Franklin, H Bruce

Entry updated 10 June 2024. Tagged: Author, Critic, Editor.

(1934-2024) US academic and critic, a cultural historian in various positions at Stanford University from 1961, in that year giving one of the earliest university courses in sf in the USA. In 1972, despite holding tenure, he was dismissed by Stanford for making speeches allegedly inciting students to riot against the university's involvement in the Vietnam War – as the first time a tenured professor had been similarly fired since the McCarthy Era, it soon became a case well known to those interested in questions of academic freedom. After being blacklisted for three years, Franklin was hired, again with tenure, at Rutgers University in 1975; he continued there as John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies from 1987, and was appointed emeritus on his retirement in 2015.

Franklin is of some sf interest for his first book, The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology (1963) (see Herman Melville), a study of the author's very far-flung sources. He is of more direct interest for Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction (1980) and War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination (1988; exp rev 2008). The former relates Robert A Heinlein's career to contemporary US history from a Marxist perspective, and won the Eaton Award for nonfiction. The latter is a pungent and important study about the US preoccupation with super-Weapons in fact and fiction, and how the two have interacted from the late nineteenth century until (as argued in the heavily revised second edition of the text) their inextricable marriage in the early years of the twenty-first century. The focus throughout is on sf tales which, tacitly or explicitly, anticipate the Holocaust of World War Three. Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War (2018) is both a memoir and a witty jeremiad about the future – including inevitable Future Wars – in store for America.

Of his two sf Anthologies, Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century (anth 1966; rev 1968; exp and rev 1978; exp and rev 1995) remains properly influential for drawing attention to the sheer volume of nineteenth-century sf. A later anthology, iCountdown to Midnight: Twelve Great Stories about Nuclear War (anth 1984), is a useful adumbration of his full presentation of the issue in War Stars.

Franklin published many other critical articles on sf and was among the genre's most respected commentators. He received the Pilgrim Award in 1983, and the IAFA Award as Distinguished Guest Scholar in 1990. He was a consulting editor of Science Fiction Studies from its inception until 2002. [PN/JC]

Howard Bruce Franklin

born New York: 28 February 1934

died El Cerrito, California: 19 May 2024

works

nonfiction

The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology (Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1963) [nonfiction: hb/]
Robert A. Heinlein: America as Science Fiction (New York: Oxford University Press, 1980) [nonfiction: in the publisher's The Science-Fiction Writers series: hb/Kelly Freas]
War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) [nonfiction: hb/Ben Santora]
- War Stars: The Superweapon and the American Imagination (Amherst, Massachusetts: University of Massachusetts Press, 2008) [nonfiction: exp rev of the above: pb/]
Crash Course: From the Good War to the Forever War (New Brunswick, Camden and Newark, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press, 2018) [nonfiction: hb/]

works as editor

Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1966) [anth: with critical commentary: hb/nonpictorial]
- Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1968) [anth: rev of the above: pb/Ursula Suess]
  - Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) [anth: exp rev of the above: hb/]
    - Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978) [anth: further exp of the above: pb/]
      - Future Perfect: American Science Fiction of the Nineteenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) [anth: further rev exp of the above: pb/Joseph Stella]
Countdown to Midnight: Twelve Great Stories about Nuclear War (New York: DAW Books, 1984) [anth: pb/Vincent Di Fate]

links

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