Time travel in fiction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Poster for the 1960 film adaptation of H. G. Wells' story

 

Time travel is a common theme in fiction and has been depicted in a variety of media, such as literature, television, film, and advertisements.

The concept of time travel by mechanical means was popularized in H. G. Wells' 1895 story, The Time Machine. In general, time travel stories focus on the consequences of traveling into the past or the future. The central premise for these stories oftentimes involves changing history, either intentionally or by accident, and the ways by which altering the past changes the future and creates an altered present or future for the time traveler when they return home. Some stories focus solely on the paradoxes and alternate timelines that come with time travel, rather than time traveling itself. They often provide some sort of social commentary, as time travel provides a "necessary distancing effect" that allows science fiction to address contemporary issues in metaphorical ways.

Time travel in modern fiction is sometimes achieved by space and time warps, stemming from the scientific theory of general relativity. Stories from antiquity often featured time travel into the future through a time slip brought on by traveling or sleeping, or in other cases, time travel into the past through supernatural means, for example brought on by angels or spirits.

Time travel themes

Changing the past

The idea of changing the past is logically contradictory, and results in a grandfather paradox. Paul J. Nahin, who has written extensively on the topic of time travel in fiction, states that "[e]ven though the consensus today is that the past cannot be changed, science fiction writers have used the idea of changing the past for good story effect". Time travel to the past and precognition without the ability to change events may result in causal loops.

The possibility of characters inadvertently or intentionally changing the past also gave rise to the idea of "time police", people tasked with preventing such changes from occurring by themselves engaging in time travel to rectify such changes.

Alternative future, history, timelines, and dimensions

An alternative future or alternate future is a possible future that never comes to pass, typically when someone travels back into the past and alters it so that the events of the alternative future cannot occur, or when a communication from the future to the past effected a change that alters the future. Alternative histories may exist "side by side", with the time traveler actually arriving at different dimensions as he changes time.

Butterfly effect

The butterfly effect is the notion that small events can have large, widespread consequences. The term describes events observed in chaos theory where a very small change in initial conditions results in vastly different outcomes. The term was coined by mathematician Edward Lorenz years after the phenomenon was first described.

The butterfly effect has found its way into popular imagination. For example, in Ray Bradbury's 1952 short story A Sound of Thunder, the killing of a single insect millions of years in the past drastically changes the world, and in the 2004 film The Butterfly Effect, the protagonist's small changes to their past results in extreme changes.

Communication from the future

In literature, communication from the future as a plot device is encountered in various science fiction and fantasy stories. Forrest J. Ackerman noted in his 1973 anthology of the best fiction of the year that "[t]he theme of getting hold of tomorrow's newspaper is a recurrent one". An early example of this device can be found in the H.G. Wells 1932 short story "The Queer Story of Brownlow's Newspaper", which tells the tale of a man who receives such a paper from 40 years in the future. The 1944 film It Happened Tomorrow also employs this device, with the protagonist receiving the next day's newspaper from an elderly colleague (who is possibly a ghost). Ackerman's anthology also highlights a short story by Robert Silverberg, "What We Learned From This Morning's Newspaper". In that story, a block of homeowners wake to discover that on November 22, they have received the New York Times for the coming December 1. As characters learn of future events affecting them through a newspaper delivered a week early, the ultimate effect is that this "so upsets the future that spacetime is destroyed". The television series Early Edition, inspired by the film It Happened Tomorrow, also revolved around a character who daily received the next day's newspaper, and sought to change some event therein forecast to happen. 

A newspaper from the future can be a fictional edition of a real newspaper, or an entirely fictional newspaper. John Buchan's novel The Gap in the Curtain, is similarly premised on a group of people being enabled to see, for a moment, an item in Times newspaper from one year in the future. During the Swedish general election of 2006, the Swedish liberal party used election posters which looked like news items, called Framtidens nyheter ("News of the future"), featuring things that Sweden in the future had become what the party wanted.

A communication from the future raises questions about the ability of humans to control their destiny. If the recipient is allowed to presume that the future is malleable, and if the future forecast affects them in some way, then this device serves as a convenient explanation of their motivations. In It Happened Tomorrow, the events that are described in the newspaper do come to pass, and the protagonist's efforts to avoid those events set up circumstances which instead cause them to come about. By contrast, in Early Edition, the protagonist is able to successfully prevent catastrophes predicted in the newspaper, although if the protagonist does nothing, these catastrophes do come about.

Where such a device is used, the source of the future news may not be explained, leaving it open to the reader or watcher to imagine that it might be technology, magic, an act of a god etc. In the H.G. Wells story, the author writes of the newspaper that "apparently it had been delivered not by the postman, but by some other hand". As in It Happened Tomorrow and Early Edition, no explanation is offered for the source of the future news. Ackerman suggests that "[t]he longer that authors mush on with the tale of... the next-week's-newspaper-now, the more difficult it becomes to pull a new rarebit out of the hat".

