Pseudonym of UK mathematician and writer Charles Lutwidge Dodgson (1832-1898), whose famous children's stories, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (1865) and Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871) – an early example of the novel (sf or otherwise) structured around the moves of a game of Chess – have had a profound impact on a wide range of writers. It has been argued by Brian W Aldiss, among others, that the underlying logic of these "nonsense" adventures has provided a significant model for much of sf's typical reorderings of reality – certainly in most sf novels whose heroes' Paranoia about reality turns out to be justified. Both novels were assembled much later, very usefully, as The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (omni 1960; rev vt More Annotated Alice 1990; The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Version 1999) edited by Martin Gardner. Alice Through the Needle's Eye * (1984) by Gilbert Adair was, interestingly, not a Wonderland parody but a genuine continuation. The extraordinarily resonant metaphysical pathos of The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits (1876 chap) has many literary and personal implications: in sf terms, it can certainly be understood as a reductio ad absurdum of the extraordinary voyage (> Fantastic Voyages) of a Ship of Fools. Carroll's mathematical and logical fantasies, as found in the puzzle stories of A Tangled Tale (coll 1886), have also had repercussions in sf. Even the generally unsatisfactory and over-sentimental fantasy diptych Sylvie and Bruno (1889) and Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (1893) contains some notable sf Inventions, including an early Time Machine permitting Time-in-Reverse travel into the past. Understandably, Carroll's mutable and arbitrary realities have had at least as great an impact on Fantasy. [JC/DRL]

see also: Mathematics; Paradox; Virtual Reality; Underground.

Charles Lutwidge Dodgson

born Danesbury parsonage, Cheshire: 27 January 1832

died Guildford, Surrey: 14 January 1898

works (highly selected)

• Alice's Adventures in Wonderland (London: Macmillan and Co, 1865) [Alice: hb/]
• Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (London: Macmillan and Co, 1871) [dated 1872 but published 1871: Alice: hb/]
  • The Annotated Alice: Alice's Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass (New York: Clarkson N Potter, 1960) edited by Martin Gardner [omni of the above two: with annotations: Alice: hb/]
    • More Annotated Alice (New York: Random House, 1990) edited by Martin Gardner [omni of the above two: with further annotations: Alice: hb/]
      • The Annotated Alice: The Definitive Version (New York: W W Norton and Co, 1999) edited by Martin Gardner [omni of the above two: with still further annotations: Alice: hb/]
• The Hunting of the Snark: An Agony in Eight Fits (London: Macmillan and Co, 1876) [chap: book-length poem: hb/Henry Holliday]
• A Tangled Tale (London: Macmillan and Co, 1886) [coll: hb/]
• Sylvie and Bruno (London: Macmillan and Co, 1889) [hb/]
• Sylvie and Bruno Concluded (London: Macmillan and Co, 1893) [hb/]

links

Previous versions of this entry

• 07/09/2006
• 10/12/2011