The very method employed in the book, that of supplying the people of the future with technical inventions which are the logical outgrowths of those currently in use or logically developed from currently accepted principles--this method has become fundamental in science-fiction. Indeed, it may be said to constitute that new art; and in a very proper sense, _Ralph 124C 41+_ may be called the first science-fiction story ever written.
This will doubtless bring some protest from the admirers of Mr. H.G. Wells. But a little thought will show that, in spite of some arresting and rather wonderful pictures of the future, and some extremely ingenious scientific devices described, Mr. Wells was not really writing science-fiction. There is nothing known to science out of which the time machine could be developed; Wells simply tells us that it was built and goes on with his story. The invincible balloon-battleships in _The War in the Air_ are flatly contradictory to logic; even when the book was written, everybody knew that hydrogen is inflammable. Heat dissipates in air far too rapidly to allow the heat-ray camera of the Martians in _The War of the Worlds_ to be built; and a very brief consideration will show that the construction of the antigravity plates in _The First Men in the Moon_ would be child's play beside the problem of constructing the screens which temporarily kept those plates from working.
It is the same all down the line, and with Jules Verne as well--whose passengers in the moon-shell would be killed at the moment of firing. The fact is that Wells, himself enough of a scientist to use technical terms correctly, was afflicted with low scientific morality where fiction was concerned. He tried to be a prophet in the domain of sociology, but he was not really interested in the progress of physical science. As long as he could get his characters into a situation by means of a plausible-sounding device, he was quite willing to flim-flam the reader about the practicability of the device and the soundness of the principles involved.
Mr. Gernsback, on the other hand, founded the school of fiction in which the technical plausibility of the surroundings is at least as important as the literary plausibility of the characters. For that matter, the reader is besought to show some interest in what can be done for us by the chemist, the inventor, the electrician, and even the meteorologist. It has often been pointed out that these technicians cannot change human nature, but Mr. Gernsback indicates that they can put human nature into a position where it can hardly avoid changing itself. World government is not an impossibility in an atmosphere where any person on the planet can be instantly in visible communication with any other, and where the barrier of language can be thrown down during a night's sleep.