Precognition

Precognition has been explored as a form of time travel in fiction. Author J. B. Priestley wrote of it both in fiction and non-fiction, analyzing testimonials of precognition and other "temporal anomalies" in his book Man and Time. His books include time travel to the future through dreaming, which upon waking up results in memories from the future. Such memories, he writes, may also lead to the feeling of déjà vu, that the present events have already been experienced, and are now being re-experienced. Infallible precognition, which describes the future as it truly is, leads to causal loops, a form of which is explored in Newcomb's paradox. The film 12 Monkeys heavily deals with themes of predestination and the Cassandra complex, where the protagonist who travels back in time explains that he can't change the past.

Time loop

A "time loop" or "temporal loop" is a plot device in which periods of time are repeated and re-experienced by the characters, and there is often some hope of breaking out of the cycle of repetition. Time loops are sometimes referred to as causal loops, but these two concepts are distinct. Although similar, causal loops are unchanging and self-originating, whereas time loops are constantly resetting. In a time loop when a certain condition is met, such as a death of a character or a clock reaching a certain time, the loop starts again, with one or more characters retaining the memories from the previous loop. Stories with time loops commonly center on the character learning from each successive loop through time.

Time paradox

Many time travel works explore the topic of disrupting causality leading to time paradoxes. One of the most commonly referred to in time travel literature is known as the grandfather paradox. Many works of fiction explore what would happen if a time traveler went back in time and changed the past, for example if they killed their own grandparents.

Time slip

A time slip is a plot device used in fantasy and science fiction in which a person, or group of people, seem to travel through time by unknown means for a period of time. The idea of a time slip has been utilized by a number of science fiction and fantasy writers popularized at the end of the 19th century by Mark Twain's A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court, having considerable influence on later writers. This is one of the main plot devices of time travel stories, the other being a time machine. The difference is that in time slip stories, the protagonist typically has no control and no understanding of the process (which is often never explained at all) and is either left marooned in a past time and must make the best of it, or is eventually returned by a process as unpredictable and uncontrolled. The plot device is also popular in children's literature.

Time slips featuring a child and a realistic depiction of an earlier period enjoyed a vogue in the UK in the mid-20th century. Successful examples include Alison Uttley's A Traveller in Time (1939) going back to the time of Mary, Queen of Scots; Philippa Pearce's Tom's Midnight Garden (1958) returning to the 1880s and 1890s; Barbara Sleigh's Jessamy (1967) and Penelope Farmer's Charlotte Sometimes, both slipping back to the period of the First World War; Ruth Park's Playing Beatie Bow (1980), where the slip in Sydney, Australia, is to the squalor of 1873; and Helen Cresswell's Moondial, where three times periods are involved (1988, also televised).

Time tourism

A "distinct subgenre" of stories explore the possibility that time travel might be used as a means of tourism, with travelers curious to visit periods or events such as the Victorian Era, Crucifixion of Christ, or some point where dinosaurs could be watched (or hunted by big game hunters), or to meet historical figures such as Abraham Lincoln or Ludwig van Beethoven. This theme can be addressed from two directions. An early example of present-day tourists travelling back to the past is Ray Bradbury's A Sound of Thunder (1952), in which the protagonists are big game hunters who travel to the distant past to hunt dinosaurs. An early example of the other type, in which tourists from the future visit the present, is Catherine L. Moore and Henry Kuttner's Vintage Season (1946), a story which was selected for inclusion in Volume Two of The Science Fiction Hall of Fame collection.

Immortality

Instances of immortality are prevalent in time travel fiction. Oxford defines immortality as "the ability to live forever; eternal life." A distinct sub-thematic characteristic is warnings of said time-traveling immortals to other characters about the dangers of time travel. Some examples are 4th dimensional beings from Rick and Morty, Professor Paradox from Ben 10, and the Doctor from Doctor Who.

Time war

The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction describes a time war as a fictional war that is "fought across time, usually with each side knowingly using time travel ... in an attempt to establish the ascendancy of one or another version of history". Time wars are also known as "change wars" and "temporal wars".

P. Nahin compiles a variety of examples of fictional works that raise issues framed as arising in a time war:

Consider this passage from The Fall of Chronopolis (Bayley), a novel about a "time-war." Just after the detection of temporal invaders, we read of them that "They had come in from the future at high speed, too fast for defensive time-blocks to be set up, and had only been detected by ground-based stations deep in historical territory. If the target was to alter past events—the usual strategy in a time-war—then the empire's chronocontinuity would be significantly interfered with." And in Time of the Fox (Costello), American physicists battle KGB physicists in a war of time travelers in the past, each side attempting to change history to its advantage. In this novel the history changers isolate themselves from all the alterations taking place outside of their Time Lab, and they compare their stored historical records with those of external libraries. That allows the staff historian to adjust for each new round of changes. As the historian explains, outside of the Time Lab "History might change, but here [in the Time Lab] the past lives on."

