Now that Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and a collection of Poe’s stories are available to me, I thought I’d share my second batch of runs on science fiction within the Gothic (if you missed it, here’s the first one).

First: Verne who, together with Wells, comprise the Fathers of Science Fiction. While I don’t think this novel is considered a Gothic work, certainly not in the way The Time Machine is sometimes considered Gothic, Twenty Thousand Leagues nonetheless owes a great debt to this genre. Certainly, the mysterious Captain Nemo resembles classic Gothic characters.

While matching Verne’s novel up with Gothic works, I came across a difficulty that resembled my problem with The Time Machine: a cluttering of novel-specific words. In Twenty Thousand Leagues, the Nautical theme shine through in two categories. Charles Brockden Brown’s Wieland, or: The Transformation provided the most interesting results:

 

Brown’s novel is sometimes categorized as horror, and that shines through here: “death, life, horror, mind, fear.” It’s interesting, however, that Verne’s novel, primarily a science fiction novel arguably emerging from the Gothic, also, to a lesser extent, shares this category.

I decided to investigate this finding by matching up Verne’s novel with other works. This Horror category appeared commonly enough that I was forced to take notice. Is Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea a horror novel after all?

Getting ahead of myself, I matched Verne with Poe, eager to see the results:

 

First, a note about Poe: the collection included, rather than comprising all of the author’s short stories, totals 23 tales. Moreover, while Verne and Wells can unquestionably be considered science fiction, and to a large extent Shelley, as well, Poe is a mixed bag. He is often credited as popularizing many genres, working within the Gothic to produce mystery, early horror, and yes, science fiction (although, you could argue that the stories themselves can represent several genres at once). With a bit of research, this collection appears to be a healthy mix of these genres. In the future, it might be fruitful to work with a collection only of Poe’s science fiction works.

Back to the results. The Horror topic, as predicted, appears again, with Poe stretching out this subfield further. The other curiosity is: “strange, mind, thought, seemed, dream.” While clearly vague, this category has to do with internal thoughts, a theme that has more to do with Gothic fiction than science fiction. The possibly fantastic element of this category, however, alludes to both genres.

Another note before I move on: while it doesn’t appear here, the semi-“Cosmic” or, more accurately, “Light/Darkness” category, “light,” “night,” “moon,” “dark,” “sun,” frequently occurs in my runs with Verne, presenting an interesting, if tenuous, link to my earlier runs with The Time Machine. Running these two texts alone confirms it, with a fairly strong correlation:

 

I now centered my attention on Poe, which more easily matched up with the Gothic texts. Running it with Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray produced interesting results:

 

Once again, you can see Poe’s fascination with Horror. The ambiguous Thoughts/Dreams category appears again, which makes sense because both works contain an element of the fantastic. The word, “seemed,” in this category, as well as in “seemed,” “time,” “appeared,” “made,” “same,” also links it with subjectivity. While this run of course doesn’t point to any clear conclusions, Poe seems to align very well with most Gothic texts, especially ones (like Dorian Gray) that have anything to do with the supernatural and fantastic.

Before concluding, I’ll present the cacophony of running all four science fiction texts together: Shelley, Wells, Verne, and Poe:

 

My semi-color blindness gave me some trouble here. I don’t want to take these comparisons too far, but there are a few things to mention. First, the appearance of the Light/Time or Sun/Moon category did not go unnoticed. To my mind, none of these texts are primarily concerned with outer space (Poe’s story about traveling to the moon is sadly not included here), but the Sun and Moon probably serve other purposes. Is this focus indicative of science fiction’s fascination with space and the heavens? Possibly, but I don’t think Woodchipper offers any greater insights here.

The reappearance of Horror is curious. Poe, Frankenstein, and Twenty Thousand Leagues spread across this category fairly evenly. What does this mean? Without assuming any familiarity with these works, form this run alone, I would probably sooner group them in the horror genre than science fiction. However, because I know these works together influenced an enormous body of science fiction literature, this run tells me that horror and sci-fi might have more in common than I realize. This makes a lot of sense for Poe and Frankenstein, but Verne surprised me.

An aside about the functions of Woodchipper itself: the ability to zoom in on specific sections of the grid, which I believe was recently added, proved exceedingly helpful for runs with three or four texts like this.

