Science Fiction Studies

# 18 = Volume 6, Part 2 = July 1979

Jrg Hienger
The Uncanny and Science Fiction
Translated by Elsa Schieder
Although the fantastic and, in the majority of cases, thrilling events
described in SF are presented as natural occurrences, some SF stories play
with the fear of the supernaturala supernatural which is, to be
sure, outside and not above all reason, and which is thus felt to
be uncanny rather than divine or holy. An uncanny effect is easily achieved
when the fantastic event restores faith in prescientific attitudes banished by
rational people to the realm of superstition. The investigation of the
"mental games" which I conducted in the first part of my book
1
has shown
that events of this sort frequently enter into SF. In order for them to be felt
as uncanny, however, this characteristic alone is not enough. Should it be
made clear from the outset that occurrences formerly perceived as
supernatural are possible, but have a natural cause, we will not even feel it
to be uncanny when people are possessed by an alien spirit, forfeit their
own identities or as in Richard Matheson's I am a Legend (US 1954)
turn into vampires. Similarly, when reading Henry Kuttner's Dark World
(US 1946), in which, not only a vampire, a medusa, and a werewolf, but also
all kinds of magicians and soothsayers appear, we do not begin to shudder;
the "dark world" is an analogue of Earth in another time/space, the fabulous
creatures are presented as mutants, and there is at least an intimation of a
scientific-sounding explanation for the witchcraft. The uncanny effect also
fails to appear when the characters affected by the occurrences, but not the
reader, lack the key to an explanation for an event that is outside the realm
of what is possible according to human experience. It is understandable
that Joseph Schwartz in Asimov'sPebble in the Sky (US 1950) almost loses
his sanity after his dislocation in time. The reader, however, informed of
the connection between the fantastic incident and a physical experiment,
retains his equanimity; he knows that the incident has a natural cause, even
though the specific nature of this cause remains unknown.
Of course, even without a rational explanation, phenomena that would be
extremely uncanny in empirical reality can lose their uncanniness in a
fictitious world. As Freud has said in his essay "The Uncanny":
The world of the fairy tale . . . has from the outset departed from the bounds of
reality and openly accepted animistic convictions. Wish-fulfillments, secret
powers, the omnipotence of thoughts, the animation of the lifeless all quite
common in fairy tales are here unable to bring about the uncanny effect,
because, for the creation of an uncanny feeling, . . . a conflict of opinion is
necessary about whether the apparently unbelievable is not, after all, really
possible. The very presuppositions of the world of the fairy tale obviate this
question.
In addition to this type of fictional fantasy, there is, according to Freud, a
second type which also excludes the uncanny:
The poet may also have created a world which, while less fantastic than that of the
fairy tale, still differs from the real one in that it includes higher spectral beings,
demons, or ghosts of the dead. All the uncanny which these figures could produce
is lost insofar as the presuppositions of this poetic reality hold . . . We suit our
judgment to these fictional realities and react to spirits, spectres, and ghosts as if
they were fully warranted beings, as we ourselves are in material existence.
2

SF belongs to neither of these two types of the fantastic because it is based
on the question of whether the existence of the fantastic is possible. It thus
creates a conflict of opinion which can be resolved only by a natural
explanation or the suggestion of explicability i.e., only in favor of a
rational world-view and against the feeling of uncanniness.
Despite the explicability of the event, a horrific effect can, no doubt, still be
achieved in SF so long as the reader is placed entirely into the experiential
perspective of a person who is unexpectedly confronted with the gruesome
consequences of a fantastic event. Although the possibility of technically
reproducing an individual is hinted at from the beginning of Philip K.
Dick's "Imposter" (in A Handful of Darkness, UK 1955) for example, the
reader must still find it shocking when at the end the hero, toward whom
the narrator has engaged our sympathies, discovers the terrible truth that he
is himself a counterfeit. But not every terrible and shocking occurrence has
an uncanny quality. Not all horror stories are weird tales. Terror can also be
unleashed by a danger to life and limb which a person knows is
threatening himself or others like him. The terror changes its quality and
becomes actual horror in the face of unusual moral baseness or physical
repulsiveness. It is indispensable for the infamous and the repulsive to be
unusual: when they become the rule, horror turns into indignation or is
blunted. The artful horror story therefore creates an atmosphere of
normality before the infamous or the repulsive is allowed, little by little or
all at once, to reveal itself.
