rightly used. Kingsley, by profession a clergyman and by interest not only a writer but
an amateur naturalist, was excited by the controversies of the time, especially
Darwinism, and corresponded with Huxley and Darwin. In The Water-Babies he
attempted a synthesis of children’s belief in fairies, the doctrines of Christianity and the
new theories of evolution and the origin of species, and was much more successful in
communicating his ideas about the wonder of God’s creation in this fantastic form, than
in his pamphleteering and adult novels.
According to his unique theology, the world is governed by a Goddess who appears in
several guises: as Mrs Bedonebyasyoudid, embodying the natural and moral law and
punishing transgressors; Mrs Doasyouwouldbedoneby, embodying God’s love for
Creation; Mother Carey, who supervises the process of Creation; and the Irishwoman
who carries out good deeds on earth, and intervenes in Tom’s story to start him on his
quest. All four beings share one consciousness and represent Mother Nature; they are
also described as fairies: Kingsley says that ‘the great fairy Science...is likely to be queen
of all the fairies for many a year to come’. The reverse-evolutionary fable of the
Doasyoulikes, and the myth of Prometheus and Epimetheus, instruct Tom that humans
were meant to use their brains and that technology is better than abstract science,
which doesn’t improve the quality of life. When Tom has completed his quest he returns
to earth to become ‘a great man of science’, using technology to improve the state of the
world.
Two short stories anticipate SF more directly. Hans Andersen wrote a prophecy of
Americans seeing Europe by airship, ‘In a thousand years’ time’ (1853), in which he
predicted the Channel tunnel between France and England, an ‘electromagnetic cable
under the ocean’ and the destruction of ‘ancient eternal Rome’. It is certainly science
fiction, but more a satirical essay than a children’s story.
E.Nesbit, who established the fantasy convention that magic must have particular
rules, embedded a tiny piece of science fiction in her time fantasy The Story of the Amulet
(1906). The children have been searching in the past for the other half of the Amulet,
and Cyril suggests that they go into the future where they will remember how they found
it. Although they do find the whole Amulet in the British Museum, they do not
remember how it was united. Walking out of the Museum into a clean and sunny
London full of happy people, they find a sad boy expelled for one day from school for
throwing litter. The boy’s mother shows them her lovely house, and calls their own time
‘the dark ages’. Her son is named Wells ‘after the great reformer... We’ve got a great
many of the things he thought of’.
The one pure science fiction novel by a classic children’s author before the first World
War, although it has not achieved classic status, is The Master Key (1901) by L.Frank
Baum, subtitled’ “An Electrical Fairy Tale” founded upon the mysteries of electricity and
the optimism of its devotees. It was written for boys, but others may read it.’ (Baum
included scientific devices in his Oz books, and Tiktok of Oz is a robot.)
Baum’s son Robert, the dedicatee of The Master Key, was an electrical gadgeteer, and
inspired this story of how Rob, a teenage experimenter, one day connects all the wires in
his bedroom together and accidentally summons the Demon of Electricity, a kind of
genie, who offers him a series of electrical gifts in order to move the human race on to
the next stage of civilisation. Pseudo-scientific (and thus magical), the gifts include food
312 SCIENCE FICTION