Ralph 124C 41+
Ralph 124C 41+ is a science fiction novel by Hugo Gernsback . It was published chapter by chapter in Modern Electrics magazine from 1911 before it was first published as a coherent book in 1925. Due to its consistent extrapolation , it is one of the first modern SF plants.
content
The book title “Ralph 124C 41+” is a play on words . When pronounced in English it results in “Ralph one to (two) foresee (four-c) for (four) one plus”. H. "Ralph, one who foresees for another". The fact that the protagonist has this name should distinguish him as an inventor of prophetic ingenuity.
Gernsback takes the reader to the earth of the future year 2660. Through technological progress, mankind has conquered poverty and disease and colonized foreign planets. Inventors are celebrated and envied. The most ingenious of them is a scientist named Ralph 124C 41+. One day Ralph accidentally calls an attractive Swiss woman named Alice 212B 423 on his visiophone. You overcome the language barrier (he speaks only English and she only French) with the help of simultaneous interpreters. They fall in love with each other. When Ralph and Alice meet, Gernsback uses the rendezvous as a means of bringing the reader closer to the many advances in the fictional year 2660.
But Ralph has two rivals, the human Fernand 60O 10 and the Martian Llysanorh CK 1618. They kidnap Alice, and Ralph is feverishly looking for the missing person. Again, the chase serves as an exposition of the future world. In the end there is a showdown in which Ralph saves Alice from an avalanche by remotely vaporizing it with heat rays. There is a happy ending and the two become a couple.
List of concepts
Gernsback uses "Ralph 124C 41+" mainly as a medium to introduce the world in 2660. Many technical and social concepts are described that were at least conceivable in the present year 1911 (technical term: extrapolation ), and also in part the social effects of these new inventions are described. The concepts are described by today's critics as “partly naive, but also astonishingly accurate”.
Gernsback saw inventions such as television , intercontinental flights, manned space travel, the solar cell , the visiophone, the magnetic levitation train , the radar , the simultaneous translator, the electric motor , the fluorescent tube , the concept of financial creditworthiness , the fax and the like. a. ahead, even if he z. T. used other names: he named u. a. the fax a “tele-autograph” or the radar a “polarized ether wave”. Concepts from the book that have remained unrealized to this day were among other things. a. antigravity, invisibility, life on alien planets, Martians and weather control .
Scientific Notes
From today's perspective, several of Gernsback's speculations are outdated. In his book he assumes that light, like sound, needs a medium (an ether ) to propagate. This was scientifically refuted even then . In addition, Gernsback enables interstellar travel with flying machines whose main drive is rotating gyroscopes . He never got the idea of the rockets in use today .
rating
Due to its many extrapolations, “Ralph 124C 41+” is considered to be one of the first modern science fiction novels. Science Fiction Weekly called the work "at first sight kitschy and superficial", the plot as a "pretext for primitive scientific speculation" and pointed out that Gernsback's work was "not considered to be trash for a while for nothing". But it said that on closer inspection Gernsback "tells a lot with few resources ... hits the nail on the head much more often than not ... even if Ralph comes up with the right solution too easily and the plot remains superficial".
This is also the opinion of SFSite.com. The “thin, stencil-like” plot is criticized, but the “many interesting ideas and the infectious optimism” are praised. Historically interesting are Gernsback's "naive, but sometimes astonishingly accurate prognoses", but because of the limited literary quality it is emphasized that "there is a reason that Gernsback was better known as a publisher than as an author".
credentials
- ↑ a b Ralph 124C 41+: A Romance of the Year 2660 , sfsite.com
- ↑ a b Ralph 124C 41+ - A Romance of the Year 2660 , tfcbooks.com