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Fantasy/SF Micro-essay #6: H.G. Wells
Sunday, September 2nd, 2012 05:19 pm[My behaviour on this course is getting more like a typical student day by day. This week I was supposed to read "The Country of the Blind", "The Time Machine" and The Island of Dr. Moreau, all of which I had read ages ago but none of which I wanted to read this week, largely because I've been engrossed in Cory Doctorow's Little Brother, which is the last work on the reading list! A day before the deadline, I remembered an essay I wrote in high school (thirty-four years ago!) and recycled the main idea. It worked surprisingly well, I think, though the 320-word limit is still a pain; I would have loved to have gone into the language in more detail, particularly how he cleverly juxtaposes the factual and the legendary, and could have written a whole other essay about Congo.]
Fantasy and science fiction often employ distancing effects as a way to make the impossible acceptable without losing its aura of wonder. Commonly this is achieved by setting the story in an alternate world, whether magical or astronomical. In the past, though, it was still feasible to set amazing stories in the unexplored parts of our world, giving rise to the sub-genre of fantastic travellers' tales, of which Gulliver's Travels is the best known. Wells was writing at a time when the world was largely explored, but there were still odd corners mysterious enough for travellers' tales, unlike the present (Crichton's Congo is an interesting exception). "The Country of the Blind" is a fable with no supernatural elements, but while a whole country of blind people is a little more plausible than Lilliputians, it still needs to be removed from the rest of the world, hence its setting in an unexplored part of South America.
This is only the practical reason for the setting, though; the main reason is to create a fabulous atmosphere. There are nine place names in the first paragraph alone, and only a few of them would be familiar to the typical reader; the rest, while real places, sound as mysterious as Mordor: Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Arauca ... Wells uses language to create an exotic fantasy world inside the real world. The Country of the Blind is remote even from these exotic places: it was only accessible "Long years ago" and then only "through frightful gorges and over an icy pass." Wells also emphasises the temporal distance by writing "Generation followed generation" three times, and using near-repetitions such as "They forgot many things; they devised many things." Mildly archaic phrases are also used ("There came a time when a child was born"). While the setting is "real", Wells might as well have said "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."
Fantasy and science fiction often employ distancing effects as a way to make the impossible acceptable without losing its aura of wonder. Commonly this is achieved by setting the story in an alternate world, whether magical or astronomical. In the past, though, it was still feasible to set amazing stories in the unexplored parts of our world, giving rise to the sub-genre of fantastic travellers' tales, of which Gulliver's Travels is the best known. Wells was writing at a time when the world was largely explored, but there were still odd corners mysterious enough for travellers' tales, unlike the present (Crichton's Congo is an interesting exception). "The Country of the Blind" is a fable with no supernatural elements, but while a whole country of blind people is a little more plausible than Lilliputians, it still needs to be removed from the rest of the world, hence its setting in an unexplored part of South America.
This is only the practical reason for the setting, though; the main reason is to create a fabulous atmosphere. There are nine place names in the first paragraph alone, and only a few of them would be familiar to the typical reader; the rest, while real places, sound as mysterious as Mordor: Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Arauca ... Wells uses language to create an exotic fantasy world inside the real world. The Country of the Blind is remote even from these exotic places: it was only accessible "Long years ago" and then only "through frightful gorges and over an icy pass." Wells also emphasises the temporal distance by writing "Generation followed generation" three times, and using near-repetitions such as "They forgot many things; they devised many things." Mildly archaic phrases are also used ("There came a time when a child was born"). While the setting is "real", Wells might as well have said "A long time ago in a galaxy far, far away...."
