The Alchemist’s Dream:
Merging Science Fiction and Mysteries to Create Fiction Gold
Nonfiction by Peter Jekel
"It is ridiculous to set a detective story in New York City."
Agatha Christie
When you think of a mystery story, you’re likely reminded of a tale in which a detective must solve a crime, usually a murder. Science fiction, on the other hand, is a genre in which plausible science is integral to the plot, and without it the story would not exist. It would seem at first glance that a mystery story and a science fiction story would never cross paths and therefore would remain separate pillars of literature, but nothing is further from the truth.
Science fiction fans know that science is fundamental to science fiction, but mystery fans also expect plausibility, whether it’s the exacting science of a tale containing forensic analysis, the methodology of a police procedural, or the psychology of a killer. In pioneering mystery author Raymond Chandler’s Ten Commandments of Detective Fiction, the third commandment is clear: the story must be technically sound in terms of both the crime (usually murder) and the detection.
The link between science fiction and mysteries has deep roots. It began in 1887 with Arthur Conan Doyle’s most famous character, Sherlock Holmes, who appeared in A Study in Scarlet and then in four novels and over 50 stories. Sherlock Holmes tales are the first detective stories in which the main character uses observation and deduction, the hallmarks of good science, to solve crimes. Conan Doyle’s character is also the first detective to employ the science of forensics, which is the application of the scientific method to solve crimes.
Since the scientific detective had its beginnings with Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, it should come as no surprise that Sherlock Holmes has found his way into science fiction stories. He is found in Manley Wade and Wade Wellman’s Sherlock Holmes’ War of the Worlds, in K. W. Jeter’s Morlock Nights, and most effectively in David Dvorkin’s Time for Sherlock Holmes. Holmes can also be found in a number of science fiction anthologies, including editor Robert Peterson’s Science Fictional Sherlock Holmes. Martin Greenberg has also produced a couple of Holmes science fiction anthologies. The first was Sherlock Holmes Through Time and Space and more recently Sherlock Holmes in Orbit. John Joseph Adams edited The Improbable Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a more recent anthology of Sherlockian science fiction featuring stories by Stephen Baxter, Stephen King, Neil Gaiman, Michael Moorcock and Anne Perry.
Another Holmesian scientific detective can be found in Stanislaw Lem’s The Investigation. A Scotland Yard detective is called upon to investigate disappearing people who apparently are also resurrected corpses. Probability and chaos theory figure prominently in the investigation. Lem followed a similar plotline in The Chain of Chance, in which an astronaut turned sleuth utilizes probability and chaos theory to determine why a resort’s male attendants are disappearing.
In 1912, Arthur Reeve wrote a series of stories featuring scientific detective Craig Kennedy and his medical doctor companion, Walter Jameson. Despite the obvious likeness to Holmes and Watson, Reeve’s characters venture into the world of science fiction, employing extensive scientific gadgetry, including wiretapping, which is commonly used in police investigations today.
Hoping to tap into the phenomenon of scientific detectives was Hugo Gernsback, an author and editor well-known to science fiction fans; Gernsback is acknowledged as one of the founders of modern science fiction along with Jules Verne and H. G. Wells. His ground-breaking science fiction pulp magazine, Amazing Stories, founded in 1926, still publishes today, though intermittently. Equally a pioneer in the scientific detective field, Gernsback created Scientific Detective Monthly. Unfortunately, that magazine, founded at the height of the Great Depression, survived only its first year, 1930. With its demise, the era of the scientific detective appeared to be over. A few authors, however, continued to blaze new territory, and the subgenre survived.
One way to venture into this subgenre is through several anthologies. The first is titled Mysterious Visions: Great Science Fiction by Masters of the Mystery edited by Charles Waugh, Martin Greenberg and Joseph Oleander. It is a series of science fiction tales by the masters of mystery fiction, including Arthur Conan Doyle, Lisa Gardner, John MacDonald, Richard Rohmer, Mickey Spillane and of course, Agatha Christie.
Not to be outdone, Isaac Asimov, Martin Greenberg and Charles Waugh edited 13 Crimes of Science Fiction, an anthology of stories by the masters of science fiction.
