinking in the course of one hundred

years. The first was made on 11

December 1750, when the young

Turgot read his paper on the Successive

Aduances of the Human Mind to a con-

ference of clerics at the Sorbonne. He

argued at length in favour of the then

new theory of progress in human

affairs; and he ended with a vague but

vigorous confession of faith in the

advancement of mankind: Open your

eyes and see Century of Louis the

FUTURES October 973


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495

Great, may your light beautify the

precious reign of his successor May it

last for ever, may it extend over the

whole world May men continually

make steps along the road of truth

Rather still, may they continually

become better and happier

One century later, after 70 years of

astounding technological advances had

inaugurated a new phase in human

history, the hopeful anticipations of

the French cleric found their realisation

in the emphatic statements of a German

prince. The occasion was a banquet at

the Mansion House in London on 21

March 1850, when the Prince Consort

outlined his plans for the Great

Exhibition. His concluding remarks

were major articles of faith in the

established creed of progress : Nobody

who has paid any attention to the

peculiar features of our present era will

doubt for a moment that we are living

at a time of most wonderful transition,

which tends rapidly to accomplish

that great end to which indeed all

history points--the realisation of the

unity of mankind. . . . The distances

which separated the different nations

and parts of the globe are rapidly

vanishing before the achievements of

modern invention, and we can traverse

them with incredible ease. . . . Gentle-

men, the Exhibition of 1851 is to give

us a true test and a living picture of the

point of development at which the

whole of mankind has arrived in this

great task, and a new starting-point

from which all nations will be able to

direct their further exertions.

The decisive factors in the rapid

development of this new view of society

were the example of the American

Declaration

of Independence, the

theories of a succession of most per-

suasive French ideologues-from Tur-

got and Condorcet to Saint Simon and

Auguste Comte-and the most impor-

tant factor of all was the universal and

unquestionable evidence of unprece-

dented technological progress. Any of

the civic dignitaries present at the

Mansion House banquet could have

summed up the sense of the Prince

Consorts remarks (and the experience

of their life-time) in the three phrases-

steam engines, steam ships, steam

locomotives. And in like manner 50

years earlier any educated European,

who was interested in the new pro-

phetic fiction of his time, could have

described in comparable terms the ex-

perience that had shaped the


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496


accustomed to technological progress

that an imaginative effort is required

in order to see in these early descrip-

tions of time-to-come the first trium-

phant statement of the new-found

capacity for

the effecting of all

things possible. The Baconian hope

in the Jvere, Atlantis for the enlarging

of the bounds of human empire began

to take shape during the last quarter of

the eighteenth century. For the first

time in human history those who had

eyes to see could discern the shape of

things to come in the whirling planet-

wheels of Watts new beam-engines

and in the even more remarkable

spectacle of the Montgolfier and

Charliere balloons as they drifted

silently over the cities of Europe. The

story of that primal period in the

course of technological progress reads

like a fairy-tale; for once upon a time,

and in fact for almost the whole of

human existence, the only sources of

power had been the water-wheel, or

the windmill, or the muscles of men

and their domestic animals. Before

James Watt started work on the

separate condenser in the May of 1765,

the most powerful prime-mover ever

constructed had been The Machine

of Marly,

the great water-wheel and

pumping system which Louis XIV had

built in 1682 to provide water for his

fountains at Versailles. This piece of

conspicuous engineering generated

about 75 horse-power and at its most

efficient, before the wooden parts began

to wear, it could raise one million

gallons a day a height of 502 feet. In its

time the Marly Machine was a wonder

of the world.

But that old world vanished very

rapidly in the smoke and steam of the

industrial revolution. The first clear

and unmistakeable signs of the ending

of the old order came in the late

summer and autumn of 1783, when the

first balloon flights made Paris the

Cape Kennedy of eighteenth century

Europe. The accounts of the first free

ascent-by Pildtre de Rozier and the

Marquis dArlandes on 2 1 November-

all comment on the extraordinary

emotions of the vast crowd. First, there

was a burst of flame and smoke beneath

the hot-air aperture ofthe Montgolfiere;

next, a dead silence fell upon the two

hundred thousand spectators as de

Rozier called for the mooring ropes to

be cast off. And then came the tears,

the shouts and prayers, the immense

excitement as the balloon moved away

with the prevailing wind north-west

across Paris. For Sebastien Mercier,

author of LAn 2440 it was a great

moment in human history; and he

recorded the attitude of the two men

themselves sailing into the blue, while

below their fellow-citizens prayed and

feared for their safety; and lastly the

balloon itself, superb in the sunlight,

whirling aloft like a planet, or the

chariot of some weather-god.