Concerning The Time Machine, Wells’ text expressed the fewest comparisons with the other texts. I used the zoom function and noticed the novel’s nodes scattered among the various categories, but I couldn’t see enough evidence to draw any conclusions here.

As in my first run, I was left with more questions than answers. Science fiction, especially as a subgenre within the Gothic, is especially difficult to locate. Indeed, in this second batch of runs, I encountered more associations with Horror than Science Fiction. This may suggest, however, that the two genres have much in common. This isn’t surprising, considering their roots in the Gothic, and their focus on the fantastic and supernatural. I encountered little that supports the idea that science fiction is concerned more with the societal than with the personal. Indeed, I found the opposite to be true, suggesting that this trend may have appeared later on. Perhaps in using these four authors as a template for future science fiction works, I can trace the origins of later texts in early sci-fi and in the Gothic genre itself. This project may prove useful, but I also suspect that while it has the possibility of producing answers, it’s almost a guarantee that I’ll also be left with more questions, as well.

Some of our Horror texts took a bit longer than expected to load. But when they came, I threw them all up through Woodchipper at once and I noticed some very interesting overlay of topics.

The classic “Horror Topic” (things, thing, seemed, horror, hideous) almost overlaps the topic related to parts (hand, eyes, face, heads, hands).

What could explain the overlap?

Is horror linked to the body in an integral way?  Does the proximity of “horror” words to “body” words indicate a fear that is linked to the body? Or could it be indicative of bodily monstrosity? Basically, do these results indicate a fear of the body or a fear for the body? Or are characters using their bodies to sense fear?

To investigate I pulled out a selection of the paragraphs that fell in the upper left of the chart, those which scored highly in “horror” and “body parts.” I ran the chipper several times, with the texts in different orders, to make different novels sit on top, so I could get at them. I pulled out examples from eight different texts. Then I went through the paragraphs and bolded the words that I suspected put them into the horror category. I italicized the body parts. This way I could see for myself the proximity of horror words to body parts.

(My choice of words is certainly subjective. Another scholar might categorize differently. I’m not certain I match Woodchipper either. I didn’t, however, have any trouble finding either type of word in any of Woodchipper’s selected paragraphs.)

Here’s what I found:

Frankenstein (84-0242)

Mary Shelley (1818)

Urged by this impulse, I seized on the boy as he passed and drew him towards me. As soon as he beheld my form, he placed his hands before his eyes and uttered a shrill scream; I drew his hand forcibly from his face and said, ‘Child, what is the meaning of this? I do not intend to hurt you; listen to me.’

The Works of Edgar Allen Poe (2148-0456)

Edgar Allen Poe (1850)

There was an instant return of the hectic circles on the cheeks; the tongue quivered, or rather rolled violently in the mouth (although the jaws and lips remained rigid as before;) and at length the same hideous voice which I have already described, broke forth:

The Works of Edgar Allen Poe (2148-0205)

Edgar Allen Poe (1850)

I sat erect. The darkness was total. I could not see the figure of him who had aroused me. I could call to mind neither the period at which I had fallen into the trance, nor the locality in which I then lay. While I remained motionless, and busied in endeavors to collect my thought, the cold hand grasped me fiercely by the wrist, shaking it petulantly, while the gibbering voice said again:

The Woman in White (583-2109)

Wilkie Collins (1859)

“How do you know?” she said faintly. “Who showed it to you?” The blood rushed back into her face—rushed overwhelmingly, as the sense rushed upon her mind that her own words had betrayed her. She struck her hands together in despair. “I never wrote it,” she gasped affrightedly; “I know nothing about it!”

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde (42-0086)

Robert Louis Stevenson (1886)

“O God!” I screamed, and “O God!” again and again; for there before my eyes—pale and shaken, and half-fainting, and groping before him with his hands, like a man restored from death— there stood Henry Jekyll!

The Picture of Dorian Gray (174-0251)

Oscar Wilde (1890)

The suspense became unbearable. Time seemed to him to be crawling with feet of lead, while he by monstrous winds was being swept towards the jagged edge of some black cleft of precipice. He knew what was waiting for him there; saw it, indeed, and, shuddering, crushed with dank hands his burning lids as though he would have robbed the very brain of sight and driven the eyeballs back into their cave. It was useless. The brain had its own food on which it battened, and the imagination, made grotesque by terror, twisted and distorted as a living thing by pain, danced like some foul puppet on a stand and grinned through moving masks. Then, suddenly, time stopped for him. Yes: that blind, slow-breathing thing crawled no more, and horrible thoughts, time being dead, raced nimbly on in front, and dragged a hideous future from its grave, and showed it to him. He stared at it. Its very horror made him stone.

