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4 0 June 2017
Science
ficsean
CULTURE
Irish science fiction,
dominated by writers
from industrial Belfast but
including works by Samuel
Beckett, Kevin Barry and
Louise O’Neill, demonstrates
critical thinking in action
by Richard Howard
‘Night Walk’ by Bob Shaw
June 2017 4 1
Spéirling
is “nothing
more than a
gaelgeoir Buck
Rogers or Dan
Dare”
T
HE FIRST published catalogue of Irish science fiction came
out as recently as 2014. ‘Irish Science Fiction’ by Jack Fen
-
nell of the University of Limerick traces the genre as far back
as Fitz-James O’Brien’s ‘The Diamond Lens’ (1858) and
Robert Cromie’s ‘A Plunge into Space’ (1891) all the way
through to what he calls “the shape of Irish science fiction to come”.
Fennell lists many strange and wonderful pickings from the Irish
science-fiction tradition, such as Tom Greer’s ‘A Modern Daedalus’
from 1885, which outlines the invention of flying machines by a
Dublin man and his inner conflict at using the technology to gain
independence for Ireland, and James Creed Meredith’s ‘The Rainbow
in the Valley’ (1939), in which Martian contact becomes a trigger for
philosophical speculations and reflections on the War of
Independence.
Fennell also uncovers science fiction in Irish. The four Captaen
Spéirling novels by Cathal Ó Sándair were space-going adventures
written in the early 1960s for children. Fennell points to the optimism
engendered by an economic upturn in Ireland in the period as crucial
for understanding the stories, with Spéirling described as “nothing
more than a gaelgeoir Buck Rogers or Dan Dare”. Fennell also
points to an imperialist theme throughout the Spéirling series, with
the suggestion in the novels that Ireland’s history as a colony will
ensure that aliens on any inhabited planets will be treated with the
utmost respect when an Irish interplanetary imperialist project is
I
RELAND IS known for is lierure, bu no
for is science ficion. There is no gre
number of Irish wriers in he genre, bu i
is puzzling fc h mjor inernionl
uhors such s Jmes Whie nd Bob Shw
re brely known in heir nive Irelnd.
Science ficion ofen imgines lernive
life-worlds, which give wriers he chnce o
ssess he presen by composing hough
experimens h explore he implicions of
new echnology, new socil srucures, or
encouners wih lien ohers. I migh be
good ide, hen, o look o Irish science
ficion s source of incisive criicl
commen on ll specs of Irish life.
A
ARTICLE
4 2 June 2017
established.
One author not covered in Fennell’s volume is
Joseph O’Neill, whose ‘Wind from the North’
(1934), ‘Land Under England’ (1935) and ‘Day of
Wrath’ (1936) arguably also belong to the genre.
A friend of W.B. Yeats, O’Neill was the Secretary
of the Department of Education in the early Irish
Free State. In The Irish Press in 1944, O’Neill rem-
inisced about his younger days as a member of
the Gaelic League, travelling the countryside
with his boyhood friend, Pádraig Pearse, collect-
ing stories and handing out cash prizes to
anyone who could speak Gaelic. However,
O’Neill’s interest in Gaelic antiquity never trans-
lated into political action. The O’Neill expert
Kelly Flynn Lynch writes that at Easter 1916, the
author was “incapable of evincing a passion or
even an enthusiasm for popular Irish causes”.
But O’Neill did have a passion for the science
fiction of H.G. Wells. Upon publication of ‘Land
Under England’, he sent the father of modern sci-
ence fiction a copy of the book with a letter
telling him that “‘Land Under England’ in so far
as it has value, owes it to you more than to all
other writers put together, because it is your
works, the early ones as well as the later, that
kindled my imagination to the point at which I
felt that I wanted to create”.
‘Land Under England’ provides a fascinating
inverse view of the newly independent Ireland.
The novel details the adventures of a young Eng-
lishman who follows his father into a secret
cavern beneath Hadrian’s Wall. His father’s
obsession with the ancient Romans has led to
the discovery of a hollow beneath the historic
wall into which Roman civilisation has retreated.
In their isolation, the Romans have evolved tel-
epathic mind-control techniques in order to
control their subjects and exist as a society of
automatons. The novel is usually connected to
the rise of fascism in Europe, but it also echoes
events closer to home, in what Diarmaid Ferriter
calls the “frenzied and paranoid” atmosphere of
1930s Ireland.
