Postmodern science fiction and temporal imagination

190 Pages·2010·0.9 MB·English

by  Gomel

Postmodern Science Fiction and
Temporal Imagination
Also available from Continuum
Measureless Time of Joyce, Deleuze and Derrida, Ruben Borg
Palimpsest: Literature, Criticism, Theory, Sarah Dillon
Postmodern Science Fiction
and Temporal Imagination
Elana Gomel
Continuum Literary Studies
Continuum International Publishing Group
The Tower Building 80 Maiden Lane
11 York Road Suite 704
London SE1 7NX New York, NY 10038
www.continuumbooks.com
© Elana Gomel 2010
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or
transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including
photocopying, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system,
without prior permission in writing from the publishers.
Elana Gomel has asserted her right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act,
1988, to be identifi ed as Author of this work.
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 9781441123954 (hardcover)
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gomel, Elana.
Postmodern science fi ction and temporal imagination / Elana Gomel.
p. cm. -- (Continuum literary studies)
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-1-4411-2395-4
1. Science fi ction--History and criticism. 2. Time in literature. 3. Postmodernism
(Literature) I. Title. II. Series.
PN3433.5.G66 2010
809.3'8762--dc22
2009050601
Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt Ltd, Chennai, India
Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Group Ltd
This one is for Jim
It seems to me, then, that time is merely an extension, though of
what it is an extension I do not know. I begin to wonder whether
it is an extension of the mind itself.
St Augustine, Confessions
Contents
Acknowledgements viii
Preface: Timeshapes ix
Introduction: Time Enough for World 1
Chapter 1 T he Time Machines: H. G. Wells and the Invention
of Postmodernity 27
Chapter 2 S trangled by the Time Loop: Paradoxes of Determinism 53
Chapter 3 ‘ My Name is Might-Have-Been’: Contingency,
Counterfactuals and Moral Choice 82
Chapter 4 E veryday Apocalypse: The Ethics and Aesthetics of
the End of Time 118
Conclusion: Beyond Millennium 147
Notes 162
Works Cited 165
Index 175
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been possible without the support, encouragement
and intellectual input of many people. Special thanks are due to my colleagues
and friends at the Department of English and American Studies of Tel-Aviv
University. Dr Amit Yahav of Haifa University fi rst drew my attention to the
problematic of temporality. My editors at Continuum made this book possible
by setting fi rm deadlines. My mother Maya Kaganskaya and my sons Ariel and
Eliran Gomel were as inspirational as ever. My students in the courses of Science
Fiction, Fantasy and Postmodernism were invaluable in responding with genu-
ine enthusiasm to the ideas expressed in this book and offering insights of their
own. I thank all of them, particularly Hadass Elber and Shawn Edrei. And
fi nally, my profoundest gratitude goes to Dr Jim Martin. This book is for him.
Preface: Timeshapes
O Attic shape! Fair attitude! with brede
Of marble men and maidens overwrought,
With forest branches and the trodden weed;
Thou, silent form, dost tease us out of thought
As doth eternity.
This is John Keats’ ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’ (1819). In the poem, time congeals
into a material shape, permanent and palpable; the present becomes charged
with eternity; and the fl ux of beginning, middle and end freezes into the
perpetual ‘now’.
In ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’ (1940) Walter Benjamin writes:
‘A historical materialist cannot do without the notion of a present which is not
a transition, but in which time stands still and has come to a stop’ (Benjamin
262). Historical fl ux becomes an object to be examined and evaluated.
In Alastair Reynolds’ science fi ction novel Century Rain (2004) a ‘quantum
snapshot’ of Earth in 1940 is enclosed in a giant cosmic sphere, complete with
all the people who existed at that point in time, as immobile and eternal as
Keats’ painted maiden. ‘Jolted’ back into time, it begins to develop, acquitting
its own history. But are people in it any more real than ‘the images in a burning
photograph’ (Reynolds 284)? Do they feel anything? Is their transition back
into time a deliverance or a fall?
A masterpiece of poetry; a longing for a new kind of history and a new kind
of historian; a science fi ction novel. As motley a collection of texts as one could
assemble. And yet they share something: an image of time, which is tangible
and material and yet paradoxical and elusive; time as an object in space; time as
a shape.
It is not merely that all three texts wish time would stand still, as one often
wishes when faced with a beautiful moment or a looming deadline. They
intimate that time is already standing still; has always been standing still; that
our perception of the evanescence of the present and the non-existence of
the past and the future is an illusion. Eternity is real; time is not. Whether this
eternity is conceived as the world of Platonic ideas as in Keats; the Marxist
pattern of history as in Benjamin; or a physical property of the quantum
universe as in Reynolds can, for now, be set aside. What is important for my