Mary Shelley
Frankenstein created life.
Wells
The Time Traveler invented the Time Machine.
Doctor Moreau enhanced animals.
Hawley Griffin made himself invisible.
Cavor counteracted gravity and flew to the Moon.
Verne
Captain Nemo invented a submarine.
Robur invented a flying machine and an all-purpose vehicle.
Lewis
Weston invented spaceships and flew to Mars and Venus.
Orfieu invented the chronoscope.
Blish
Roger Bacon invented scientific method and gunpowder.
Adolph Haertel discovered antigravity and flew to Mars.
Heinlein
Pinero invented a machine that predicted dates of death. Henlein followed the Wellsian convention that the secret is lost. Pinero is murdered and his machine detroyed. It is odd that the Future History begins with this retrograde story.
Anderson
In "Flight to Forever," MacPherson invents the time projector although it is not he that travels in it. It is destroyed at the end.
Inventors are not big in Anderson. Verne was not a major influence on him.
4 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Alas, I don't think THE ISLAND OF DR. MOREAU to be one of Wells' better stories. Merely surgically altering animals will not somehow make them even temporarily smarter.
After 20,000 LEAGUES UNDER THE SEA the Verne story I liked best was FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON.
I think Heinlein had to jettison Pinero and his invention. A machine which infallibly predicted when everyone dies would make it almost impossible for him to write more Future History stories.
We do see inventions in some of Anderson's stories, such as the one used for his Flying Mountains tales.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I thought of the Flying Mountains but could not remember the details. That is another anti-gravity deal.
Paul.
The thing is, big complex inventions usually don't have single inventors. They're team efforts. Eg., SpaceX would not exist without Musk, and he has made most of the major decisions on what to work on, but he needs literally thousands of scientists, technicians and administrators to realize his visions.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: And I as well! I should have looked up my copy of TALES OF THE FLYING for some of those details.
Mr. Stirling: I agree, and Anderson would as well, as the first of his Flying Mountains stories, "Nothing Succeeds Like Failure" makes plain. The genius inventor in that story also need assistance from scientists, technicians, administrators.
I'm glad we still have people like Elon Musk shaking up this stagnant age of ours!
Ad astra! Sean
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