THE MAN WHO EVOLVED

Edmond Hamilton's(1904-1977) The Man Who Evolved(1931) presents a particular type of science fiction that in its most evolved form (sic) consist mostly of a middle-brow version of the info-dump so common on those early pulp days: A story told through talk or thought, with little actual action shown.

It might seem like a cardinal sin; after all, we are told so often show and not tell; but not only does this type of story often reach heights like James Tipree Jr's(1915-1987) And I Awoke and Found Me Here on the Cold Hill's Side(1972), it has illustrious forbears in the so-called serious mainstream literature. Much of the existentialist literature, from its roots in the work of Fyodor Dostoyevsky(1821-1881) through Albert Camus(1913-1960) and forward, is of this type.

So, we might well forgive and applaud. Yet, this telling instead of showing is still a weakness. It's the weakness of an idea confined to a too little a space - and, admittedly, a weakness in the author. An author who has an idea, but lacks not in abilities to carry out it out fully, but in concentration. We can hardly claim that Dostoyevsky or Tipree or even Hamilton couldn't have been able to flesh out in action what they make their characters tell us, but they were in a hurry (the model of publication united and restrained Dostoyevsky and Hamilton) and impatient of mind.

There is a novel, or in days of modern publication, a trilogy in the The Man Who Evolved. Tiptree's story would surely have gained in being extended to a short novel - and the arguments and implications carried with more force in that form.

The benefits of science fiction are shown in Hamilton's story in the ability to at least give the evolution of humanity through one particular individual, Pollard, also a drastically physical form and not just an inner one. Dostoyevsky's Pollard would have just spoken, Hamilton's changed physically. A crude example of mind and body being one, but with the mind being on driver's seat in this forced evolution - until its drive to rise even greater heights dooms it.

Of course, the very weakness of pulp-era science fiction forces Hamilton's surviving characters from taking the next logical step: Continuing the experiment of seeing what the protoplasm would evolve into. And that mentality of continuing the experiment beyond of the limits of mainstream fiction is what in the end justifies the fantastical literature of horror, fantasy, science fiction as literature, even when its confined to a too short a form where its forced to lecture instead of showing.

When mainstream authors escape the building at the sight of what is happening, an author of fantastical coolly turns the switch on to see what next fifty million years of evolution confined to the length of fifteen minutes will do what was the unfortunate Mr Pollard - as long as she or he has the space to do it.