To demonstrate that science fiction and mystery can co-exist, science fiction author Barry Malzberg and mystery writer Bill Pronzini, jointly edited Dark Sins, Dark Dreams. The book is full of science fiction mysteries written by masters of both genres.
Other good science fiction mysteries anthologies include Crime Prevention of the 30th Century, edited by Hans Stefan Santeson; Space Time and Crime, edited by Miriam Allan de Forde; and Space Police, edited by Andre Norton. More recent examples include Alien Crimes and Down These Dark Spaceways, edited by Mike Resnick.
The first true attempt to blend science fiction and mystery into a novel was made by science fiction and fantasy writer William Sloane, who wrote To Walk the Night in 1937. The story follows the investigation of the death of a friend of the protagonist, Bark Jones, with one suspect in particular, the wife of the murder victim, being more than she first appears.
Science fiction author Frederic Brown started his writing career in 1938 with mystery tales and only published his first science fiction story, Not Yet the End, in 1941. He was on a path to becoming a gifted science fiction writer, but he never forgot his mystery roots. Perhaps his most famous novel, the satirical What Mad Universe, is a classic detective story that takes place in a universe governed by all of the clichés of early science fiction pulps.
A number of writers have since realized the possibilities of science fiction mysteries. One of the basic themes of science fiction is futuristic society. In 1951 Curme Gray wrote Murder in Millenium VI, where a murder takes place in a society where death has been forgotten. A classic science fiction story, The Demolished Man, by Alfred Bester, is a futuristic murder that takes place in a society where the punishment for murder is psychic demolition. Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? has been adapted into a couple of screen versions as Blade Runner. The story follows a bounty hunter who must seek out and destroy killer androids that have invaded Earth. Perhaps the most chilling futuristic scenario for a science fiction mystery is Joe Clifford Faust’s A Death of Honor. In this world, a private citizen must investigate the murder of a young woman because the police services are too busy! The City and the City by China Mieville involves the murder of a woman in a city somewhere in futuristic Europe. The investigation requires detective Tyador Borlu to travel from the city in which the murder took place to a neighboring city. Sounds simple and straightforward but the crossing from one city to the other is unlike anything that is expected; the journey is as much a physical as a psychic one. Prolific writer Nora Roberts, under the pseudonym J. D. Robb, wrote and continues to write the …In Death series about a New York City police officer, Eve Dallas, patrolling the streets of 21st century New York City. Many of the crimes in the novels and short stories are what we see today, but some delve into the science fiction realm.
Though mysteries taking place in the modern day often involve murder, some crimes of the future do not exist today. In Larry Niven’s Long Arm of Gil Hamilton and its sequel, The Patchwork Girl, the crime is not murder per se, but “organ-legging,” which is similar to drug-running, but the black market commodity is organs. This crime exists today but hardly to the extent we see in Niven’s imagined world. Anthony Boucher, a writer familiar to mystery fans, wrote short story collection Far and Away containing a tale entitled The Other Inauguration, where the crime of the future is “tampering with fate.” Altered Carbon by Richard Morgan is written in the gritty style of mystery writer Raymond Chandler although the crime is far from anything Chandler ever wrote about: a rich man kills himself and a backup copy of himself hires a detective to find out why. The Disappeared by Kristine Katherine Rusch describes a far future in which aliens and humans have entered into a number of treaties, including one that requires that humans are subject to alien laws when on alien soil. Unfortunately, a lot of the laws are nonsensical to humans. A private detective is thrown into three cases that put him in conflict with the need to uphold the nonsensical laws while also saving the human victims from further alien persecution. When Gravity Fails by George Alec Effinger is about the investigation of a serial killer who utilizes bootlegged personalities ranging from a James Bond type to a sadistic disemboweler. In Peter Hamilton’s Great Road North, humanity has spread across a number of colonized worlds. The key to its success lies with the North family, which is unlike anything that you might imagine: it is made up of successive generations of clones that are not identical because genetic errors have crept into each succeeding generation.
