{"id":5496,"date":"2025-01-23T09:58:02","date_gmt":"2025-01-23T09:58:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/learningspaces.dundee.ac.uk\/dundeeuniculture\/?p=5496"},"modified":"2025-09-15T10:46:29","modified_gmt":"2025-09-15T09:46:29","slug":"historic-science-fiction-edition-from-research-at-the-university-of-dundee","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sites.dundee.ac.uk\/culture\/historic-science-fiction-edition-from-research-at-the-university-of-dundee\/","title":{"rendered":"Historic Science Fiction Edition from Research at the University of Dundee"},"content":{"rendered":"

On the 23 of January, Bloomsbury Academic published a lost piece of Scottish and transatlantic literary history, recovered as part of an ongoing project based at the University of Dundee: The Essential Robert Duncan Milne: Stories by the Lost Pioneer of Science Fiction: Robert Duncan Milne: Bloomsbury Academic<\/a><\/p>\n

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This collection co-edited by Dr Keith Williams, Reader in English, University of Dundee, with Science Fiction programme graduate Ari Brin, based in California, showcases the writing of Scottish-born Robert Duncan Milne (1844-99), a forgotten pioneer. Milne was hailed as the first full-time science fiction writer in America. This critical edition \u2013 the first in 126 years \u2013 \u00a0constitutes the most expansive collection of Milne\u2019s writing ever published, placing his life, works and themes into their historical, literary and scientific contexts. Astonishingly prescient, Milne makes clear the often-obscured contribution of both Scotland and California in the development of the science fiction genre.<\/p>\n

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\u2018The Great Electrical Diaphragm\u2019 (1879) in which Milne imagines a satellite phone system, whereby signals are bounced off the Earth\u2019s atmosphere to transmit information around the world instantly.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Milne was born in Cupar, Fife, but emigrated to California in 1868. He became a science fiction pioneer after many itinerant adventures in the American West (which he also wrote about), publishing mostly in San Francisco\u2019s Argonaut <\/em>and Examiner <\/em>periodicals from 1879. His contribution to Early science fiction was greater than Scottish contemporaries Robert Louis Stevenson and Arthur Conan Doyle. It was often compared to Jules Verne\u2019s \u00a0and Edgar Allan Poe’s, but disappeared into oblivion after Milne died prematurely.<\/p>\n

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\u2018The Eidoloscope\u2019 (1890) is a kind of crystal-ball like electronic monitor, which can replay all events which have taken place in any room. One of Milne’s stories about visual time travel. It is accidentally used to solve a cold case murder.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

A gifted Classics scholar destined for the clergy as son of Cupar\u2019s Episcopalian rector, Milne attended Glenalmond College, then the University of Oxford where he encountered the evolutionary thought which challenged the theological cosmology of his upbringing. Milne\u2019s stories often \u2018scientise\u2019 themes from Classical myth, folklore and Scottish gothic fiction. He speculated about electromagnetic forces, imagining technologies overcoming distances in space and time. In 1881 he wrote about time-travelling as cinematic experience before H.G. Wells. Milne foresaw today\u2019s tele-presencing, remote visualisation, satellite phone systems, climate change, scientific terrorism and cryogenics. He also wrote on: alien life; molecular resurrection; forensic technology; identity theft and personality exchange; lost advanced civilisations; revival of extinct species; etc. Milne\u2019s ideas anticipate today\u2019s networked, online, media-driven world.<\/p>\n

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‘A Man who Grew Young Again\u2019 (1887) an experiment in early blood transfusion to save the life of a man turns into a cautionary tale about scientific vampirism and body-snatching.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

Milne was republished round the world, though rarely if ever in Scotland. His story about reviving an ancient iceman unintentionally became an international hoax. Because of Milne\u2019s trademark documentary plausibility, it was taken as an eye-witness report. Enthralled by progress, Milne nonetheless cautioned about disruptive technologies turned to sinister ends, such as universal surveillance, criminality and drone warfare. Ironically, modernity cut Milne\u2019s career short. A high-functioning alcoholic, who never gathered his work into book form, he was killed by one of San Francisco’s new electric cable cars, just before the dawn of the new century which his science fiction did so much to foresee.<\/p>\n

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\u2018A Question of Reciprocity\u2019 (1891) the earliest known story about a weaponised unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) or \u2018drone\u2019. San Francisco is blackmailed by a remote-controlled helicopter dubbed the \u2018vampire bomb\u2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n

The Essential Robert Duncan Milne<\/em> features a foreword by Ken MacLeod, Scotland’s leading contemporary science fiction writer, as well as illustrations by comics artist, Norrie Millar (who is also working with Professor Chris Murray and Keith Williams to adapt Milne\u2019s work into graphic novel form). It contains a critical and historical introduction, \u2018The Ghost of Futures Past\u2019, and is organised into Thematic Clusters, which showcase many aspects of Milne\u2019s pioneering themes:<\/p>\n