By ERIC A. JOHNSON and COLLEEN R.C. STUMBAUGH
By most accounts, the origin of science fiction as a distinct literary genre dates back to 1926, when Hugo Gernsback started publishing what he called "scientifiction" in a new magazine known as Amazing Stories.
Under U.S. Copyright Law, creators are required to deposit one or two copies of a work, depending on medium. The Library of Congress, home of the U.S. Copyright Office, began receiving mandatory deposit copies of this title - as well as other newly emerged "science fiction" magazines - from the beginning. The Library's excellent Pulp Fiction Collection contains more than 15,000 items that are now being microfilmed for preservation purposes. While this collection was originally housed in the Serial and Government Publications Division, it can now be accessed on microfilm through the Microform Reading Room. The Rare Book and Special Collections Division, however, still retains custody of several key pulp fiction titles, including Astounding Stories and Weird Tales.
Seventy years after its birth, science fiction has become an integral part of American popular culture. This summer's blockbuster movie "Independence Day" updates one of the field's oldest tropes. Indeed, seven of the top-10 money- making movies of all time (including the top three: "E.T.: The Extraterrestrial," "Jurassic Park" and "Star Wars") are related to the genre films that have managed to capture the imagination of people around the world. And, as the hit television series Star Trek prepares to celebrate its 30th anniversary this fall, science fiction seems to be more popular than ever.
Thanks once again to the Copyright Law, major Hollywood films - as well as television episodes originating on American network television, like the "X-Files," "Babylon 5" and "The Twilight Zone" - are now among the holdings of the Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division. This division is also responsible for preserving films selected by the Librarian of Congress based on widespread recommendations for the National Film Registry. This registery includes a growing number of genre classics such as "Blade Runner," "The Day the Earth Stood Still," "The Invasion of the Body Snatchers" and "2001: A Space Odyssey."
Like many elements of American popular culture, science fiction has old European roots. Hugo Gernsback simply provided a name - and the first exclusive publishing vehicle - for a genre that had been evolving steadily since Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein in 1818 at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. While American writers like Edgar Allan Poe (father of the modern short story), Nathaniel Hawthorne, Herman Melville and Mark Twain experimented with this proto-genre, it was not until Jules Verne started his literary career in France with the 1863 publication of Five Weeks in a Balloon that the field began to take shape.
With the appearance of H.G. Wells's first novel (The Time Machine) in Britain in 1895, science fiction developed a distinct identity if not a name. American writers such as Jack London, H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Rice Burroughs conducted their own science-fictional experiments on this side of the Atlantic before the 1926 appearance of Amazing Stories. Publications from this crucial evolutionary period (1818-1926) can be found in the Rare Book Division's Jules Verne Collection (about 150 items) and Dime Novel Collection (about 20,000 items) as well as in the Library's general collections.
By the early 1950s, American science fiction had clearly outgrown the pulp magazines in which it had been born. Specialty houses such as Shasta Publishers and Gnome Press appeared in the late 1940s and devoted their energies to publishing genre books. Major New York publishers, realizing that there was money to be made from science fiction, quickly adopted a field that had once only held their sporadic interest. Doubleday was among the first publishers to add a separate science fiction line with the release of Isaac Asimov's Pebble in the Sky (1950). However, science fiction book publishing did not really take off until 1952, when both Ace and Ballantine introduced their mass-market paperback lines.
The resulting explosion of mass-market (or pulp) paperback publishing caused major difficulties for numerous library collections including those of the Library of Congress. Because these publications used cheap paper (it began deteriorating soon after publication) and because the overall publishing quality was so low (these books could not be easily bound, which is a requirement for addition to the permanent collections), the Library determined that these books were ephemeral in nature and would not be collected. The unfortunate result of this premature decision was a significant gap in the Library's science fiction collections, as many important novels in the genre have never seen hardcover publication.