In a novel of a galaxy-wide confrontation between humans and androids—Time and Again (Simak)—the use of time travel to alter history is central: "A war in time ... would reach back to win its battles. It would strike at points in time and space which would not even know that there was a war. It could, logically, go back to the silver mines of Athens, to the horse and chariot of Thut- mosis III, to the sailing of Columbus. ... It would twist the fabric of the past."

Hitler and World War II

In Western fiction, one common use of time travel technology is to travel back in time and attempt to kill Adolf Hitler in an attempt to avoid World War II and the Holocaust.

Fiction that applies the Novikov self-consistency principle that the past can't be changed results in plots where attempts to assassinate Hitler or avert the war are destined to fail, or where they actually result in the rise of Hitler as history records it. Fiction that does allow the past to be changed often explores the unintended consequences of time travel or the butterfly effect, which result in Germany and Japan winning World War II. This outcome is also explored in parallel world fiction such as The Man in the High Castle.

Biology in fiction

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Boris Karloff in James Whale's 1931 film Frankenstein, based on Mary Shelley's 1818 novel. The monster is created by an unorthodox biology experiment.

 

Biology appears in fiction, especially but not only in science fiction, both in the shape of real aspects of the science, used as themes or plot devices, and in the form of fictional elements, whether fictional extensions or applications of biological theory, or through the invention of fictional organisms. Major aspects of biology found in fiction include evolution, disease, genetics, parasitism and symbiosis (mutualism), ethology, and ecology.

Speculative evolution enables authors with sufficient skill to create what the critic Helen N. Parker calls biological parables, illuminating the human condition from an alien viewpoint. Fictional alien animals and plants, especially humanoids, have frequently been created simply to provide entertaining monsters. Zoologists such as Sam Levin have argued that, driven by natural selection on other planets, aliens might indeed tend to resemble humans to some extent.

Major themes of science fiction include messages of optimism or pessimism; Helen N. Parker has noted that in biological fiction, pessimism is by far the dominant outlook. Early works such as H. G. Wells's novels explored the grim consequences of Darwinian evolution, ruthless competition, and the dark side of human nature; Aldous Huxley's Brave New World was similarly gloomy about the effects of genetic engineering. 

Fictional biology, too, has enabled major science fiction authors like Stanley Weinbaum, Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Ursula Le Guin to create what Parker called biological parables, with convincing portrayals of alien worlds able to support deep analogies with Earth and humanity.

Aspects of biology

Aspects of biology found in fiction include evolution, disease, ecology, ethology, genetics, parasitism, and mutualism (symbiosis).

Evolution

Evolution, including speculative evolution, has been an important theme in fiction since the late 19th century. It began, however, before Charles Darwin's time, and reflects progressionist and Lamarckist views (as in Camille Flammarion's 1887 Lumen) as well as Darwin's. Darwinian evolution is pervasive in literature, whether taken optimistically in terms of how humanity may evolve towards perfection, or pessimistically in terms of the dire consequences of the interaction of human nature and the struggle for survival. Other themes include the replacement of humanity, either by other species or by intelligent machines.

Disease

Jack London's 1912 The Scarlet Plague (reprinted in 1949) takes place after an uncontrollable epidemic.

 

Diseases, both real and fictional, play a significant role in both literary and science fiction, some like Huntington's disease and tuberculosis appearing in many books and films. Pandemic plagues threatening all human life, such as The Andromeda Strain, are among the many fictional diseases described in literature and film. Science fiction takes an interest, too, in imagined advances in medicine. The Economist suggests that the abundance of apocalyptic fiction describing the "near annihilation or total extinction of the human race" by threats including deadly viruses rises when general "fear and unease", as measured by the Doomsday Clock, increase.

Tuberculosis was a common disease in the 19th century. In Russian literature, it appeared in several major works. Fyodor Dostoevsky used the theme of the consumptive nihilist repeatedly, with Katerina Ivanovna in Crime and Punishment; Kirillov in The Possessed, and both Ippolit and Marie in The Idiot. Turgenev did the same with Bazarov in Father and Sons. In English literature of the Victorian era, major tuberculosis novels include Charles Dickens's 1848 Dombey and Son, Elizabeth Gaskell's 1855 North and South, and Mrs. Humphry Ward's 1900 Eleanor.

