Abstract
This chapter provides an overview of German science fiction (SF) and its position in a transcultural context. Mapping its historical trajectory from Kurd Laßwitz in the late nineteenth century to the early international SF success during the Weimar Republic, via its post-WWII decline and its renaissance since the 1990s, this chapter seeks to identify the specific and significant German contribution to the international project that is science fiction. An emphasis is placed on the transcultural fantastic in the twenty-first century and how German SF proves a valid and important voice, a counterpoint to Anglo-centric discourses on global issues such as the climate crisis, migration and refugees, transhumanism and technocracy, as well as challenges of social unrest and inequality.
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Notes
- 1.
There is a debate around the issue of what to include in this category, depending on national or language-boundaries, further complicated in film by issues of production industries. We are opting to include SF originally created in German, no matter which nationality the author or film maker has.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
Lastly, as with English-language SF, it should be mentioned that even before 1800 and the Gothic, there have been stories that can be read as German proto-SF: Johannes Kepler’s dream of living on the moon, Somnium (1634, written in Latin), elements in the picaresque novel Der abenteuerliche Simplicissimus Teutsch (Simplicius Simplicissimus, 1668) by Hans J. C. von Grimmelshausen, or the utopian novels Die schwarzen Brüder (The Black Brotherhood, 1795) by Heinrich Zschokke and Ini: Ein Roman aus dem 21. Jahrhundert (Ini: A Novel from the 21. Century, 1810) by Julius von Voss (cf. Alpers 2021).
- 5.
Translations of texts originally written in German are ours, unless otherwise noted.
- 6.
Specifically dedicated to German SF are William B. Fischer’s The Empire Strikes Out (1984), Sonja Fritzsche’s Science Fiction Literature in East Germany (2006), Bruce Campbell, Alison Günther-Pal, and Vibeke Petersen’s Detectives, Dystopias, and Poplit: Studies in Modern German Genre Fiction (2014), and Ingo Cornils’ Beyond Tomorrow: German Science Fiction and Utopian Thought in the 20th and 21st Centuries (2020).
- 7.
This volume appears in the Studies in Global Science Fiction by Palgrave, which gathers research on SF from such diverse places as China, Canada, Italy, and the Arabian countries. In addition, there are also Studies in Global Genre Fiction by Routledge, World Science Fiction by Peter Lang, New Dimensions of Science Fiction at the University of Wales Press, and the long-running series Liverpool Science Fiction Text and Studies by Liverpool University Press.
- 8.
An important translation of German SF stories has been an early example of this internationalization trend: Franz Rottensteiner’s edition of The Black Mirror and Other Stories: An Anthology of Science Fiction from Germany and Austria (2006), translated by Mike Mitchell.
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Schmeink, L., Cornils, I. (2022). Introduction: New Perspectives. In: Schmeink, L., Cornils, I. (eds) New Perspectives on Contemporary German Science Fiction . Studies in Global Science Fiction. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-95963-0_1
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