Essential Science Fiction Novels - Volume 6. Richard JefferiesЧитать онлайн книгу.
These Shadows here, as in The Blue Sphere, are not altogether clear as to motivation, yet they seem to stand for Fate interference in human destiny. In the latter play Fate is also represented by a Fast Mail which is one of the active characters, menacing and destroying a child.
One reason why these motifs of science are not used in drama to any extent is that they are impossible of representation on the stage. Even the wizardry of modern producers would be unable to show a Power of Physics, or Nitrous Acid, save as they might be embodied, as were the symbolic characters in Maeterlinck’s Blue Bird, which would mean that they would lose their effect. And what would a stage manager do with the rhythm of the universe, which enters into Dreiser’s play? Many sounds can be managed off stage, but hardly that, one fancies. These themes are not even found in closet drama, where many other elements of supernaturalism which would be difficult or impossible of presentation on the stage trail off. William Sharp’s Vistas, for instance, could not be shown on the stage, yet the little plays in that volume are of wonderful dramatic power. The drama can stand a good deal of supernaturalism of various kinds, from the visible ghosts and devils of the Elizabethans to the atmospheric supernaturalism of Maeterlinck, but it could scarcely support the presentations of chemicals and gases and supernatural botany and biology that fiction handles with ease. The miraculous machinery would balk at stage action. Fancy the Time Machine staged, for instance!
We notice in these scientific stories a widening of the sphere of supernatural fiction. It is extended to include more of the normal interests and activities of man than has formerly been the case. Here we notice a spirit similar to that of the leveling influence seen in the case of the ghosts, devils, witches, angels, and so forth, who have been made more human not only in appearance but in emotions and activities as well. Likewise these scientific elements have been elevated to the human. Supernatural as well as human attributes have been extended to material things, as animals are given supernormal powers in a sense different from and yet similar to those possessed by the enchanted animals in folk-lore. Science has its physical as well as psychic horrors which the scientific ghostly tales bring in.
Not only are animals gifted with supernatural powers but plants as well are humanized, diabolized. We have strange murderous trees, vampire orchids, flowers that slay men in secret ways with all the smiling loveliness of a treacherous woman. The dæmonics of modern botany form an interesting phase of ghostly fiction and give a new thrill to supernaturalism. Inanimate, concrete things are endowed with unearthly cunning and strength, as well as animals and plants. The new type of fiction gives to chemicals and gases a hellish intelligence, a diabolic force of minds. It creates machinery and gives it an excess of force, a supernatural, more than human cunning, sometimes helpful, sometimes dæmonic. Machines have been spiritualized and some engines are philanthropic while some are like damned souls.
This scientific supernaturalism concerns itself with mortal life, not with immortality as do some of the other aspects of the genre. It is concrete in its effects, not spiritual. Its incursions into futurity are earthly, not of heaven or hell, and its problems are of time, not of eternity. The form shows how clear, cold intelligence plays with miracles and applies the supernatural to daily life. The enthusiasm, wild and exaggerated in some ways, that sprang up over the prospects of what modern science and investigation would almost immediately do for the world in the latter half of the nineteenth century, had no more interesting effect than in the stimulating of scientific fictive supernaturalism. And though mankind has learned that science will not immediately bring the millennium, science still exercises a strong power over fiction. This type shows a strange effect of realism in supernaturalism, because of the scientific methods, for supernaturalism imposed on material things produces an effect of verisimilitude not gained in the realm of pure spirit. Too intellectually cold for the purposes of poetry, too abstract and elusive for presentation in drama, and too removed by its association with the fantastic aspects of investigation and the curiosities of science to be very appropriate for tragedy, which has hitherto been the chief medium of expressing the dramatic supernatural, science finds its fitting expression in prose fiction. It is an illustration of the widening range of the supernatural in fiction and as such is significant.
The Land of the Changing Sun
by William N. Harben
I
The balloon seemed scarcely to move, though it was slowly sinking toward the ocean of white clouds which hung between it and the earth.
The two inmates of the car were insensible; their faces were bloodless, their cheeks sunken. They were both young and handsome. Harry Johnston, an American, was as dark and sallow as a Spaniard. Charles Thorndyke, an English gentleman, had yellow hair and mustache, blue eyes and a fine intellectual face. Both were tall, athletic in build and well-proportioned.
Johnston was the first to come to consciousness as the balloon sank into less rarefied atmosphere. He opened his eyes dreamily and looked curiously at the white face of his friend in his lap. Then he shook him and tried to call his name, but his lips made no sound. Drawing himself up a little with a hand on the edge of the basket, he reached for a water-jug and sprinkled Thorndyke's face. In a moment he was rewarded by seeing the eyes of the latter slowly open.
“Where are we?” asked Thorndyke in a whisper.
“I don't know;” Johnston answered, “getting nearer to the earth, for we can breathe more easily. I can't remember much after the professor fell from the car. My God, old man! I shall never forget the horror in the poor fellow's eyes as he clung to the rope down there and begged us to save him. I tried to get you to look, but you were dozing off. I attempted to draw him up, but the rope on the edge of the basket was tipping it, and both you and I came near following him. I tried to keep from seeing his horrible face as the rope began to slip through his fingers. I knew the instant he let go by our shooting upward.”
“I came to myself and looked over when the basket tipped,” replied the Englishman, “I thought I was going too, but I could not stir a muscle to prevent it. He said something desperately, but the wind blew it away and covered his face with his beard, so that I could not see the movement of his lips.”
“It may have been some instructions to us about the management of the balloon.”
“I think not—perhaps a good-bye, or a message to his wife and child. Poor fellow!”
“How long have we been out of our heads?” and Johnston looked over the side of the car.
“I have not the slightest idea. Days and nights may have passed since he fell.”
“That is true. I remember coming to myself for an instant, and it seemed that we were being jerked along at the rate of a gunshot. My God, it was awful! It was as black as condensed midnight. I felt your warm body against me and was glad I was not alone. Then I went off again, but into a sort of nightmare. I thought I was in Hell, and that you were with me, and that Professor Helmholtz was Satan.”
“Where can we be?” asked Thorndyke.
“I don't know; I can't tell what is beneath those clouds. It may be earth, sea or ocean; we were evidently whisked along in a storm while we were out of our heads. If we are above the ocean we are lost.”
Thorndyke looked over the edge of the car long and attentively, then he exclaimed suddenly:
“I believe it is the ocean.”
“What makes you think so?”
“It reflects the sunlight. It is too bright for land. When we got above the clouds at the start it looked darker below than it does now; we may be over the middle of the Atlantic.”
“We are going down,” said Johnston gloomily.
“That we are, and it means something serious.”
Johnston made no answer. Half-an-hour went by. Thorndyke looked at the sun.
“If the professor had not dropped the compass, we could find our bearings,” he sighed.
Johnston