Indeed, after its publication, reviewers won
-
dered whether its depiction of Roman
automatons was a sly critique of Irish Taoiseach
Éamon de Valera’s Fianna Fáil party, or his rivals
in the fascist Blueshirts. In his role in the Depart-
ment of Education, O’Neill was said to have been
one of Archbishop McQuaid’s favourite civil serv-
ants, and O’Neill’s official writings on education
and the church certainly bear this out. However,
O’Neill’s final novel ‘The Black Shore’, published
posthumously in 2000, reveals a more sardonic
take on the relationship between church and
State in Ireland, and perhaps adds a new dimen-
sion to the metaphorical significance of O’Neill’s
Roman automatons.
The bulk of Irish science-fiction literature has
been produced by three Belfast writers: Bob
Shaw and James White, who both wrote from the
mid-twentieth century to its end, and Ian McDon-
ald, whose career spans from 1989 to the
present. Science fiction is a genre that tends to
arrive with late modernity, so it is probably no
surprise that a science-fiction tradition would
take root in Belfast, given the history of indus-
trialisation in the city. Bob Shaw and James
White were friends who worked together at the
Shorts aerospace company. White set up the
Irish science-fiction group Irish Fandom in 1947
with his friend Walt Willis, with Shaw joining the
group soon after. White and Willis met through
the pages of the British speculative fiction maga-
zine Fantasy, when White noticed a Belfast
address in one of the letters to the editor and
tracked Willis down. Irish Fandom was nominally
a non-sectarian grouping, although White
remained the only Catholic member throughout
its existence. The group self-published the sci
-
ence-fiction fanzine Slant, which was printed
using a hand-levered flatbed printing press.
White made prints using woodcuts of rocket
ships, astronauts and planets for the
illustrations.
White saw his science fiction as an antidote to
the violent and militaristic take on the genre that
was internationally popular in the mid-twentieth
century. His ‘Sector General’ stories depicted a
vast space station that serves as a hospital for
an assortment of alien species. These stories
propose that the firmest foundation for contact
between alien races is a medical encounter.
Although White placed the first ‘Sector General’
Bob Shaw and James White at Festivention, 1951
Roman civilisation has retreated into a hollow
beneath Hadrian’s wall and the Romans have
evolved telepathic mind-control techniques
CULTURE
June 2017 4 3
story in New Worlds magazine in 1957, the con-
text of the Troubles became increasingly relevant
as the series carried on in numerous short sto-
ries and twelve novels, culminating in 1999’s
‘Double Contact’.
Although White was a self-declared pacifist,
the vision expressed across the ‘Sector General’
novels is unlike the passive resistance of a
Mahatma Gandhi or a Martin Luther King, which
would have aligned with the burgeoning Civil
Rights movement in the north. White’s pacifism
was more of a top-down affair, with the Monitor
Corps as the police force of the ‘Sector General’
universe guaranteeing peace with the threat of
State violence. White’s standalone fiction is as
interesting as his ‘Sector General’ stories, in par-
ticular his veiled Troubles commentaries ‘The
Dream Millennium’ (1974) and ‘Underkill’ (1979).
His final standalone novel ‘The Silent Stars Go
By’ (1991) imagines a Hibernian Empire that has
long since discovered steam power, which it
uses to colonise a newly-discovered planet, with
priests, bishops and cardinals dominating the
mission.
Bob Shaw is rather more cynical, his narra-
tives undermining utopianism at every
opportunity. His early fiction included ‘Light of
Other Days’ (1966) and ‘Burden of Proof’ (1967),
both of which were sold to the US science-fiction
magazine Analog, overseen by the legendary
editor John W. Campbell. The stories introduced
the concept of slow glass, a substance that
reduces the speed of light to an extent that
events that take place in front of a sheet of slow
glass are replayed later. The early ‘Slow Glass’
tales and the later novel ‘Other Days, Other Eyes’
(1972) propose many applications for the mate-
rial: scenic views for urban dwellers, memorials
of lost loved ones, spying, and crime detection.
The latter is the theme of the story ‘Burden of
Proof’, in which a judge waits to see whether the
guilty verdict he gave in a murder case that sent
the accused to the electric chair was correct, a
pane of slow glass being present at the scene.
Here and elsewhere, Shaw locates the tenden
-
cies in technology that undermine institutions
and subvert our interpretations of history.
Shaw’s oeuvre covers a broad area of subgen-
res and themes within science fiction: time travel
(‘The Two-Timers’, 1968), dystopia (‘The Shadow
of Heaven’, 1969), anti-ageing technology (‘One
Million Tomorrows’, 1970), nuclear cataclysm
(‘Ground Zero Man’, 1971), and space opera
(‘Orbitsville’, 1975, ‘Ship of Strangers’, 1978). His
debut novel, ‘Night Walk’ (1967), touches most
acutely on the sociopolitical climate of Belfast
and the identities that flow around it. Depicting
a future in which Earth has colonised other plan-
ets, the novel’s protagonist Tallon is a member
of a group called the Block on the planet Emm
Luther. The Block wishes to maintain a political
link between Emm Luther and the home planet,
engaging in acts of terrorism to further that
cause. Tallon realises that the ‘flicker-transit’
technology with which space is explored has
undermined the foundation of a planetary iden-
tity. He asks: ‘Why should a man choose one
planet and say, this now I will put above all
others? If he survived the psychic disembowel-
ment of the flicker-transits and arrived on yet
another miraculous green orb, why shouldn’t
that be enough? Why carry with him the para-
phernalia of political allegiances, doctrinal
conflicts, imperialism, the Block?’
