About the Author
I am a PhD student at York University in Ontario, originally from British Columbia on the warm west coast. I study the history of science and technology, as well as the intellectual history of Europe and America in the nineteenth century. I grew up in a family fascinated by both Carl Sagan's science and Erich von Daniken's conspiracy theories, and now I find myself trying to find the cultural and intellectual roots of what we consider science in the modern day and how it came to be.
Document Type
Article
Abstract
Beginning in the early nineteenth century, a new type of literature envisioned what the United States would look like in the far future. Now known as science fiction, three of these works - Mary Griffith’s “Three Hundred Years Hence,” George Tucker’s A Century Hence, and Edward Bellamy’s Looking Backward - are exemplary in how they reflect social concerns of their time, particularly in the construction of notions of race in America. Through the idea of science as a universal and rational ideal, these authors imagined a progressive, white future for the United States, in which science and progress are increasingly identified by their proximity to whiteness and distance from blackness. These authors are not outliers, but form the foundation for a liberal tradition in American science fiction that runs through popular culture to the present day.
Recommended Citation
Snopek, Ryan C.
(2025)
"For All Mankind? Reading Race in Early American Science Fiction, 1836-1888,"
Madison Historical Review: Vol. 22, Article 8.
Available at:
https://commons.lib.jmu.edu/mhr/vol22/iss1/8
Ryan Snopek academic CV
Included in
Cultural History Commons, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons, United States History Commons