Transportation

Entry updated 22 July 2019. Tagged: Theme.

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Sf stories based on serious speculations about future means of transportation are greatly outnumbered by stories in which those means function as facilitating devices – i.e., as convenient ways of shifting characters into an alien environment. Inevitably, the same kinds of machines crop up in both categories of story because stories of the second kind borrow heavily from those of the first.Spaceships have been employed by sf writers almost exclusively as a literary device; few stories deal speculatively with the real possibilities of interplanetary and interstellar transportation. Much fruitless argument has been wasted comparing the plausibility of machines designed for quite different literary functions. One such argument, of long standing, concerns the relative merits of the space-gun in JulesVerne'sFrom the Earth to the Moon (1865-1870: trans1873) and theAntigravity device in H GWells'sThe First Men in the Moon (1901), which tends to ignore the fact that only the former device aspires (unsuccessfully) to practicability.

InFantastic Voyages written before the mid-nineteenth century virtually all modes of transport were facilitating devices. JohnWilkins, fascinated by ideas of novel means of transportation, had discussed submarines, flying machines and land-yachts at some length inMathematicall Magick (1648), but he touched only tentatively on the possibility of adapting newPower Sources to the business of transport. Today, the short-sightedness of the anonymousThe Reign of George VI, 1900-1925 (1763), which is optimistic about the bright future of the canal barge, seems slightly absurd; but the author of the book lived in a world in which there had been no significant advance in motive power for 2000 years. This situation underwent a revolutionary change in the nineteenth century.

The first practical steamboat,The Charlotte Dundas, was built in 1801, but it was not until the development of the screw propeller in 1843 for theGreat Britain, designed by Isambard Kingdom Brunel (1806-1859) and placed in service in January 1845, that the revolution in marine transport really began. Richard Trevithick (1771-1833) built the first practical steam locomotive in 1804, but only in 1825, with the opening of the Stockton-Darlington railway, did there begin the railroad revolution which very rapidly extended itself across Europe and the emergent USA. It is understandable that the speculative writers of the later nineteenth century should find the future of transportation one of their most inspiring themes, and that authors of the numerousUtopias published in the latter years of the century often focused – not necessarily with much precision – upon advances in transportation, frequently driven by electricity. Their trust in electricity as a direct motive power now seems naive, for the transport revolution was soon dominated by the development of the internal combustion engine, and entered a new phase in 1909, when Henry Ford (1863-1947) set his Model-T production line rolling. By then the first heavier-than-air flying machines were in operation, as were the first practicable submarines. Everything that has happened since in the world of transportation was within the imaginative sights of the writers of 1909: private motor cars for all; fast aeroplanes to carry passengers and freight; evenSpaceships (KonstantinTsiolkovsky published "The Probing of Space by Means of Jet Devices" in 1903).

The man whose literary work stands as the principal imaginative product of this era of revolution is JulesVerne, whose first novel wasFive Weeks in a Balloon (1863; trans "William Lackland"1869). This was the period that made tourism possible, and Verne remains the archetypal tourist of the literary imagination. He was fascinated by the machines that made far travelling practical, and wrote a memoir of a real voyage on theGreat Eastern: "A Floating City" (in coll1871; trans1874). The submarineNautilus is the real protagonist ofTwenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (1870; trans Lewis Mercier1872), just as the "aeronef" is ofThe Clipper of the Clouds (1886; trans1887; vtRobur the Conqueror1887).Around the World in 80 Days (1873: trans Geo M Towle1874) inspired many imitators, literary and actual, but few of the literary ones had Verne's fascination with means: most of them invented marvellous devices simply to enable the characters to participate in exotic adventure stories whose plots were thoroughly routine – a kind of inventiveness ironically celebrated by such latter-dayScientific Romances as MichaelMoorcock'sThe Warlord of the Air (1971) and its sequels, and ChristopherPriest'sThe Space Machine (1976).