The terror takes on another quality again if its object is not only
threatening or morally or physically shocking but, in addition, defies all
reason and thus produces an uncanny effect. A threat to reason which is felt
to be uncanny can, of course, also take place even when there is no threat to
life and nothing horrible happens. It does not even need to stem from an
event but may spring out of a frame of mind which is itself often
dependent of the overall atmosphere. The feeling that one is going insane
is extremely uncanny; likewise the objectless horror that may steal upon a
person at night or in weird places. Nevertheless, in all these instances, there
is present the (not necessarily confirmed) expectation that something is
about to happen that will overthrow our reason.
It may be objected that uncanny effects are possible even without a threat
to reason. In point of fact, an indisputably natural danger can be uncanny
as long as the threatened person and the observer (or only the latter)
correctly or incorrectly believe in the nearness of such a danger but do not
know whether, where, when, and in which form the blow will fall. In this
case, the source of the uncanny feeling is not a threat from the rationally
unknowable but an as yet insufficiently known threat. However, we need
not concern ourselves with this simplest form of the uncanny, which is
resolved simply through the passage of time: it is a form often associated
with the adventure story and as such frequently appears in SF too. Our
interest is to be focused on the uncanny that is characteristic of an event
belonging exclusively to the fantastic in SF, i.e. Of an event which,
according to hitherto existing human experience and science, may be
considered existentially impossible.
In SF, the sufficient condition for the irruption of the uncanny is fulfilled
by the presence of three prerequisites. First, a fantastic happening must, for
a shorter or longer period of time, remain incomprehensible to all those
affected. Second, the viewpoint of the narrator must be identical to that of
his characters or one of the characters must be the narrator. Third, the
unexplained occurrence must awaken a doubt as to its fundamental
explicability. That just two of these conditions are insufficient is shown,
e.g., by Fred Hoyle's The Black Cloud (UK 1957). For a long time
astronomers are unable to satisfactorily explain the threatening cosmic
phenomenon; and the reader receives no (or almost no) premature hint
from the narrator, but only finds out step by step along with the scientists
what the fearful heavenly appearance portends. But it is clear from the
beginning that, while the cloud is at most forcing a revision of the scientific
world-view, it is not jeopardizing the belief in the possibility of scientific
research into natural phenomena. This belief is not to be jeopardized, if for
no other reason than because the Black Cloud is not only discovered by
scientific means but can also be measured and subjected to predictions
immediately after its discovery. Its mass, its speed, and the probable
moment of its arrival in the solar system can be established immediately.
The specialists have taken up this dark matter and, owing to their energetic
efforts at an explanation, the uncanny feeling cannot arise.
The effect is entirely different when an unprecedented phenomenon is at
first observed only by people who prefer to doubt their sanity rather than
to believe in the monstrous evidence of their senses, and who, afraid of
becoming a laughing stock, keep secret what they have seen or, at most,
share it with a trusted friend under the seal of secrecy. Many stories about
alien invasions begin in this fashion.
In Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers (US 1955), the narrator, a doctor in a
small California town, becomes professionally embarrassed when several
patients claim that a father, an uncle, a spouse, or a teacher although in
no way different in appearance or behavior is in reality an alien. That it
is a delusion is accepted implicitly by the narrator until, in the house of an
acquaintance, he spots lying in the cellar, as smooth and unscarred as an
infant's body, the naked and lifeless body of an adult, whose well-
proportioned face is similar to a half developed photograph: it lacks
individual traits. However, during the course of the night it begins to
acquire the facial features of the inhabitant of the house; and in the same
night, the narrator discovers a second similar monstrosity in the house of
his girlfriend. This time there lies in the basement a female form which
looks like an unfinished version of the woman he loves. Apparently, the
townspeople who complained that their fellow citizens were counterfeits,
were not deceived; what is now revealed as reality is far more
incomprehensible than a psychiatrically inexplicable mass psychosis
among the sober townspeople.
True, after the first climax of the uncanny there ensues a period of
seemingly coming to one's senses. In broad daylight, the monsters
discovered at night have disappeared. A psychiatrist, who has up to now
been forced to acknowledge his incompetence, suddenly has a plausible
theory ready: it has all been, after all, an infectious delusion which can lead
to significant changes in perception and to hallucinations. In addition, all
the narrator's patients suddenly assure him that they themselves no longer
understand how they could have fallen prey to the absurd thought that
some of their own relatives and fellow citizens were in reality alien beings.