Dracula (345-0352)

Bram Stoker (1897)

She shuddered and was silent, holding down her head on her husband’s breast. When she raised it, his white nightrobe was stained with blood where her lips had touched, and where the thin open wound in the neck had sent forth drops. The instant she saw it she drew back, with a low wail, and whispered, amidst choking sobs.

Dracula (345-0968)

Bram Stoker (1897)

There on the bed, seemingly in a swoon, lay poor Lucy, more horribly white and wan-looking than ever. Even the lips were white, and the gums seemed to have shrunken back from the teeth, as we sometimes see in a corpse after a prolonged illness.

The Turn of the Screw (209-0168)

Henry James (1898)

My lucidity must have seemed awful, but the charming creatures who were victims of it, passing and repassing in their interlocked sweetness, gave my colleague something to hold on by; and I felt how tight she held as, without stirring in the breath of my passion, she covered them still with her eyes. “Of what other things have you got hold?”

Collected Stories (31-0690)

H. P. Lovecraft (2006)

Then, after a short interval, the form in the corner stirred; and may pitying heaven keep from my sight and sound another thing like that which took place before me. I cannot tell you who he shrieked, or what vistas of unvisitable hells gleamed for a second in the black eyes crazed with fright. I can only say that I fainted, and did not stir till he himself recovered and shook me in his frenzy for someone to keep away the horror and desolation.

Collected Stories (31-3241)

H. P. Lovecraft (2006)

The dreams were meanwhile getting to be atrocious. In the lighter preliminary phase the evil old woman was now of fiendish distinctness, and Gilman knew she was the one who had frightened him in the slums. Her bent back, long nose, and shrivelled chin were unmistakable, and her shapeless brown garments were like those he remembered. The expression on her face was one of hideous malevolence and exultation, and when he awaked he could recall a croaking voice that persuaded and threatened. He must meet the Black Man and go with them all to the throne of Azathoth at the centre of ultimate chaos. That was what she said. He must sign the book of Azathoth in his own blood and take a new secret name now that his independent delvings had gone so far. What kept him from going with her and Brown Jenkin and the other to the throne of Chaos where the thin flutes pipe mindlessly was the fact that he had seen the name “Azathoth” in the Necronomicon, and knew it stood for a primal evil too horrible for description.

Collected Stories (31-3201)

H. P. Lovecraft (2006)

That night Gilman saw the violet light again. In his dream he had heard a scratching and gnawing in the partitions, and thought that someone fumbled clumsily at the latch. Then he saw the old woman and the small furry thing advancing toward him over the carpeted floor. The beldame’s face was alight with inhuman exultation, and the little yellow-toothed morbidity tittered mockingly as it pointed at the heavily-sleeping form of Elwood on the other couch across the room. A paralysis of fear stifled all attempts to cry out. As once before, the hideous crone seized Gilman by the shoulders, yanking him out of bed and into empty space. Again the infinitude of the shrieking abysses flashed past him, but in another second he thought he was in a dark, muddy, unknown alley of foetid odors with the rotting walls of ancient houses towering up on every hand.

Conclusions

After mucking about in the paragraphs of these different texts, categorizing words, I don’t think my questions can be answered easily, nor do I think the link between body and horror can be simply explained. On the surface, it often seems that the characters are using their bodies to sense and to express their horror. But I don’t think that’s the whole story. Rather, it seems that the most intensely horror-filled passages contain a heightened consciousness of body and there must be more behind that body-consciousness. Whether this proximity of horror words to body words indicates horror of the body, or horror for the body would take further analysis and interpretation. I suspect that the answer lies tangled up in both options.

Monstrosity of the body is certainly an important factor in the Gothic Horror—that’s not a shocking find. Perhaps Woodchipper has failed, in this instance, to teach me anything that I didn’t already suspect. I do think the assortment of paragraphs identified by Woodchipper would give me a great place to start a more intense investigation.