Decoding the Origins of the Tank and “The Land Ironclads”: Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton and H. G. Wells

I just sent off my presentation proposal for SLSA 2009, which as the theme “Decodings” and will be in Atlanta, Georgia in November. Since I’ll be teaching and reading for my PhD exams, I decided to dust off a publishable paper to shorten and present at the conference (assuming it’s accepted). In the meantime, I think I’m going to send this essay out to a journal over the Summer to see if they are interested in publishing it as it is or with minor revision. Here’s my abstract to SLSA:

Decoding the Origins of the Tank and “The Land Ironclads”: Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton and H. G. Wells

Jason W. Ellis

The first popular, and widely cited, fictional account of the military tank is H.G. Wells’ 1903 short story, “The Land Ironclads.” The recognized and widely circulated literary publication, the Strand Magazine published Wells’ short story in 1903–thirteen years before the British tank was unveiled to the world at Flers and Courcelette on 15 September 1916 during the First World War’s Battle of the Somme. However, Wells was not involved in the actual development of the tank, but many historians point to Major-General Sir Ernest Dunlop Swinton as the single person most responsible for convincing the British military to design and commit invaluable war time resources to its development and utilization in the Great War. Interestingly, these two persons–Wells and Swinton–developed a public debate in print and other media, which eventually led to Swinton’s libel suit against Wells, over who was most responsible for the invention of the tank. It is the purpose of this presentation to highlight their public debate, and uncover how the public reacted to these men’s claims. From this very public argument it will be possible to decode the meaning of such claims to invention, and the early history of Science Fiction, which was in part buttressed on imaginative futurology.

Okay, So Half-Priced Books Isn’t That Great

Yufang and I are trying to trim down how much paper stuff we have in the house, which you may have guessed from my previous post on scanning. Besides the print material that we create, we obviously have a lot of books, because we both study English literature (I do SF, and she does Asian-American lit). However, we don’t always need all of the books that we take in from the cold, but we would like to find new homes for them. We both sell books on Amazon, but we’ve collected two canvas bags of books that just won’t sell. So, I thought to myself today, “why don’t I take these to the Mentor, Ohio Half-Price Books and get at least a little something for them.” Unfortunately, I didn’t realize just how little their offer would be. I figured that we would get $20 to $30, because the lot of books runs about $60 on Amazon used and I acknowledge that they need to make a profit (lowest price). But, I wasn’t even in the ballpark. I was offered $3 for the lot of 20 books. Needless to say, I gathered our books and put them back in the car before returning to look through their SF section. As I was walking around the store, I began thinking about all of the books in their and how Half-Price Books must have royally screwed over a lot of folks to have that much stock–not to mention the entire chain of stores. Is Half-Priced Books the GameStop of book? (NB: GameStop is a company that sells new and used video games, and it is notorious for ripping off gamers on game trade-ins–read more here). Be warned before you make the mistake of driving an hour in crazy NE Ohio Saturday evening traffic with the hope of unloading some books.

On the other hand, perhaps Half-Priced Books is a necessary evil. I’ve found some books there that I would have had difficulty finding otherwise, or having found it elsewhere such as on Amazon it may have cost more.

Isaac Asimov’s “The Bicentennial Man” and Chris Columbus’ Bicentennial Man

Late last night, I finished revising my Bicentennial Man entry for Peter Wright’s The Critical Companion to Science Fiction Film Adaptations (to be published by Liverpool University Press). It was a real joy to dive back into Asimov’s work, because it was through his work that I precariously began my trip into SF scholarship with my presentation on dualism in robot narratives for Georgia Tech’s Monstrous Bodies Symposium.

Having just completed Professor Babacar M’Baye’s African-American Literature course, I was able to engage Asimov’s “The Bicentennial Man” with the history and stories of the African-American experience that were fresh on my mind. I have known for a long time that Asimov’s robots are an allegory for African-Americans, but it was on re-reading “The Bicentennial Man” that I realized how much Asimov’s earlier robot writing culminated in this later robot story, first published in 1976–two and three decades after his much loved early robot stories such as “Runaround” and the R. Daneel Olivaw/ Elijah Bailey detective stories. In fact, I found that “The Bicentennial Man” mirrors the basic structure of American slave narratives, which I go into more detail on in my entry for the collection on film adaptations.

With this rich source material, I was at first resistant to spoiling it by watching the abysmal film adaptation Bicentennial Man by Chris Columbus and starring Robin Williams. However, I discovered that for as bad as the film is, there are subtle gestures toward the spirit of the source material. Unfortunately, the film overall pulls the rug out from under the main character’s efforts and successes by erasing the anxiety and hardship Andrew encountered in Asimov’s original story. I don’t believe the audience understands Andrew’s predicament in the film in the same way that Asimov demonstrates Andrew’s precarious situation in the novelette. Nevertheless, the film does have some redemptive elements, which are more fully explored in my entry for the collection.

When I have more information about the publication of the critical companion, I will post it to dynamicsubspace.net.

The Internet Speculative Fiction Database

Over the years, I have occasionally run across the Internet Speculative Fiction Database when I would perform Google searches as I began researching a particular topic or work. Back at IAFA, Ritch Calvin told me that the ISFDB is a very important research tool that he uses a lot. Based on his recommendation, I have used it explicitly a few times in my recent work–including my entry on Bicentennial Man for Peter Wright’s The Critical Companion to Science Fiction Film Adaptations. If you need to find reviews of works and print histories of SF and fantasy works, then I would recommend you check out the ISFDB when you start your research.

Another cool aspect of the ISFDB is that Ritch is tirelessly posting SFRA Review metadata to the ISFDB, which means that my reviews are now indexed on there, too (see here). Thanks, Ritch!

Scanning, Recycling, and Reflecting

Yufang and I purchased a Canon CanoScan LIDE 100 flatbed scanner, because we wanted to cut down on all of our cooperatively accumulated clutter of papers, notes, and other school-related documents. The past few days have been an interesting experience for me as I worked through notes from Georgia Tech, the University of Liverpool, and the past two years at Kent State.

First, I am amazed at how much my handwriting has transformed over the years, and even from semester to semester. In fact, if I did not know that I wrote all of this stuff, there is no way in Hades that I would believe the same person wrote all of these notes.

Second, it is interesting how my note taking hasn’t changed that much over the years. Anyone who has taken a class with me knows that I write down everything that I possibly can during class. As a result, I have volumes of handwritten notes for all of my classes. However, there are some subtle changes with the way that I cluster information on the page. For example, my earlier notes are essentially one thought per line, but my later notes contain chunks of information with the first line against the margin and subsequent, related thoughts are listed beneath the first line with a hanging indent. I’m not sure why I began doing this, but it seems to be a more recent development in grad school.

Third, I’m surprised at how many notes are missing. I know that I tossed a lot of material when I left Liverpool, but I’m missing a considerable amount of material from Kent State. I have moved a couple of times since beginning school here, so it is possible that I accidentally threw some things out that I didn’t want to, or a box of school-related material may have been lost or left behind. This is of course unfortunate, but there isn’t anything that I can do about it now.

Currently, Babacar’s African-American Literature class has 110 pages, Pendleton’s Semeiotics class is second with 100 pages, and Raja’s Postcolonialism course comes in second at 88 pages.

Another project that I’m working on right now is scanning all of my Star Wars and Star Trek clippings. I’ve accumulated a small collection of magazine and calendar images of spacecraft that I’m currently assembling into a digital archive.

And, I have a deal for my KSU friends–I will trade you my class notes in exchange for yours. After I finish scanning all of my class materials, I will let you borrow the scanner to digitize your own notes. Let me know if you’re interested.