Margaret CavendishThe Blazing World and Other Writings (Penguin Classics)

This is one of various works touted as “the first science fiction novel” (especially in contexts where people are pointing out the strong influence of female authors in the early development of science fictional concepts). The full title is The Description of a New World, Called The Blazing-World, first published in 1666, but with an expanded version (as discussed below) published in 1668.In brief: a young woman is abducted by a would-be suitor but the ship carrying them is blown off course to the North Pole and enters a passage into an alternate world, in the course of which everyone on the ship except for the young woman perishes of the cold. From the description of the transition and the destination, the world seems to be not so much located in the interior of the Earth, but accessed as a sort of Klein bottle concept where both worlds are “exterior” to each other. The text seems to alternate between treating the home world of the young woman (who is never identified by name -- first she is simply “the lady”, later referenced by another title) as our own world, but later on there is reference to three worlds, with the third being the one the author herself dwells in, which is not directly accessible to the other two. The “Blazing World,” as this destination is called, is clearly utopian, being united under a single emperor and a single religion where everyone lives in peace and harmony. The inhabitants are of a number of different races, partaking of the nature of various animals (bird-men, fish-men, bear-men, worm-men, in addition to unmarked humans) to each of which is attributed some inherent set of intellectual skills. Unsurprisingly given the era when it was written, there’s a lot of unexamined essentialism, colonialism, and “white savior” issues. “The lady,” by virtue of her inherent virtue and purity is instantly recognized as being worthy to be the spouse of the emperor and is thereafter referred to simply as “the empress.”After this elevation in status, the text bogs down in a long philosophical treatise, presented as the empress’s inquiries of the various beast-scientists as to the nature of the world she has come to rule. The Wikipedia entry on the book suggests that this section had originally been a separate and purely factual treatise “Observations on Experimental Philosophy,” which was appended to the fictional tale in the 1668 edition. (If this is the case, I’d dearly love to get ahold of the simpler 1666 text to see if it holds up better.) If I’d been reading this as a text, I probably would never have gotten past the first few pages of this section, but I had quite wisely chose an audiobook version in preparation for a long road trip. Even so I had to take a break to avoid being put entirely to sleep.Eventually, the dramatized lecture on experimental philosophy shifts into a more complex story when the Empress turns her hand to introducing Christianity to the Blazing World (though she knowingly uses stage-magician’s tricks to convince her subjects of its truth) and then has her beast-philosophers summon up immaterial spirits to satisfy her curiosity about the condition of the world she left behind. They discourse for some time on theology and philosophy and in the end the Empress sets her heart on creating a Cabbala. The Empress asks the spirits to recommend to her a scribe who can write up the Cabbala for her and they recommend one Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle. There’s only one problem: the Duchess lives in an entirely different world inaccessible to the Blazing World, but they can procure her spirit to talk to the Empress by a sort of astral projection, “and truly their meeting did produce such an intimate friendship between them, that they became Platonick Lovers, although they were both Femals.” [swoon] The Empress expresses a desire that the Duchess should rule over a similar realm to her own, but the spirits point out that every person is capable of creating an infinity of worlds within their own imagination over which they could rule, so why be content with just one? Both women exercise this power for a while, creating and abandoning invented worlds at whim. Oh, and the Duchess introduces the Empress to several important English concepts including Theater, with which she is much taken. (There are also digressions where the Duchess laments her husband’s financial woes and how badly Fortune has treated him.) The Empress decides she wants to visit England for herself, so she and the Duchess to the astral projection thing again and somehow both end up sharing the Duke of Newcastle’s body with him and there’s this discussion of the awkwardness of three spirits sharing a single body and the jealousies that arise thereby.The next section involves a court case against the personification of Fortune, who is being indicted for crimes against the Duke of Newcastle, during which the Duchess pleads his case most eloquently and successfully. After this, the two women’s souls take leave of each other, promising to visit regularly (by astral projection, of course). And that’s the end of Part 1.Part 2 can be summarized as, “The Empress checks out how things are going back in her home world, discovers that her homeland is beleaguered and throws the scientific and natural resources of the Blazing World at the problem of how to smite her homeland’s enemies and make it the dominant political power of its world. This involves the invention of submarines and chemical warfare. A great deal of the world-building info-dump from the beginning of the novel now becomes relevant as the special physical resources of her new realm are weaponized against the unsuspecting folks back home. They are victorious and the Empress returns home to the Blazing World considering it a job well done. There is a last episode where the Duchess visits the Empress in spirit once more and is lavishly entertained. The story concludes with an epilogue to the reader from the Duchess, describing the supreme delights of world-building and encouraging others to do the same.For me, it is this emphasis on the self-conscious creation of an inventive secondary world, and the exploration of its nature, properties, and consequences, that places The Blazing World solidly in the lineage of modern science fiction and fantasy. If the plot seems a bit sluggish to the modern reader, and the language overly florid, and the social politics more than a little cringe-worthy, this must be chalked up to being A Product of Its Times and, if not forgiven, at least understood. As an imaginative creation, the Blazing World ranks solidly up there with Middle Earth, Narnia, and Barsoom. For that matter, when stripped down to the essence of the plot, the story could hold its own against many a straight-forward quest adventure. But do yourself a favor and listen to an audio version while doing something tedious like housework or weeding. I doubt many modern readers would have the patience to slog through it otherwise.

