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What Is a Literary Hoax?• A hoax exploits existing genres of writing, rather than

standing alone as a genre unto itself.• A hoax exploits the ways that these genres have established

an audience and a set of expectations or conventions. • A hoax involves deception at some level. Perhaps most

importantly, a hoax almost inevitably takes advantage of a pre-existing condition of readers’ trust in order to perpetrate its deception.

• A hoax always incorporates an element of surprise. It is always an occasion.

Science Fiction

While science fiction does not pretend that its subject matter will occur—and it certainly doesn't insist that it has occurred—it does rely upon a reader's acceptance of the possibility of the subject matter. In general, this emphasis distinguishes science fiction from fantasy.

Why the Rise in Science Fiction?

• The rapid technological change that occurs in this period• The growing use of publicly accessible

media and trusted genres of writing to help consolidate a general acceptance of this worldview. • The growing hegemony of a scientific

world-view

Hegemony?A pervasive, invasive consensus regarding how the world is understood. Here, it involves assumptions about

> the progressive development of science and technology the efficacy of science and technology for

invention and discovery> a future that will be different from the present

Science Fiction vs. Hoaxes

If science fiction explores what is supposedly believed to be

possible, hoaxes reveal actual shifts in what is believed to be

possible

“The Balloon Hoax” April 13, 1844 The New York Sun

The Victoria Steering Balloon

The Power of Exposing Hoaxes• Commentary on Belief in Media• Commentary on Hegemonic Power of Scientific

Style• Commentary on Reading as a Creative Act

• Verisimilitude depends upon what a reader expects as much as it depends on what would actually be the case.

“Von Kempelen and His Discovery”

• By reference to the 'Diary of Sir Humphrey Davy' (Cottle and Munroe, London, pp. 150), it will be seen at pp. 53 and 82, that this illustrious chemist had not only conceived the idea now in question, but had actually made no inconsiderable progress, experimentally, in the very identical analysis now so triumphantly brought to an issue by Von Kempelen.

• The paragraph from the 'Courier and Enquirer,' which is now going the rounds of the press, and which purports to claim the invention for a Mr. Kissam, of Brunswick, Maine, appears to me, I confess, a little apocryphal, for several reasons; although there is nothing either impossible or very improbable in the statement made. I need not go into details. My opinion of the paragraph is founded principally upon its manner. It does not look true.

“And if I were not well aware, from experience, how very easily men of science are mystified, on points out of their usual range of inquiry, I should be profoundly astonished at finding so eminent a chemist as Professor Draper, discussing Mr. Kissam's (or is it Mr. Quizzem's?) pretensions to the discovery, in so serious a tone.”

“The paragraph from the 'Courier and Enquirer,' which is now going the rounds of the press, and which purports to claim the invention for a Mr. Kissam, of Brunswick, Maine, appears to me, I confess, a little apocryphal, for several reasons; although there is nothing either impossible or very improbable in the statement made. I need not go into details. My opinion of the paragraph is founded principally upon its manner. It does not look true.”

“I need not go over the details of Von Kempelen's confession (as far as it went) and release, for these are familiar to the public. That he has actually realized, in spirit and in effect, if not to the letter, the old chimaera of the philosopher's stone, no sane person is at liberty to doubt.”

“We read, in reference to his researches about the protoxide of azote: “ [LAUGHING GAS} In the brief account of Von Kempelen which appeared in the 'Home Journal,' and has since been extensively copied, several misapprehensions of the German original seem to have been made by the translator, who professes to have taken the passage from a late number of the Presburg 'Schnellpost.' [Presburg, in Slovakia, now Bratislava, associated with magic rather than science]

Maelzel’s Chess Automaton (1770)“The family is connected, in some way, with Maelzel, of Automaton-chess-player memory.”

“The Facts in the Case of M. Valdemar” Published in both American Review and Broadway Journal in Dec. 1845

“A garbled or exaggerated account made its way into society, and became the source of … a great deal of disbelief. It is now rendered necessary that I give the facts—as far as I comprehend them myself.”

• “It remained to be seen, first, whether, in such condition, there existed in the patient any susceptibility to the magnetic influence; secondly, whether, if any existed, it was impaired or increased by the condition; thirdly, to what extent, or for how long a period, the encroachments of Death might be arrested by the process.”

• “The left lung had been for eighteen months in a semi-osseous or cartilaginous state, and was, of course, entirely useless for all purposes of vitality. The right, in its upper portion, was also partially, if not thoroughly, ossified, while the lower region was merely a mass of purulent tubercles, running one into another.”

• “Mr. L—l was so kind as to accede to my desire that he would take notes of all that occurred, and it is from his memoranda that what I now have to relate is, for the most part, either condensed or copied verbatim.”

• “I now feel that I have reached a point of this narrative at which every reader will be startled into positive disbelief. It is my business, however, simply to proceed.”

Poe notes that as the discoveries of Herschel "were gradually spread before the public, the astonishment of that public grew out of all bounds; but those who questioned the veracity of 'The Sun'—the authenticity of the communication to 'The Edinburgh Journal of Science'—were really very few indeed; and this I am forced to look upon as a far more wonderful thing than any 'man-bat' of them all”

So, ultimately, Poe uses literary hoaxes to reveal …• the extent to which an audience is

predetermining what they read• the types of claims that are implicit in a genre• the way that both media and literary genre,

apart from any particular content, constructs shared beliefs about the world.