The Influence of Pulp Fiction
by Michael Doyle

Science fiction without a snark
Didn't just materialize out of the dark
In 1926, Hugo Gernsback, without a lot of glory
Came to publish the first Amazing Stories

From the cover of this first, we might know
The Hugo Awards emerged from Wells, Verne, and Poe
The cauldron began stewing in the 19th century
With a call of science fiction as being literary

Jules Verne pointed at the role of technology
H.G, Wells offered his age's social commentary
Most of all was Poe who seemingly would show
The world how to write in his understated role

From his unparalleled adventure to the moon
Science Fiction would develop in form soon
In 1835, Hans Pfaall quietly pointed the way
Without a lot of bravado but a lot to say

In an attempt to escape debt, a man sees
An escape to the moon was his opportunity
This moon trip shows deep thought and conscience
It relies on the best of Poe's contemporary science

Eiros and Charmion's conversation on destruction
Mellonta Tauta was Poe's futuristic construction
Poe's further endeavors bore must inspiration
Until Verne's Sphinx arose in a seeming dedication

H.P. Lovecraft was inspired into Mountains of Madness
But it was Verne who was influenced without sadness
To write epic after epic including the first moon shot
Citing the name of Edgar Poe, least it be forgot

Though looking into details and getting things right
There was a lot of wrongs that have since come to light
It becomes a subject of context and what was known
Then what developed, which remained to become shown

Too many critics find fault for following the possible
Then dreaming of what might yet become the plausible
Playing with the net up is seen as a sort of fallacy
May it be suggested instead as the way of the literary

Lifelong, Verne wrote a series of journeys unordinary
In fact, so magnificent as to be thought extraordinary
Cliffhanger endings seem to demand the next story
How else will we know what has happened with glory?

Verne despised Wells as creator of storied convenience
Creating inventions as a matter of needed reliance
Most of these inventions existed beyond known science
This to Verne rattled against principles and conscience

Well recognized his stories played on the imagination
Suggesting that he and Verne had different destinations
Ones that both arise in the thoughts of one's mind
Thoughts of the undoable do not require being blind

These are the things of a good and gripping dream
And do not need to be any more real than they seem
The practical view can also be the dystopian view
Paris in the 20th Century plays on the wrong men do

The Eloi are creatures of the deepest pessimism 
Brought by The Time Machine as a social criticism
The technological Morlocks breath the wretched decay
That may yet arise from our ill regarded days

All the most technocratic bits we hide underground
Might turn to dystopian futures when chased around
Benjamin Disraeli's Sybil speaks of two coming nations
Each pursuing their own ends without common destination

The War of the Worlds retells mankind's modern history
One side technological and the other's loss, not a mystery
Man in the Year Million may become heads and brains
That is if the warnings of men like Wells prove in vain

(c) October 23, 2024   Michael Doyle
All Rights Reserved