- HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel
- (1804-1864)US writer known primarily for his work outside the sf field. One of the formative figures in US literature, NH was intrigued throughout his writing career by themes we would now call sf. His extensive notebooks outline dozens of projected sf works, some of which he was able to complete, while others he worked on unsuccessfully until his death. A long line of doctors, chemists, botanists, mesmerists, physicists and inventors parade their marvellously creative and destructive skills through his fiction, even the most apparently fantastic events being given naturalistic explanations. Thus much of his writing at least borders on sf.In three of his four major romances, sf elements run as a main undercurrent. A secret medical experiment controls the plot of The Scarlet Letter (1850); the main action of The House of the Seven Gables (1851)derives from hypnotism (PSYCHOLOGY) and a strange inherited disease; all the major events in The Blithedale Romance (1852) flow from a major topic of 19th-century sf, mesmeric control. A SCIENTIST's quest for the elixir of life is the subject of Dr Heidegger's Experiment (1837 Salem Gazette; 1883 chap) and two unfinished, posthumously published romances, allpossibly differing draft attempts at the same basic story: the title story of The Dolliver Romance and Other Pieces (1864 The Atlantic Monthly as "The Dolliver Romance"; coll 1876), and Septimius: A Romance (1872 UK; vtSeptimius Felton, or The Elixir of Life 1872 US). Some stories, such as "The Man from Adamant" (1837), come directly from pseudo-scientific curiosities NH encountered as editor of The American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Knowledge.NH's short work of interest appeared in Twice-Told Tales (coll 1837; exp in 2 vols 1842), Mosses from an Old Manse(coll 1846) and The Snow-Image and Other Twice-Told Tales (coll 1852). Three of his early stories had profound influences on subsequent 19th-century sf, and all three still stand as masterpieces of the genre. In "The Birthmark" (1843) a lone genius who has invented numerous scientific marvels commits the fatal error of attempting to remove the one blemish which keeps his wife from being perfect, a tiny birthmark which makes this lovely woman disgusting to him. "The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844) describes the creation of an automaton butterfly which, for anotherlone inventive genius, substitutes for love, sex and biological procreation. In "Rappaccini's Daughter" (1844) a scientist attempts to make his only child impervious to the evils of the world by filling her with secret poisons, but is foiled by his arch-rival. Part of the enduring power of these three tales comes from their deep penetration into the psychology of a group of men emerging in NH's society, the technical-scientific elite. NH's sf extends the achievements of Mary SHELLEY's Frankenstein (1818) into the dawn of the age of modern scienceand the literature that is part of that age's culture, modern sf.HBFOther works: Doctor Grimshawe's Secret (1883); The Ancestral Footstep (1883); The Ghost of Doctor Harris (1900 chap); The Dolliver Romance, and Kindred Tales (coll 1900); The Complete Short Stories of Nathaniel Hawthorne (coll 1959), assembling 72 tales; The Snow Image and Uncollected Tales (coll 1974) ed E.F. BLEILER; Young Goodman Brown and Other Short Stories (coll 1992).
Science Fiction and Fantasy Encyclopedia. Academic. 2011.