I found the two "other writings" in this collection nearly unreadable. Think "Horatio Alger," where the plucky but disadvantaged young'n makes good against all odds through kind spirit and determination. Now gender-flip, rework it to seventeenth century flowery language at its most florid, add run-on sentences at their most run-on, and substitute "preserves her virtue" for "makes good."I found the "Blazing world" story itself, longest and last in the collection, more interesting. The leading lady outshines all others in beauty, virtue, and wisdom, as usual. So, when she's shipwrecked in an unknown land, of course the emperor marries her at once, makes her empress, and is seldom heard from after that. She proceeds to make over the laws and customs to her liking, as is proper for her virtue and wisdom, and in the end, brings an army of her minions back to her homeland where they instruct all other nations to subjugate themselves - or face her army and their invincible weapons.I've skipped over many episodes of her imperial reign, but one in particular stood out. One of her buddies wanted some place to reign for herself, and Our Lady calls upon supernatural allies to find a world for her. In the end, the most practical world-building would be within the ladies' own minds - echoing the author's (or almost any author's) own process. And, as so many authors find out, the imagined worlds tend to go their own ways, irrespective of what their creators had in mind. (Hmm. Doesn't that sound like a familiar "creation" story?)I can't recommend this for the stories or style as such. Still, this seems to hold some place in the lineage that begat modern science fiction, which some may find interesting. And, like any writing, it captures the zeitgeist of its time like a bug in amber. It presents that time's roles of women, the assumed superiority of European culture and people, and the god-given obligation to bring the lower folk into line, all of which are assumed like laws of nature. (It is given, of course, that the lower folk welcome this with fawning adulation.)-- wiredweird

This is specifically a reaction to the Kindle edition of Cavendish, which I just purchased (23 August 2011). Two obvious typos in my first 30 seconds of reading (locations 193, 2794). Come on Penguin! If you are going to be a serious leader in ebooks, clean things up. You are doing better than most, but your work is still sub-standard. Etexts should now be of the same quality as print. This is no reflection on the work of Kate Lilley the editor, or on the fascinating concoction of Margaret Cavendish's Blazing World, but on the sloppy conversion of this text. For prospective purchasers of this Kindle texts, I think despite my complaint you can go ahead. The book is readable, despite a few font errors and some obvious typos. It's not as bad as the Penguin Chaucer and some of the other poetry texts. My complaint is directly to the publisher, and I am probably wasting my time. Yet, without criticism, there will be no improvement.

The book lives up or down, depending on your perspective, to Cavendish's inclusion in Nick Page's In Search of the World's Worst Writers. Bizarre plot, bad writing, and other entertaining features of the spectacularly bad writer are readily available here. The introduction, likewise, can be viewed as either entertaining or depressing depending on how you take suggestions such as bad grammar being an act of feminist defiance.

Book arrived in condition as expected. Thank you!

A few months ago, I read an article in the Guardian Review about the Penguin Classics series. The author of the article selected ten titles – apparently at random – to illustrate the richness and variety of the works available from Penguin. I realised that of the ten works, I had only read one, so I resolved to read the other nine this year. This is the fourth of those nine that I’ve read so far.Like most female writers before the modern era, Margaret Cavendish was of the elite. The fact that she became Duchess of Newcastle by marriage is an indicator of her social status. As such she had access to a level of privilege far beyond what was available to lesser mortals – male as well as female – in the seventeenth century. But as a woman she had precious little opportunity to put her talents to practical ends. She doesn’t seem to have had much education as a child, but as a young adult she must have spent a great deal of time educating herself as, at the age of thirty, she suddenly unleashed a torrent of fiction, philosophy, letters, plays, poetry, autobiography and a biography of her husband. The result is a mixture of radicalism, proto-feminism, social conservatism and a respect for hierarchy (she was on the Royalist side in the Civil Wars).What we’re presented with in this edition is three works of creative fiction that constitute a tiny taster of Her Grace’s oeuvre. All three focus on a woman, or women, negotiating a world ruled by men. Although The Blazing World is the centrepiece of the collection, my favourite was Assaulted and Pursued Chastity in which the heroine disguises herself as a young man and achieves great things simply because in appearing to be male she is given the freedom to use her intelligence, fortitude and multifarious talents without any gender constraints. I found The Blazing World more difficult. There is a lot of scientific and philosophical material packed into it which might have been cutting edge when it was written but now seems slightly dull. What makes the Blazing World close to a utopia is that it only has one religion that is celebrated in one way with no doctrinal divisions or sects. This is an obvious comment on Margaret’s own turbulent times when religious controversy and division caused so much violence and bloodshed. Another interesting feature is the idea that if you’re not entirely happy with the world as it is, you can create a better world in your mind. I suspect that Margaret spent a large amount of her time doing just that.As I said, this is a taster of Margaret’s work, and I would happily read more if I could find it.

Amazing woman write in the 17th century.Book is well covered by a very erudite scholar.Print quite small.

My review concerns only The Blazing World section of this book. It is an interesting, not often-read 17th-century Utopia/Romance/Autobiography by one of the century's more controversial authors. Unfortunately, this edition suffers from numerous transcription/digitization errors ('them' is rendered as 'diem' on several occasions) and frankly somewhat lazy annotations. Indeed, aside from a few points offering definitions of slightly-obscure words, there appeared to be almost no annotations in the text. The editor offers no discussion of the Hobbesian influences found throughout the text, or of the contemporary debates regarding helio-centric and geo-centric models of the solar system, which are referenced several times in the text. The introduction outlines some of the autobiographical elements of the text, but offers only a few annotations of the text's significant autobiographical content. Obviously there is a balance to be struck in terms of annotations and clean reading, but with the text freely available from numerous sources online, I feel the editors have to offer a little bit more in terms of notes to make this purchase worthwhile.

It's not a gripping storyline, but it does give an understanding of how the 16th science tried to make sense of the world.