Genetics

Aspects of genetics including mutation or hybridisation, cloning (as in Brave New World), genetic engineering, and eugenics have appeared in fiction since the 19th century. Genetics is a young science, having started in 1900 with the rediscovery of Gregor Mendel's study on the inheritance of traits in pea plants. During the 20th century it developed to create new sciences and technologies including molecular biology, DNA sequencing, cloning, and genetic engineering. The ethical implications of modifying humans (and all their descendants) were brought into focus with the eugenics movement. Since then, many science fiction novels and films have used aspects of genetics as plot devices, often taking one of two routes: a genetic accident with disastrous consequences; or, the feasibility and desirability of a planned genetic alteration. The treatment of science in these stories has been uneven and often unrealistic. The 1997 film Gattaca did attempt to portray science accurately but was criticised by scientists. Michael Crichton's 1990 novel Jurassic Park portrayed the cloning of whole dinosaur genomes from fossil remains of species extinct for millions of years, and their use to recreate living animals, using what was then known of genetics and molecular biology to create an "entertaining" and "thought-provoking" story.

The lack of scientific understanding of genetics in the 19th century did not prevent science fiction works such as Mary Shelley's 1818 novel Frankenstein and H. G. Wells's 1896 The Island of Dr Moreau from exploring themes of biological experiment, mutation, and hybridisation, with their disastrous consequences, asking serious questions about the nature of humanity and responsibility for science.

Parasitism

A 1990s gargoyle at Paisley Abbey resembling a Xenomorph parasitoid from Alien

 

Parasites appear frequently in fiction, from ancient times onwards as seen in mythical figures like the blood-drinking Lilith, with a flowering in the nineteenth century. These include intentionally disgusting alien monsters in science fiction films, though these are sometimes less "horrible" than real examples in nature. Authors and scriptwriters have to some extent exploited parasite biology: lifestyles including parasitoid, behaviour-altering parasite, brood parasite, parasitic castrator, and many forms of vampire are found in books and films. Some fictional parasites, like the deadly parasitoid Xenomorphs in Alien, have become well known in their own right. Terrifying monsters are clearly alluring: writer Matt Kaplan notes that they induce signs of stress including raised heart rate and sweating, but people continue indulging in such works. Kaplan compares this to the "masochism" of liking very hot spicy foods, which induce mouth burns, sweating, and tears. The psychologist Paul Rozin suggests that there is a pleasure in seeing one's own body react as if to stress while knowing that no real harm will result.

Symbiosis

Symbiosis (mutualism) appears in fiction, especially science fiction, as a plot device. It is distinguished from parasitism in fiction, a similar theme, by the mutual benefit to the organisms involved, whereas the parasite inflicts harm on its host. Fictional symbionts often confer special powers on their hosts. After the Second World War, science fiction moved towards more mutualistic relationships, as in Ted White's 1970 By Furies Possessed, which viewed aliens positively. In The Phantom Menace, Qui-Gon Jinn says microscopic lifeforms called midi-chlorians, inside all living cells, allow characters with enough of these symbionts in their cells to feel and use the Force.

Ethology

Ethology, the study of animal behaviour, appears in the wildlife scientist Delia Owens's novel Where the Crawdads Sing. The protagonist, Kya, is abandoned by her parents at age six, and grows up alone in a North Carolina swamp, learning camouflage and how to hunt from the animals there. She reads about ethology including an article entitled "Sneaky Fuckers", using her knowledge to navigate the tricks and dating rituals of the local boys.

Ecology

Ecology, the study of the relationships between organisms and their environment, appears in fiction in novels such as Frank Herbert's 1965 Dune, Kim Stanley Robinson's 1992 Red Mars, and Margaret Atwood's 2013 MaddAddam. Dune brought ecology centre stage, with a whole planet struggling with its environment. Its lifeforms included giant sandworms for whom water is fatal and mouse-like animals able to survive in the planet's desert conditions. The book was influential on the environmental movement of the time.

In the 1970s, the impact of human activity on the environment stimulated a new kind of writing, ecofiction. It has two branches: stories about human impact on nature; and stories about nature (rather than humans). It encompasses books written in styles from modernism to magical realism, and in genres from mainstream to romance and speculative fiction. A 1978 anthology of ecofiction includes 19th and 20th century works by authors as diverse as Ray Bradbury, John Steinbeck, Edgar Allan Poe, Daphne du Maurier, E. B. White, Kurt Vonnegut Jr., Frank Herbert, H. H. Munro, J. G. Ballard, and Isaac Asimov.

Fictional organisms

A mock taxidermy specimen of a fictional rhinograde invented by the German zoologist Gerolf Steiner

Fiction, especially science fiction, has created large numbers of fictional species, both alien and terrestrial. One branch of fiction, speculative evolution or speculative biology, consists specifically of the design of imaginary organisms in particular scenarios; this is sometimes informed by precise science.

Functions

Fictional biology serves a variety of function in film and literature, including the supply of suitably terrifying monsters, the communication of an author's worldview, and the creation of aliens for biological parables to illuminate what it is to be human. Real biology, such as of infectious diseases, equally provides a variety of contexts, from personal to highly dystopian, that can be exploited in fiction.

