Mark Twain’s Early Contributions to Fantasy and Science Fiction and “Mormon” Narratives of Reconciliation

Abstract

Mark Twain is best known in popular culture as the author of The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. It is somewhat less widely known that he wrote on the leading edge of the writing genre we now know as Fantasy and Science Fiction (F&SF). He stands with Edgar Allan Poe, Jules Verne, and H. G. Wells as one of the early developers of basic themes that are with us still: time travel, political dystopia, alternative history, future history, ESP, alien/demonic visitation, travel to alien worlds, and world-altering inventions. Twain likewise had fictional alignments with Latter-day Saint theology, including the theme of reconciliation through transcendence. Transcendent reconciliation is thus the driving force behind the general plot strategy of the most successful examples of Latter-day Saint fantasy/sci-fi and Twain’s writings as well.