But just this sudden return to normality arouses in the narrator a new
suspicion, which is horribly confirmed. The number of counterfeit people
has increased in the meantime. The psychiatric expert and the ostensibly
recovered patients are now themselves of that gruesome company. Their
distinguishing characteristic proves to be an indifference to ordinary
human occupations and pleasures as well as a tendency toward isolation
from the world outside the town. Stores and hotels yawn empty. Houses
and gardens deteriorate. Contacts with the outside world die off. Roads
leading to the town are torn up or blocked off. In the end, the narrator and
his girl companion are the only real people left in the town, which has by
now been taken over by the counterfeits.
After the uncanniness of the happening has reached this second and higher
climax,
3
there comes the explanation which is demanded by the rules of the
game and the content of which has already been expected by the initiated
SF reader. By metamorphosing into the inhabitants of Santa Mira,
California, an extraterrestrial protean life-form has created a bridgehead for
conquering the planet. The how of this process remains mostly
incomprehensible; but the mere certainty that it is a natural process takes
away its ghastly character. The narrator and his companion react
accordingly. Though they had easily escaped the fate of their fellow
citizens by fleeing from the affected houses, they were both paralyzed by
terror. Now, although they have fallen into the power of the non-humans,
they take the initiative and mount a counter-offensive. Along with faith in
their reason, both the remaining representatives of the species homo
sapiens also reassert their ingenuity and readiness to struggle, the
distinguishing characteristics of humans in SF. By courage and luck, and
without help from outside, they succeed in driving the alien life-form from
Earth.
The typical SF-ending does not alter the fact that the major part of this tale
has the character of a horror story. The same thing holds true for many
other stories. This seems to favor the opinion that there is no hard and fast
dividing line between SF and weird fiction: the pseudoscientific
explanation of the uncanny is, supposedly, often only a concession to the
reader who is inclined to be skeptical yet is at the same time fascinated by
the uncanny, and who does not want to experience the pleasure of horror
without the fig leaf of rationality. However, an important point is not taken
into account by such an interpretation. The resolution of the horror at the
end of a predominantly uncanny tale has a function similar to that of the
disturbance of a closed society at the end of a predominantly satirical tale.
In both cases stagnation turns again into movement. Like the social order
which has become rigid and therefore perverted, the uncanny and therefore
paralyzing condition proves to be transitory. As the temporary perversion
of the social order is a danger with which one must reckon when
progressing into new, fantastic phases of human history, so the temporary
paralysis of reason is a threat to which people will have to adapt when
coming into contact with to date unknown or superstitiously
misunderstood possibilities of nature. Therefore horror stories also belong
in the domain of SF as long as, at the end, a reactivated reason lays hold of
even though it may not necessarily completely clarify the object of the
horror, and the feeling of uncanniness is dispelled.
The limits of SF are reached and overstepped only when a story ends
without this feeling. In Ray Bradbury's story "The Third Expedition"
(in The Martian Chronicles, US 1951), the participants in the Third
Expedition to Mars their predecessors have vanished without a trace
discover near their landing site a small town which looks exactly like the
captain's Illinois hometown had looked in 1996. Several untenable theories
meant to make sense out of the uncanny phenomenon are considered. Has
the spaceship perhaps landed on Earth instead of Mars? Does the town
have something to do with the participants of the first two expeditions who
wanted to create a second Earth on Mars? Did the trip through space
become a journey through time? But then, among the town's inhabitants the
crew members encounter dead people who were near and dear to them,
and, in their hysterical happiness, the unbelievable is accepted without
question. Those who died on Earth have received a second chance not in the
beyond but on the neighboring planet, and their space-traveling relatives
and loved ones have now rejoined them. Only during the night, while he is
resting in the familiar bedroom of his youth after an evening spent in
recollecting the past with his parents and his brother, who have been dead
for a long time, does the captain chance upon the explanation which a
reader acquainted with SF conventions has thought of from the beginning.
On Mars there are indigenous intelligent beings with telepathic and
hypnotic faculties, which they use to destroy invaders relying a
technological superiority. Just like the narrator in Finney's The Body
Snatchers, the captain finds, along with the explanation, the strength to
defend himself; but he finds it too late. He does not succeed in creeping out
of the room unnoticed because the "brother" beside him awakens. The
captain can still cry out twice. But he does not reach the door.
