Early Canadian Futurism: Tisab Ting, The Storm of '92, and The Dominion in 1983

Unlike its neighbour to the south, Canada has no strong history of Scientific Romances. It has only really been in the last 40 years that the Dominion has developed a strong voice in Science Fiction as a whole. Even then, amidst the Robert J. Sawyers, A.E. van Voghts and William Gibsons, there is still plenty of ambivalence towards the genre. The great dame of Canadian literature, Margaret Atwood, still seems undecided on whether to allow her works to stoop to being called SF. 

The oddity of our lack of Scientific Romances comes into sharper focus when considering that Canada is, truly and uniquely, an invention of the Victorian Era. From earlier historic roots among Indigenous peoples, fur traders, and early French and British settlers, the Dominion of Canada as a single political institution began life with Confederation in 1867, when the independent colonies of Upper and Lower Canada, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia unified. In 1870, the Hudson's Bay Company sold its vast western holdings to the fledgling nation, all of which became the North-West Territories. Other colonies joined later, and other provinces were carved out of the NWT. Perhaps the most influential member was British Columbia. It joined Confederation in 1871 by the promise that within a decade, a Transcontinental Railway would be built connecting the Pacific coast to the Atlantic.

Not only is Canada a product of the Victorian Era, but it is even more so a product of the Steam Age. Perhaps no country on earth owes as much of its existence to the construction of a single railway. The driving of the last spike at Craigellachie, British Columbia, in 1885 linked Vancouver to the mouth of the St. Lawrence Seaway at a distance of some 5000 kilometres, allowing for the fast movement of immigrants, troops, and tourists through the rugged Canadian northwoods and beyond. Thanks to Canadian Pacific Railway's fleet of Royal Mail Steamers, the well-heeled could travel from England to Hong Kong, Australia, and New Zealand by way of Canada, journeying halfway across the world without ever leaving the British Empire.    

Imperial pride reflects in two of the earliest Canadian futurist tales... The only three early Canadian futurist tales to speak of. The Dominion in 1983, The Storm of '92, and Tisab Ting; or, The Electrical Kiss share the same essential conceit of showing the status of Canada in the decades hence. Published in 1883, 1889, and 1896 respectively, all dared to make technological and political predictions while imposing Victorian attitudes upon the 20th century.

The March of Intellect

It is the current year, and the current year seems embroiled in a heavy debate over issues of freedom of speech and access to information. One of the great selling points of the Internet in the 1990's was that it would finally democratize speech and information, allowing the common person to produce and access content unmediated by corporate media. Then it happened, and the powers that be hated it. 

Gatekeeping provides an illusion of consensus and easy manipulation of the hoi polloi. The rise of comment sections and social media proved how illusory this control was, reaching its apotheosis with the presidential campaign of Donald Trump. Not only bypassing the corporate media mainstream, the freedom of social media allowed him to attack it directly and ride it all the way to the White House. Now, deplatforming and Silicon Valley unpersoning are among the attempts to get the genie back in the bottle, under the pretense of public "safety." Freedom is risky, and unpopular with those who prefer controlling opinion to engaging in healthy argument in the marketplace of ideas. Whether the odd collusion of leftist authoritarians and corporate media can assert control is for the future to decide, but the historical record doesn't look good.  

None of this is new. The Industrial Revolution brought, of course, many huge changes to the fabric of European and global societies. Not the least of these was a newfound premium on the natural and applied sciences, education, and the increasingly widespread and efficiently affordable production of educational literature. Learning was no longer the privilege of the wealthy upper classes. Now the burgeoning middle class and even the lower classes were becoming wealthier on average, better educated, more literate, and looking forward to advances in technology that would make their own lives easier. Dear God, what hath we wrought?

William Heath satirized this debate at the turn of the 19th century in his series titled The March of Intellect. Born in 1794, Heath was a popular war and military portrait artist who eventually turned to satirical cartoons. The March of Intellect, drafted over 1825 to 1829, provide a vision of futurism from the age of Jane Austen and Edgar Allan Poe, and the social concerns surrounding it. What would these changes mean for class conscious England? For warfare? For the Church? For, gasp, politics?

The following is a sample of Heath's March of Intellect series. Click on the image for larger versions. 

Robert Seymour joined the fray with his own satirical cartoons, though his is a much cruder (and less jam-packed) apocalyptic vision of new ways sweeping away the past. 

The satirical figure of Charles Golightly was a part of this critique as well, as he took his "Flight of Intellect" aboard his steam-powered rocket.

Scientific Romances in the Land of the Rising Sun

Japan has a long history of Science Fiction, going far beyond the dystopian epics of Cyberpunk anime. It even goes back further than the immediate post-war period that gave rise to such things as the Kaiju monster movies and Osamu Tezuka's Mighty Atom. It goes all the way back to the worldwide scope of Scientific Romances and stands uniquely in the canon of the genre.

Walter R. Booth's "Airship" Trilogy

By 1909, Scientific Romances were well established in film. The "Romance" part often overshadowed the "Scientific" part, however. Georges Méliès, one of the most innovative minds in movies in the first decade of the 20th century, was most interested fantasies with a Vernian gloss rather than a straight attempt at serious speculative storytelling. In many cases, science was merely a just-so explanation for phenomena that would otherwise be attributed to magic or ghosts. For example, The Electric Hotel (1905) by Segundo de Chomón is an otherwise typical haunted house trick film, only this time it's electric conveniences gone awry.

Walter R. Booth was a magician turned trick filmmaker, like Georges Méliès in many respects. with the same preoccupations. 1901's The Magic Sword, for instance, is a straightforward fantasy story. An Over-Incubated Baby from the same year is more of a trick film with a mad science premise. But come 1909, Booth was interested in a much different project. Rather than a humourous trick film, The Airship Destroyer is a remarkably serious and prescient attempt at Scientific Romances in the vein of H.G. Wells' War in the Air, published the preceding year.        

This film is a remarkably prophetic one-reel opening chapter to a trio of conceptually similar films that includes The Aerial Submarine and The Aerial Anarchists. In it, a thinly-veiled Germany descends on the British coast with a fleet of invincible dirigibles which can only be brought down by the genius of an inventor and his guided aerial torpedo. More authentically like Verne and Wells, Booth's prognostications were based on solid projections of existing technology, as both Zeppelin's and the Wright Brothers' crafts had debuted and entered into commuter and military service by 1909. A scant few years thereafter, Europe would descend into violent mechanized warfare and The Airship Destroyer would become horrifying reality. It was even re-released in 1915 to boost morale. 

Extract from The Airship Destroyer.

A year later, Booth released The Aerial Submarine, in which a pair of children are kidnapped by high-tech pirates inspired loosely by Jules Verne's Robur. From beneath the waves they strike out at passing cruise ships, looting their cargoes. When the submarines of the Royal Navy catch their scent, the pirates take to the air and drop shells on their hapless pursuers. It is only when a careless engineer causes disaster that the world has a hope of salvation from the aero-pirates. It is much less serious than The Airship Destroyer, returning to the cinematic genre's more fanciful trends.

Extract from The Aerial Submarine.

Unfortunately, the third film in the series, The Aerial Anarchists (1911), is a lost film. No footage is known to exist, and all that is known is a vague synopsis that mentions a bombing of St. Paul's Cathedral and the destruction of a railway over a chasm.

Both The Airship Destroyer and The Aerial Submarine can be viewed from British ISPs on the BFI Player website.