ABSTRACT
Brian Aldiss emphasizes the Gothic heritage in his pioneering history of science fiction, Billion Year Spree. Aldiss specifically mentions the Gothic propensity for exotic scenes and shocking revelations as useful models for science fiction (SF), but other features may have been equally significant in the development of the younger genre. The Neat Idea was eventually to shed some of its Gothic garishness but not its sexual subtext. The poisonous garden, with its single human blossom, is not just a Gothic device. It is what science fiction readers are wont to call a Neat Idea: that is, a scientific datum or hypothesis that calls up, in the right sort of imagination, a host of fascinating 'what-ifs'. The feminist reading of the novel is as much a resisting reading as Fetterly's reinterpretation of 'The Birth-Mark'. Both connect scientific arrogance with the absence of the maternal in nature and society.