If the story ended with this horrific effect, it would remain within the
framework of SF. For, according to the conventions of SF, it is self-evident
that man may encounter, in space or even one day on Earth, intelligent
beings who possess some power which his ancestors ascribed to wizards
and demons, that he must reckon with his possible physical annihilation at
the hands of such creatures, and that he may perhaps be unable to even
come close to comprehending the nature of the alien intelligence.
Nevertheless, according to the same conventions, the incomprehensibility
of the facts must not become an axiomatic incomprehensibility: the
nonhuman intelligence may greatly surpass the human one, but it may not
set it altogether aside by completely disqualifying rationality. So that there
can be no doubt about the latter's invulnerability, the incomprehensible
power must at least conform to some set of laws, which enables men to
form plausible, even if unverifiable, theories about particular aspects of the
phenomenon and to make this or that forecast which is confirmed by
events. Even the most modest success in the intellectual endeavor to
understand the monstrous, would show that the mentally outclassedhomo-
sapiens is still able to think adequately, within his mental limits, and that
the impenetrable aspect of nature is not to be held as being of supernatural
origin. The effort at understanding may be useless for all practical
purposes, as in the case of the scientist in Heinlein's ''Goldfish Bowl"
(in The Menace From Earth, US 1959) who cannot positively ascertain into
whose power he has fallen and where he is, but who nevertheless develops
ingenious hypotheses and arrives at the correct conclusion namely, that
his body, upon which he is writing a warning message for humanity, will
be thrown into the ocean after his death. People do not understand the
message, but the fished up corpse is proof for the reader that human
intelligence can remain active even in the face of a terribly superior alien
mind.
The death of the captain in Bradbury's story seems, more than ever, to
furnish such a proof in that, to all appearances, it fully confirms the theory
that the captain formulated after the temporary paralysis of his reason. Of
course, this does not diminish the horror of his death. In fact, it is hardly
possible to think of a greater horror than the transformation of those
believed nearest and dearest into murderous monsters. That this is a very
frequently recurring theme in SF I have substantiated elsewhere. But no
matter how horrible the explanation of the frightful occurrences may be, it
would end the uncanniness if, after the nighttime atrocity, there did not
follow a final scene which cannot be explained by the captain's theory and
which therefore becomes once again extremely uncanny.
The following morning a funeral procession with a coffin comes out of
every house on the street on which the home of the captain's "parents" is
situated. Weeping fathers and mothers, grandparents and siblings, go to the
cemetery where the graves have already been dug. A brass band is playing.
The mayor makes a speech. His face sometimes looks like that of the mayor
and sometimes "like something else." The faces of the mourners are equally
changeable: "Grandpa and Grandma Lustig were there, weeping, their faces
shifting like wax, shimmering as all things shimmer on a hot day." the
brass band, "playing 'Columbia the Gem of the Ocean'," marches back into
town "and everyone took the day off."
Why this preservation of an illusion, the victims of which have already all
been murdered? Do the Martian telepaths and hypnotists want to celebrate
their victory with a macabre joke? But if everything on Mars that resembles
the human world is only an illusion called forth by hypnosis, and in
conformity with telepathically perceived human memories, then who, after
the death of the men of the Third Expedition, actually has the illusion of
the city, the cemetery, the weeping survivors, and the brass band? No
answer is possible. Reality, like the faces of the mourning fiends, is
"shifting like wax"; there is no more logic, not even the kind of twisted
logic to be found in time-travel fantasies with their description of a fluid
reality. This story of Astronauts is unlike so many others in that human
reason neither undergoes a radical relearning process, nor is it worsted by a
superior alien reason. Instead, the story completely disposes of rationality,
and, as the invulnerability of reason is a strictly enforced ground rule of the
fantastic in SF, Bradbury's tale can, at most, be allowed to pass for a
borderline case between SF and weird fiction. If forced to make a choice,
one would have to class is as the latter.
Bradbury's final scene is not only uncanny, but also comic. The fusion of
these seemingly incompatible qualities is easily brought about because, in
spite of their entirely different effects, a structural relationship subsists
between comic and uncanny phenomena. Both rest on the incongruity
between a prevailing order and one of its component parts which does not
fit into it. The prevailing order is not seriously endangered but rather
strengthened by a comic disparity since the disruptive force must be clearly
inferior. Otherwise the conflict would take on satiric or even tragic
proportions, and without a restoration of the proper relationships either
through actual events or through the mere recognition of the absurdity of
the deviation the comic effect will not be achieved. In contrast to this, in
the uncanny incongruity the disruptive force is incalculably menacing. In
this case we are not amused, as in the comic conflict, by the opposition
between the being or behavior of the humans and the natural laws or
conventions; it is the break in the continuity of natural law itself that
frightens us. The clown who attempts to climb a ladder not leaning against
any support, and who by his fall demonstrates the absurdity of his action as
well as the validity of the laws of gravity, is comic. The ladder that without
any means of support stays upright and is climbable, is uncanny - as long
as it belongs to a reality in which the laws of gravity hold. But just on
account of this presupposition, the uncanny object is also potentially comic.
