8 - Utopian Experiments: Island Idylls, Glass Beads, and Eugenic Nightmares

Summary

SOME MAY QUESTION whether the texts discussed in this chapter can be regarded as SF, since the authors under consideration here are interested in science only insofar as they require a means or a process by which a utopian society can be established or to critique its impact. But then we would also have to ask whether Aldous Huxley's Brave New World (1932) or George Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) belong in the history of SF, where they are routinely listed. Given the imagined futures—desirable or undesirable—that these speculative texts contain, I believe that they, as well as a venerable forebear, deserve consideration in this investigation.

Johann Gottfried Schnabel's Die Insel Felsenburg (1731–43) is a meandering narrative published under the pseudonym Gisander that grew into four volumes over twelve years. It follows the fate of several individuals in the first half of the eighteenth century as they are shipwrecked on an island in the South Atlantic, or are later invited to join the a utopian community they find there. Founded by Albert Julius and populated by his offspring who marry refugees and exiles from continental Europe, Insel Felsenburg becomes an escape fantasy for those tired of the social conditions in Europe and without hope that these will ever change. Thomas Schölderle sums up the experience of the “Felsenburger” (residents of Felsenburg) as follows:

The newcomers all experienced suffering, misery, and injustice in their European homelands. Their lives and the conditions on the old continent were shaped by poverty, war, and the execution of innocent people, by adultery and sexual abuse, gluttony, larceny, murder, religious intolerance, and a general decline in morals. While one life story after another illustrates the shocking conditions in the Europe of that time and offers Schnabel the opportunity to assemble his satirical critique out of the numerous individual representations, he brusquely sets them against the life stories from the utopian island.

In his commentary on the critical edition of this text, Günter Dammann argues that the community established on the island has attained the “moral good” as envisaged in Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz's Essais de Théodicee (1710). Indeed, once established, Felsenburg becomes a utopian community with a strong programmatic foundation dedicated to mutual aid.