LASSWITZ, Kurd

(1848-1910)

   German Kantean philosopher, historian of science, novelist and short-story writer. As the first major sf writer in German, he holds the same place in GERMANY as do H.G. WELLS in the UK and Jules VERNE in France. He taught philosophy for many years at the Gymnasium Ernestinum inGotha, and it is symptomatic of 19th-century German intellectual culture that he irradiated his fiction with theoretical speculation; there is no KL fiction without a lesson. In "German Theories of Science Fiction" (1976Science-Fiction Studies) William B. Fischer claims on KL's behalf that many of his ideas directly prefigure later critics' use of terms like "extrapolation" and "analogue", and translates as follows from KL'sintroduction to the short-story collection Bilder aus der Zukunft ("Images of the Future") (coll 1878): "Many inferences about the future can be drawn from the historical course of civilization and the present state of science; and analogy offers itself to fantasy as an ally." The seriousness of KL's didactic impulse can be seen in the strong emphasis he places in his fiction on establishing a plausible imaginary world whose hypothetical nature will be governed, and given verisimilitude, by the resemblance to scientific method evident in its realization.Unsurprisingly, the stories that embody these overriding concerns tend to be more effective as broad technological and scientific canvases than as studies in character. The tales collected in Bilder aus der Zukunft read consequently almost like illustrated tours of various "superior terrestrial cultures located in the future". (A short story from this volume was published in Overland Monthly in 1890 as "Pictures of the Future".) Further short stories are collected in Seifenblasen ("Soap Bubbles") (coll 1890), 2 stories from this volume appearing (trans Willy LEY 1953 and 1955) in FSF, and Nie und Nimmer("Never, Ever") (coll 1902); 2 sf novels, Aspira (1906) and Sternentau("Star Dew") (1909), have not been translated into English.KL's major work is his long sf novel, Auf zwei Planeten (1897; cut 1948; cut again 1969; trans Hans J. Rudnick, much cut, as Two Planets 1971 US), in which mankind confronts a superior Martian culture when a Martian SPACE HABITAT is discovered above the North Pole along with an enclave at the pole itself. After useless defiance of the Martians, Earth is put under a benignprotectorate, and humans gradually begin a process of self-improvement at the same time that the Martians on Earth become decadent. Ultimately mankind rebels, equality between the two planets is established, and Earth seems destined to a UTOPIAN future. The book incorporates much technological speculation, including details about life on MARS - based on the theories of Percival Lowell (1855-1916) - possible alien forms of biology (XENOBIOLOGY), and the nature of mankind, actual and potential. It was deeply influential upon at least two generations of German youth,as the epigraph to the 1971 translation by Wernher von Braun (1912-1977) attests; and E.F. BLEILER has speculated that it was important in shaping Hugo GERNSBACK's "technologically based liberalism".In 1981, the KurdLasswitz AWARDS were established to honour, in a fashion meant to reflect the HUGO, the best German sf published during the previous year.

   JC

   See also: HISTORY OF SF; INVASION.