Monsters and aliens

A common use of fictional biology in science fiction is to provide plausible alien species, sometimes simply as terrifying subjects, but sometimes for more reflective purposes. Alien species include H. G. Wells's Martians in his 1898 novel The War of the Worlds, the bug-eyed monsters of early 20th century science fiction, fearsome parasitoids, and a variety of giant insects, especially in early 20th century big bug movies.

Humanoid (roughly human-shaped) aliens are common in science fiction. One reason is that authors use the only example of intelligent life that they know: humans. The zoologist Sam Levin points out that aliens might indeed tend to resemble humans, driven by natural selection. Luis Villazon points out that animals that move necessarily have a front and a back; as with bilaterian animals on Earth, sense organs tend to gather at the front as they encounter stimuli there, forming a head. Legs reduce friction, and with legs, bilateral symmetry makes coordination easier. Sentient organisms will, Villazon argues, likely use tools, in which case they need hands and at least two other limbs to stand on. In short, a generally humanoid shape is likely, though octopus- or starfish-like bodies are also possible.

Many fictional plants were created in the 20th century, including John Wyndham's venomous, walking, carnivorous triffids. in his 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids, The idea of plants that could attack an incautious traveller began in the late 19th century; the potatoes in Samuel Butler's Erewhon had "low cunning". Early tales included Phil Robinson's 1881 The Man-Eating Tree with its gigantic flytraps, Frank Aubrey's 1897 The Devil Tree of El Dorado, and Fred White's 1899 Purple Terror. Algernon Blackwood's 1907 story "The Willows" powerfully tells of malevolent trees that manipulate people's minds.

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  Cephalopod-like sea monster in Jules Verne's Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea drawn by Alphonse de Neuville, 1871
  
  
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  A bug-eyed monster, a trope of early science fiction. Illustration shows Stanley G. Weinbaum's 1951 story "A Man, A Maid, and Saturn's Temptation".
  
  
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  Big bug movie: Reynold Brown's poster for Nathan H. Juran's 1957 The Deadly Mantis
  
  
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  Man-eating plant: 1962 poster by Steve Sekely for a film adaptation of John Wyndham's 1951 novel The Day of the Triffids
  

Optimism and pessimism

H. G. Wells's 1898 The War of the Worlds struck a pessimistic note about human evolution.

 

A major theme of science fiction and of speculative biology is to convey a message of optimism or pessimism according to the author's worldview. Whereas optimistic visions of technological progress are common enough in hard science fiction, pessimistic views of the future of humanity are far more usual in fiction based on biology.

A rare optimistic note is struck by the evolutionary biologist J. B. S. Haldane in his tale, The Last Judgement, in the 1927 collection Possible Worlds. Both Arthur C. Clarke's 1953 Childhood's End and Brian Aldiss's 1959 Galaxies Like Grains of Sand, too, optimistically imagine that humans will evolve godlike mental capacities.

The grim possibilities of Darwinian evolution with its ruthless "survival of the fittest" has been explored repeatedly from the beginnings of science fiction, as in H. G. Wells's novels The Time Machine (1895), The Island of Dr Moreau (1896), and The War of the Worlds (1898); these all pessimistically explore the possible dire consequences of the darker sides of human nature in the struggle for survival. Aldous Huxley's 1931 novel Brave New World is similarly gloomy about the oppressive consequences of advances in genetic engineering applied to human reproduction.

Biological parables

The protagonist's journey across Mars in Stanley Weinbaum's 1934 A Martian Odyssey

 

The literary critic Helen N. Parker suggested in 1977 that speculative biology could serve as biological parables which throw light on the human condition. Such a parable brings aliens and humans into contact, allowing the author to view humanity from an alien perspective. She noted that the difficulty of doing this at length meant that only a few major authors had attempted it, naming Stanley Weinbaum, Isaac Asimov, John Brunner, and Ursula Le Guin. In her view, all four had impressively full characterizations of alien beings. Weinbaum had created a "bizarre assortment" of intelligent beings, unlike Brunner's crablike but extinct Draconians. What united all four writers, she argued, was that the novels centred on the interactions between aliens and humans, creating deep analogies between the two kinds of life and from there commenting on humanity now and in the future. Weinbaum's 1934 A Martian Odyssey explored the question of how aliens and humans could communicate, given that their thought processes were utterly different. Asimov's 1972 The Gods Themselves both makes the aliens major characters, and explores parallel universes. Brunner's 1974 Total Eclipse creates a whole alien world, extrapolated from terrestrial threats.