White’s ‘The Silent Stars Go By’
(1991) imagines a Hibernian
Empire that has discovered
steam power in its prehistory,
and utilises it to colonise a newly-
discovered planet, with priests
dominating the mission
4 4 June 2017
Ian McDonald is from the cyberpunk genera-
tion, and his fiction features hacking, artificial
intelligence and the link between spirituality and
computer technology. His best received work is
perhaps the 2004 novel ‘River of Gods’, set in a
technologically advanced future India coming to
terms with the effects of nanotechology and arti-
ficial intelligence. McDonald researched ‘River
of Gods’ by spending an
extended period in India and
extrapolating from what he
observed, a process he
repeated in Brazil for 2007’s
‘Brasyl’, which revolves
around quantum computing,
and in Turkey for 2010’s ‘The
Dervish House’, which
explores the religious exploi-
tation of nanotechnology.
His latest novels, ‘Luna: New
Moon’ (2015) and ‘Luna: Wolf
Moon’ (2017) feature
intrigues between the Aus
-
tralian, Ghanaian, Brazilian,
Chinese and Russian fami-
lies involved in colonising
and developing the moon.
McDonald has also writ-
ten three Irish science-fiction novels, where he
indulges his decidedly postcolonial take on the
past and future of Ireland. ‘King of Morning’
(1991) examines Celtic Twilight faeries through
the prism of alien invasion, ‘Hearts, Hands and
Voices’ (1992) restages the War of Independ-
ence with nanotechnology and body
modification, and ‘Sacrifice of Fools’ (1996)
plants androgynous aliens in the heart of
industrial Belfast and imagines the reactions of
the locals.
So, could it be suggested that there is such a
thing as an Irish science-fiction tradition? Before
answering, it’s important to remember how
genres are themselves constructed, and for par-
ticular purposes. The creation of science fiction
itself was one such feat of imagination. In 1926
Hugo Gernsback cobbled the genre together by
republishing Poe, Wells and
Verne in his Amazing Stories
magazine, and soon writers
were making their own con
-
tributions and similar pulp
publications began to
thrive. Gernsback’s purpose
was to provoke a young
audience to think
scientifically.
If we were to propose an
Irish science-fiction tradi-
tion with a contemporary
continuity, we could point to
Louise O’Neill’s ‘Only Ever
Yours’ (2014), Kevin Barry’s
‘City of Bohane’ (2011), and
Mike McCormack’s ‘Notes
From a Coma’ (2005) as
recent examples. In addi
-
tion, there are other works that could be
appraised through a science fiction lens. The sci-
ence-fictional tendency of Samuel Beckett’s
‘Endgame’ (1957) has already been explored by
the critic Carl Freedman, and Francis Stuart’s
‘Pigeon Irish’ (1932), ‘Faillandia’ (1985) and ‘The
Abandoned Snail Shell’ (1987) are also texts that
might reward assessment as examples of an
Irish science-fiction sensibility, albeit a
muted one.
What would be the benefit of arguing that
there is such a subgenre as Irish science
fiction? Well, possibly it would be a useful way
to identify where critical thinking is happening
in our society. Critical thinking is not the
same thing as creativity or innovation, terms
that have been swallowed up by post-2008 neo-
liberal recession discourse. Critical thinking
is stymied when the ownership of media outlets
(press, radio, TV, online, advertising) is owned
and controlled by ever smaller cliques. It is also
stymied by the ‘doing more with less’ ethos of
public sector reform, which encourages
groupthink and discourages independence in
education, health and the public service gen
-
erally. Science fiction is the ideal genre with
which to critically reflect on the present and
imagine alternative life-worlds. An Irish science
fiction would be part of that project.
Richard Howard is a lecturer whose PhD
research at Trinity College on Bob Shaw and
James White was funded by the Irish Research
Council.
‘Luna: Wolf Moon’ by Ian McDonald
CULTURE
This article was
commissioned for Village
Magazine by Field Day.
Founded in 1980, Field Day is
a publishing and theatre
company dedicated to
cultural critique.
A Field Day podcast will be
launched later in 2017.
www.fieldday.ie