That last phrase reveals how the

sudden and unexpected achievement

of balloon flight had penetrated to the

most profound depths of the human

psyche. The sky, for millennia the

abode of gods and the sacred place to

which only the elect could ascend, had

over-night become an area for demon-

strating the powers of the new tech-

nologies. The balloons were indis-

putable evidence that science had begun

the conquest of nature; and because

everyone could see them moving across

the sky, they became a most powerful

factor in the swift development of the

new practice of prediction. For Diderot

the balloon flights of 1783 were a

promise that one day men would go to

the moon. For the anonymous English

author of The Air Balloon (1783) they

represented an experiment, which in

a very few ages back would have filled

the world with amazement and wonder,

and perhaps have sent the inventor to

his grave with ignominy and disgrace.

The times, however, in this respect are

more enlightened; for whilst this pheno-

menon produces novelty, (it) opens a

wide field for speculation and im-

provement.

FUTURES October 973


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The first demonstration of the hot-air balloon was at Versailles on 19 September 1783. The first

aeronauts were-a sheep, a cock, a duck

One of the earliest futuristic fantasies: a German artists impression of air warfare


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I

A French project (imaginary) to crush

British opposition to Napoleon. Vast

Montgolfier balloons are expected to

carry 3000 troops across the English

Channel

)ne of the earliest illustrat ions to a

tory of the future: sea-going platforms

owed by whales from I n i 81 0


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499

The long countdown in Western

science was coming to an end, and the

applied sciences were beginning to

realise the Baconian dream as they

worked for the endowment of human

life with new inventions and riches.

And so, by the end of the eighteenth

century the European imagination

had taken off into the future in an

ever-increasing number of forecasts

and fantasies about the changes that

lay ahead. These visions oftime-to-come

introduced a new ritual between science

and society - a transposition of values

that placed the new heaven in a new

world of the future. 0 posterity, holy

and sacred Diderot exclaimed. Pos-

terity is for the philosopher what the

other world is for the devout. The new

Jerusalem would come; and it would

bring in a new epoch of peace and

universal happiness, so William Godwin

foretold in his

Enquiry concerning Political

Justice in 1793

:

There will be no war,

no crimes, no administration of justice

as it is called, and no government.

These latter articles are at no great

distance; and it is not impossible that

some of the present race of men may

live to see them in part accomplished.

Whilst the world waited for the new

heaven to appear, a succession of

writers in Britain, France, Germany,

and the United States applied them-

selves to writing the history of the

future. The first French time-traveller,

SCbastien Mercier, gained an instant

success with four editions of his LAn

2440 in 177 1, and the book was quickly

translated into English, Dutch, German

and Italian. What attracted readers in

Europe and the United States was the

future blessedness of mankind-consti-

tutional monarchy, universal peace,

scientific research, colonialism finished

for ever. Merciers vision of a better

world was the starting point of a new

kind of fiction that has ever since

reacted to the condition of its time.

From the first the tale of the future-at

its most serious-has always accepted

the task of prophecy and prediction.

These imaginative anticipations of com-

ing events are a major social device for

communicating the hopes and fears, the

opportunities and the dangers, that

come out of the turmoil of change

brought about by the powers of science.

They are scenarios that project their

tale of consequences-for good and

evil-into the empty spaces of the

future. They are a primary product of

the Promethean period of human

existence;

and they represent the

collective and unquestioning recogni-

tion of the fact that science has given

mankind the power to play Prosper0

upon the planet Earth. And from the

start this has seemed to some an

unqualified blessing. Witness the eager

anticipations of Turgots precursor,

Joseph Glanvill, Fellow of the Royal

Society and Chaplain-in-Ordinary to

Charles II, who took an early look into

the future in 1661: And I doubt not

but posterity will find many things,

that are now but Rumours, verified into

practical Realities. It may be some

ages hence, a voyage to the Southern

unknown tracts, yea possibly the Moon,

will not be more strange than one to

America. To them that come after us,

it may be as ordinary to buy a pair of

wings to fly into remotest Regions, as

now a pair of Boots to ride a journey.

And to confer at the distance of the

Indies by Sympathetick conveyances

may be as usual to future times as to us

in a literary correspondence. The

restauration of gray hairs to Juvenility,

and renewing the exhausted marrow,

may at length be effected without a

miracle. And the turning of the now

comparative desert world into a Para-

dise may not improbably be expected

from late Agriculture.

FUTURES October 973

futures volume 5 issue 5 1973 [doi 10.1016%2f0016-3287%2873%2990041-4] i.f. clarke -- 8....

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