1 - German Science Fiction: Its Formative Works and Its Postwar Uses of the Holocaust

Summary

IN 2010 THE FIRST INTERNATIONAL scholarly conference on German science-fiction literature took place. The following year saw the appearance of the first German scholarly journal to focus on science fiction, entitled Zeitschrift für Fantastikforschung (Journal for Research into the Fantastic). Until then, despite the popularity it enjoys, few scholars had taken German science fiction seriously. With the establishment of a yearly international conference and a journal, German science-fiction scholars hope to institutionalize the genre, legitimizing it and making various discussion fora available, akin to those we have in the United States.

This of course does not mean that there is little interest in science fiction in Germany. On the contrary. A writer and editor of the genre, Wolfgang Jeschke, has published or helped publish a steady stream of stories and novels from the 1970s onward, particularly with the Heyne publishing house. Lately, a generation of science-fiction writers has come of age. These writers, including Andreas Eschbach, German science fiction’s poster child, are being enjoyed by a growing reading public in hard copy but increasingly also online. So it is not material that is missing, but rather the scholarly interest—despite a smattering of dissertations on the Perry Rhodan series and articles on the literary quality of science fiction. Still, scholarly interest is growing, and Shayol Publishers are coming out with growing numbers of secondary literature written by science-fiction scholars.

In the early part of this essay I discuss some of the historical events that helped shape German science fiction and its particular characteristics. One characteristic of science fiction is the transposition of sociocultural apprehensions and concerns to distant future times and places. Twentieth-century Germany is fertile historical ground, and modern German science fiction is both embedded in the happenings of that period and at the same time engaged with present cultural concerns. In addition, recent German history is fraught with anxieties that have found and still find their way into the science-fiction genre. For example, colonialism, eugenics, and racial inequity were reality in the twentieth century and as a consequence white supremacy was part of the overall tenor of many speculative narratives. While such themes are common in most science fiction, they take on a particular bent when rendered in German. I then move on to an examination of German post–Second World War science-fiction narratives and their use of Endzeit—apocalypse.