"The leafy sea dragon" (actually weedy seadragon) from William Buelow Gould's Sketchbook of fishes, c. 1832, used by Richard Flanagan in his 2001 novel Gould's Book of Fish

 

In her 1969 The Left Hand of Darkness, Le Guin presents her vision of a universe of planets all inhabited by "men", descendants from the planet Hain. In the book, the ambassador Genly Ai from the civilised Ekumen worlds visits the "backward- and inward-looking" people of Gethen, only to end up in danger, from which he escapes by crossing the polar ice cap on a desperate but well-planned expedition with an exiled Gethenian Lord Chancellor, Estraven. They are ambisexual with no fixed gender, and go through periods of oestrus, called "kemmer", at which point an individual comes temporarily to function as either a male or a female, depending on whether they first encounter a male- or female-functioning partner during their period of kemmer. The invented biology reflects and exemplifies, according to Parker, the opposing but united dualities of Taoism such as light and darkness, maleness and femaleness, yin and yang. So too do the opposed characters of Genly Ai with his carefully objective reports, and of Estraven with his or her highly personal diary, as the story unfolds, illuminating humanity through adventure and science fiction strangeness.

Structure and themes

Modern novels sometimes make use of biology to provide structure and themes. Thomas Mann's 1912 Death in Venice relates the feelings of the protagonist to the progress of an epidemic of cholera, which eventually kills him. Richard Flanagan's 2001 novel Gould's Book of Fish, which makes use of the illustrations from artist and convict William Buelow Gould's book of 26 paintings of fish for chapter headings and as the inspiration for the various characters in the novel.

Realism

The geneticist Dan Koboldt observes that the science in science fiction is often oversimplified, reinforcing popular myths to the point of "pure fiction". In his own field, he gives as examples the idea that first-degree relatives have the same hair, eyes and nose as each other, and that a person's future is predicted by their genetic code, as (he states) in Gattaca. Koboldt points out that eye colour changes as children grow up: adults with green or brown eyes often had blue eyes as babies; that brown-eyed parents can have children with blue eyes, "and vice versa"; and that the brown pigment melanin is controlled by around 10 different genes, so inheritance is along a spectrum rather than being a blue/brown switch.  Other authors in his edited collection Putting the Science in Fiction point out a wide variety of errors in the portrayal of other biological sciences.

Yellow journalism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Yellow journalism and the yellow press are American terms for journalism and associated newspapers that present little or no legitimate well-researched news while instead using eye-catching headlines for increased sales. Techniques may include exaggerations of news events, scandal-mongering, or sensationalism. By extension, the term yellow journalism is used today as a pejorative to decry any journalism that treats news in an unprofessional or unethical fashion.

 

In English, the term is chiefly used in the US. In the UK, a roughly equivalent term is tabloid journalism, meaning journalism characteristic of tabloid newspapers, even if found elsewhere. Other languages, e.g. Russian (Жёлтая пресса), sometimes have terms derived from the American term. A common source of such writing is called checkbook journalism, which is the controversial practice of news reporters paying sources for their information without verifying its truth or accuracy. In the U.S. it is generally considered unethical, with most mainstream newspapers and news shows having a policy forbidding it. In contrast, tabloid newspapers and tabloid television shows, which rely more on sensationalism, regularly engage in the practice.

Definitions

Joseph Campbell describes yellow press newspapers as having daily multi-column front-page headlines covering a variety of topics, such as sports and scandal, using bold layouts (with large illustrations and perhaps color), heavy reliance on unnamed sources, and unabashed self-promotion. The term was extensively used to describe certain major New York City newspapers around 1900 as they battled for circulation.

Frank Luther Mott identifies yellow journalism based on five characteristics:

1. scare headlines in huge print, often of minor news
2. lavish use of pictures, or imaginary drawings
3. use of faked interviews, misleading headlines, pseudoscience, and a parade of false learning from so-called experts
4. emphasis on full-color Sunday supplements, usually with comic strips
5. dramatic sympathy with the "underdog" against the system.

Origins: Pulitzer vs. Hearst

Etymology and early usage

The term was coined in the mid-1890s to characterize the sensational journalism that used some yellow ink in the circulation war between Joseph Pulitzer's New York World and William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal. The battle peaked from 1895 to about 1898, and historical usage often refers specifically to this period. Both papers were accused by critics of sensationalizing the news in order to drive up circulation, although the newspapers did serious reporting as well. An English magazine in 1898 noted, "All American journalism is not 'yellow', though all strictly 'up-to-date' yellow journalism is American!"

The term was coined by Erwin Wardman, the editor of the New York Press. Wardman was the first to publish the term but there is evidence that expressions such as "yellow journalism" and "school of yellow kid journalism" were already used by newsmen of that time. Wardman never defined the term exactly. Possibly it was a mutation from earlier slander where Wardman twisted "new journalism" into "nude journalism". Wardman had also used the expression "yellow kid journalism" referring to the then-popular comic strip which was published by both Pulitzer and Hearst during a circulation war. In 1898 the paper simply elaborated: "We called them Yellow because they are Yellow."

