The Tissue-Culture King

Last updated

The Tissue-Culture King (1926 in Cornhill Magazine and in The Yale Review , reprinted 1927 in Amazing Stories and many times afterwards) [1] is a science fiction short story by biologist Julian Huxley.

Contents

The story tells of a biologist captured by an African tribe. It incorporates the idea of immortality based on reproduction from a tissue culture and genetic engineering, and an early mention of tin foil hats and their supposed anti-telepathic properties. [2] [3] [4]

Plot

A group of explorers of Africa stumble upon a strange two-headed toad, and that leads them to meet an endocrinologist, Dr. Hascombe. Captured by an African tribe, Dr. Hascombe saves himself by using "magical" powers of modern biology. [5] [6] [7]

Critical evaluation

Patrick Parrinder considers the story as an allegory to the servile place of science within a capitalist political world. [8]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aldous Huxley</span> English writer and philosopher (1894–1963)

Aldous Leonard Huxley was an English writer and philosopher. His bibliography spans nearly 50 books, including novels and non-fiction works, as well as essays, narratives, and poems.

H. G. Wells English writer (1866–1946)

Herbert George Wells was an English writer. Prolific in many genres, he wrote more than fifty novels and dozens of short stories. His non-fiction output included works of social commentary, politics, history, popular science, satire, biography, and autobiography. Wells' science fiction novels are so well regarded that he has been called the "father of science fiction".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tin foil hat</span> Hat and stereotype for conspiracy theorists

A tin foil hat is a hat made from one or more sheets of aluminium foil, or a piece of conventional headgear lined with foil, often worn in the belief or hope that it shields the brain from threats such as electromagnetic fields, mind control, and mind reading. The notion of wearing homemade headgear for such protection has become a popular stereotype and byword for paranoia, persecutory delusions, and belief in pseudoscience and conspiracy theories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Julian Huxley</span> British evolutionary biologist, philosopher, author (1887–1975)

Sir Julian Sorell Huxley was an English evolutionary biologist, eugenicist, and internationalist. He was a proponent of natural selection, and a leading figure in the mid-twentieth century modern synthesis. He was secretary of the Zoological Society of London (1935–1942), the first Director of UNESCO, a founding member of the World Wildlife Fund, the president of the British Eugenics Society (1959-1962), and the first President of the British Humanist Association.

<i>Amazing Stories</i> American science fiction magazine

Amazing Stories is an American science fiction magazine launched in April 1926 by Hugo Gernsback's Experimenter Publishing. It was the first magazine devoted solely to science fiction. Science fiction stories had made regular appearances in other magazines, including some published by Gernsback, but Amazing helped define and launch a new genre of pulp fiction.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Edgar Wallace</span> British writer (1875-1932)

Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace was a British writer of sensational detective, gangster, adventure and sci-fi novels, plays and stories.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Antoni Słonimski</span> Polish writer and journalist (1895–1976)

Antoni Słonimski was a Polish poet, artist, journalist, playwright and prose writer, president of the Union of Polish Writers in 1956–1959 during the Polish October, known for his devotion to social justice.

Biopunk is a subgenre of science fiction that focuses on biotechnology. It is derived from cyberpunk, but focuses on the implications of biotechnology rather than mechanical cyberware and information technology. Biopunk is concerned with synthetic biology. It is derived of cyberpunk involving bio-hackers, biotech megacorporations, and oppressive government agencies that manipulate human DNA. Most often keeping with the dark atmosphere of cyberpunk, biopunk generally examines the dark side of genetic engineering and represents the low side of biotechnology.

John Randal Baker FRS was an English biologist, zoologist, and microscopist, and a professor at the University of Oxford, where he was Emeritus Reader in Cytology. He received his D.Phil. at the University of Oxford in 1927.

The Huxley family is a British family; several of its members have excelled in science, medicine, arts and literature. The family also includes members who occupied senior positions in the public service of the United Kingdom.

<i>The Science of Life</i>

The Science of Life is a book written by H. G. Wells, Julian Huxley and G. P. Wells, published in three volumes by The Waverley Publishing Company Ltd in 1929–30, giving a popular account of all major aspects of biology as known in the 1920s. It has been called "the first modern textbook of biology" and "the best popular introduction to the biological sciences". Wells's most recent biographer notes that The Science of Life "is not quite as dated as one might suppose".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alpheus Hyatt Verrill</span> American novelist

Alpheus Hyatt Verrill, known as Hyatt Verrill, was an American zoologist, explorer, inventor, illustrator and author. He was the son of Addison Emery Verrill, the first professor of zoology at Yale University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Miles J. Breuer</span> American physician and writer

