Jim Endersby, "The Arrival of the Fittest: Biology's Imaginary Futures, 1900-1935" (U Chicago Press, 2025)

Jan 7, 2026

Jim Endersby, a professor of the history of science at the University of Sussex, dives into the intriguing interplay between biology and culture in the early 20th century. He discusses the forgotten mutation theory of Hugo de Vries and its unexpected impact on popular imagination, including its influence on notable writers like H.G. Wells. The concept of 'biotopia' emerges as he explores how narratives in fiction shaped public understanding of evolution and genetics, reflecting both utopian and dystopian visions for the future.

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INSIGHT

Mutation Promised Rapid, Controllable Evolution

De Vries argued new species can appear rapidly in mutation periods, making evolution experimentally accessible.
That promised controllable, accelerated evolution and the first visions of genetic engineering.

INSIGHT

Biotopia Reframes Nature As Malleable

Biotopias treat nature, including human nature, as remediable raw material for scientific redesign.
They blur utopia and dystopia because manipulation can yield both ideal and terrifying futures.

INSIGHT

Fans Rewrote Science Into Popular Meaning

Early science-fiction fandom actively shaped how biological ideas were imagined and repurposed.
Fans and amateur commentators often reinterpreted scientific concepts into new cultural meanings beyond experts' control.

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The Arrival of the Fittest: Biology’s Imaginary Futures, 1900–1935 by Jim Endersby

In the early twentieth century, varied audiences took biology out of the hands of specialists and transformed it into mass culture, transforming our understanding of heredity in the process.
In the early twentieth century communities made creative use of the new theories of heredity in circulation at the time, including the now largely forgotten mutation theory of Hugo de Vries. Science fiction writers, socialists, feminists, and utopians are among those who seized on the amazing possibilities of rapid and potentially controllable evolution. De Vries’s highly respected scientific theory only briefly captured the attention of the scientific community, but its many fans appropriated it for their own wildly imaginative ends. Writers from H.G. Wells and Edith Wharton to Charlotte Perkins Gilman, J.B.S. Haldane, and Aldous Huxley created a new kind of imaginary future, which Jim Endersby calls the biotopia. It took the ambiguous possibilities of biology—utopian and dystopian—and reimagined them in ways that still influence the public’s understanding of the life sciences. The Arrival of the Fittest recovers the fascinating, long-forgotten origins of ideas that have informed works of fiction from Brave New World to the X-Men movies, all while reflecting on the lessons—positive and negative—that this period might offer us.

Jim Endersby is professor of the history of science at the University of Sussex. He is the author of Orchid: A Cultural History, Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science, and A Guinea Pig’s History of Biology.

Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter.

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