Hearst in San Francisco, Pulitzer in New York

"Evil spirits", such as "Paid Puffery" and "Suggestiveness", spew from "the modern daily press" in this Puck cartoon of November 21, 1888

Joseph Pulitzer purchased the New York World in 1883 after making the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the dominant daily in that city. Pulitzer strove to make the New York World an entertaining read, and filled his paper with pictures, games and contests that drew in new readers. Crime stories filled many of the pages, with headlines like "Was He a Suicide?" and "Screaming for Mercy." In addition, Pulitzer only charged readers two cents per issue but gave readers eight and sometimes 12 pages of information (the only other two cent paper in the city never exceeded four pages).

While there were many sensational stories in the New York World, they were by no means the only pieces, or even the dominant ones. Pulitzer believed that newspapers were public institutions with a duty to improve society, and he put the World in the service of social reform.

Just two years after Pulitzer took it over, the World became the highest circulation newspaper in New York, aided in part by its strong ties to the Democratic Party. Older publishers, envious of Pulitzer's success, began criticizing the World, harping on its crime stories and stunts while ignoring its more serious reporting — trends which influenced the popular perception of yellow journalism. Charles Dana, editor of the New York Sun, attacked The World and said Pulitzer was "deficient in judgment and in staying power."

Pulitzer's approach made an impression on William Randolph Hearst, a mining heir who acquired the San Francisco Examiner from his father in 1887. Hearst read the World while studying at Harvard University and resolved to make the Examiner as bright as Pulitzer's paper.

Under his leadership, the Examiner devoted 24 percent of its space to crime, presenting the stories as morality plays, and sprinkled adultery and "nudity" (by 19th century standards) on the front page. A month after Hearst took over the paper, the Examiner ran this headline about a hotel fire: HUNGRY, FRANTIC FLAMES. They Leap Madly Upon the Splendid Pleasure Palace by the Bay of Monterey, Encircling Del Monte in Their Ravenous Embrace From Pinnacle to Foundation. Leaping Higher, Higher, Higher, With Desperate Desire. Running Madly Riotous Through Cornice, Archway and Facade. Rushing in Upon the Trembling Guests with Savage Fury. Appalled and Panic-Striken the Breathless Fugitives Gaze Upon the Scene of Terror. The Magnificent Hotel and Its Rich Adornments Now a Smoldering heap of Ashes. The Examiner Sends a Special Train to Monterey to Gather Full Details of the Terrible Disaster. Arrival of the Unfortunate Victims on the Morning's Train — A History of Hotel del Monte — The Plans for Rebuilding the Celebrated Hostelry — Particulars and Supposed Origin of the Fire.

Hearst could be hyperbolic in his crime coverage; one of his early pieces, regarding a "band of murderers," attacked the police for forcing Examiner reporters to do their work for them. But while indulging in these stunts, the Examiner also increased its space for international news, and sent reporters out to uncover municipal corruption and inefficiency. 

"The Yellow Press", by L. M. Glackens, portrays William Randolph Hearst as a jester distributing sensational stories

 

In one well remembered story, Examiner reporter Winifred Black was admitted into a San Francisco hospital and discovered that indigent women were treated with "gross cruelty." The entire hospital staff was fired the morning the piece appeared.

Competition in New York

"Yellow journalism" cartoon about Spanish–American War of 1898. The newspaper publishers Joseph Pulitzer and William Randolph Hearst are both attired as the Yellow Kid comics character of the time, and are competitively claiming ownership of the war.

 

With the success of the Examiner established by the early 1890s, Hearst began looking for a New York newspaper to purchase, and acquired the New York Journal in 1895, a penny paper which Pulitzer's brother Albert had sold to a Cincinnati publisher the year before.

Metropolitan newspapers started going after department store advertising in the 1890s, and discovered the larger the circulation base, the better. This drove Hearst; following Pulitzer's earlier strategy, he kept the Journal's price at one cent (compared to The World's two cent price) while providing as much information as rival newspapers. The approach worked, and as the Journal's circulation jumped to 150,000, Pulitzer cut his price to a penny, hoping to drive his young competitor (who was subsidized by his family's fortune) into bankruptcy.

In a counterattack, Hearst raided the staff of the World in 1896. While most sources say that Hearst simply offered more money, Pulitzer — who had grown increasingly abusive to his employees — had become an extremely difficult man to work for, and many World employees were willing to jump for the sake of getting away from him.

Although the competition between the World and the Journal was fierce, the papers were temperamentally alike. Both were Democratic, both were sympathetic to labor and immigrants (a sharp contrast to publishers like the New York Tribune's Whitelaw Reid, who blamed their poverty on moral defects), and both invested enormous resources in their Sunday publications, which functioned like weekly magazines, going beyond the normal scope of daily journalism.