The Rare Book Division took its first important step toward filling this gap when it acquired the Dell Paperback Collection (about 6,500 items) in 1976. Realizing that mass- market paperbacks provided a unique documentary record of American popular publishing and reading trends, Lolita Silva of the Collections Policy Office recommended that a Copyright Paperback Collection be established to complement the Dell Collection. Since 1976, this collection has grown to more than 70,000 items and spans a variety of other genres in addition to science fiction. Copyright materials from 1960 to 1976, currently in storage, will be reviewed for inclusion in the Library's collections to fill gaps.
By 1990 the Library realized that its science fiction collections had grown so vast and diverse that some degree of overall coordination was needed. As a result, the Collections Policy Office appointed Joseph Mayhew as the Library's first recommending officer for science fiction that same year.
Mr. Mayhew, a well-known science fiction buff who has been nominated twice for the field's prestigious Hugo [Gernsback] Award for his cartoons, set about to systematize and rationalize the Library's holdings in the field by working on the first drafts of a collections policy statement.
After he retired, Eric A. Johnson was appointed the Library's second recommending officer for science fiction in early 1994. With the help of a newly appointed Science Fiction Policy Working Group (a team comprised of Library staff members Colleen R.C. Stumbaugh, Sinya B. Schaeffer, Chris Callahan, Hartley Walsh, Evelyn Tim- berlake, Winton Matthews, Michelle Cadoree and Georgia Higley assisted by Peter Bridge), Mr. Johnson finished drafting the Library's Collections Policy Statement for Fantasy & Science Fiction. The Library officially adopted this document in June 1995.
This new Collections Policy Statement provides a template for collecting science fiction and its related genres of fantasy and horror. While this statement defines what the Library will and will not acquire in the field, it also provides guidance in identifying current gaps in the collections and ways to fill them. The huge task of preparing a desiderata list of items not presently in the collection has become somewhat easier since Ms. Stumbaugh was appointed the Library's alternate recommending officer for fantasy and science fiction in 1996.
As the fascination with science fiction has become a worldwide phenomenon, other recent acquisition efforts have concentrated on improving the Library's collections of foreign science fiction. Although America may dominate the world market in the genre, more and more works of science fiction are being created in other countries and in languages other than English. In order to acquire this material, the Library has established numerous exchange arrangements with science fiction organizations and groups in Australia, Canada (including sources of French-language material produced in Quebec), the Czech Republic,
England, France, Germany, Poland, Romania, Russia, South Africa and Ukraine to list just a few. As a result, the Exchange and Gift Division is now the major source of acquisitions for those science fiction materials that cannot be acquired through the mandatory deposit provisions of the Copyright Law.
The Library's general collections of books and bound serials are home to the single greatest number of genre-related items. As the general collections number more than 10 million volumes (there are more than 25 million bound volumes throughout the Library), it is almost impossible to estimate exactly how many of these items would be considered works of science fiction. This is especially true because definitions of the genre vary so widely (writer and editor Damon Knight is famous for his definition: "science fiction is whatever we point to when we say it").
In any event, original works of science fiction - whether written in English or another language - are treated in much the same way as other literature. After processing, hardcover books are added to the collections "as is" while trade paperbacks and serials must first be bound. The books are maintained on the shelves according to the unique numbers assigned to them by the LC Classification System. Each fiction writer is usually assigned a distinct control number based upon his or her name. As a result, science fiction authors are interspersed among authors of mainstream and other genre fiction. Unlike curators of specialized science fiction collections in other libraries where all genre books are housed together, the library's general collections do not attempt to preserve dust jackets for their cover art nor do they contain multiple editions of each work in order to keep track of every possible variation in text or presentation.
Current unbound issues of serials in the genre can be found in the Serial and Government Publications Division (those in major European languages other than English are in the custody of the European Division). The division is also home to another key genre collection. Today, the Comic Book Collection contains approximately 100,000 pieces and it continues growing at the rate of 300 items a month thanks to Copyright deposits. Among the nearly 5,000 titles in the collection are the first issues of the science fiction classics Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman, Planet Stories and Adventures into the Unknown (access to these titles is restricted, because of their fragility). The division's reading room has color microfiche copies of some important early issues of Batman, Superman, Adventure Comics and other titles. While most of these comic books are in English, the collection also contains a few foreign language titles, primarily French and German.
