On the Hybridity of the Classic Occult Detective Story

Abstract: This paper reads fin-de-siècle and Edwardian British occult detective fiction as a form of proto-science fiction, suggesting that the epistemological focus on the occult typical of these texts can be usefully envisioned as formally and functionally equivalent to the focus of modern science fiction on orthodox science. Drawing from Stephen Halliwell's studies on mimesis and recent developments in the field of unnatural narratology, the paper thus shows how the subgenre of occult detective fiction anticipates and participates in the systematic rationalization of the impossible that distinguishes the discourse of modern science fiction.