Submarines andAirships were most often invoked in futuristic fiction as carriers ofWeapons and other materials ofFuture War. It quickly became obvious to military observers of the US Civil War in 1861-1865 that observation balloons, ironclad ships and railroads would transform the tactics and logistics of warfare. Writers like GeorgeGriffith took a particular delight in imagining the kind of battles which might be fought withAirships and submarines, greatly assisted by the illustrator and occasional sf writer Fred TJane. Other illustrators, most notably AlbertRobida, likewise became entranced by flying machines, usually driven by electricity. Wells's speculations about the future of transportation technology are mainly concerned with warfare – most spectacularly, the aerial battles inWhen the Sleeper Wakes (1899; rev vtThe Sleeper Awakes1910) andThe War in the Air (1908). InThe Shape of Things to Come (1933) he imagined the rebirth of a world devastated by wars under the aegis of a benevolent "Air Dictatorship", a notion anticipated by RudyardKipling'sPax Aeronautica stories of the Aerial Board of Control,With the Night Mail (November 1905McClure's; rev1909 chap) and "As Easy as A.B.C." (March-April 1912The London Magazine). Kipling's ideas were echoed in MichaelArlen'sMan's Mortality (1933), and the technological charisma of the aeroplane is evident also inZodiak (trans Eric Sutton1931) by WaltherEidlitz. This mystique carried over into the early sfPulp magazines: HugoGernsback foundedAir Wonder Stories to deal exclusively with the future of flight. Pulp-sf writers interested in facilitating devices were soon ready to take extreme liberties. TheFaster-than-Light starship had arrived before the end of the 1920s, as had the ultimate in personal transport, the antigravity-belt featured in theBuck Rogers stories by Philip FrancisNowlan.Matter Transmission soon became commonplace; and some interplanetary romances of the kind pioneered by Edgar RiceBurroughs simply ignored the whole issue, tacitly employing the most blatant facilitating device of all:Teleportation. Such methods began to receive more detailed speculative evaluation in JackWilliamson's "The Cosmic Express" (November 1930Amazing), but not until AlfredBester'sTiger! Tiger! (October 1956-January 1957Galaxy as "The Stars My Destination";1956; rev vtThe Stars My Destination US; rev1996) was there a serious attempt to imagine a society which uses teleportation as a routine means of travel.

Attempts to imagine the eventual social effects of the transportation revolution soon appeared in the pulps, though in no way could it be claimed that these offerings displayed much prescience (seeFutures Studies;Prediction) about the deeply revolutionary impact of motor vehicles on the twentieth century. It is in fact difficult to find before around 1970 any telling presentation – in words orIllustration – of the all-encompassing physical imprint upon the planet of that revolution; or (in particular) any dramatic prevision of the demographic transformation of America. When they dealt with motor vehicles at all, sf stories rarely extended beyond mild exercises inHorror in SF, with cars being anthropomorphized or demonized: as thoughindividual vehicles were the proper focus for sf writers purporting to bring to life the consequences, for good or ill, of technological Progress. This diversion of focus – which might be described as a prolepticAmnesia – may help explain the absence of any genuineConceptual Breakthroughs in stories dealing with the motor vehicle and the vast swathes of this Earth it colonizes. Almost the only exception to this rule is what may be the first significant sf tale about the subject. In David HKeller's LamarckianDystopia, "The Revolt of the Pedestrians" (February 1928Amazing), a ruling elite of automobilists, having lost the use of its legs, is overthrown by the underprivileged pedestrians, though the story is in fact more a typical early-sf diatribe against theCity than it is an analysis of the automobile. Further stories in which the motor car appears as topic (or, less fortunately, as quasi-animate subject) include satirical comedies like Clark AshtonSmith's "The Great God Awto" (February 1940Thrilling Wonder), IsaacAsimov's "Sally" (May/June 1953Fantastic) and Robert FYoung's "Romance in a Twenty-First Century Used-Car Lot" (November 1960F&SF) through blacker comedies like FritzLeiber's "X Marks the Pedwalk" (April 1963Worlds of Tomorrow) and dourer analyses like RayBradbury'sThe Pedestrian (7 August 1951The Reporter;1964 chap), H ChandlerElliott's "A Day on Death Highway" (October 1963Galaxy) and JohnJakes's surrealOn Wheels (1973) to such extreme quasi-apocalyptic works as BenElton'sGridlock (1991) and the book-length poemAutogeddon (1991) by HeathcoteWilliams, both these texts being far more violent diatribes than it is easy to find in theGenre SF world. The car also features as a death-machine in macabre stories of futureGames and Sports, in such stories as HarlanEllison's "Dogfight on 101" (August 1969Adam; vt "Along the Scenic Route" inThe Beast That Shouted Love at the Heart of the World, coll1969), the filmDeath Race 2000 (1975) and RichardMorgan'sMarket Forces (2004). A classic early exercise in sf realism is Robert AHeinlein's "The Roads Must Roll" (June 1940Astounding), which deals with the commuter chaos resulting from a strike by the engineers who maintain moving roadways; such moving ways also appear incidentally in C MKornbluth'sThe Syndic (December 1953-March 1954Science Fiction Adventures;1953) and – explored in considerable sociological detail – IsaacAsimov'sThe Caves of Steel (1954).

Other notable sf stories attempting to get to grips with the idea of social revolution brought about through transport deploy some kind ofMatter Transmission (which see) in a quasi-symbolic fashion; notable stories in this vein include "Ticket to Anywhere" (April 1952Galaxy) by DamonKnight and "Granny Won't Knit" (May 1954Galaxy) by TheodoreSturgeon. RobertSilverberg's anthologyThree Trips in Time and Space (anth1973) contains novellas on the theme: LarryNiven's "Flash Crowd", JackVance's "Rumfuddle" and JohnBrunner's "You'll Take the High Road". Niven later continued the theme in four further stories, and Brunner developed it in a novel,Web of Everywhere (1974).