Miles John Breuer was an American physician and science fiction writer of Czech origin. Although he had published elsewhere since the early 20th century, he is considered the part of the first generation of writers to appear regularly in the pulp science fiction magazines, publishing his first story, "The Man with the Strange Head", in the January 1927 issue of Amazing Stories. His best known works are "The Gostak and the Doshes" (1930) and two stories written jointly with Jack Williamson, "The Girl from Mars" (1929) and The Birth of a New Republic (1931).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Definitions of science fiction</span>

There have been many attempts at defining science fiction. This is a list of definitions that have been offered by authors, editors, critics and fans over the years since science fiction became a genre. Definitions of related terms such as "science fantasy", "speculative fiction", and "fabulation" are included where they are intended as definitions of aspects of science fiction or because they illuminate related definitions—see e.g. Robert Scholes's definitions of "fabulation" and "structural fabulation" below. Some definitions of sub-types of science fiction are included, too; for example see David Ketterer's definition of "philosophically-oriented science fiction". In addition, some definitions are included that define, for example, a science fiction story, rather than science fiction itself, since these also illuminate an underlying definition of science fiction.

<i>The Best of Science Fiction</i>

The Best of Science Fiction, published in 1946, is an anthology of science fiction anthologies edited by American critic and editor Groff Conklin.

<i>The War of the Worlds</i> 1898 science fiction novel by H. G. Wells

The War of the Worlds is a science fiction novel by English author H. G. Wells. It was written between 1895 and 1897, and serialised in Pearson's Magazine in the UK and Cosmopolitan magazine in the US in 1897. The full novel was first published in hardcover in 1898 by William Heinemann. The War of the Worlds is one of the earliest stories to detail a conflict between humankind and an extraterrestrial race. The novel is the first-person narrative of an unnamed protagonist in Surrey and his younger brother in London as southern England is invaded by Martians and is one of the most commented-on works in the science fiction canon.

<i>Great Science Fiction by Scientists</i> Science fiction anthology

Great Science Fiction by Scientists is an anthology of science fiction short stories edited by Groff Conklin. It was first published in paperback by Collier Books in 1962; it was reprinted twice in that year and again in 1966, 1967, 1968, 1970 and 1978.

The year 1926 was marked, in science fiction, by the following events.

<i>Amazing Stories Quarterly</i> U.S. science fiction pulp magazine

Amazing Stories Quarterly was a U.S. science fiction pulp magazine that was published between 1928 and 1934. It was launched by Hugo Gernsback as a companion to his Amazing Stories, the first science fiction magazine, which had begun publishing in April 1926. Amazing Stories had been successful enough for Gernsback to try a single issue of an Amazing Stories Annual in 1927, which had sold well, and he decided to follow it up with a quarterly magazine. The first issue of Amazing Stories Quarterly was dated Winter 1928 and carried a reprint of the 1899 version of H.G. Wells' When the Sleeper Wakes. Gernsback's policy of running a novel in each issue was popular with his readership, though the choice of Wells' novel was less so. Over the next five issues, only one more reprint appeared: Gernsback's own novel Ralph 124C 41+, in the Winter 1929 issue. Gernsback went bankrupt in early 1929, and lost control of both Amazing Stories and Amazing Stories Quarterly; associate editor T. O'Conor Sloane then took over as editor. The magazine began to run into financial difficulties in 1932, and the schedule became irregular; the last issue was dated Fall 1934.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Aldous Huxley bibliography</span> List of works by Aldous Huxley

The following bibliography of Aldous Huxley provides a chronological list of the published works of English writer Aldous Huxley (1894–1963). It includes his fiction and non-fiction, both published during his lifetime and posthumously.

References

  1. "Title: The Tissue-Culture King".
  2. Julian Huxley, The Tissue-Culture King: A Biological Fantasy , Cornhill Magazine vol. 60 (New Series), #358, April 1926, pp. 422-458 (Magazine table of contents)
  3. Huxley, Julian (1925–1926). "The Tissue-Culture King: A Parable of Modern Science". The Yale Review . XV: 479–504.
  4. Huxley, Julian (August 1927). "The Tissue-Culture King". Amazing Stories . Well, we had discovered that metal was relatively impervious to the telepathic effect, and had prepared for ourselves a sort of tin pulpit, behind which we could stand while conducting experiments. This, combined with caps of metal foil, enormously reduced the effects on ourselves.
  5. p.118
  6. p. 190
  7. p. 39
  8. Patrick Parrinder, Scientist in Science Fiction: Enlightenment and After, in: Science Fiction Roots And Branches: Contemporary Critical Approaches, pp. 72-23