Their Sunday entertainment features included the first color comic strip pages, and some theorize that the term yellow journalism originated there, while as noted above, the New York Press left the term it invented undefined. Hogan's Alley, a comic strip revolving around a bald child in a yellow nightshirt (nicknamed The Yellow Kid), became exceptionally popular when cartoonist Richard F. Outcault began drawing it in the World in early 1896. When Hearst predictably hired Outcault away, Pulitzer asked artist George Luks to continue the strip with his characters, giving the city two Yellow Kids. The use of "yellow journalism" as a synonym for over-the-top sensationalism in the U.S. apparently started with more serious newspapers commenting on the excesses of "the Yellow Kid papers." 

In 1890, Samuel Warren and Louis Brandeis published "The Right to Privacy", considered the most influential of all law review articles, as a critical response to sensational forms of journalism, which they saw as an unprecedented threat to individual privacy. The article is widely considered to have led to the recognition of new common law privacy rights of action.

Spanish–American War

Male Spanish officials strip search an American woman tourist in Cuba looking for messages from rebels; front page "yellow journalism" from Hearst (Artist: Frederic Remington)

 

Pulitzer's treatment in the World emphasizes a horrible explosion

 

Hearst's treatment was more effective and focused on the enemy who set the bomb—and offered a huge reward to readers

Pulitzer and Hearst are often adduced as the cause of the United States' entry into the Spanish–American War due to sensationalist stories or exaggerations of the terrible conditions in Cuba. However, the vast majority of Americans did not live in New York City, and the decision-makers who did live there probably relied more on staid newspapers like the Times, The Sun, or the Post. James Creelman wrote an anecdote in his memoir that artist Frederic Remington telegrammed Hearst to tell him all was quiet in Cuba and "There will be no war." Creelman claimed Hearst responded "Please remain. You furnish the pictures and I'll furnish the war." Hearst denied the veracity of the story, and no one has found any evidence of the telegrams existing. Historian Emily Erickson states:

Serious historians have dismissed the telegram story as unlikely. ... The hubris contained in this supposed telegram, however, does reflect the spirit of unabashed self-promotion that was a hallmark of the yellow press and of Hearst in particular.

Hearst became a war hawk after a rebellion broke out in Cuba in 1895. Stories of Cuban virtue and Spanish brutality soon dominated his front page. While the accounts were of dubious accuracy, the newspaper readers of the 19th century did not expect, or necessarily want, his stories to be pure nonfiction. Historian Michael Robertson has said that "Newspaper reporters and readers of the 1890s were much less concerned with distinguishing among fact-based reporting, opinion and literature."

Pulitzer, though lacking Hearst's resources, kept the story on his front page. The yellow press covered the revolution extensively and often inaccurately, but conditions on Cuba were horrific enough. The island was in a terrible economic depression, and Spanish general Valeriano Weyler, sent to crush the rebellion, herded Cuban peasants into concentration camps, leading hundreds of Cubans to their deaths. Having clamored for a fight for two years, Hearst took credit for the conflict when it came: A week after the United States declared war on Spain, he ran "How do you like the Journal's war?" on his front page. In fact, President William McKinley never read the Journal, nor newspapers like the Tribune and the New York Evening Post. Moreover, journalism historians have noted that yellow journalism was largely confined to New York City, and that newspapers in the rest of the country did not follow their lead. The Journal and the World were not among the top ten sources of news in regional papers, and the stories simply did not make a splash outside New York City. Rather, war came because public opinion was sickened by the bloodshed, and because leaders like McKinley realized that Spain had lost control of Cuba. These factors weighed more on the president's mind than the melodramas in the New York Journal. 

When the invasion began, Hearst sailed directly to Cuba as a war correspondent, providing sober and accurate accounts of the fighting. Creelman later praised the work of the reporters for exposing the horrors of Spanish misrule, arguing, "no true history of the war ... can be written without an acknowledgment that whatever of justice and freedom and progress was accomplished by the Spanish–American War was due to the enterprise and tenacity of yellow journalists, many of whom lie in unremembered graves."

After the war

Hearst was a leading Democrat who promoted William Jennings Bryan for president in 1896 and 1900. He later ran for mayor and governor and even sought the presidential nomination, but lost much of his personal prestige when outrage exploded in 1901 after columnist Ambrose Bierce and editor Arthur Brisbane published separate columns months apart that suggested the assassination of William McKinley. When McKinley was shot on September 6, 1901, critics accused Hearst's Yellow Journalism of driving Leon Czolgosz to the deed. Hearst did not know of Bierce's column, and claimed to have pulled Brisbane's after it ran in a first edition, but the incident would haunt him for the rest of his life, and all but destroyed his presidential ambitions.

Pulitzer, haunted by his "yellow sins," returned the World to its crusading roots as the new century dawned. By the time of his death in 1911, the World was a widely respected publication, and would remain a leading progressive paper until its demise in 1931. Its name lived on in the Scripps-Howard New York World-Telegram, and then later the New York World-Telegram and Sun in 1950, and finally was last used by the New York World-Journal-Tribune from September 1966 to May 1967. At that point, only one broadsheet newspaper was left in New York City.