ABSTRACT
The argument that recognizably modern science fiction (SF) developed out of Romantic Gothic writing has many adherents. Gothic as a mode mediated and shaped nineteenth-century discourses of science in culturally discursive ways. The original vogue for Gothic fiction endured from Walpole's Castle of Otranto, usually pegged as the first 'Gothic' tale, through to the early years of the nineteenth century. The conventional critical narrative is that Gothic then becomes in effect submerged as the main literary currents of the nineteenth century turn towards domestic fiction and 'condition of England' social novels. One element in particular is worth stressing, not least because it is perhaps counter-intuitive: the internalization of this Ruskinian Gothicism. Many key fascinations of Victorian scientific enquiry are specifically Gothicized: fascinations with size and scale, cosmic and ultra-longue duree timescales; with the intimate connections of past to future; with the savage and irrational underpinning of apparently rigorous laws and rules.