Early sf about transportation infrastructure is mostly concerned withUnderground tunnels. HugoGernsback was an early adopter of the notion that the shortest transport route between two points on Earth's surface is a straight tunnel forming a chord of our world's roughly circular cross-section, as explained with an accompanying diagram inRalph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660 (April 1911-March 1912Modern Electrics; exp as fixup1925; rev1950). More realistically, versions of the Channel Tunnel have often featured in UKInvasion stories prior to its actual construction, while a transatlantic tunnel is the subject of BernhardKellermann'sThe Tunnel (1913; trans1915) and the films based on it,DerTunnel (1933) andTheTunnel (1935). The idea reappears in modern sf in RayNelson's "Turn Off the Sky" (August 1963F&SF) and is the theme of HarryHarrison'sAlternate-History satireTunnel through the Deeps (1972; vtA Transatlantic Tunnel, Hurrah!1972). A popular variations on this theme involves digging or boring vehicles that create their own tunnels en route, as in numerous tales ranging from FredThorpe'sThrough the Earth; Or, Jack Nelson's Invention (5 June-7 August 1897Golden Hours as "In the World Below; Or, Three Boys in the Center of the Earth";1909) to JamesBlaylock'sThe Digging Leviathan (1984; rev1988). More futuristically, one tiny subgenre of subterranean transport avoids physical tunnelling by use ofMatter Penetration (which see).

Early stories about artificialIslands in the Atlantic to facilitate the refuelling of aeroplanes, such as CurtSiodmak'sF.P.1 Does Not Reply (trans1933), filmed asF.P.1 Antwortet Nicht (1932), were soon out of date. The problems of laying railroad tracks on a highly volcanic alien world are featured in "The Railways up on Cannis" (October 1959New Worlds) by ColinKapp. AnUnderground railway system not unlike the London Underground is the only exit route from the domedCity of Arthur CClarke'sThe City and the Stars (1956); a bizarre alien equivalent must be comprehended in ColinKapp's "The Subways of Tazoo" (inNew Writings in SF 3, anth1965, ed JohnCarnell); a particularly deep example is the setting for the climax of Iain MBanks'sConsider Phlebas (1987). Further railways feature in ChinaMiéville'sIron Council (2004) and – rather more surreally –Railsea (2012). Trains thread the deserts of a magic-realist Mars in IanMcDonald'sAres Express (2001), and with the help ofMatter Transmission gateways cross the space between the worlds of different star-systems in Peter FHamilton'sPandora's Star (2004) andJudas Unchained (2005).

There are numerous sf stories which involve improvised means of transport adapted to exotic situations. JackVance is particularly ingenious in devising such inventions, although they rarely play a major part in his plots. Ice-yachts take centre stage in Moorcock'sThe Ice Schooner (1969) and Alan DeanFoster'sIcerigger (1974), and ships which travel on unwatery media are also featured in David JLake'sWalkers on the Sky (1976), BruceSterling'sInvolution Ocean (1977) and Brian PHerbert'sSudanna, Sudanna (1985). The strangest vehicles ever devised are perhaps those in Robert Wilfred Franson'sThe Shadow of the Ship (1983), in which trails through airless "subspace" link primitive planets, and can be used only byStarships that are effectively sleds drawn by vast animals. The largest sf vehicles vary widely in size, depending somewhat on actual definition: should they be entirely artificial or may they incorporate natural structures up to and including planets? Of note are the spacefaringCities of JamesBlish'sCities in Flight series (omni1970) and the much more laborious moving city in Priest'sThe Inverted World (1974); very many convertedAsteroids, as in GeorgeZebrowski'sMacrolife (1979; rev1990); dirigible planets, as in E ESmith's Lensman series and in (again)Cities in Flight, with a whole fleet of artificial worlds featuring in GregBear's debut novelHegira (1979; rev1987); further assortedWorld Ships (which see); andMacrostructures like theDyson Sphere of BobShaw'sOrbitsville sequence, which ultimately proves to be a vehicle of inter-universal travel. An abundance of technical detail supports HilbertSchenck's memorable account of the circumnavigation of the globe by a steam-powered aeroplane in "Steam Bird" (April-May 1984F&SF; title story of coll1988).

In spite of such bold adventures, it cannot really be said that sf has been particularly adept in the invention of new means of transportation that have subsequently proved practicable, aside from a number of devices concerned with space technology – including, of course, spaceRockets. Arthur CClarke proved particularly expert in this regard, and there remain several imaginative devices used in his stories which may one day be actualized, including the lunar transport inA Fall of Moondust (1961) and the spacefaringSolar-Wind-powered yachts of "Sunjammer" (March 1964Boys' Life; vt "The Wind from the Sun" inThe Wind from the Sun, coll1972), the latter developing a notion first put forward in 1921 by KonstantinTsiolkovsky. Clarke'sThe Fountains of Paradise (1979) and CharlesSheffield'sThe Web Between the Worlds (1979) both deploySpace Elevators connecting the Earth's surface to orbital stations – a wonderful idea whose practical limitations are, alas, mercilessly exposed in Sheffield's own article "How to Build a Beanstalk" (August 1979Destinies). [BS/DRL]