The Narrative Of Arthur Gordon Pym

Author: Edgar Allan Poe

Hugo Gernsback defined scientifiction as "the Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, and Edgar Allen Poe type of story". Poe was a very varied writer, associated with romantic and gothic fiction, one of the fathers of the horror story and the detective story. Only a portion of his short fiction could be identified as science fiction, and most of them, such as "MS, Found in a Bottle" or "A Descent into the Maelstrom", are also straightforward adventure stories with an extra and often disturbing element. That is certainly true of this novella. For the most part it is the story of an ill-fated expedition to the south seas, but on one remote island the crew of the ship encounter a race of savages who are terrified by the crew's whiteness. The crew are lured into a trap from which only the narrator, Pym, and one other survive by hiding in a cave where they discover traces of ancient writing (it seems to be a sort of hieroglyph) which explains the fear of whiteness in terms of a shrouded white figure. Escaping the island, the two men set off in a small boat in which they find themselves swept towards a great hole, at the entrance to which they glimpse a white, shrouded figure. The narrative ends at that point. Why it's on the list: The science fictionality of this story is all a matter of suggestion. We don't know that the Antarctic hole towards which the two men are heading at the end of the story is the entrance to an underworld, but that is the implication. We do not know that the white shrouded figure is an alien from this other, subterranean world, but again that is the best explanation. It is the use of hints that makes this such a powerful story.