The Motion Picture, Broadcasting and Recorded Sound Division's collections are also particularly strong in Americana. However, a growing number of foreign films are available in the collection, such as Fritz Lang's "Metropolis" (Germany-1926) and Andrei Tarkovskii's "Stalker" (Russia-1979). The division contains most of the major works of French film pioneer Georges Méliès, including the earliest science fiction film ever made: "A Trip to the Moon" (1902).
In addition to its outstanding collections of science fiction film and videos, the division has significant collections of genre sound recordings. For example, there are recorded radio broadcasts from the 1930s and 1940s, including such popular shows as "Buck Rogers in the 25th Century," "Dimension X," "The Fifth Horseman" and "X Minus One." The sound collections also include the original 1939 CBS broadcast by Orson Welles and the Mercury Theater of H.G. Wells's "War of the Worlds" - famous for causing widespread panic. More recent broadcasts such as "The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" are also important parts of the collection as are National Public Radio interviews with science fiction authors and a growing number of books on tape.
Beyond the large science fiction collections mentioned above, the Library has a number of other genre-related material scattered throughout its nonbook collections. The Geography and Map Division contains maps of imaginary lands such as J.R.R. Tolkien's Middle Earth and L. Frank Baum's Oz. Other relevant items can be found in the Music Division (e.g., the Franz Waxman Collection contains the original score for "The Bride of Frankenstein"), the Manuscript Division (e.g., the Val Lewton Papers documenting work done on "The Cat People" and other genre films for RKO in the 1940s), as well as in the Poster Collection of the Prints and Photographs Division (e.g., numerous original movie posters related to science fiction films).
To complement its significant collections, the Library regularly sponsors other science fiction-related activities. One of Joseph Mayhew's many accomplishments as recommending officer for science fiction was to bring David Hartwell (one of the most important editors in the field) to speak at the Library in 1993. With the support of the Library of Congress Professional Association, talks on science fiction have now become a regular monthly event. The What IF ...? Science Fiction & Fantasy Information Forum meets on the second Wednesday of each month.
The Information Forum has hosted numerous writers in the field, including Nancy Kress, Charles Sheffield, Hal Clement, Doug Beason, S.N. Lewitt, Susan Schwartz, Roger MacBride Allen, Paula Volsky, Aleta Jackson and Eric Kotani (Yoji Kondo). Other featured speakers such as Alexis Gilliland, Tom Schaad, Camille Bacon-Smith, Robert Kennedy, Peggy Rae Pavlat and Marty Gear have talked about a variety of topics including science fiction scholarship, preserving the history of science fiction's increasing popularity and media science fiction. Some of the forum's most popular programs have been "Star Trek"- related, such as one given by Marc Okrand, the linguist who developed the Klingon language.
In 1996, science fiction and science fact continue to overlap in exciting ways as shown by this summer's speculation that life might have once existed on Mars. As the nation's interest in the genre continues to grow, science fiction's sense of wonder can be heard in a variety of diverse American voices ranging from Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich (co- author of 1945) and Larry Niven (co-author of The Mote in God's Eye and The Gripping Hand) to Samuel R. Delany (Babel 17, Triton and Dhalgren) and Rachel Pollack (Temporary Agency, Godmother Night and Unquenchable Fire). The Library will continue its efforts to both improve and expand its vast science fiction collections to document America's fascination with the future.
Eric A. Johnson (eaj@loc.lov) and Colleen R.C. Stumbaugh (cstu@loc.gov) are available to help potential researchers navigate the Library's science fiction collections. Special thanks are due to Alice Birney, Clark Evans, Cooper Graham, Georgia Higley, Martha Hopkins, Edwin Matthias, Elena Millie, Joseph Puccio and Wayne Shirley, who provided information used in preparing this article.
For more information about the What IF ...? Science Fiction & Fantasy Information Forum contact Sinya B. Schaeffer (schaeffe@mail.loc.gov).