Loss of memory, usually inflicted on the protagonist, is a recurring plot device in all forms of fiction; an early instance is the amnesia of a traumatized character in A Tale of Two Cities (1859) by Charles Dickens. In genre writing this has become a notorious Cliché: a combined technique of empathy generation and narrative delay, with amnesiac and reader beginning on an equally bewildered footing and together groping towards the character's Identity, empowerment and goals. Examples include Philip José Farmer's The Maker of Universes (1965; rev 1980), Roger Zelazny's Nine Princes in Amber (1970), and Colin Kapp's The Patterns of Chaos (February-May/June 1972 If; 1972) – whose hero's initial amnesia seems arbitrarily imposed and has no particular justification beyond the traditional knock on the head. Sometimes memory has been blotted out by knowledge too awful to be retained, as in Fredric Brown's "Come and Go Mad" (July 1949 Weird Tales) and some tales of Horror in SF, including the Cthulhu Mythos.
More science-fictional but often equally accidental is memory loss during Identity Transfer to a new body, as in the back-story of The World of Ā (August-October 1945 Astounding; rev 1948; rev vt The World of Null-A 1970) by A E van Vogt; in Arthur C Clarke's The City and the Stars (November 1948 Startling as "Against the Fall of Night"; 1953; exp and much rev vt 1956), where memories of past incarnations eventually return after adolescence; and in Lord of Light (1967) by Roger Zelazny. Amnesia may also accompany radical transformation: the protagonist of Charles L Harness's Flight into Yesterday (May 1949 Startling; exp 1953; vt The Paradox Men 1955 dos; rev 1984) is, unknowingly, a much changed version of a contemporary who will undergo Time Travel. Seeming amnesia conceals a case of Identity Exchange in H P Lovecraft's "The Shadow Out of Time" (cut June 1936 Astounding; restored in The Outsider and Others, coll 1939).
Typical sf presentations of amnesia take two forms, not always distinct. The condition may be imposed from outside – by the amnesia-inducing Ray of Thomas Calvert McClary's Rebirth: When Everyone Forgot (March 1934 Astounding; rev 1944), or more usually by Drugs, Psi Powers or Technology capable of erasing or modifying the memory, a wide-ranging theme here discussed under Memory Edit. Or it may be concealing – perhaps by deliberate intention of the hidden self – a secret potential such as Superman, gifted Alien or Robot status. Examples of the latter are very numerous and include: A E van Vogt's "Asylum" (May 1942 Astounding); Ursula K Le Guin's City of Illusions (1967); Keith Laumer's Dinosaur Beach (1971) and The Infinite Cage (1972); Tanith Lee's The Birthgrave (1975); Philip E High's Fugitive from Time (1978) and others; the film D.A.R.Y.L. (1985); and Helen S Wright's A Matter of Oaths (1988). Mass amnesia is caused by Drugs in the public water supply in Robert Silverberg's "How It Was When the Past Went Away" (in Three for Tomorrow, anth 1969, ed Robert Silverberg).
Amnesia regarding recent events – loss of short-term memory – is logically the price of Immortality in John R Pierce's "Invariant" (April 1944 Astounding) and Algis Budrys's "The End of Summer" (November 1954 Astounding), where physical regeneration continually reverts mind and memory to the status quo. Another imagined immortality treatment has amnesia as its side effect in Christopher Priest's metafictional The Affirmation (1981). The protagonist of Piers Anthony's Mute (1981) achieves a kind of retroactive Invisibility through his Psi Power of inducing amnesia about himself; Priest's The Glamour (1984) offers a more subtle blurring of the line between amnesia and invisibility. [DRL]
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