It is uncanny, because its existence forms an exception to a rule upon which
we are unthinkingly accustomed to rely; comic, insofar as we have so little
doubt that the reliability of the rule that we regard an irregularity as an
anomaly which poses no serious threat to the norm and react to it as to
many a human deformity which may provoke laughter as well as instill
horror.
The potential comicality of the uncanny is, like the comic itself, perceived
only by a distanced observer. In the fictional reality of a story it does not
appear as long as the reader sees the uncanny phenomenon only through
the eyes of the affected and threatened characters; and as we know, it is
only through their eyes that he normally perceives it in SF, because its rule
of explicability does not allow an event to be shown as objectively
uncanny. It may be experienced as uncanny by the people affected, who
cannot explain it, but by the reader only insofar as he has been placed into
the experiential perspective of these people. Even Bradbury's Martian tale
follows this rule until the death of the captain from whose viewpoint all
the uncanny happenings have appeared. What happens afterwards is
certainly much more uncanny, but since the increased uncanniness rests on
the uncertainty as to who is really perceiving the events described, we now
have no fixed angle of vision and we can discover the comic in the uncanny.
It is uncanny that the world of the humans continues to exist on Mars
although no rationally acceptable mode of its existence can be ascertained.
It can no longer be an illusion. Still less is it reality. Furthermore, apart
from its existential mode, it is senselessly perverse and therefore uncanny
that murderers, observing small-town funeral ceremonies, weep for their
victims although they gain nothing by this presence. But that the fiends
continue, against all rhyme and reason, a pretense which has till now had
its evil purpose is also, like every effort obviously directed into the void
(not to be confused with unsuccessful efforts), extremely comic.
In the works of many SF writers one finds tales whose world is as
pervasively comico-uncanny as Mars at the end of Bradbury's "The Third
Expedition." The town of Peaksville in Jerome Bixby's "It's a Good Life" (in
Frederik Pohl, ea., Star Science Fiction Stories, US 1953) constitutes an
excellent example: the inhabitants must without pause assert and, if
possible, believe that everything is good, everything is very good, because
the terrifying "Little Anthony" does not like dissatisfaction. The three-year-
old thinks like a child, but his thoughts are omnipotent, and he can read the
thoughts of others. Fortunately, he is usually busy with himself or with
animals. But from time to time he takes notice of the humans around him.
When someone whom he likes allows himself to feel dissatisfaction, it is to
be feared that Little Anthony will do something horrible in his attempt to
be helpful. When someone whom he does not like shows displeasure, his
intervention promises to be even more terrible. And when someone like
Dan Hollis, who at his birthday party drinks more than is wise, actually lets
it be known that he dislikes Little Anthony himself, the unspeakable
occurs. "Bad man," says the child, "and thought Dan Hollis into something
like nothing anyone would have believed possible, and then he thought the
thing into a grave deep, deep in a cornfield."
The child commits his gruesome actions in all innocence, and they are all
the more gruesome because perpetrated by an uncomprehending child and
because comprehending adults are forced to applaud. Since we discover
that Peaksville had been a completely normal town before Anthony was
born, the question of the possibility of the existence of such a horror arises.
No answer can be discovered. This is why the infantile omnipotence, in
conduction with the impotence of mature intelligence, is not only gruesome
but also uncanny. And because we are informed about the gruesome
absurdity with impersonal impartiality, and not from the viewpoint of one
of the victims or from that of its originator, the incongruity of the whole
thing is also comic. The uncanniness though not necessarily also the
comicality and certainly not the horror would cease if, according to the
ordinary SF proceeding, an overarching system were set up which
explained the fantastic effect of the story as the result of a natural
occurrence and put it in its proper place in a larger scheme of things. But in
"It's a Good Life" such a system is missing. "Little Anthony" certainly
reminds each connoisseur of the genre of many similar dangerous mutants
who appear, alongside precursors of a more vital human species, in the
supermen tales. But though Anthony possesses all the powers usually
designated in SF as telepathy, teleportation, and telekinesis (and also has
other powers far more amazing), there is no mention of these terms nor any
talk about his genetic inheritance. The use of the customary terminology
would suggest explicability.
