{"id":7145,"date":"2012-01-02T08:00:47","date_gmt":"2012-01-02T14:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=7145"},"modified":"2012-01-04T17:17:51","modified_gmt":"2012-01-04T23:17:51","slug":"happy-birthday-ralph-124c41","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/?p=7145","title":{"rendered":"Happy Birthday, Ralph 124C41+!"},"content":{"rendered":"

One more for 2011:<\/p>\n

This article<\/a> in The Economist<\/i> points out that Hugo Gernsback’s Ralph 124C41+<\/b><\/a> (one to foresee for one) was published 100 years ago. The article calls it “arguably the first major work of American science fiction.” Well, no. There were a lots of examples of American SF before that, as both the late Everett Bleiler<\/a> and the very much alive Jess Nevins<\/a> could point to no end of antecedent examples. But Ralph 124C41+<\/b> is probably the first novel overwhelmingly concerned with the idea that technology will change almost every aspect of the quotidian lives of ordinary people. In weird way it’s sort of a cyberpunk precursor. That’s why, for all the clumsy prose, the “As you know Bob” infodumps, the hackneyed romance-and-rescue plot, and the paper thin characters, the work remains a cornerstone of American science fiction.<\/p>\n

That said, it’s not for everyone. It isn’t quite unreadable (I like it a bit better than Horace Walpole’s The Castle of Otranto<\/b><\/a>), but it’s close. Today its importance is entirely historical, and only real students of the field should give it a try. (I was quite surprised when Charlie Brown admitted he hadn’t read it on a panel we were on at the 2006 Worldcon in Anaheim.) <\/p>\n

(Hat tip: Locus Online.)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

One more for 2011: This article in The Economist points out that Hugo Gernsback’s Ralph 124C41+ (one to foresee for one) was published 100 years ago. The article calls it “arguably the first major work of American science fiction.” Well, no. There were a lots of examples of American SF before that, as both the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":5,"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,5],"tags":[1973,200,1299,1970],"class_list":["post-7145","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-science-fiction","tag-books","tag-cyberpunk","tag-hugo-gernsback","tag-science-fiction"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7145"}],"version-history":[{"count":14,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7192,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7145\/revisions\/7192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7145"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7145"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lawrenceperson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7145"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}