The Perversity of Things: review #1 of X: Gernsback as Philosopher of Technology

I just started reading The Perversity of Things: Hugo Gernsback on Media, Tinkering, and Scientifiction, edited by Grant Wythoff (University of Minnesota Press, 2016).  I've read the first 8 pages of Wythoff's 59-page masterful Introduction to the 359-page volume, and there's so much to say about this, because there's so much on every page, that I thought I'd post a series of reviews here, rather than try to cram everything that needs to be said about this volume into one long unwieldy review.  After all, I just posted three reviews of The Man in the High Castle second season on Amazon, even though I binge-watched it over two evenings.

I'm looking forward to spending ten times longer if not more on The Perversity of Things, which seeks to put Gernsback, most known as the father of pulp magazine science fiction due to his publication of Amazing Stories, the first magazine devoted only to science fiction, beginning in 1926. I've always had a special interest in Amazing Stories, given that it was the first "pro" magazine to publish one of my science fiction stories - "Albert's Cradle" in 1993 (thanks again, Kim Mohan, who was editor) - but The Perversity of Things is much more than a meticulously researched compendium about Gernsback's philosophy of science fiction, though it is that, too.

But as the first eight pages of Wythoff's Introduction explain and detail - each page is a small feast for the intellect - this book is about Gernsback as a philosopher of technology, and his unrecognized position as such. Wythoff tells us that the title of this book comes from what Gernsback thought and said about "things" - "the perversity of things" -which can confound, confuse, and irritate us when we (the public) have no experience with them.  We, and alas, much of media criticism and what passes as scholarship, are therefore prone to see what's wrong not right with new technology and media, and blame them for every evil in our society (look at the beating Twitter has taken for Trump's election - as if Twitter somehow forced people to vote for him). Wythoff contends that Gernsback's life project was to do just the opposite - enable the public to learn what was right about new technology, and use it for the betterment of our species.

Wythoff supports his arguments not only with powerful logic, but comprehensive research expressed in copious footnotes and illustrations from the time (at this point, the beginning of the 20th century and its publications).  On the footnotes, it's been years since I've read such well-written mini-essays, and it's a pleasure and enlightening to see them again.  (The last time I did anything like this in my own work was in my Mind at Large: Knowing in the Technological Age, 1988, which explored technology as an embodiment of human ideas and imagination.)

It's fair and sad to say that Gernsback ultimately lost his battle.  The Man in the High Castle, superb and astonishing as it is, represents the kind of science fiction that won, in 1962 when the novel was first published, and now.  As Wythoff points out, it's amazing that we had much optimism about science and technology after the ravages of the First World War, but we did.  And that somehow lasted even past the Second World War, but not the 1960s, when, as I mentioned in my review of Star Trek Beyond just last night, the Star Trek series on television represented the last major science fictional paean to how we could improve our species and the cosmos beyond our planet with our science and technology.

There have been some exceptions to this tide - such as some of the stories in Hartwell and Cramer's Hard SF Renaissance (2004) - but the fact that Wythoff put this book together and got it published by a major academic press, the fact that the Star Trek franchise is still flourishing, speak more ringingly to the survival of Gernsback's vision despite the pummeling it has received.  The Perversity of Things will be a handbook for the resurgence of that vision - it's the best new scholarly book I've read in decades - and I'll be back here with another installment of my reviews soon in the New Year.

See also The Perversity of Things: review #2 of X: Learning by Doing ... #3 of X: The Evolution of Media ... #4 of X: Gernsback and the First Amendment ... #5 of X: Amateurs vs. Corporations ... #6 of X: Thought Experiments and Toys ... #7 of X: The Invention of Invention, and the Advent of Science Fiction ... #8 of X: Definitions and Fake News

Star Trek Beyond: The Rescue of Optimism

Continuing with my reviews of important 2016 movies, which I certainly should have seen and reviewed much earlier - in this case, July - but, hey, time itself has always been somewhat malleable in science fiction, especially Star Trek,

Star Trek Beyond is the lucky 13th movie in the Star Trek movie series - lucky to be released around the 50th anniversary of the first appearance of Star Trek on television in 1966, now known as Star Trek: The Original Series or ST: TOS for short.  ST Beyond is third in the reboots, in which  J. J. Abrams re-presented the original Kirk, Spock, McCoy et al crew, beginning a little earlier in time than TOS, somewhat before and during their time as trainees in Starfleet Academy.

In a brilliant move, the 2009 Star Trek reboot also brought into play the original Spock from TOS, older, played by Leonard Nimoy, via an alternate universe gambit.   I mention this, not only to praise it again, but because in some ways my favorite single part of Beyond was Zachary Quinto's Spock looking at a photo of his alternate, older self (Nimoy) near the beginning of the movie, and the whole original crew, again, near the end.   It was a satisfying way to again to make a connection to what started fifty years ago.

And it had a special pull on the heart because Leonard Nimoy is no longer with us, having died at 83 years of age in 2015.  The fact that Quinto's Spock not only knew but loved his alternate self, whom we also had come to know and love, has given Nimoy even more of a continuing place and life in our ongoing popular culture.

There was, indeed, a lot of the past in Beyond, with an earlier starship, the USS Franklin, playing a major role in the story.  It's a Warp 4 ship, which puts it a notch below the Warp 5 speeds of the Enterprise in the Star Trek: Enterprise series, which depicts voyages of the first Starfleet starship.   This immersion in the past was good to see, continuing a tradition which goes back to TOS itself, and its making an episode - "Menagerie" - out of its pilot episode, in which Kirk was not even yet Captain of the ship.

In fact, I'd go so far as to say the optimistic view that underlies all of Star Trek - in contrast, to say, Star Wars - comes from Victorian times, and lasted until a little beyond the middle of the 20th century, when it was assaulted but not destroyed by the cynicism and pessimism that hold so much sway today.   I've just begun reading a great anthology of the writings of Hugo Gernsback (compiled and with a pathbreaking introduction by Grant Wythoff), and his unbridled but well considered optimism about how we could and would improve our lot via science and technology (I'll be reviewing it here soon).  I share that view - and certainly Star Trek did as well.

And the inspiration of the Star Trek reboots, continuing with Beyond, is that it still does.  The stories are exciting, the repartee between Kirk and Bones and Spock is clever and fun, but it's the joy in the prospect of humans out in there in the stars that was always the beacon of Star Trek - a beacon drawing us to it and drawing us out there.  Star Trek has rescued that optimism that animated Jules Verne and Hugo Gernsback, and I look forward to its continued presentation as it pursues its bold, new voyages on the screen in our 21s century.

See also Star Trek: Reborn, Reset, Resplendent and Star Trek Into Darkness: Echoes, Resonances, and Great