Irish sci-fi blasts off: Tramp Press launches anthology of science fiction stories

An anthology of science fiction stories, dating as far back as the 1830s, has launched on Tramp Press, writes Marjorie Brennan

Ireland has always punched far above its weight when it comes to certain literary genres; some of the best novels, poetry, and plays have emanated from this small island nation. However, one area where there has traditionally been a lack of representation is science fiction. A Brilliant Void is a collection of short stories that aims to close the gap somewhat; part of the Tramp Press ‘Recovered Voices’ series, which aims to give an airing to forgotten or neglected writing.

A Brilliant Void editor Jack Fennell (inset below) has done years of research in the area and also writes science fiction. He says there are several reasons it has never taken off as a genre in Irish writing.

“If you go back to the Irish literary revival in the late 19th and early 20th century, it was all about trying to rebuild something that had been destroyed by the Famine. We were very much focused on the past then.

“At the start of the 20th century, you had James Joyce and Samuel Beckett, who were very experimental and pushing boundaries. At the same time, sci-fi was taking off elsewhere but it was pulpy and populist and wasn’t really the kind of thing that people wanted to be associated with here; we were trying to be taken seriously as a culture.

“Science fiction kind of fell between two stools. On top of that, our publishing industry wasn’t geared towards it. It is a much smaller catchment area [than other markets] and there is less room for agents and publishers to specialise in different genres.”

Fennell thought science fiction would be a relatively narrow field of expertise but was surprised by what he found in his research.

“When I started off looking at it years ago, I didn’t expect there to be this much. There were scores of stories there that nobody knew about. [For this collection] I wanted to go back as early as I could while still making it readable.

“The earliest story in this collection is from the 1830s and is by a Cork author named William McGinn, it is his little sequel of sorts to Frankenstein. I wanted to bring it up as close as I could to the present day without tipping over into people who don’t need that signal boost. The last story in the collection is by Cathal Ó Sándair (1960), a short story called ‘The Exile’.”

While science fiction is stereotypically seen as a predominantly male pursuit, in terms of both readers and writers, Fennell and Tramp were keen to unearth work by women. While it was a challenge to find such work, Fennell managed to found there was enough there to include eight female authors and six male in the collection.

“To their credit, Tramp Press wanted as equal gender representation as possible. That took a bit of work because women’s writing back in the day was not treated with any respect — it was miscategorised, it wasn’t recorded, it wasn’t synopsised. Quite a lot of the women’s sci-fi in this collection was originally labelled as fairytales or something like that — that kind of imprecise cataloguing that you would not get with men’s writing. Many authors [in the 19th century] disguised their genders with pseudonyms when they were first published — but that was still happening with sci-fi well into the 20th century and it still happens today. That is to do with market forces and the response from the fan community — which is all the more reason to shine a spotlight on the women’s writing that is there.”

For those who have never read science fiction, and may have a certain preconception of what it is about, Fennell says this collection makes for an accessible introduction to the genre. “You will get into a whole other aspect of Irish literary history that maybe you haven’t come across before. It talks about what people were afraid of, what they were expecting to happen, what they thought about certain things. They are hugely interesting. The way I explain it to people is that science fiction stories are basically detective stories. You are dropped into the middle of a world that is just a little bit off-kilter from the ones you know and you have to figure out how it works as you go along. It engages the puzzle-solving part of your brain and also, that kind of a remove from reality allows for a more nuanced or insightful discussion of topics.”

While much of the work was written in the 19th century and early 20th century, there are many eerie modern, and universal, resonances.

“Even though it is wrapped up in a weird package, there are definite messages about the world we live in; because all writing is about the world we live in.

For example, ‘Mercia, the Astronomer Royal’ by Amelia Garland Mears could have been taken from the headlines of any newspaper in the past ten years.

It is a case of workplace sexual harassment in a science fiction world. The Cathal Ó Sandair story is about a young man emigrating to find work, in this case, to the moon but it is a perennial story. Then there is a story by Tarlach Ó hUid, ‘The Chronotron’, where somebody time travels to the past to try and prevent the civil war. That speaks to our complicated relationship with our past and the things that we wish we could undo.”

While the collection delves deep into the past, the future of science fiction is showing promising signs of development in Ireland, says Fennell. “People are trying it more than they used to. In the past, when things were going well, we tended to copy the Americans, people fighting in outer space or cyberpunk thrillers. When things are on the slide, we become more contemplative, more political. Recently I’ve seen those two things start to merge… we are doing that high adventure, theatrical stuff that people go to the movies for but we are also putting in troubling questions such as who we are as a people, how we fit into the modern world and what responsibilities we have. It is an interesting time.”