From the Collection: Blake and Science Fiction and Fantasy

As an author who created an entire cosmology involving his at once heroic and fallen beings, the four zoas, it is hardly surprising that Blake has been namechecked repeatedly as a significant influence on science fiction and fantasy authors. One of the first writers to self-consciously build a self-contained universe - fulfilling Los's famous dictum in Jerusalem that "I must build a system or be enslaved by another man's", Blake has been invoked by later writers not simply because of his commitment to world building, but also because many of his beliefs in the role of imagination chime with those who followed him.

The titles below are a small selection of science-fiction and fantasy titles that I have been collecting over the years that demonstrate Blake's influence.

William Blake: Milton a Poem

Trianon Press (1967)

Blake's appeal to science fiction and fantasy writers is obvious, and his strange and wonderful cosmology is a source of constant inspiration. The eponymous hero of Milton descends into the fallen world in a way that references Descartes' theories of space as a vortex, as well as Newton's concept of the fluxion.

George Macdonald: Lilith

George Allen and Unwin (1924)

Originally published in 1895, this centenary edition published on the anniversary of his birth includes an expanded introduction. Lilith is a romance of parallel worlds and probably the first piece of science fiction and fantasy that shows the direct influence of Blake, including a bookplate depciting the Romantic artist's illustration of Death's Door.

Morchard Bishop: The Star Called Wormwood

Victor Gollancz (1941)

As well as writing a biography of Blake's patron, William Haley, Morchard Bishop (Oliver Stonor) produced an anti-war satire on the events of 1939 set in the distant future of 2839. A Victorian stable lad's mind is flung into the future where he encounters S. T. Coleridge and William Blake in this eccentric, socially-minded novel.

Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451

Ballantine Books (1953)

A science fiction classic, Bradbury's dystopia about a future world where all books are burned owes a surprising amount to the very same poem that inspired Bester's novel. Part three, entitled "Burning Bright", uses the motif of The Tyger to invoke the fearsome mechanical hound that pursues the protagonist, Montag.

Alfred Bester: Tiger! Tiger!

Sidgwick and Jackson (1956)

Bester's sci-fi classic is a retelling of the Count of Monte Christo with a very Blakean twist in that its diabolical protagonist, Gully Foyle is transformed into a living tiger during an accident and henceforth driven with the dark energy of that creature. This is self-consciously a novel of Romanticism as well as romance: the first edition had a stunning front cover with Foyle's face decorated like Blake's Tyger.

R. F. Nelson: Blake's Progress

Laser Books (1975)

Probably the oddest of the titles here - in a genre that invites oddities - is R. F. Nelson's Blake's Progress. Although best known today for the story that was filmed as They Live, in this novel Wiliam and Catherine travel through parallel dimensions to fight the time traveller Urizen.

Angela Carter: The Passion of New Eves

Victor Gollancz (1977)

Carter's relationship with William Blake can best be describe as that of a friendly enemy, especially on issues of sex and gender. Passion is the first of the retellings of Milton a Poem included here, detailing the sexual transition of Evelyn to Eve in a violent, post-apocalyptic America where all contrarieties are equally true.

J. G. Ballard: The Unlimited Dream Company

Jonathan Cape (1979)

Ballard had long seen Blake as a surrealistic precursor, but it was with this 1979 novel that he demonstrated the influence most profoundly. This retelling of Milton is more explicit, with the pilot Blake descending in a nightmarish dream to Shepperton where he unleashes the citizens' darkest desires.

Philip José Farmer: Red Orce's Rage

TOR (1991)

In the 1960s, Farmer began his World of Tiers series, depicting virtual worlds with creators who were very loosely modelled on the four zoas. This later addition to the series was written in consultation with the psychotherapist James Gianinni to explore how immersion in fictional worlds to aid the therapeutic process.

Philip Pullman: Northern Lights

Scholastic (1995)

The most famous of the novels included here to be inspired by Blake, Pullman's first book in the Dark Materials trilogy follows Lyra Belacqua as she seeks out the source of a mysterious dust in an alternative earth dominated by religious tyranny. For Pullman, Blake is a poet very knowingly of the devil's party and the book was adapted for large and small screen.

Zoamorphosis

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