The History of Science Fiction

A Graphic Novel Adventure

Xavier Dollo & Djibril Morisette-Phan

Humanoids 2021

Hb, 200pp, £24.99, ISBN 9781643379142

Glyn Morgan is the curator of the Science Fiction exhibition currently at the Science Museum

(FT425:16-17); his book is not an exhibition catalogue, but a fascinating companion to the exhibition. “Science and science fiction spark off each other endlessly,” writes Science Museum director Sir Ian Blatchford in his introduction. SF “provides a tool for future-gazing, social commentary, art and satire that can inspire scientists”, while SF writers look at scientific developments and ask “where could this take us?”

The book covers, in five parts, People and Machines, Travelling the Cosmos, Communication and Language, Aliens and Alienation and finally Anxieties and Hopes. Each part has a couple of very readable essays by academics, and interviews with SF writers by the editor. As Morgan writes in his own essay: “Science fiction has always existed in a delicate balancing point between explaining the world, and leaving enough mystery to suggest a wider world beyond the confines of the narrative” – which is probably why it appeals to so many forteans; Stanisław Lem’s well-known and nigh-perfect definition of SF as the literary genre of cognitive estrangement is also cited in the book.

Colourfully illustrated on nearly every page, with a design reminiscent of the 1950s and 1960s (clearly deliberately), this is a book to be dipped into, to be browsed – simply to be enjoyed.

The History of Science Fiction is certainly not, as the blurb asserts, “for the first time in illustrated form”; longtime SF fans will know of John Clute’s excellent historically based Science Fiction: The Illustrated Encyclopedia (1995) among others. But it is probably the first history of SF in graphic novel form – and it does the job thoroughly, starting with the fantastic stories in Homer’s Odyssey, Lucian of Samosata’s True Story of a voyage to the Moon, More’s Utopia, Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels – all before Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, Jules Verne and HG Wells, and the coming of the pulps.

Written by Xavier Dollo and illustrated by Québec artist Djibril Morisette-Phan, the book, originally published in French, has writers discussing with each other the development of the genre. A long section on the Golden Age, with John W Campbell, Asimov, Heinlein, Van Vogt, Sturgeon, Simak and others, is followed by Michael Moorcock telling HG Wells (for some unexplained reason they’re travelling in the Tardis) about such quintessentially British works as Brave New World and 1984, moving on to Arthur C Clarke and then the British New Wave of the 1960s. Anthologist Judith Merrill leads Wells into American SF of the 1960s onwards, including a quick run through female writers. But the last 40 years or so are a bit rushed, little more than talking heads presenting a list of names, titles and themes; and poor HG must be bewildered by terms like “LGBTQIA”.

A valiant but somewhat breathless attempt, trying to cover too much too quickly. David V Barrett Morgan ★★★★★ Dollo & Morisette-Phan ★★★