“The End of Science Fiction” by Lisel Mueller, published in 1996 in her collection Alive and Together: New and Selected Poems from Louisiana State University Press, considers a tipping point in the relationship between technology and human beings. The poem posits that the genre of science fiction has come to an end as humans become indistinguishable from the machines they’ve produced.

“The End of Science Fiction” is written in four stanzas of unrhymed free verse. Alluding to narratives from ancient Greece and the Old Testament, the poem directs the reader to look to the past to rediscover and, thereby, reinvent stories that demonstrate human conditions of struggle, perseverance, and triumph. “The End of Science Fiction” was published over thirty years after Mueller’s first published collection. While it does not construct new worlds in the manner of traditional science fiction, the poem is an example of speculative poetry in that it imagines a way to envision a future that is markedly different from the present.

Poet Biography

Lisel Mueller was born in Hamburg, Germany, in 1924. Her father, a teacher, gave a speech in 1933 opposing Nazi ideology and was fired when the Nazi Party came to power. He emigrated to Italy and ultimately to the United States, where Lisel, who was then 15, and the rest of the family joined him in 1939. Lisel Mueller earned a BA from University of Evansville, where her father was a professor. She attended graduate school at Indiana University.

Mueller studied poetry on her own, worked as a receptionist in a doctor’s office, and wrote literary reviews for the Chicago Daily News before embarking on an academic career that led her to teaching posts at the University of Chicago, Elmhurst College, Goddard College, and Warren Wilson College. Her first collection, Dependencies, was published in 1965. Mueller said she was moved to express herself in poetry after the death of her mother in 1953.

Mueller’s poetry carries themes of solitude, as well as of music and elements of nature. Mueller said, “I write a lot of poems that have tension between what is going on now in society and what has always been there. My poems are much concerned with history. The message is obvious. My family went through terrible times. In Europe no one has had a private life not affected by history. I’m constantly aware of how privileged we (Americans) are.” (Poetry Foundation).

Mueller had two daughters with husband Paul Mueller, with whom she lived in Lake Forest, Illinois, until his death in 2001. Mueller died in Chicago at the age of 96. She authored multiple collections, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning Live Together: New and Selected Poems (1996), as well as many translated works. She was the recipient of numerous awards, among them the National Book Award for Poetry, the Carl Sandburg Award, the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, the Lamont Poetry Prize, the Pulitzer Prize, a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, and the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany.

Poem Text

Mueller, Lisel. “The End of Science Fiction.” 1996. The Slowdown.

Summary

“The End of Science Fiction” begins as the speaker asserts that what follows is not a made-up scenario, but reality. In the first stanza, the speaker lists examples of human achievement, including the moon landing and computer technology, and refers to human power. In the second stanza, the speaker likens humans to machines who can “live forever” (Line 8) and who communicate with a language the speaker compares to elevator music. The speaker shifts to a directive tone in the third stanza, imploring the reader to “[i]nvent something new” (Line 13), listing possible inventions like “a child that will save the world” (Line 16) and “a spool of thread/that leads a hero to safety” (Lines 19-20). In the final stanza, the speaker calls for the invention of human stories that contain tales of human struggle and perseverance.