“Solarion” was written by Edgar Fawcett and first appeared in Lippincott’s Magazine (Sept 1889). Fawcett (1847-1904) was an American author of Society novels and science fiction.

Kenneth Rodney Stafford is a brilliant American scientist who knows all there is to know of chemistry and physics. He is possessed of enormous powers of insight and deduction, but he is also cold, vain, selfish, and monumentally irresponsible. Stafford hears about a German professor, Conrad Klotz, who has supposedly written a revolutionary book about evolution. Stafford travels to Strasbourg to meet Klotz, but Klotz will not discuss his work and is initially hostile to Stafford. Kenneth eventually worms his way into the old man's affections and learns that Klotz is working on “stringent artificial evolution,”¹ that is, the heightening of intelligence through artificial, electrical means. Klotz won't tell Stafford the details, and as Klotz dies he gives his book to Stafford, making Stafford swear to destroy it without reading it.

But Stafford is a thorough cad and reads the book anyhow. Stafford is so taken with Klotz's ideas that he decides to try out in practice what Klotz had proven in theory. Stafford returns to England and builds a laboratory. He begins experimenting on dogs, since Klotz’s theory is not applicable to humans. Klotz’s theories work on a golden retriever puppy; for several months Stafford stimulates the puppy’s brain, until the dog is as intelligent as a human adult and can speak fluent English. Stafford names the dog “Solarion.” Solarion is beautiful, philosophical, moral and insightful, and he and Stafford have long, philosophical discussions. Solarion knows himself to be a monster and disapproves of Stafford for creating him as well as for stealing Klotz's work, but Solarion is as much a dog as a human and still loves his master.

Stafford eventually gives Solarion to Celia Effingham, a woman Stafford is in love with, and begins getting reports from Solarion about Celia. But Solarion falls in love with Celia (mysteriously, for she is unlikable) and soon refuses to give Stafford any information about Celia. Stafford is outraged at this, and pained and jealous that Caryl Dayton, one of his childhood friends and rivals, is Celia's lover. Stafford goes to Celia's house, confronts Solarion and orders him home, but Solarion refuses. Stafford draws his pistol, but Solarion succeeds in ripping half his face off before Stafford shoots him. Celia and Caryl marry and live happily ever after, and Stafford goes to Switzerland to recuperate, disfigured but none the wiser.

Though no classic, Solarion is surprisingly entertaining. Fawcett does a good job of exploiting the animal/human duality of Solarion, and during the philosophical conversations between Stafford and Solarion Fawcett nicely evokes a comparison between Solarion and Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein: Solarion suffers from the Creature’s loneliness, while Stafford's arguments echo Victor Frankenstein's irresponsibility and cruelty. Solarion anticipates twentieth-century science fiction in its animal enhancement/”uplift” theme, and Fawcett adds a Freudian dimension to Solarion’s affection for Celia.

In context, Solarion is of note for its presentation of “artificial evolution” as the product of a wicked mind. To the Victorians who understood and agreed with Darwin’s arguments in The Descent of Man, evolution was not controversial, but comforting, a “gradual, lawful, and progressive development in the natural world,”² exactly the sort of unyielding scientific theory which would appeal to Victorians otherwise afflicted with Fin-de-Siècle Unease. For these men and women, artificially-created/man-made evolution would be a violation of natural law, akin to Victor Frankenstein’s experiments with bodies in Frankenstein, and it is no surprise that Fawcett, a professional writer, decided to appeal to the pro-evolution crowd in his reading audience by casting someone tampering in Darwin’s domain as a villain.

Print: Edgar Fawcett, Solarion, a Romance. Philadelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1889.

¹ Edgar Fawcett, Solarion; a Romance (Phildelphia: J.B. Lippincott, 1889), 338.

² Bernard Lightman, Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), 220.