“LIKE ALL ARBITRARY HIERARCHIES” the judgmental system of “literary fiction” versus genre “promotes ignorance and arrogance.” So writes American science-fiction author Ursula K. Le Guin of the existing “hierarchy of fictional types,” which places realism at the top. Unfortunately, German science fiction, in both the East and the West, has today been relegated to the margins of literary production. This is the case for three reasons: its conservative reputation, the flood of Anglo-American translations into (West) Germany, and its early designation as “trivial” literature.

The first German science-fiction author, Kurd Lasswitz, wrote from a social-democratic point of view. However, at the beginning of the twentieth century more conservative authors quickly dominated the genre, most notably Hans Dominik, but also some right-wing reactionaries: some of these stories from the twenties and thirties easily rival Mein Kampf (My Struggle, 1925) in their dreams of racially purified futures. Still, these were not the only stories of the period. Fritz Lang and Thea von Harbou created the highly influential films Metropolis (1927) and Frau im Mond (Woman in the Moon, 1929). Bernhard Kellermann’s Der Tunnel (The Tunnel, 1913) was the most famous of a notable, if lesser known, tradition on the Left.

Second, science fiction flourished in both East and West Germany, and continues to do so in a reunited Germany. East German science fiction faced its own challenges within the ideology of socialist realism, but it also enjoyed a protected market. In West Germany, Anglo-American science fiction of the golden age flooded the market. Today, the German love-hate relationship with American mass culture continues to make science fiction suspect. Further, critics sometimes question whether the few German science-fiction authors who manage to publish can hold a candle to the imports. Yet many German fan clubs are extremely supportive of German science-fiction writers and have even helped to publish stories when more mainstream presses were unwilling to do so.

The genre’s raison d’être is the exploration of alterity through the use of novum to estrange the reader from her known world. The portrayal of the other and otherness is central. Thus it is an ideal literature with which to explore the human-nature relationship, in which nature has so often occupied a marginal position.