ABSTRACT
Sf is often considered to be the dominant twentieth-century site for the expression of visions of apocalypse and catastrophe, something that might seem paradoxical for a genre originally associated with ideas of scientific progress and technological utopianism. And yet, this transmutation may be interpreted precisely by focusing on the significance of modern ideas of “progress” for sf as well as on its status as “the expression of, or reflection upon, the terrors and delights of technologized modernity” (Luckhurst 2005: 170). As Walter Benjamin (1939) argues, the “concept of progress” has always been “grounded in the idea of catastrophe,” and “That things ‘just go on’ is the catastrophe” (Benjamin 1985: 50). Progress implies the destruction of an existing state of affairs so that it can be replaced by a new one (etymologically, “catastrophe” – from the Greek kata (over) and strephein (turn) – means an “overturning of a given situation” (Doane 1990: 228)). Furthermore, during the modern period, catastrophe became increasingly associated with technology, since new means of transportation, such as the railway, increased the potential for accidents (see Schivelbusch 1977). Therefore, catastrophe “is, through its association with industrialization and the advance of technology, ineluctably linked with the idea of Progress” (Doane 1990: 230). The convergence of sf and catastrophe may therefore be interpreted in terms of their shared relationship to modern conceptions of progress and technology. Tracing the trajectory of catastrophe fiction may elucidate the ways in which technological modernity developed during the past two centuries.
