Beyond Tomorrow: German Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Centuries

333 Pages·2020·4.493 MB·English

by  Ingo Cornils

Beyond Tomorrow
Studies in German Literature, Linguistics, and Culture
Beyond Tomorrow
German Science Fiction and
Utopian Thought in the
20th and 21st Centuries
Ingo Cornils
Rochester, New York
Copyright © 2020 Ingo Cornils
All Rights Reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation,
no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system,
published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted,
recorded, or reproduced in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission of the copyright owner.
First published 2020
by Camden House
Camden House is an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Inc.
668 Mt. Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620, USA
www.camden-house.com
and of Boydell & Brewer Limited
PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK
www.boydellandbrewer.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-64014-035-6 (hard cover)
ISBN-13: 978-178744-797-4 (ePDF)
ISBN-13: 978-178-744-987-9 (ePUB
Cover image: Detail from poster for Metropolis by Werner Graul (1905–1984),
c. 1926. New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). Lithograph, 27 ¼ x 18˝
(69.2 x 45.7 cm). Publisher: UFA (Universum-Film-Aktiengesellschaft). Printer:
Dinse, Eckert & Cie., Berlin. Gift of the artist. Accession number 390.1939
© 2020. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
CIP data is available from the Library of Congress.
This publication is printed on acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America.
Contents
Acknowledgments vii
Note on the Translations ix
Introduction 1
Part I. The Great Discourse on the Future
1: Utopians and Utopian Thought 17
2: Futurists and Futures Studies 33
3: Utopian/Dystopian Writers and Utopian/Dystopian Fiction 46
4: Science Fiction: The Nexus of Utopianism, Futurism, and
Utopian Fiction 61
Part II. German Science Fiction in the
Twentieth and Twenty-First Centuries
5: Some Preliminary Thoughts on German Science Fiction 77
6: First Contact: Martians, Sentient Plants, and Swarm
Intelligences 84
7: The Shock of the New: Mega Cities, Machines, and Rockets 104
8: Utopian Experiments: Island Idylls, Glass Beads, and Eugenic
Nightmares 110
9: To the Stars! Cosmic Supermen and Bauhaus in Space 122
10: Visions of the End: Catastrophism and Moral Entropy 133
11: Virtual Realities: Caught in the Matrix 149
vi  Contents
12: Alternative Histories: Into the Heart of Darkness 157
13: Big Brother Is Watching Us: Who Is Watching Big Brother? 170
14: Artificial Intelligences: The Rise of the Thinking Machines 178
15: Eternal Life: At What Cost? 188
16: Social Satires: Of Empty Slogans and Empty Hearts 193
17: Critical Posthumanism: Twilight of the Species or a New
Dawn? 207
18: High Concept: Time, the Universe, and Everything 215
Conclusion 229
Appendix 1:
Chronological List of German SF Novels—A Selection 237
Appendix 2:
Chronological List of German SF Films—A Selection 239
Notes 241
Bibliography 275
Index 315
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank
• The School of Languages, Cultures and Societies, the Leeds
Arts and Humanities Research Institute, and the Faculty of Arts,
Humanities and Cultures, at the University of Leeds, for their
support.
• My academic teachers who encouraged my lifelong fascination
with Science Fiction: Professor Johann N. Schmidt at the Uni-
versity of Hamburg, and Professor Mark Rose at the University
of California, Santa Barbara.
• Professor Robert Weninger, for his wisdom and astute comments
on the manuscript.
• Professor Tom Shippey, for challenging the naysayers.
• My colleagues at the University of Leeds, especially my collabo-
rators, Dr. Sarah Dodd and Dr. Liz Stainforth, in our research
project The Transcultural Fantastic.
• My students in the seminar German Utopian Thought in Fiction
and Film who helped me understand the liberating power of
speculative thought.
• My colleagues in the weekly “shut up and write” sessions.
• Mike Collins and Dr. Hilary Potter, for their help with my
translations.
• Dr. Lars Schmeink and colleagues at the Gesellschaft für Fantas-
tikforschung/Association for Research in the Fantastic.
• Professor Rebecca Braun and the participants of “The Future is
Now” panel at the 2017 ACLA conference in Utrecht.
• Dr. Amanda Rees, and colleagues in the Unsettling Scientific
Stories AHRC project.
• The two anonymous readers, for their constructive criticism.
• As ever, Jim Walker, the editorial director of Camden House, for
support and encouragement beyond the call of duty.
Ingo Cornils, Leeds, February 2020

Note on the Translations
Ih ave made a conscious decision to include a broad selection of voices
from German utopian discourse and science fiction so that readers
without German can get a sense of the range of utopian ideas and a fla-
vor of the debates built on them but can also appreciate the quality and
variety of SF writing (and filmmaking) on offer. Much of this material has
never been translated into English. Unless indicated otherwise, the trans-
lations are my own.