Science fiction has the whole universe to serve as its setting; Earth need not be a limiting factor. In this arena, Isaac Asimov reigns supreme, having written a number of mystery tales that take place on other worlds. He began in 1954 with his science fiction mystery, Caves of Steel, featuring Elijah Baley, and his robot partner Daneel Olivaw. The title comes from the fact that the world that serves as the setting for the story is claustrophobic and enclosed. Asimov used the same detective team in The Naked Sun, on a world that is the opposite of claustrophobic, a planet of wide open expanses. In both novels, the investigations involve murders of political figures. In 1973 Asimov published The Robots of Dawn, in which the detectives investigate not just a murder but a case of roboticide. Although the series came to an end, it served as a prelude to his famous and classic Foundation series. Red Planet Blues by Robert Sawyer takes place on Mars, in a small frontier town not unlike the gold rush towns of the 1800’s in California and the Yukon; the object of interest is not gold but Martian fossils. A private detective in this frontier town embarks on the resolution of a decades-old murder.
Aliens are a staple of science fiction, and some interesting aliens have found their way into mystery tales. One of the first authors to use an alien in a mystery story is the guru of hard science fiction, Hal Clement, in his 1950 novel Needle. It features an alien police officer who takes over the body of a boy (with his permission) to apprehend an alien criminal. Alien criminals can be found in the novel Illegal Alien, by Robert Sawyer. The story bears an eerie resemblance to the O. J. Simpson crime and trial in addition to suspects who are aliens rescued from a splashdown in the Atlantic.
Aliens have also been used in the detective role. Stephen Spruill created the detective team of private eye Elias Kane and his alien partner, Pendrake. Several novels appeared featuring the duo, including The Psychopath Plague, The Impersonator Plot and The Paradox Planet. Ron Goulart wrote a series featuring the exploits of the members of a police force called the Chameleon Corps, who are able to change shape. The series began with The Sword Swallower, followed by Flux, Spaceships Inc., A Whiff of Madness, and Flux and the Tin Angel.
Sometimes the detectives of science fiction are humans with special abilities. Donna Andrews wrote a couple of novels, You’ve Got Murder and Click Here for Murder, featuring an artificial intelligence-enhanced detective named Turing Hopper. Adam Christopher also features a robot detective in Made to Kill; the twist is that the detective is working as such to hide his true career as an assassin. The Automatic Detective by A. Lee Martinez is about a robot cabbie who contents himself with driving around his home of Empire City until his neighbors disappear without a trace, which moves him to involve himself in human society to find out what happened. In David Brin’s Kiln People, society is able to make fully functional copies of people, including a detective who brings new meaning to multi-tasking. Since he is able to make copies of himself, he can investigate several crimes concurrently. Peter Hamilton’s detective, Greg Mandel, has an advantage over his adversaries because he can read minds. A Quantum Murder, Mindstar Rising and Nanoflower feature this interesting detective.
Ever since H. G. Wells published his classic The Time Machine in 1895, time travel became an accepted premise of science fiction. The potential for incorporating time travel into a mystery story is enormous. Ironically, one of the first authors to attempt to do so was mystery writer John Dickson Carr. In 1957, he published Fire, Burn, in which a detective hero travels back in time to the early 19th century to solve a crime. Jack Finney, probably best known for his classic Invasion of the Body Snatchers, also dabbled in science fiction mystery using time travel as a theme in Time and Again and From Time to Time. John Brunner used time travel to good effect in his science fiction mystery, The Production of Time. Bob Shaw twists time travel in his science fiction mystery, The Two-Timers, where the hero enters an alternate timeline to prevent the murder of his ex-wife. Vernor Vinge’s classic Marooned in Realtime is about a time-travel machine that allows people to exist in time bubbles where time slows down. When people leave their bubbles in the 23rd century, the planet is missing a key ingredient—people. One of the travelers is forced to stay behind and dies alone. In other words, a murder was committed.
In a twist on the time-travel theme, Alastair Reynolds’ Century Rain is written in hard-boiled mystery style and follows a detective investigating the suicide of a young woman in Paris in 1959. The twist is whether or not the setting is actually Paris or even 1959.
Douglas Adams, famous for The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and its sequels, created Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency. The series does not fit well into any particular science fiction category but probably fits best as a detective fiction against a time-travel backdrop. It combines quantum physics, time-travel and the poetry of Samuel Taylor Coleridge (Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Kubla Khan, Christabel, Dejection: An Ode, Frost at Midnight), to illustrate the connectivity of the entire universe.