To be sure, many SF stories fail to discuss explicitly the possibility of each
fantastic event. They rely instead on the effectiveness of established
conventions brought into play through the use of a correlative vocabulary.
The cue words "overdrive" and "mutant " e.g., tell the initiated reader that
superhuman powers and journeys made at speeds higher than that of light
are not to be taken as supernatural occurrences. Bixby's story not only
avoids any suggestion of explicability, it also refuses to allot the events in
Peaksville a place in the realm of nature or the course of human history,
and therefore ignores both of the basic principles on which, in SF, the
rationality of the fantastic is founded. The end of the story expressly
disappoints the expectations of an explanation. We learn that, as Anthony
crept out of the body of his mother, the horrified doctor cried out, let him
fall, and attempted unsuccessfully to kill him. The whimpering baby
already knew how to defend itself. It moved the town out of the universe or
destroyed the universe and let only the town survive, "nobody knew
which." Peaksville is surrounded by nothingness, impossible to locate in
time or space, provided by Anthony with a lead-colored sun and a climate
in which the seasons change as unaccountably as the moods of the infant
fiend. We are literally dealing with a bottomless world.
What is true of Bradbury's Martian chronicle, in which the happenings
move into a comic-uncanny state, is especially valid for all stories which,
like Bixby's "It's a Good Life," know no reality other than such an
ambivalently created one. They all present a world in which we can no
longer orient ourselves. They take from SF its subject-matter but do not
belong to SF according to their basic axiom of presentation. Of course, it
sometimes happens that a story only begins in this style and then, halfway
through, changes its character and eliminates the uncanny by introducing a
rational explanation. In so doing, it undergoes a break in style which a
horror-tale built according to the pattern of Finney's The Body
Snatchers avoids, because in it the uncanny is not presented as a quality of
the fantastic object, but is only evoked through the way and manner in
which the subject experiencing it perceives it. No break is created when
something subjectively perceived as uncanny finally loses the uncanny
effect as a result of objective observations. (I have already discussed why in
this case no mixture of the gruesome and the comic comes about.)
A purely uncanny feeling, then, may establish itself as the temporary
paralysis of reason in the face of an occurrence for which nothing in a
person's prior experience and learning has prepared him or her. It may also
continue throughout the larger part of an SF story but certainly not to the
end.
NOTES
1. This essay, part of the chapter "Uncanniness and Comicality," is taken with the author's
kind permission from pp. 219-30 of Professor Hienger's Literarische
Zukunftsphantastik (Gttingen: Vandenhoech & Ruprecht, 1972), probably the most
important single book on SF in general published in the German language so far.DS.
2. Sigmund Freud, "Das Unheimliche," in his Das Unheimliche (Frankfurt, 1963), pp. 81-82.
3. See Peter Penzoldt's investigations into the "climax" and the "double climax" in the
literature of the uncanny, in his The Supernatural in Fiction (New York, 1965), p. 1 595.

ABSTRACT
Although the fantastic and, in the majority of cases, the thrilling events described in SF are
presented as natural occurrences, some SF stories play upon the fear of the supernatural--a
supernatural which is, to be sure, outsideand not aboveall reason, and which is thus felt to
be uncanny rather than divine or holy (cf. Freud's Unheimliche). An uncanny effect is achieved
when the fantastic event restores faith in prescientific attitudes banished by rational people to the
realm of superstition.
In SF, the sufficient condition for the irruption of the uncanny is fulfilled by the presence of three
prerequisites. First, a fantastic happening must, for a shorter or longer period of time, remain
incomprehensible to all those affected. Second, the viewpoint of the narrator must be identical to
that of his characters, or one of the characters must be the narrator. Third, the unexplained
occurrence must awaken a doubt as to its fundamental explicability. In most SF narratives--in
contrast to horror fiction, for example--the uncanny is ultimately dissipated by a cognitively
rational explanation of the fantastic event before the end of the story.
This phenomenon is examined in a variety of SF works including Philip K. Dick's "The
Imposter" (1955), Jack Finney's The Body Snatchers (1955), and especially Ray Bradbury's The
Martian Chronicles (1951).

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