Hugo Gernsback and SF's Handicraft Roots

While Hugo Gernsback's 1911 novel Ralph 124C 41+ (a wordplay on "one to foresee for one") is one of the foundational works of science fiction, it's also widely agreed to be "the worst science fiction novel ever written" (Everett Bleiler; similar sentiments in a talk recently webcast on SF and architecture by Warren Ellis). Setting aside this work's questionable merit ("Ralph 124C 41+, his heart thumping in a most undignified way, was acting more like a schoolboy than a master of science"), Gernsback's work as a magazine editor provides some fascinating materials when considering the emergence of science fiction within an environment of fin de siècle technological utopianism and DIY experimentation with radio homebrew. I've been digging through some of the Firestone Library's Gernsback materials and came across a few interesting points.

The Luxembourg-born Gernsback began his career as a publisher in 1908 with Modern Electrics, a hobbyist's guide to wireless experimentation, including how-to articles, descriptions of the latest developments in the field, and speculations on the future of wireless technology. It was in this steampunk incarnation of Wired magazine that Ralph 124C 41+ was first published, and here that, strangely enough, Lewis Mumford published his first bit of writing at the age of 15, titled "A Portable Receiving Outfit." Gernsback's next big success wasScience and Invention, running from 1913 (originally as Electrical Experimenter) to 1931. In the August 1923 issue, Gernsback first edited a collection, calling on many of the same writers contributing technical pieces to write for this "Science Fiction Number."

This issue served as a sort of trial run for Gernsback's most famous publication, Amazing Stories, appearing in April 1926 and continuing, in one form or another, until the present day. In its early incarnations, the magazine largely published reprints of authors Gernsback wanted to appropriate as canonical works of "scientifiction," a term he patented and attempted to popularize with Amazing Stories. One finds in the first two years of the magazine stories by Wells, Verne, and Poe. There simply wasn't a large pool of authors writing in the genre (indeed, the "genre" at this point is little more than a business venture with no product), and those who were writing fiction along Gernsback's lines of "a charming romance intermingled with scientific fact and prophetic vision" were put off by Gernsback's less than attractive editorial style (he believed that publication is payment enough). Burroughs was too expensive to contract, and Lovecraft had a good enough following of his own.

One of Gernsbacks' most important contributions is his development of a forum in which a community of genre fans could develop, in which a medium of popular criticism could develop around a particular set of aesthetic questions. He was one of the first magazine editors to regularly publish a letters to the editor section, responding each month. Indeed, in many of the correspondences between Gernsback and his readers, he seems to be behind the curve when discussing the poetics of the genre. In the July 1926 issue of Amazing Stories, nineteen year old reader Green Peyton Wertenbaker writes, "Scientifiction goes out into the remote vistas of the universe, where there is still mystery and so still beauty. For that reason scientifiction seems to me to be the true literature of the future. The danger that may lie before Amazing Stories is that of becoming too scientific and not sufficiently literary." Gernsback's unfortunate reply in the next month's issue: "we should state that the ideal proportion of a scientifiction story should be seventy-five per cent literature interwoven with twenty-five per cent science."

Gernsback never abandons his earlier technical publications, continuing with titles such asShort Wave Craft (seen above), Everyday Mechanics, and Technocracy Review. He opens a radio station WRNY which in 1928 broadcast one of the earliest radio programs with a live classical concert (conducted by fellow wireless enthusiast Joseph Kraus) and conducted experiments with television in the late 20s and into the 30s, though never with simultaneous image and sound--an image would be broadcast and then a sound over the same wavelength in a sort of shot countershot. One of the most interesting things about Gernsback's regular editorials and critical writings (publishing a short essay in each of his several publications each month) is the degree to which his (if you want to call it this) literary criticism and technical writings feed into one another--and this seems to be the case in the fan letter, pop critical discussion that flourished in his magazine empire. In the passage below from the Feb-March 1931 issue of Short Wave Craft, one can just as easily imagine the "experimenter" to be the writer of fiction as the hobbyist tinkering with tubes and resistors. (And note the way that the nature of television--a medium which has yet to come into being--is already seen to be determined not by the nature of its technological support but by a certain aesthetic of its use--potential technics?)

With television on the threshold, an entirely new radio paradise has been opened to the experimenter; because television will, no doubt, be transmitted on the shorter wave lengths for a long time to come. The up-to-date experimenter is, of course, thinking about this and is following the new art in all its different branches; so that, when television finally 'breaks,' he will be equipped to work with it as thoroughly as he has been familiarized with transmission and reception, 'phone as well as code.