In keeping with a time travel theme with their alternate timelines, alternate histories serve as a backdrop for a couple of stellar murder mysteries that take place on alternate worlds. One by Michael Chabon, The Yiddish Policeman’s Policeman’s Union takes place in a world in which Israel never existed; instead the Jewish state lies in Alaska. Against the backdrop of Alaska taking over this last vestige of a Jewish state, a homicide detective finds himself immersed in a murder investigation. In Robert Harris’ Fatherland the Nazis won the Second World War and are in control of America, and a detective is called upon to investigate a murder that as the investigation unfolds seems to implicate the power structure of the Nazi party.
Science fiction has future technologies to incorporate into its tales, and new technologies have been used to good effect in a number of science fiction mysteries. Computer technology is growing by leaps and bounds and it is not beyond the realm of possibility to see it being used in crimes of the future as well as in their solution. In 1979 Lee Killough wrote Doppelganger Gambit, a police procedural set on a computer-dominated world. William Shatner, of Star Trek fame, wrote a number of science fiction tales, including his TekWar series. The series follows the exploits of a 22nd century police officer battling computerized drug barons. William Gibson wrote a science fiction novel, Pattern Recognition, that ironically takes place in the present; however, as with his other novels, this one incorporates the power of computers and the people who use them. A group of internet obsessives strive to find meaning in a collection of online videos called the “footage.” The source of this work is unknown but the heroine is hired to track down whoever is behind its creation. Computers also play a role in This is Not a Game, by Walter Jon Williams. A group of online gamers join together to find a real-life murderer. Dream Park by Larry Niven and Steven Barnes follows a security agent who must find a murderer in a theme park for fantasy gamers in 2050. Halting State by Charles Stross is about a bank robbery via an online role-playing game. Mystery writer Edward Hoch wrote a trilogy of science fiction mysteries, The Transvection Machine, The Fellowship of the Hand and The Frankenstein Factory, that features an elite corps of police services called the computer cops whose beat is a colonized solar system.
Horror thriller writers F. Paul Wilson and Matthew Costello wrote Mirage, a mystery that utilizes a computer technology that allows people to see other’s dreams. The technology is used to solve the mystery of why the sister of the protagonist inexplicably falls into a coma. In Blue Limbo, Terence Green uses biotechnology to solve the crime of police corruption, with his protagonist enlisting the aid of a dead colleague’s brain suspended in “blue limbo.” Lloyd Biggle, Jr., wrote All the Colors of Darkness about a detective who investigates the disappearance of two women in a teleportation machine. In Philip K. Dick’s famous short story The Minority Report, crime does not exist but is dealt with by a police agency that uses precognition of the future to arrest criminals before they commit the crime.
Nanotechnology is a relatively new technology that is becoming more and more a part of modern life. Essentially it is a form of engineering that uses extremely small machine to do work such as repairing or destroying cells or DNA and manufacturing things from an atomic base upwards. It is used to good effect in Wil McCarthy’s Murder in the Solid State. Greg Bear uses it in his Queen of Angels, in which police employ it to monitor and solve crimes. The Jane Hawk series by Dean Koontz has a female lead character investigating a plot by a large corporation to infect the world’s population with nanotechnology to allow the corporation to control them.
Police of the future will also have to learn to think outside the box. In Nightside City by Lawrence Watt-Evans, a detective seeks to find out why someone is buying up land that will be useless in the near future due to an anomaly in the planet’s rotation. Pat Cadigan wrote Tea from an Empty Cup, a mystery that takes place in a futuristic Japan that no longer exists, having been destroyed in a natural disaster. In order to deal with the loss of their country, the younger generation seeks solace in virtual reality. The crime being investigated by detective Dore Konstantin is a murder that happens not only in the virtual but also in the real world. Sean Williams wrote The Resurrected Man about a private detective who finds himself a wanted man for the murder of several women who all resemble his former girlfriend. Since the detective was in a coma during the time the crimes occurred, he is not responsible, but who is? He is working against time to prevent the next victim.
The merging of science fiction and mysteries, two seemingly distinct genres, has had a synergistic effect on outcomes. Science fiction mysteries often transcend the silos that define genre fiction to become literary classics.